ABug & Homebrew Gaming Weekend, July 11th + 12th

[Arcadian]

When you switched it on it tried to access the floppy drive.

Each key press would result in another attempt to access the floppy.

So it would appear that it might have needed a system/boot disc for it to work.

I swear I'd got it to display a command prompt when I last tried it 7/8 years ago - so maybe I had got hold of an OS disc at some point?! Or perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me?!

[daveejhitchins]

I'm hoping to be a the meet tomorrow May even manage a few hours on Sunday too
I'll have to miss the meal on Saturday evening, however.

Dave H

[jbnbeeb]

So it would appear that it might have needed a system/boot disc for it to work.

I swear I'd got it to display a command prompt when I last tried it 7/8 years ago - so maybe I had got hold of an OS disc at some point?! Or perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me?!

Found the "System 5 Handbook" here : http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org ... ndbook.pdf

On page 1 we have:

Code: Select all

HARDWARE
- Rack, PSU and Backplane
- 6502A Processor Board
- 32K Dynamic RAM Board
- 80 x 25 VDU Interface Board or Teletext VDU 
Interface Board
- Floppy Disc Controller Board
- One Floppy Disc Drive
SOFTWARE
- Resident DOS
- A DOS utilities disc (see Section 5)
A list of available hardware and software options is 
given in pare 1 of System 5 System Description.
Note  that  a  different  version  of  DOS  is  required  for
different  VDUs  and  different  manufacturer's  disc
drives.

and ..

Although the DOS is primarily concerned with disc
access, handling and management, it also contains
the System 5 Operating System (OS)

So we have an OS and DOS in ROM, but many utils on a DOS util disk.. which will be different per disk drive model! Might be hard trying to track the latter down

I dunno much about the Atom, but perhaps the Atom DOS utils disk could be somehow made to work with the System. I guess this would require some amendments for the utils disk to cope with the System OS ROM or vice versa.

[Prime]

Reading jnbeeb's post.....

I think that the difference in DOS is mainly what VDU card it has, for example when I was recently working with Atom DOS it contained routines for a Teletext VDU card, which I believe is a holdover from the Systems, though could be fitted to the Atom.

So I would think that the main thing is to get the correct VDU card with the correct Disk card. An analasis of the dumped ROMS may well reveal which card that system is designed to work with.

But of course if you have the wrong card in there (or even it's jumpered for the wrong address), you'll get nothing on the monitor, as being 6845 based they don't produce any sensible output until correctly programmed, unlike the 6847 in the Atom, which will at least produce a picture, even if it's garbage.

Anyway, I'll have a look later today

Cheers.

Phill.

[davidb]

Is anyone else travelling there from the north Manchester area?

[oss003]

Ok guys, have fun and enjoy yourselfs!!!!!!

Greetings
Kees

[sydney]

Just packed the boot of the car, early night tonight and an early start tomorrow. I'm planning on arriving around 9am, is that too early?

[Arcadian]

Yep, myself and Gary will be on site by 9!

[davidb]

I should be there around 11. Have a safe trip everyone!

[Arcadian]

Are there any plans for a meal/drink out on saturday evening?

Missed this. Yes, we'll head out around 8-ish probably. Then back to base for a final hour's hacking between 10-11pm.

[Arcadian]

We are OPEN!

[roland]

Have fun and pictures please

[jgharston]

Just woken up. Will be there after lunch(/breakfast!).

[jgharston]

It's ALIVE!!!!

40-year-old System 3 booting up and running BBC BASIC!

Pictures to follow.

[hoglet]

Cool!

Dave

[Arcadian]

What a monumental day!

Despite seemingly suffering setback after setback, Prime (Phill), IanS and JGH (Jonathan) beavered away all afternoon - and finally all ABug attendees were able to witness a fully working Acorn System 3, running both System (BBC) BASIC and Atom BASIC.

Images below!

[Arcadian]

Obligatory group photo, less me (taking photo!) and Gary

[Arcadian]

General photos, Day 1 (apols for the lousy quality, they're phone snaps)

[Arcadian]

Homebrewers!

[Arcadian]

Acorn homebrew ...

[Arcadian]

In addition to the Acorn homebrewers, it was a real pleasure to welcome Spectrum programmers Jonathan Cauldwell and Doug B (retrific).

At the event, Jonathan made some progress on his upcoming title "Gamex 2" (which includes an incredible 16 minigames) whilst Doug was doing some work on a new platform game that he's writing using Jonathan's excellent Arcade Game Designer program.

[Arcadian]

Last but not least ... a couple of panoramic shots.

[Arcadian]

Couple of clips of the Acorn System Three(?) in action, narration courtesy of JGH:

[Arcadian]

This is the last bit of media I have from the Saturday - a little video montage of some of the new/homebrew games that were being demoed/played at HGW #5:

[roland]

Thanks for the pictures.

[oss003]

Agree, nice pictures and videos and for all achievements!!!

Greetings
Kees

[davidb]

It was a pleasure to see some familiar faces again, and to finally catch up with some familiar names in person!

I promised to send jgharston a screenshot which I'll do later. I tried last night but failed to get my phone to do it. I'll use a proper computer next time.

Thanks to Arcadian for uploading all those photos. I'll have to put up some with him on the other side of the lens a bit later on. None of them contain dragon punches, however.

[flaxcottage]

A great day, yesterday, thanks.

Good work with that Acorn system 3. Having seen all those Atoms I might just have to get myself one - maybe ...

[Retrific]

Thank you to everyone for making the weekend so amazing.

It was great meeting and talking to everyone, and especially Jonathan Cauldwell, the creator of AGD (which I use to create games on the Speccy).

I shall certainly be attending as many future events as I can get to.

Thank you.

Doug

[tricky]

Thanks for the pictures and video. Wish I were there! I am trying to get a bit of coding in here.