All-day 'Virtual' Acorn session #4, Saturday 6th June 2020, 9am - 10pm - NOW FULL

[roland]

They're also available via abug.org.uk

How did i miss the announcement of this?

[Arcadian]

They're also available via abug.org.uk

How did i miss the announcement of this?

Ah, there wasn't one ...

(I've not had much time for the forum the last week, sorry).

I'll pop a new post up in the General Event Chat thread in a bit and will bump the old thread too...

Oh, don't worry about giving up the morning session I've messaged BillCarr (he only "lurks" ... equivalent of a 'no kitter' ... so we can probably manage one more without the session turning into anarchy... )

[Arcadian]

Here is the full programme for Sat 6th June:

Session 1 - Morning

10:00 - 10:45
Floppy disc preservation: HFE & Greaseweazel (Daniel J)

I'll be covering:

• The floppy disk and drive
• Floppy formats
• Philosophy of preservation
• Methods of preservation, including tools
• Case study
• Q&A

11:00 - 11:45
PCB Design: Tips & Tricks from dp11 (Dominic P)

With lots of people designing PCBs some for the first time, I'm going to share some tips and tricks to help make your boards electrically better. Even though retro clock rates are low , actually one of the most important parameters is slew rate of signals. Modern chips even if clocked slowly have very fast slew rates which can cause problems.

Items I hope to cover :

1. Loop area : Why it is important especially on 2 layer board
2. I'll show a a few simple tweaks to a design to keep loop area to a minimum
3. Via placement to minimize loop area.
4. Decoupling capacitors
5. 4 layer board stackups and why the traditional stack may not be the best.
6. A few little design tips to increase reliability for boards being hand soldered.
7. Questions

12:00 - 12:30
Dave Hitchins: PRES/ACP - Career before, during & after! (daveejhitchins)

We've asked Dave Hitchins to take us through:

• his career pre-PRES
• his work at PRES / Advanced Computer Products, where he designed numerous interfaces for the Acorn Electron and Archimedes
• career post-PRES
• Retro Hardware, products to-date
• Retro Hardware, what's next on the horizon

Session 2 - Afternoon

13:30 - 14:00
Home Computer Museum, Netherlands - Live demonstration of Acorn System One (Timo Hartong & BasV_NL)

It will be presented from the Home Computer Museum in Helmond by Bart van de Akker (Managing Director). I myself will interview him, with Bas V.

14:15 - 15:00
Coding demo effects on the Acorn Electron from 0xC0DE

A short description of my talks in the afternoon:

Bad Apple!!

• toolchain
• video of demo
• preprocessing the frames
• delta frames RLE compression
• syncing audio/video
• moving to version 2

Bouncing Basketball

• video of demo
• DOs and DONTs of coding fast effects
• stable raster on the Elk
• cycle counting
• speed tricks

Porting MOUNTAIN PANIC from the BBC Micro to the Acorn Electron, by 0xC0DE

• video of BBC version
• exploring the source code
• changes in Elk version
• optimising sprite plotting etc.
• video of Elk version
• coming to an Electron near you...

15:15 - 16:00
Coding WHITE LIGHT for the BBC Micro (Sarah Walker)

I'll probably:

• go into the history of the game
• cover some of the tech in the finished game
• show some of the tools used.

16:15 - 17:00
Using Arcade Game Designer (AGD) with the BBC Micro, Electron and Atom - (Kees van Oss)

I will cover:

• What is AGD/MPAGD
• How does it work
• How do you create a game in WinAGD
• Demo creating multi platform games

Session 3 - Evening

18:00 - 19:00
Speaker - Matt Godbolt (mattgodbolt): jsbeeb - The BBC Micro Emulator

The talk is broadly:

• Why jsbeeb exists
• Some neat things in jsbeeb you probably didn't know about
• How emulators work, and specifically how jsbeeb implements them

19:15 - 20:00
High Score Challenge, coordinated by KarateEd (Ed)

When it's time for the HSC, visit this thread which by then will have been updated with all the links and details for today's challenge!

20:15 - 20:45
New BBC Micro RPG Game Project by Naomasa298 (Shane)

I'll be demonstrating and covering progress on my RPG project. Some areas I'd like to cover are:

• Technical challenges I've come across so far, and anticipated issues
• Game design - including features and ideas
• Graphics

21:00 - 22:00
Speaker - Phil Pearson (myelin): The "Ultimate Electron Upgrade"

I'll be talking about the trickiest hardware project I've done the Ultimate Electron Upgrade and will include:

• A brief rundown of the Electron ULA's capabilities and the original wishlist for the UEU
• Hoglet's work to implement a ULA workalike in VHDL, and the full ElectronFpga project
• The UEU PCB and its quirks: four layers, tons of BGA, missing IRQ/NMI pullups, bus-hold buffers, LVC vs HCT for video
• Writing and debugging the RTL: SDRAM, QPI flash, audio
• Future potential: how to max out the SDRAM bandwidth, internal coprocessors, emulating bigger systems

[Arcadian]

In addition to the set up guide that Robert has posted, below is a slide containing some further guidelines...

[Arcadian]

I've created a set of 1080x1080 'Profile' images for all users that have registered for a virtual ABug session to-date: http://www.stardot.org.uk/zoom/

They simply show username and name (plus a tiny Stardot ident!):

So if you have created an account on Zoom, feel free to grab a copy of 'your' profile image and use it for the meetings.


Background: the main reason I made these was because, when editing the first set of videos from the last event, I noticed that if someone who is not sharing their video feed asks a question - and they don't have a profile image set - Zoom will project this rather vague image onto the video:

Hence if a custom profile image were to be used, it would at least be clear on the video who is speaking/asking the question.



Edit: As it stands, I'm having to manually insert profile images into the video timeline during the editing process when users ask a question without having video feed enabled or a profile image set ...

Example:

This is adding a lot of time to the editing process, so I'd be really grateful if all participants can set a profile image if possible. Note as mentioned above, setting a hi-res profile image does require you to have a Zoom account.

[Arcadian]

In case it's helpful, Instructions for changing profile pic (assumes you already have signed up for a Zoom account)

1) Click the tiny profile icon at the top-right of the Zoom client:

Profile1.png (6.77 KiB) Viewed 2390 times

2) This will prompt you to log into the Zoom website:

3) Click the 'Change' option and upload the new image

[SimonSideburns]

When I first started using Zoom I noticed that my webcam video was being mirrored rather than being seen in the normal orientation. Within Zoom there is an option to change this if you prefer. For example, if you were wearing a t-shirt with the Acorn owl logo on it, you'd want it to be facing the right way.

The option is in video settings.Hopefully you'll find it yourself.

I'm not at my laptop yet but hope to be there very soon.

[TimoHartong]

Hello as promised the links to the Big Ben Club and Homecomputer museum:

https://www.homecomputermuseum.nl/

And Big Ben Club the Dutch Acorn enthusiasts club.
https://www.bigbenclub.nl/

Unfortunately the raw video files are quite big so tomorrow

[JudgeBeeb]

When I first started using Zoom I noticed that my webcam video was being mirrored rather than being seen in the normal orientation. Within Zoom there is an option to change this if you prefer. For example, if you were wearing a t-shirt with the Acorn owl logo on it, you'd want it to be facing the right way.

The option is in video settings.Hopefully you'll find it yourself.

I'm not at my laptop yet but hope to be there very soon.

Just in case there is any confusion, the mirroring only works on your own screen because it can be somewhat disorientating to see your own image in the 'unmirrored' orientation. Everyone else, though, sees you unmirrored with any text and logos seem as if they were looking directly at you in real life.

[0xC0DE]

A huge thanks to all organisers, participants and presenters for creating another very interesting and enjoyable virtual ABUG meeting yesterday!!
It was especially great to see the Electron in the spotlight and I enjoyed being able to contribute to that myself.

[dominicbeesley]

Hear, hear, another success. Some really excellent talks - again I missed some bits so looking forward to the videos going up too so I can catch up on some of the bits I missed. Sometimes it is good to hear somebody explain some of these larger projects - the more interesting threads on the forum can be quite daunting to wade through but having an overview presentation really whets the appetite!

D

[Soruk]

Absolutely! Some I missed and will need to watch on the ABug-player, and one or 2 that I'll need to re-watch as some of it went a bit over my head the first time

(Not helped by me accidentally introducing a bug in my Mode 7 implementation that only fell over spectacularly on Windows but was fine in Linux)

A little thing I posted on the chat last night - I've put together a native Windows version of Yellow River Kingdom from the BBC Welcome Tape. Enjoy!

[dominicbeesley]

A little thing I posted on the chat last night - I've put together a native Windows version of Yellow River Kingdom from the BBC Welcome Tape. Enjoy!

Gah! I'm meant to be working today - I've probably not played that since I was at primary school, very simple but quite addictive!

[SimonSideburns]

When I first started using Zoom I noticed that my webcam video was being mirrored rather than being seen in the normal orientation. Within Zoom there is an option to change this if you prefer. For example, if you were wearing a t-shirt with the Acorn owl logo on it, you'd want it to be facing the right way.

The option is in video settings.Hopefully you'll find it yourself.

I'm not at my laptop yet but hope to be there very soon.

Just in case there is any confusion, the mirroring only works on your own screen because it can be somewhat disorientating to see your own image in the 'unmirrored' orientation. Everyone else, though, sees you unmirrored with any text and logos seem as if they were looking directly at you in real life.

I wasn't aware of that so thanks for the info.

[Arcadian]

Thanks again to all speakers/presenters, hosts and participants. It was another thoroughly enjoyable day.

I've spent the day editing videos, only three down so far (DanielJ/Preservation, dp11/PCB Design, daveejhitchins/life story!) but they're now available to view.

I'll hopefully have 0xC0DE's talks uploaded later this evening too, possibly more we'll see!

[roland]

Thank you for that. I already watched Dominic and Dave. After watching Dominic's video I wonder why all my boards worked without problems about timings, glitches and so. Either I am a natural born PCB designer or I just had dumb luck .... I go for the second option

Thanks again to all who made the 4th session to another great and inspiring day

[0xC0DE]

Thanks again to all speakers/presenters, hosts and participants. It was another thoroughly enjoyable day.

I've spent the day editing videos, only three down so far (DanielJ/Preservation, dp11/PCB Design, daveejhitchins/life story!) but they're now available to view.

I'll hopefully have 0xC0DE's talks uploaded later this evening too, possibly more we'll see!

That must be a lot of work! So thanks for all of your hard work making these available so quickly!

[Arcadian]

Thanks Roland and cheers 0xC0DE, though I'm sure the time spent pales in comparison to all the hours you've put into Mountain Panic so far (which I'm very grateful for!)

P.S. Electron Demos and Mountain Panic videos now on the ABug website .

[0xC0DE]

P.S. Electron Demos and Mountain Panic videos now on the ABug website .

Excellent! I just watched myself; that's an odd experience to say the least haha. But I'm glad I could give something back to this great community.

[Arcadian]

Sarah's excellent White Light talk now on the ABug website (note I had to cut a few seconds just as Sarah began talking about sound, as the audio/video feed was stuttery for a moment or two).

[Arcadian]

Morning! I left Matt Godbolt's breathtakingly detailed talk on JSBeeb rendering overnight, and it's now ready to view at the ABug website.

myelin's Ultimate Electron Upgrade talk is currently rendering but I'm going back to bed for a few hours ... !

After that it'll be naomasa298's discussion about his RPG game. Then there may be a delay publishing the remaining talks: I'm awaiting the remaining high quality video files from Timo and I'm also going to see if there's a way of improving some of the audio on Kees' talk...

[Arcadian]

"Ultimate Electron Upgrade" presentation by Phil Pearson (myelin) now live on the ABug website.

[rmbrowngr]

Just be browsing through the videos. Great stuff.

[Arcadian]

Thanks Richard, we've had another bonanza weekend in terms of top, top talks - we're very lucky!

Ok, last talk uploaded for now - Shane aka Naomasa298's New BBC Micro RPG Game Project.

Forum thread: viewtopic.php?f=53&t=19127

[Arcadian]

The stream from the Helmond computer museum in the Netherlands is now online. This upload has been generated from the original video files that Timo kindly transferred, hence the video is of a higher quality as it hasn't been streamed and compressed by Zoom.

This was 'fun' to edit, to say the least! The audio track on the original video featured very quiet/tinny sound from people asking questions (as I presume the presenters were using a laptop speaker to hear questions) so I tried using the audio track from the Zoom call, however it would start to drift out of sync after a while. So in the end I used the audio from the original track and spliced in cuts from the zoom audio whenever a question was asked! There was also the loss of signal in the middle of the talk; I've done the best I can patching this up - we may have lost a few sentences in the process, but not too much.

I'm afraid there'll be a delay on uploading the final video (Kees' presentation about Arcade Games Designer) as he's going to re-record it due to background noise.

For anyone that prefers to watch on Youtube (which offers the ability to stream/cast videos to your own TV), all videos have also been sent to the Centre for Computing History so hopefully they'll appear on their Youtube channel soon.

[BigEd]

Wow - thanks, for all the prep work, moderating and post-event work that you, and the others, have put in.

[dominicbeesley]

Good work Dave,

I can imagine this is taking a good bit of time but it really is appreciated - I watched some of the videos back where I missed bits and they are really good. I spent a pleasant half hour watching pixelblip's art work video yesterday. I'm going to work through all the other things I've missed. I bet you're putting more new documentary content out than the BBC this week!

I even forced myself to watch myself back a little and am now determined to make some short videos to make up for the shortcomings of my own talk when I completely overran!

D

[0xC0DE]

This is SOOO MUCH work but rest assured it's highly appreciated, Dave!!

[Soruk]

This is SOOO MUCH work but rest assured it's highly appreciated, Dave!!

Hear, hear. Indeed, I watched your one last night (as I missed it on the day) and I am seriously impressed with what you were able to convince that wee machine to do!
So much so, I checked in a change to Matrix Brandy, see if you can spot it....

[0xC0DE]

This is SOOO MUCH work but rest assured it's highly appreciated, Dave!!

Hear, hear. Indeed, I watched your one last night (as I missed it on the day) and I am seriously impressed with what you were able to convince that wee machine to do!
So much so, I checked in a change to Matrix Brandy, see if you can spot it....
80-9F.png

Very nice to hear, thank you!! Yes, I can spot the VDU 135, a very important commit to Matrix Brandy that!