Acorn & BBC User Group (ABug) NORTH 22 Nov HALIFAX

[KarateEd]

Thanks so much for posting these pics, it looks to me like everyone had a great time.

The next best thing to being there is to see the activity through these pics.

Thanks once again.

Ed.....

[Arcadian]

Last handful of photos, taken as the night was drawing to a close.

Unfortunately many attendees couldn't handle the sheer ecstasy of being given their Hard Hat Harry tapes; which saw some members reduced to a state of crazed lunacy ...

Anyway, hope the Dutch (+Canadian +Kiwi) contingent are happy with the quantity of photos - and cheers guys for the well wishes!

[Arcadian]

Any chance of some names against one of those group pics pretty please...?

Post updated with forum names.

[Arcadian]

Thought I better add thanks to Simon (sydney) for organising and everybody else who came along and made it such a BRILLIANT day!

Thanks especially to CMcDougall who burned the midnight oil with me whilst fixing up Econet Beebs!

Can't wait for the next meetup!!

P.S. One last photo - a panorama of the room ...

[richardtoohey]

Anyway, hope the Dutch (+Canadian +Kiwi) contingent are happy with the quantity of photos

It's a from me!

Hopefully there will be some write-ups, about anything interesting that was fixed/done/invented, etc. But maybe all too busy with HHH!

Thanks.

[oss003]

Thanks Dave, nice photo shoot!!!
Looks like it was a great meeting again complete with curry beer and a nice bonus, those are the better weekends

Greetings
Kees

[dixiestoat]

Looks like everyone had a great time!
Good turn-out too.

[BeebMaster]

I had a great time, it was lovely to see so many of my BeebMates again, and quite a few new faces as well. I thought it was a good venue, it's very handy to have the hotel/meeting room/food & drink place all on the same site, and it's only a couple of miles away from Halifax train station.

The best thing for me was seeing an Econet-module-on-a-podule being built from scratch, fitted and made to work on a RISC PC, before my very eyes!

The second best thing was the Master 128 PSU explosion with a goodly quantity of smoke, even though it nearly caused the hotel to be evacuated! Even I've never seen a Master go pop before, so it was a very welcome new experience!

[sydney]

I had a great time this weekend and I'd like to thank everyone who came and made it such a success. Many thanks also to DaveM who probably did more of the organising than I did! I didn't get much done myself, not even much gaming! Most of my time was spent talking to people which was great. It's so nice to be able to have a conversation with someone about beebs/games/retro stuff and not have them look at you like you are mad! My one regret is that I didn't take a single photo, but I think Dave and Beebmaster probably took enough to make up for it.

We had a group chat about the next meeting and an announcement should be being made soon.

[danielj]

Just to echo - Simon, DaveM - thank you for organising. Great to see everyone! And complete a long standing project. Colin - good to see you, fab you made it down to one of these! You'll be glad to know I swapped out the DFS ROM in your Plus 3 for an ADFS

d.

[flaxcottage]

A great meet, thanks.

It is good to pick people's brains for that arcane piece of knowledge. Learnt some very interesting stuff;

- capacitor smoke from Masters has a quite distinctive smell,

- EPROMs won't program if a leg is missing,

- how to set up a Level 4 server; it is looking very much better than my Level 3 to manage and the upside is that I can release the Master that hosts my L3 server to better things - it has a datacentre and 65C102 co-processor too.

- CAT5 cable can be used to connect Econet boxes

- LCD TVs don't work without their PSUs ; thanks Simon for lending me a spare

- BeebMaster really does take his tea-pot wherever he goes

[Multiwizard]

Thanks for all the photo's, nice to see everyone had such a great time...


Greetings, Wim...

[1024MAK]

@ the photo takers- photo-fantastic

Great to hear that the event went well

Mark

[roland]

Thanks for the pictures. They make me feel jealous. Halifax (or every location in the UK) is too far for me to visit for one day. But who knows ... one of the next years

[paulv]

Unfortunately I couldn't make it this year as although I was up north this weekend, it was for my mums birthday. The photo's are great and it looks like everyone had a good time hacking away on various projects.



Paul

[Dave Footitt]

Everything was going fine until Colin asked Pete if he remembered "when 2 big birds came out in Chuckie Egg"

[daveejhitchins]

Back home last night at around 21:35 after a cracking weekend.

Thanks to J.G. Harston and Beebmaster for helping with my first BASIC programming in over 25 years . . . Didn't get very far as there was so much going on that you just didn't want to miss. Oh! The £11 curry, as usual I didn't manage to finish my Biryani, but enjoyed it immensely with a pint of Cobra.

Manage to visit my Sister (thanks for the B&B ) and my two daughters and two grandchildren. Got home to a pile of mail and this:

It'll need a few mods but at lease I'll be able to verify everything enough to order the final boards.

Then this:

and Beebmaster wasn't even in the room but probably near enough

Now, when's the next event . . .

Dave H

p.s. mustn't forget to say thanks to EVERYONE who attended for just a great weekend

[Prime]

To echo everyone else's comments fantastic weekend here too, with much learned and my two goals achieved (A5000 net server and getting the 486 card in my RiscPC working).

I seem to remember Jason (I think) having a home made Econet clock, is the schematic for that available anywhere? I'm going to build one of the RiscPC Econet podules, and thought it might be a good idea to put the clock on there too.

Cheers.

Phill.

[leenew]

Driving to Halifax:

Well I must admit I was a bit underwhelmed when I burst into the room on Saturday... It was just about empty! everyone was on lunch

I had a quick chat with Sydney and met Hiddenevil for the first time. (A thoroughly nice chap but with a tad too much Amiga-Love for this particular meeting ).

There were loads of interesting projects laid out, and when the gang returned from their mid-day replenishments, they all got straight back to beavering away on them.

As Arcadian had not managed to secure extra tables because of a bad accident on the motorway on Friday, I was relegated to working on a plastic case in the corner


My job for the afternoon was to fit a new RAM/ROM board I had just purchased from IFEL and see if it lives OK with my datacentre beeb.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321592153599? ... EBIDX%3AIT

The board fitted easily and I was toying with the decision to solder the leads to the board rather than just have the flying-leads-with hooks-on-the-end-thingys.
I removed the board and went in search of the soldering iron.
I found it in the corner on Jason Flynn's table.
Jason was beavering away on his excellent co-pro project and I didn't have the heart to tear him away from it.

** I have to say that I bet Jason thinks I am either a grinning fool, or that I fancy him madly! When our eyes met and I gave him my cheesy lopsided grin, I am sure it put him off coding for just a split second! Well - to put your mind at rest Jason, I was just gonna ask you to solder 4 wires for me, but thought it was an unfair request as you were sooooo busy on much more important jobs. (although I DO fancy you a bit in a purely brainy way ) so I wandered off and used the hook-things **

Thanks must go to IanS for the use of his eyes I couldn't see to get the hooks on, but Ian made it look easy - Cheers!

My board worked - and to prove it, I loaded an image into flash ROM..... writing straight over all the utilities in the process tsskk! the 73 (yes 73) page manual should have warned me more clearly of this possibility

It was nice to see Colin McD. for the first time. A great effort coming all the way from Scottishland to see us

Samwise smashed me on the ARCADIANS high score challenge (I was terrible). *Another great effort from Peter travelling 4 or 5 hours to get here!*

It was nice to see Dave Hitchins getting programming help from Beebmaster and JGH
Beebmaster was once again resplendent in his green knitted Acorn jumper - Marvellous. His tea drinking skills were once more in evidence.

JGH was in good humour and seemed to be having a great time with all the "really hard stuff" that only the brainy ones could understand.

Phill Prime looked amazing with his super magnifying visor on. He looked a bit like this

John Flaxcottage had a robot arm connected to a joystick connected to a beeb. I challenged him to make a cup of tea with it, whilst it was on his beeb. He FLATLY REFUSED! Well, that's not the spirit John, is it!

Oh, he gave me a load of software to sort through - Thanks and a load of stuff to get scanned - thanks (*looks for Lurkio's phone number* ... )

DanielJ was getting stuck in to a personal project of his that had remained unfinished due to the fact that apparently it is impossible to solder whilst holding a baby! Well done D.

Mark Retroclinic diagnosed a poorly beeb (hiddenevil's) and fixed it without looking at it or touching it in any way. (well almost! )

Later on, Dave Arcadian took us to one of his secret lairs to see some hidden treasure.
JGH drove, and thanks to a bad sat nav and a bit of fog, we ended up in Leeds
After doubling back we eventually found the lair.
I can only describe it as a "room" filled with "boxes".

The good thing was the "boxes" had loads of cool stuff in them. beebs, beebs, electrons, electrons, masters, barry boxes, modems, BARRY BOXES!
Yes, amongst the many weird and wonderful peripherals in the treasure room was the BARRY BOX. we didn't know what it did so we put it away.
JGH picked a magazine up - flicked through it - and found a type-in listing by himself We all cheered

I went under a table.

...and came out with a beeb. An issue 2 upgraded model 'A' beeb with DFS and econet fitted and speech chips! It was one of the ones we fetched back to the meeting. It worked fine. A Nice find! Dave didn't know he had it

I put Hard Hat Harry down my trousers and Dave took a photo of the hilarity.

I was starving at this point so A few of us went to McD's (not Colin's - it was too far - but MacDonald's was straight across the road).
I disgraced myself by having 2. Well I was starving!

Sorry If I missed any important happenings - I was going to take notes throughout the day, but the look Daniel gave me when I mentioned this, put me off

A great day

Lee.

[sPhilMainwaring]

Hello all!

Many thanks to DaveM and to Sydney for organising this As usual I thoroughly enjoyed myself

You just can't beat a *whole day* (or more!) of being able to ask questions (with your mouth) and have them instantly heard by real life ears and answered ... and repeat Ad Happynum; infinitely better than the slow forum based processes!

I wish I had been able to make the Curry Evening but unfortunately it was not to be

Thanks also to DaveM for the photo's and everyone involved in the Hard Hat Harry tapes ... whilst we may have seemed underwhelmed with them I think it's more that we have all developed secret self-defence mechanisms for facially masking our nerdy excitement at such things due to a non accepting society :p

Thanks also to HiddenEvil (who I hadn't met before) for the mini cube monochrome (crt) monitor

An apology for BeebMaster maybe; I had said I *could* go past the train station but we hadn't taken it any further before I dashed off Saturday night... I later consoled myself on the motorway when I remembered that IanS and BeebMaster were Google mapping the area he lives and motorway access so I hope I'm right in assuming that either that happened or someone else was passing the train station. Anyway I hope you enjoy Micro Men

One small request / problem. Can people taking photo's not have the flash strobe going off when SamWise is playing Arcadians as, apparently, this (and "screen flash" from it) very much diminishes his skills :p

Also the venue seems to have been a bit cold for SamWise as he also cited "Cold Hands" as also being responsible for the above

p.s. ......

Still can't get over a curry and two pints for £11

I take it you live "Dahn Sath" :p

Hi Phil, didn't you sleep in your camper this time ....

Hi Kees ... didn't bother with the camper van this time as I stayed the night with friends who, very conveniently, live only 5 miles up the road from the venue ... hope to see you there next year though

[jbnbeeb]

Thanks for all the pics and write ups.. looks like a fab time had by all. Really a shame I couldn't make this one - looking forward to the next

[KarateEd]

Anyway, hope the Dutch (+Canadian +Kiwi) contingent are happy with the quantity of photos - and cheers guys for the well wishes!

I have to say that the photos and write-ups are absolutely awesome. Thank you all for doing these. It does give a flavour of the event that we could not otherwise have.

Thank you,

Ed......

[Samwise]

Next time, Phil, next time! The room was cold, the flashes were distracting, there was a lot of noise in the corner ... ermmm ... I'm sure there are other excuses I can come up with, give me time!!!

Sam.

[tricky]

Thanks for the write ups, they really help to give flavor to the photos.
Hoping to make it up myself next year.
PS Does anyone fix floppy drives?

[richardtoohey]

Thanks for the write-ups, and were you blind-folded going to/from Dave M's Cave of 1000 Acorns?

[DutchAcorn]

Thanks very much for the photos!

Also great to see who's who on the group photo!

And I learned Electrons are not only useful as a BBC Master spare keyswitch holder but can also be used as an assault weapon.

Paul

[CMcDougall]

It was an absolute pleasure meeting you all

The day started well at 8AM, my Atom was working /talking to the AtoMMC card. Simon got his first touch /go of an Atom, playing Galaxians and Galaforce enjoying the 'snow' effect on screen and could not believe the speed of Galaforce. DaveF also enjoyed it, so did one of his young kids
Then just before lunch time:

DaveH then was shocked /astonished that it stopped working with the AtoMMC. So PhillH came over to take a look, and could not believe it still had screws in it after taking the lid off, he started to scratch his head, and had not seen the 'magic' inside mine before. It was game over for my Atom, so got out the electron and many boards, which Ian was very interested in and took many pics of the boards.
Don't think anyone else got much of a go of my elk setup, as PeterE was hooked playing the arcadians game on it, until PhilM had had enough, and wanted a go too
Then there was excitement in the near corner:

Jason had got his Very nicely made board working with his new software
It was all to much for Gary.....:

James brought over his broken elk, and a quick look at the pins on the ULA, about 5 where stuck down, he was not impressed, and a little deflated:

SimonH said that DaveH could sort it out with his big tool , so he was back to ecstatic
DaveM said he would take some of us to a deserted junk yard, where I found some useful things:

and a massive 20"+ DVD player thingy

We got back with about eight beebs under arms, LeeN and myself got about getting the Iss2 back to life, so could hear it talking some weird foreign language....
Everyone then ran away when he wanted the rest fixed, so I checked over the machines, and got a few kicking, screaming and smoking back to life

Wicked time

[hiddenevil]

Hey all

Just wanted to say how much fun I had Saturday! Such a lovely bunch of people, who really made me feel welcome. (LeeNew) You'd better watch it, I might paint up an A500 to look like a Beeb and sneak it in Mwuahaha!

Almost thought I wasn't going to make it after getting an occular migraine Friday night. If you've never had one, pray you never do. Anything 2 meters away was blurred, pretty scary stuff. Luckily Saturday morning I was much better and an emergancy appointment at Vision Express gave me the all clear to get back behind the wheel. Drama over, I was shooting off to Halifax and ringing Sydney for direction.

A massive thank you to Mark (retroclinic) who has hopefully solved my Model B reset woe's Even though he later made my poor BBC Master smoke so much, we could have send signals. Boy what a smell! But he did kindly hand me a recap kit, so there's something for me to do

I'm new to Acorn computers and still learning, so thanks to everyone who I had to stop and ask to elaborate. I'm not yet at the point were I know why X chip is better then Y chip.

Some awesome pictures posted!
Big thank you for organising this, count me in for the next event! Hopefully next time I'll have a day of gaming and not taking machines apart.

sPhilMainwaring I hope the monitor comes in handy, it's all about having fun and sharing an interest in these computers afterall.