Commodore Free 29/Commodore_Free_Issue_29_2009_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/mossycon 5

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 12KB | 394 lines

*************************************
*          MossyCon5 report         *
*     By Lord Ronin from Q-Link     *
*************************************

The day started off vile. Woke up at
9am, those that know me, understand
that s about 4 hours too early for
this creature of the night. To make
matters worse, that despicable sun
god drove away our local rain god.
Leaving hot burning solar radiation
to pour on my poor Nosferatu skin.
Plus the sky was an unnatural colour.
Twas blue and not slate gray as is
our custom. Knew the day was going to
be bad.

 Save that the kitties where friendly
#30, did spend all night up on the
computer so I could be awakened at
the proper time. I Even had that big
coffee cup ready with wake up juice.
Most of the things for the con had
been loaded (as was I) last night
into the jeep. Sadly #30 was too
tired to attend the event, and
crashed shortly after the borrowed
jeep pulled out for the con.

 I arrived there a little after 10am,
at the Moose Lodge #408, here in
Astoria. Some "guys" where outside
having a smoke break delete 664
blocks of rant about discrimination
and oppression of smokers. Filled my
pipe and looked around for our
contact man. Found him (it is his
jeep I borrowed anyway) and set to
work on the start of the day. While
talking with him. Robert Bernardo
pulled up with his large car. That
even squinting across the street. I
could see he had it full of wonderful
C= things.

 Rather than take the interior twisty
steps to the lower level. My plan was
to take the straight steps along side
of the building to the lower level.
Had our man Karl Konka (Moose
contact( clear the way and the door
for us. Making it a lot easier to
move things from street level to the
event room. Karl did that and in some
manner received permission to have
the connecting gate to the lumber
yard opened. That made life a lot
easier for Robert. Rather than
traipse across a street and down the
long flight of ancient concrete steps
that have an unsecured handrail.
Robert was able to park right at the
gate and tote those wonderful (yeah
he did escape with them) Commodore
items from the car about 15' into the
big room.

 This year I was a bit more prepared
for the event site. I Dug out my old
dealer table cloths from my days at
the sci-fi conventions. Long imperial
emerald green one for Roberts tables
and a red one for my smaller set up.
I had a strip box and extension cord
this time as well, plus a few extra
power cords and serial cables.

 Insert at this point that; I took
some photos and in a bit these will
be sent to our webmaster Balzabaar
with annotations. Robert took photos
as well, and Matt shot some pictures
of us, and for us. There is also some
raw video footage that will be made
into DVD and for the web site. At
least that is my current
understanding.

 I did have to make a fast trip to
the shop, facing the A500 kitty. Who
thought I am supposed to spend the
day with her, and not at the con. As
Robert needed a 40/80 monitor.
Brought back the 1084s that will be
for the new BBS. That was connected
to a flat 128. Ah but more on that
one in a bit.

 Took time to set things up, but
after the lay out of things, where I
shot most of my photos. We started
off with Robert explaining his items.
Was not a great day for him. Starting
off was the monitor from his school.
Would not accept the Amiga One at
all. Ignored its existence, killing
the demo of the OS 4.1 on the Amiga
system. We did see the disk and
booklet for OS 4.1. Robert did
explain about the specific power pc
theme board that is in his unit. That
it isn't around any more but there is
another one for a very high price in
Euros.

 Not doing this in the precise order
of presentations, because some caught
my attention more than others, as
well as my understanding. 128mega
chip IIRC the name correctly is a
story in and of itself. That is a bit
farther in the time line. A SID type
of chip, that was not demoed because
of time and the sad fact that at the
last moment Steve Jones was taken ill
after a trip to Puerto Rico. There
was in that vein also a moog device
that works with the C=. Robert didn't
know how to operate it and there
wasn't time to look into the manual
and try to understand. As it was a
part of Steve's projected demo. Two
types of the uIEC  device where on
the table and that is what I wanted
to see the most at that time. But
that demo for that was later in the
day. A 2040 dual PET drive that was
on it's way to Ray Carlsen for
repairs sat on the table. I had not
seen one of those before today.

 An item that was on the table with
Roberts presentation was the "tough
book" from Matt. Now to me it seems
to be the beginning of a lap top
Commodore 64. Using a small LCD
screen from a DVD player and the
64DTV chip from one of those hummer
toys. Matt gave a run down of the
current state of the little C=. Along
with his plans for the future
operation. Which will use one of
those SD things for a disk drive.
Yeah that is one of the things that I
am drooling about. On the video he
had the unit opened up and explained
the internals of his creation.
Because of space, well it is small
man real small, I wasn't able to take
a shot of the insides.

 Then it was time for the fat freak
in the top hat to show off his items.
Well for almost the entire 6+ hours
of the con. The small amount of
attendees where being tormented by
S.I.D. music. Brought along my last
working SX-64. Finished on Saturday
the last parts of a double sided 1541
of music. All from Q-Link. One side
has selections I grabbed from a 19mb
zipped file that was sent to me a
long ago, but until I gained the
Linux system was too big to download
to the Commodore. Now I was able to
open it up and look at all the
directories of the S.I.D. artists.
Making selections of over 55 songs to
put on the disk. Those were put on
side #1 with the Stereo SID player
V10.3. Along with the 1541 and the
1581 booter. Side #2 had a collection
of songs that I had downloaded when
Q-Link was still up. Playing both
sides that bugger ran till a little
after 4pm.

 Passed those out to the attendees
and I spoke on my other give out. The
MossyCon5 CD. About how it was
constructed, using 98% and more
Commodore. In fact it was the Linux
that made the CDs. All the other work
was done on the Commodore. Geos and
GeoDos with post print 3.8 were my
primary tools for the writing stuff
and file transfer. So I could convert
the post script files made in post
print into pdf files for the CD. That
last part was done on the Linux
system with the burning of the CDs.
Except for some jpeg of scans and of
photos I shot, the rest was done on
the C=. At least what we did. A few
files were found on line and placed
on the CD as well. Have a few
originals left after the con

  I Showed a few familiar things,
like the atari joysticks;  these are
useless if you are left handed. Then
my fave the Quickshot,  a recently
acquired Okimate-10 thermal printer
with disk and a still sealed black
ribbon in the box. A sealed Geos 2.0
with GeoWrite 2.1, some verbatim 10
count disk boxes still sealed. Couple
of odd modems, A us robotics password
2400 and a odd ball 1200. Both had
been used in the past at the Pink
Panther BBS and gifted to us my Mad
Max of that BBS and MHI. And good
news gang! No one asked me this year
about the dice RPGs.

 Then we went back to some of Roberts
more detailed demos. First up was
that new 128 mega byte chip. Here we
had the second round of computers
fighting Robert. You see, he had
brought several flat 128 units. These
were to be tested and if
needed/possible repaired by Ray. Ah
the fun we had at this time. First
one that Robert opened up had some
wild chip placement. A C=64 factory
Jiffy DOs chip. But the 128 one was
ah, not that way we suspect. There
was a chip in the empty socket that
was unlabelled. Just had a black tape
over the window. Bit scary when in
slot next to it, there was the
servant chip, we suspect and it was
wired to the Jiffy Dos chip. Let us
just say that Robert will be doing
some editing of that part of the
video. Because the system failed to
work.

 Bang, another one 128 flat was
brought forth. Ah good news, this one
had torque screws and we didn't have
the proper driver for it. OK another
flat 128 was brought out of that car,
which magically holds so much C=
stuff.
Well the case was stock Phillips
screws. But the metal sheathing was
... right you got it torque screws. A
little bit of improper tool use and
it did open up.

 Now we have round three of the
Computer Wars against Robert. The
demo didn't work at all! Well though
I can drag this out a bit more, I
won't do that. Robert tried and
fought and ... Well it turned out
that the first one of the new 128
mega byte chip units, was bad. The
second one that he brought fresh out
of the bag, worked the first time. I
am not certain of this unit for my
work. There are three screens of
options on the menu. This is recorded
on the video. Many bits of Maverick,
and we did fire up the main screen
for that in 64 mode. Tried out my old
friend ZED. He showed a word
processor that I had not seen before.
On menu 3 there is Leader Board Golf,
a form of solitaire that I had not
seen before and at least one other
game. Many of the options I do not
know, but my memory does have it that
one of the first options on the first
menu is the Servant option.

 Honestly that ate up time till about
3:45 when we were asked by a Moose
man how long we would be staying. My
watch is busted so I had no idea of
the time. This sort of forced a fast
run of the other items. But there
were exclusions.

 I very much wanted to see this uIEC
device in action. I have been hearing
about it, just never even with some
pictures. Its difficult to get the
device into my mind as to what it
will do for me as a hard core daily
C= user. OK now I know that it uses
.D64 files, but it will also use
regular ones as well. My opinion of
this device has changed. Out of the
two, I am not leaning to the Jim
Brain one. No offence meant to Jim.
The option that I saw for disk
changing on the other unit makes that
one more in line for the heavy use
that I have for the uIEC thing. As I
do a lot of disk changes, like
playing games that are multi disk.
But yeah I want one of these now for
myself. Having seen what it does and
had hands on work with them.

 Well this is long and doesn't cover
all in detail for what we did today
at MossyCon5. Small as it may be with
several people having to cancel at
the last minute. We had a good and C=
informative time. In fact we may be
able to use the same location for
next year and MossyCon6. Yeah I have
some plans for that already. So till
next time gang. Make mine Commodore.

 Now for dinner a double shot and bed


BCNU
Lord Ronin from Q-Link
------------------------------------

AMENDMENT
Lord Ronin from Q-Link wrote:

> changed. Out of the two, I am not
leaning to the Jim Brain one. No
> offence meant to Jim. The option
that I saw for disk changing on the
> other unit makes that one more in
line for the heavy use that I have
> for the uIEC thing. As I do a lot
of disk changes, like playing games
> that are multi disk. But yeah I
want one of these now for myself.
> Having seen

The other board is a NKC Electronics
SD2IEC:
http://www.nkcelectronics.com/sd2iec-b
oar2.html ($44.99).  I can't
personally speak to the board, as I
do not own one, but I am sure it's a
fine unit.  It also is a bit cheaper
than the uIEC ($50.00).  However, I
think it's important to note that the
demo showed the NKC SD2IEC *AND* the
SD2IEC daughtercard
(http://www.nkcelectronics.com/sd2iec-
daughter-boar2.html).  That is a
$14.99 option that provides IEC
connectors and disk swap buttons.  I
also think the daughtercard is a kit
and must be assembled for that price
(it might be available pre-assembled
at an additional cost)

Both SD2IEC and uIEC units provide
disk swap functionality (they share
the same DOS code, so they share the
same functionality). Thus, you are
free to install switches on the uIEC
for disk swap support.

However, because the uIEC cabling is
manually intensive, I am readying a
similar daughtercard for the uIEC.
It provides disk swap switches as
well.  I'll probably initially offer
it for free, and then later split it
out as a $10.00 option, much like
NKC.

Jim Brain
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--