Commodore Free 38/Commodore_Free_Issue_38_2010_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/ccc uk meeting

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 7KB | 224 lines

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        CCC U.K. MINI MEETING
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  www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk

I left my house and drove down to
Preston Train station, shortly after
my arrival I met Shaun Bebbington
and Chris both Commodore Computer
club U.K. Members. We exchanged
greetings then all boarded my car and
set off to Alan's house. Intense fog,
roadwork's and sheer amount of
traffic meant the going would be
slow, but eventually we arrived,
parked up and were greeted by Allan.

The first order of the day was a
strong cup of tea, and then after a
brief tidy up! Allan invited us into
his Den of computers. Now I have
been to Allan's on 2 other
occasions, but this time marked a
new and cleaner Computer room
(actually a converted garage); Allan
said he was installing more storage
and shelving so to excuse the mess
(although it was scarily tidy, every
paper filed neatly away; and every
disk labelled and stacked in place;
even nuts bolts and screws found
there own storage boxes and a shelf
to house them in). Moving further
into the garage I was greeted by an
almost complete looking Dalek scarily
pained in grey like it had come out
of a mould and was getting prepared
for world domination or some such
similar event; maybe like scaring
small children. In the picture you
can see how truly evil the machine
is, without power and a full
armourment its still intent on
attacking a florescent jacket. If
you want to follow the Dalek project
you will find it here
http://commodorescene.servebbs.org/
dalek.html

Allan said he was still working on
his Commodore setup but did have his
Commodore 128D with SCPU, RAMLINK
and Cmd hard disk setup all
connected to a Flat panel TV, So
this begs the question "Allan did
you get the A-22 Board Working?
Allan's reply was "sort of have a
look"

Although the picture wasn't truly
accurate, (colour problems) it was
good enough to use and stable, as
can be seen in the screen shot
(sorry it's off my phone I didn't
take my camera; although it does
show a very clear image. You can
also see a picture of the A-22 board
Allan has spent time adapting to get
the full colour display of the 128
and a stable picture, so the colours
are not all bleached out. I see in
some forums the users seem to think
the board can be purchased and used
as is, the problem is this isn't a
perfect picture, especially if you
want to use Geos and Wheels.

Now booted in 80 column mode glory
was a 128d with a TFT screen, Allan
then booted the wheels operating
system (and updated version of Geos)
and the screen sprang into action
again, very clear and usable
although there were some problems
like the mouse pointer colour,
although still usable it tended to
blend in with the background on some
areas of the wheels desktop (so the
board isn't just plug and play as
some forum members suggested). Allan
booted up Post print and as you can
see it worked perfectly with all
areas of the screen visible and
clear and in full colour.

The quite remarkable thing about
this was that the demo "Risen from
Oblivion" ran without a hitch,
although the colours were not 100%
accurate but without this machine
side by side to one running the demo
on a commodore monitor it would be
hard to spot, and the demo did still
look impressive.

If you can't get the demo to run try
watching the demo on the YouTube
link, Although the Demo will run
under Winvice the timing is
incorrect (I think the Winvice
emulation of the 128 is limited to
1mhz) and so some of the effects
don't work properly, especially the
end picture again this must be the
emulators limitation, the problem is
the final picture is well worth
seeing and a main part of the demo
(in my opinion). Still a very
impressive demo, even viewing it
after all this time from its initial
release. The link is for version 2
of the demo.

http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=W8ZyA3WzpZQ

http://noname.c64.org/csdb/
release/?id=44983

The demo itself needs some bizarre
hardware to actually run in the real
world so we were quite surprised it;
firstly ran and secondly that it
didn't look to bad on the screen
(again apologies for the poor screen
shots from my Camera phone)

Next we decided to re-visit the
networking of a Commodore 64, Shaun
suggested we test out GEOLINK,
http://www.lyonlabs.org/commodore/geo
Link/geoLink.html for information;
this software was written by ShadowM
using the IP65 network stack and
runs under GOES, with the server
version running in Java on a remote
machine, although still in an early
form, the software has been tested
with RR-Net, MMC Replay, FB-Net,
1541 Ultimate, and 64NIC+ network
cards. We very easily obtained via a
DHCP router an IP address and were
able to test logon to the remote
server, and even ping domain names,
the Application comes on a
customised GEOS disk (downloadable
from the website) boots on a c64
with a 1541, we tried running the
software on Allan's 128 setup but it
didn't seem to work so we downgraded
to a Commodore 64 and 1 disk drive
and a network card; although still
in an early release the demo is
quite impressive stuff. I hope this
application evolves into a real set
of networking tools for Geos /Wheels
users, something sadly lacking from
such a setup.

From Allan's router we could see the
Commodore 64 machine on his home
network and even ping the commodore
64 from a pc, the software with the
aid of the DHCP client is so easy to
use and takes any confusion from the
user who is new to networking and or
IP addressing, filling in IP
address, Subnet mask, gateway and
DNS server settings.

Of course no meeting would be
complete without some for of game
play and this was in the form of
Richard Bayliss{SHIFT-*}s "sub Hunter"
Possible Richards finest work to
date. After a quick dance around to
the music, we took turns, sadly no
one completed the game on this
session though.

All to soon my day pass ran out; and
With regret I had to leave Allan and
head back to the motorway, although
it was rush hour when I left, and
the road had a large number of
roadwork's, I made it quickly back
home, drank a cup of fruit juice and
went to bed.

CCUK UPDATE

At this mini meeting various CC U.K.
problems were tried to be resolved
like banking issues and I asked for
a list of stock to sell via
Commodore Free magazine. (Allan is
compiling a list of items the CC
U.K. shop has. Hopefully this will
be included in this issue maybe.)
One thing that was causing confusion
was the membership, its quite
confusing with the various options 6
months 1 year and life so we decided
that we should just have one option
that of life membership for 30.
Also we suggested a "crap game
competition" More on this when
details arrive.

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