Wakefield Acorn Show / 26 April 2014 / W. Yorks

[daveejhitchins]

Just back from the show . . . 2nd time there and better than ever. It was just great to meet everyone again and to meet new faces

And, picked-up some goodies (shhhhhh! Yve doesn't know ) I'll post images in the Today I Received thread tomorrow.

Dave H

p.s. please don't let me drink so much coffee again! I think I'm in for a long night without sleep

[sydney]

I just want to repeat what Daniel, Ian and Dave have said. What a fantastic day! Great to see everyone from the forum. As for the cake I have to say Dave's was nicer! I think we need to grow the 8 bit presence again next year and take the larger end of the room and relegate riscos to the small end!

[RobC]

Yes - a great day that more than made up for the horrific drive up on Friday night!

Special thanks to Jason and Ian for fixing my Domesday player

[retroclinic]

Yes good times, nice to meet the faces from stardot. Hopefully see a lot of you again at Play next weekend.

Anyone know what program the BBC Camerman was filming for? I'd like to see his report if it's online somewhere?

Mark.

[BeebMaster]

Yes - a great day that more than made up for the horrific drive up on Friday night!

Special thanks to Jason and Ian for fixing my Domesday player :D

Not me, I just took a couple of screws out.

Jason needs to be nominated for a Knighthood, he fixed 3 Domesday Players today!

[jbnbeeb]

Hi

Great to meet so many people from the forum at the show. I really enjoyed meeting and chatting with everyone. The show itself was a frenzy of beeb related hardware activities and some retrosoftware gaming.

Thanks Simon for running the high score competition... I wasn't much help..I'll do a better job next time.
Thanks davidh for letting us share your exhibition table
As well as fixing 3 domesday players, Jason also found time to show me how to solder and point out where I was going wrong.. Thanks Jason!


Meanwhile Richard (tricky) showed me how a lot of his code works for his fantastic Carnivale game as seen at retrosoftware. Thanks for taking me through it and also encouraging me to try implementing some of the more advanced stuff that might not be so scary if I get stuck in.

Some cool stuff was on display . The robot arm via data centre USB socket was good.. As was David boddie's castleraider demo.. Also over at retrosoftware.

Curious about the camera guy with BBC tshirt

Btw awesome BBC micro owl jumper beebmaster!

I hope people post photos up soon. I took a few, if they are any good I will post here.

[firthmj]

I'll add my voice to the growing messages of appreciation - last year was enough fun to make doing it again this year seem a good idea.

And this year's was even better. Good to meet those I've met before again, and good to put faces to a few more names from here.

And while slightly annoying, it was probably kind of my A3020 to announce to me that the battery was about to start destroying the machine!

Real shame about that A3010 mezzanine machine which wasn't so lucky - see here for paulv's picture.

Michael

[tricky]

Thanks everyone for making my first acorn show in nearly 30 years great.

If anyone wants to help find the causes of my last two bugs (apart from hi-score can't save on various ROM/compact combinations) the story of Carnivale and .ssd can be found here: http://www.retrosoftware.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=877&p=6558#p6558

jbnbeeb, I love speaking to people who are keen to program and if it is on the beeb, that is all the better.

In general, I think anyone writing retro software needs as much encouragement as possible. Is it too late to get beebs back in schools?

[Garrettimus]

Pictures, please! Pictures, please! Pictures, please... or...

It didn't happen!

[denni505]

wish went ran out if money to go get the one next year sounds excellent

[flaxcottage]

To put Gerrettimus out of his misery ...

I didn't take many photos - much too busy but here are some.

This one shows my table which I shared with paulv, his multi-upgraded A440 is the one on the right

This one shows ddaveejhitchins and arcadian (in red) at their tables

This one shows what was left of the charity stall after stardot raided it. I wish I had had my camera ready to capture Mark of Retroclinic fame staggering down the stairs beneath a mound of 'rescued' BBC micros

Another one of my BBC Master, upgraded with a Datacentre, running a program to drive a USB robot arm. The screen shot is of the help screen.

The last one is of Lee trying to install Solidisk double-density disc interfaces or was it an Acorn speech upgrade? And to the right Beebmaster can be seen holding something in his hand helping to repair one of several laser disc players that were fixed.

The show was a great event and a lot of upgrading and repairing went on as everyone shared their skills and expertise. I got to see a kryoflux working and was mightily impressed. From what I could see the 8-bit section was much busier than the other one.

A huge vote of thanks to paulv who took the time to upgrade my A3000 with the VIDC enhancer I bought last year but never got round to fitting.

Roll on next year.

[sPhilMainwaring]

Would just like to thank the relevant "bods" who did the organising and a special thanks for the kryoflux demo by danielj

My first show ... a retro virgin no more !

Great to meet everyone and finally put some faces to the names ... Arcadian, Daniel, DaveH, Simon to name a few ... will definitely be at the next one

Can't believe I went without my nice new camera ... I looked at it before I left and thought "Don't forget to take that" ... then did!

[Garrettimus]

To put Gerrettimus out of his misery ...

Great photos! Thank you very much, Sir!

[jms2]

Any tales of risc os trolling then?

[leenew]

Here's my take on the show...
It was great
You want more?
Oh, OK then!

First of all I am gutted I didn't take any pictures It totally slipped my mind as I was too busy with other stuff....

Oh! Except this one!

Beebmaster looking resplendent in is hand knitted beeb-jumper
I took some flak for wearing a Super Nintendo T-shirt but hey ho!, there's more than one kind of retro

Oh.... the review...

I arrived a little late having been instructed to nip to the butcher's for some chicken breasts, then I forgot my phone so had to go back home..

I missed Mark's apparently amazing feat of strength and balance, carrying teetering piles of goodies that will be brought up to spec in due course.
**Those chicken breasts cost me the chance of snapping up a few bits I am sure! The sales tables looked like a tornado had just blown through when I got there, but I still managed to bag a few chips including a speech upgrade or 3.
I also grabbed some Torch manuals which will look nice along side the Torch I am sticking on eBay next week

I picked up the Acorn monitor from omx50 (Pete) that I bagged from him a week or two ago - thanks.

I got a bagful of bits from Mark (Retroclinic) - thanks.

I got 2 SWR modules and an IDE cable from Beebmaster - thanks.

I got a load of EPROMS from DaveH (more on this later) - thanks.

I got an UPURS cable/ROM from PaulV - Thanks - OH! wait a minute - he forgot to bring it! *** PAUL I will p.m. you my address in a bit ***

I got my badge (eventually!) from Arcadian - thanks.
I wore it with pride
DaveH commented that he felt 'important' wearing his badge, and I felt just the same way

Once I had settled in and made a few hello's to some people I had met before (Retroclinic, DaveH, DanielJ, Flaxcottage, PaulV, Beebmaster, Flynnjs, Firthmj, jbnbeeb, Sydney, Crowley) and meet some new faces (Tricky and sPhilMainwaring, Arcadian), and I spied a few 'names' JGHarston, AlanD, flibble RobC, and probably more that I cannot bring to mind at this moment

Beebmaster commented to me that he felt more relaxed this year as he wasn't officially exhibiting, so could get out of the spotlight if he wanted. (even though he stayed behind the tables 99% of the time) (the other 1% time was spent making a cup of tea ).

Jon (Flaxcottage) had a great setup showcasing the educational archive which he kindly gave me a copy - thanks. (No 4Mation obviously )
He had rigged up a robot arm that you could control by typing in commands using a language of Jon's own creation
It was rigged through the datacentre's USB capabilities and I believe this is the first time this has been done. (Mark RC seemed to like it)
I had a good 'spot' noticing a copy of Wolfenstein 3D for the Arc shoved in the bottom of a box that I grabbed for Jon as he has been after it for a while

Jonathan Harston seemed to like the robot arm too.
After learning the language for one microsecond, he proceeded to make the robot arm pick up a small packet in its jaws.
I could be wrong, but I think I saw him smile. Just a little one

Special mention must be made to the repair team headed by Jason Flynn.
Working tirelessly from start to finish, they managed to repair 3 Domesday laser players and were working on a 4th when the show closed!!! Absolutely amazing.
"It's not rocket science" Jason said.
Maybe not, but still damned impressive work
I am sure this made RobC's arduous journey from Welsh Wales a little more bearable on the return leg

Well, when I said Jason never stopped working on the machines from start to finish - I am lying - he stopped to solder 2 wires back on to a couple of Solidisk dual DFS boards for me - a wire fell of each of them while I was there!!
He also soldered a leg onto a speech chip that I had just bought - thanks Jason.

The only thing that didn't get fixed as far as I know was an A3000 with terminal damage from a leaky battery and a RAM/ROM board of Lurkio's that I took along for him, but there just wasn't enough time

**Lurkio - it's a shame you had to babysit mate!! I am sure we could have fetched the little 'un along in a cat box or something? **

PaulV was as enthusiastic as ever, showing his A440+++ and fitted Jon his VIDC enhancer to his A3000 after a bit of jiggery pokery.
That A5000 was a bit of a bargain Jon!!

PaulV has the best soldering iron I have seen in quite a while!!!

DaveH fetched along his EPROM programming stuff and blew me half a dozen EPROMS for me to test the Solidisk Dual DFS (1770/8271 on one board) that I fetched along.
I knew these were finicky about which ROM works with which board, so Dave blew 'em all - thanks Dave.
After trying a couple, I got one working (Version 1 board with version 2.00 DFS) but I could not get the version 2 board working - in fact it seemed to be 'killing' the EPROMS???
After Dave had verified an EPROM, I tried it in the beeb, only to get some random characters on screen - giving it back to Dave, it failed the verify - very strange.
I tried this a couple of times then gave up on it Jason would not approve
Well! I had other things to look at
I had fetched along a Z80 communicator, and clipped on beebmaster's cable, only to find it didn't work

DanielJ plugged his into my beeb and it worked.
After Daniel looked at my board, he noticed the crystal was hanging off - so that's another job for me tomorrow.....

I met Dave (Arcadian) for the first time (I was a bit excited )
He forgot the badges again but nipped off to Brighouse to get them for us all
Dave bought some more stuff to add to his collections and showed off some good stuff including a couple of beeb 'luggables' the likes of which I had never seen before! **visualise something like an Osborne case with a beeb guts in it - someone must have taken a photo surely! **

Sydney had set up his high score station and it got plenty of takers.
I left my attempt until later after I had thoroughly weighed up the opposition.
Hmmm. that flibble looks a bit good...
sPhilMainwaring... good skills......
Right - my turn - Arcadians - terrible!!!!!
I was a bit of an embarrassment
Tricky's daughter Imogen certainly knew her way round the old games - I wonder if dad has anything to do with that?

His "carnivale" game is absolutely excellent!
I was a bit better at that than I was at Arcadians and I put it down to the fact that it is just about arcade perfect in look and responsiveness - well done indeed.
JSnake by jbnbeeb was really good fun - but very unforgiving! it ramps up to turbo mode at 2,500 points and even if you know when it is coming - death isn't far away



All in all I had a fantastic day, and it was a pleasure to mingle with the fellow stardotters

Roll on 2015

Oh, there was a room with some RISC stuff in it. Apparently.

Lee.

[sPhilMainwaring]

Oh, there was a room with some RISC stuff in it. Apparently

Damn I missed that ... was it in the Theatre?

[tricky]

Oh, there was a room with some RISC stuff in it. Apparently.

Lee.

I must of missed that, I did find a second room with cake

[aerworuld]

Sorry the wife and I couldn't make it up norf this year; sounds like it was a cracking show!

However, although we couldn't make it, it seems a certain something has been found on the Charity stand that I've been searching for..... More to follow

Stuart

[sPhilMainwaring]

... it seems a certain something has been found on the Charity stand that I've been searching for...

It wasn't an original Acorn Atom PSU was it by any chance ... ?

[aerworuld]

... it seems a certain something has been found on the Charity stand that I've been searching for...

It wasn't an original Acorn Atom PSU was it by any chance ... ?

Nope, but as much of a Holy Grail to me it was a certain Electron communications device..

[BeebMaster]

Does that picture of me seem to show me lying down, or is it a Ubuntu image orientation glitch again?

[flaxcottage]

No, you were originally that way up.

[flynnjs]

You can't keep the tea in the cup if you're laying down like that.

[Arcadian]

That was a great write-up Lee! (Are you Samwise in disguise?).

Wakefield was great this year - the best yet for me I think (even though I had to disappear for about an hour-and-a-half in the middle of the show!). Great meeting new and old faces from the forum.

Same again next year? (Just with more tables for 8-bit!!!).

[flaxcottage]

Same again next year? (Just with more tables for 8-bit!!!).

What an excellent idea.

[BeebMaster]

I promised my May update would be on time, and it is (just about), and it's all about Wakefield:

http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/Wakefield20 ... d2014.html

[jbnbeeb]

Fantastic pics Beebmaster! Love the captions too. I love the way you start with a cup of tea

I promised my May update would be on time, and it is (just about), and it's all about Wakefield:

http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/Wakefield20 ... d2014.html

[flibble]

Some more pictures.

http://home.marutan.net/~peter/subsite/ ... /20140426/

Arcadian, let us know if you want any of the RAWs.

[flaxcottage]

Great pictures guys. Thanks.

Was it just a week ago?

[richardtoohey]

Yes, thanks for the pics & write-ups. Not as good as being there, of course, but much appreciated!

@flibble (1) what is the glowing box on top of the Electron with +3? And (2) can you name names for the group shot at the end? I can work out some of them based on the write-ups and other photos, but not all of them.