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FCUG Meeting Reports Page 1 |
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These are the informal reports on meetings of the Fresno Commodore User Group. Not really minutes, and not exactly news, we started this just to have a record of decisions made, attendance, etc. Notes are co-written by President Robert Bernardo and Treasurer Dick Estel, unless an individual byline appears. The latest report will always be at the top of Page 2, after that they appear in order with the oldest years at the top. Don't know what year or month you want? Start with the newest and read a few recent reports; then go back to the oldest and see what was different. |
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Latest Meeting Report Older Meeting Reports Commodore Links 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2017 - 2022 are on Page 2 2023 and later reports are on Page 3 |
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Older Meeting Reports |
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2010 |
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February 2010 Starting
with this issue, we are going to attempt to provide a brief report
on each meeting, for the benefit of our majority of members who are
unable to attend in person. Before getting down to business, I’d like to mention that we have
a lot of fun, with conversations going off on all kinds of tangents
in between actual business, and those who don’t attend are really
missing out. I can’t really remember everything we talked about
– for that part of the meeting, you have to be there. At the February 21 meeting we had the usual suspects, President
Robert Bernardo, Treasurer Dick Estel, Brad Strait (who joined last
September), and special guest Roger Van Pelt. As far as formal business,
Robert reported on plans for the Las
Vegas Expo July 24 and 25. That Saturday will be the 25th
anniversary of the release of the Amiga A1000, and we talked about
doing something at CommVEx to acknowledge the event. Dick announced
that Guaranty Bank, where we keep our checking account, has been
absorbed by a larger company, BBVA Compass. Although this bank is
unfamiliar to those of us in the west, it has a large presence in
the south, and now a small presence in Robert
told about his visit to the Macworld Expo, where he taped the
performance of Warp 11, a musical group with a Star Trek theme. The
female lead, Kiki Stockhammer, was an Amiga Video Toaster
personality in the late 1980's to early 1990's. Robert said he
wished he could have walked around with a C64 under his arm, as a
reminder of who was really first and biggest in the “computer
wars” of the 1980s. Robert
has obtained some disks containing scans of many Commodore
magazines and newsletters, includingRUN
, Ahoy, Info and lots more, and has gone to a lot of work to make
copies onDVD
for each member at the meeting. He passed out the second batch of
what will eventually be 20 disks. The demonstration and much of the rest of the conversation focused
on the transmission of Morse code via short wave radio, and how
Commodore computers fit into the process, a long ago and newly
revived interest of Roger and his father. From my ancient
perspective, Roger looks like he could crash a high school prom
unchallenged, but he is actually old enough to have been using
Commodore computers for many years, and his technical knowledge is
impressive. He brought an extensive collection of equipment to make his VIC20
part of a ham radio setup, including the Hamtext cartridge, one of
those little laptop shapedDVD
players (to serve as a monitor for the C64, which was used in lieu
of a shortwave transceiver), a Kantronics Interface (in essence, a
radio modem), and the necessary software. Roger describes the
software as “halfway between a terminal program and an instant
messaging system.” However, my favorite item was a World War II
era telegraph key that Roger’s uncle used inEurope
during the 1950s. To summarize briefly, Roger used the C64 as a stand-in for a short
wave radio transceiver. But instead of receiving the Morse code
signal from another transceiver, it generated the signal itself (via
software and telegraph key) and sent it to the Kantronics interface.
The interface then converted the signal to a TTL signal which the
Hamtext software on the VIC displayed as text on its screen. The
Hamtext software is also able to translate text from the VIC to
Morse code and send it to the transceiver via the interface. The
telegraph key was plugged into the joystick port. As Roger operated
the telegraph key, we watched the text appear on the monitor of the
VIC. (By the way, the Hamtext system was available for the C64 and
several other computer platforms.) My knowledge of the subject is limited and my explanation may be a
bit ham-handed (sorry!), but Roger has promised (we have it on tape,
Roger) to write an article that will explain it far better and in
much greater detail. In addition to business and talk, we ate pizza and sandwiches and
drank sodas, and just had a good time in general. |
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March
2010 We had a special guest at our March 21 meeting, Leif Bloomquist
of Leif is involved in many other activities, Commodore and otherwise, and you can check them out on his home page. Attending from FCUG were the “regulars,”
Robert, Brad, Dick, and
Roger, who is now our newest member. Robert passed around a flyer
for a new Commodore brand Windows PC – looks like a laptop with no
screen. He also showed us a game he picked up at the recent TOGA
meeting, “The Settler,” which is entirely in French. Our
bilingual guest from We looked at a cassette of games that was labeled “compliments of
Canadian Tire,” which we learned is a department store chain
similar to Target or K-Mart. Leif told us he got his VIC20 at
Canadian Tire “back in the day.” We took a look at Super Student, an educational series that
Robert had bought from the late Dave Mohr. It has a package for each grade,
K through 5, and was published by Micrograms Publishing of Rockford
IL, a company that specialized in education computer programs. Tests
proved that we are all as smart as a 5th grader. Finally
Robert loaded up Wolfman, a text adventure game. Leif was
able to get out of the room it starts in, but we didn’t have much
luck proceeding further. This was probably the largest member attendance we have had in a couple of years, and our thanks to Leif for including us on his itinerary. |
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April 2010 This
month's meeting was like some in the past; instead of a meeting it
could be called "Dick and Robert have lunch." We had to
change our meeting date to a Saturday due to some conflicts, which
kept two of our members from attending. Robert
reported on the memorial dinner that was held in We discussed the dwindling number of Commodore clubs - the list as
far as we knew was down to clubs in Fresno, southern California,
Chicago, Fort Collins, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and the Las Vegas
area. There continue to be a few gatherings related to vintage
computers, games, etc., including two that Robert was planning to
attend, the SC3 Arcade Party in southern Robert
opened up a box of stuff he had bought from Jim Scabery,
including Rescue at Rigel, Quizmaster, VIC Music Composer, and an
Amiga Powerstick mini-joystick. Robert also had with him another
Hamtext cartridge with accessories (discussed in our last report)
that came from Dan Olson in the We also looked at the Computer Patch interface for the C64 - a box
the size of a miniDVD
player which performs the same function as the interface for Hamtext.
It was made by Advance Electronics Applications of Lynwood, WA, and
the complete instructions were there, as well as several C64 ham
radio applications that came on disk. |
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May 2010 We
had what we consider full attendance for May: Robert, Dick, We discussed CommVEx, coming July 24 and 25.
Robert is working on
getting speakers and special guests, either in person or via
recorded interviews. There is a possibility we will be able to
include Amiga engineers R.J. Mical and Dale Luck, to help observe
the 25th anniversary of the release of the A1000. Michael Battilana
of Dick reported on the passing of Walt Harned, who did the cover art
and many high quality slide shows for Loadstar Magazine. Former
Loadstar editor Fender Tucker emailed Dick that Walt's equipment was
available, and it was agreed to pay shipping costs for items other
than basic computers and disk drives. Due to schedule conflicts, the June meeting was moved to June 6. |
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June 2010 At
the June meeting we had the usual complement of Robert Bernardo,
Dick Estel, Roger gave a brief report on the differences and similarities
between the two Kantronics Hamtext cartridges for the VIC-20 and the
AEA Computer Patch for the C64, which he had taken home after the
May meeting. He
tentatively agreed to do a video presentation of Hamtext for the
July 24-25 CommVEx. Robert
announced two special guests for CommVEx, Amiga engineers
Dale Luck and RJ Mical. Their appearance will coincide with the 25th
anniversary of the A1000. As an honorary member of the now defunct Robert
showed the uIEC/CF with IDE, a serial card drive from Jim
Brain which uses Compact Flash memory cards and also had an IDE
connection. This uIEC
also came with a Compact Flash-to-SD adapter and an empty 512 meg SD
card.It was compared to
an early version of the uIEC/SD card drive and the NKCElectronics
SD2IEC card drive.It
was briefly tested; Robert wrote a Basic program, saved it to the
uIEC/CF, and then loaded it from it. At the end of the meeting,
Robert showed the C64C video he obtained
from Syd Bolton of the Personal Computer Museum in In a non-Commodore related development, we took a look at
Robert's
"new" 1970s-era Bronica 6 x 7SLR
camera, which uses 120 roll film. This camera was a popular tool for
professional news and sport photographers, and weighs in at a hefty
seven pounds - a bit of a shock for those of us used to lightweight
digital cameras. |
| July 2010
(No meeting notes found) |
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August 2010 In
addition to most of our regulars (Robert, Dick and Brad), the August
meeting featured a rare appearance by Keith Sohm. Keith has been in
the club for over 20 years, and was the operator of our BBS system
for a long time. Other duties and interests usually prevent him from
attending our meetings. Robert
reported that several issues of Loadstar, taking it through
#250, have been published on-line by a group of people who have been
contributing to the magazine. "Official" editor Dave
Moorman has produced neither Loadstars nor an explanation for about
two years. We voted to simplify bookkeeping and save paper by leaving our 2010
contribution to CommVEx in the show account, so that next year's
donation is in effect already made. The meeting concluded with
Robert's demonstration of the 1998
program Wheels. This program, written and sold by Maurice Randall,
is an upgrade to the GEOS operating system and requires GEOS to
install. However, it makes GEOS more like Windows (or perhaps we
should say more like Xerox Alto), allowing multiple windows that can
be moved around the screen. The program has many other features that make GEOS more convenient for many users. Lots of information on GEOS and Wheels can be found here and here. The
meeting also included a report on CommVEx -- with a few minutes of
video shown -- which is covered extensively in a separate article in
the previous and current issues of The Interface. |
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September 2010 Coming
out for the September meeting and lunch were three of FCUG’s
stalwart regulars, Robert Bernardo, Robert
reported on some significant changes affecting CommVEx for next
year. The Plaza Hotel (except for the casino) is closing for
refurbishing, and the job will last well past our next expo date. Robert
had been in touch with the catering representative there, and
she can accommodate us in the Vegas Club Hotel, which is right
across Some
time ago Robert acquired a Lt. Kernal, the original hard drive for
the Commodore, and at the meeting he showed us a set of hardware
that upgrades it to the Rear Admiral configuration. The items
include a DOS disk, a set of chips that go in Lt. Kernal interface
cartridge, and a MMU adapter to be placed in a flat C128.With the upgrades, the Lt. Kernal becomes more bug-free and
has access to more drive commands. Finally,
we made plans for our annual club dinner (which we sometimes still
call the picnic because that’s how it started). We will go to the
original DiCicco’s, a well-known Italian restaurant near downtown |
| October 2010
(No report found) |
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November 2010 Our
attendance was back up to our normal high of four, with a surprise
visit from Alfredo Mijango, our member in Manteca (about two hours
away). Also on hand were Robert Bernardo, Roger Van Pelt, and Dick
Estel. It seems like we spent a lot of the meeting having a meeting (or
just talking, depending on how picky you are about definitions),
before we actually touched the equipment. Robert
announced that all but the last two videos from CommVEx are
on-line, including Roger's HamText presentation, which was scheduled
but never shown in Robert
is working on a couple of hardware projects, and his comments
on what he's ready to reveal follow: Work progresses on the SUX 6400 (the Sound Ultimate Expander 6400
audio digitizer board for the C64).The first prototypes were to be ready at Thanksgiving.The SUX 6400 uses the Autumn Technologies program, Digimaster
64, which is the best audio-digitizing program ever created for the
C64. Another project, a RF adapter for the C64 joystick ports which uses
the Amiga CDTV remote control, is moving along slowly in its
development. We got into the intricacies of D64 files and chatted a bit about
long-distance member and newsletter editor Lenard Roach's book,
"Run, Stop, Restore." Because Lenard is running into cost
and technical problems getting the new version published, we thought
maybe he should consider an audio book or podcast version. The demonstration of the musical program, PetSynth, which uses the
PET 4032 computer, was put on the back burner, because #1. the PET
4032 had something screwy with its screen display, and #2. the MSD
SD-1 drive which we were using didn't respond to any disk insertion
or commands.There was
far more success in looking at the latest Commodore Mailink
newsletter and running its accompanying disk-of-the-month.On one side of the flippy DOM, there was an old issue of
Loadstar disk magazine but only side one. Anytime the disk asked for
side two or other disks, there were no others to use. |
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December 2010 On
hand for the final FCUG meeting of 2010 were president Robert Bernardo, treasurer Dick Estel, and newly-elected board member Roger
Van Pelt. Roger replaces Meredyth Dixon, who has left the We also elected We took a look at a package of items that had been sent to us by
Fender Tucker, former editor of the Loadstar disk magazine. Fender
had needed some 5.25 floppy disks, and we were able to provide him
with some. In addition to his payment, Fender sent the latest copy
of Loadstar Compleat, a CD-ROM containing D64 images of virtually
everything ever published on Loadstar "and more!" The CD
also contains the VICE Commodore emulator program which will run the
Loadstar files One of the cool things about Loadstar Compleat is that the CD comes
inside the shell of a 5.25 inch disk (with the original media
removed). Our copy even arrived in one of the last existing Loadstar
paper sleeves, complete with the no longer valid Also in the package were a number of full cover magazine-style
covers that were used with Loadstar disks that were sold on
newsstands. A few of these may show up as door prizes at the next
CommVEx. Robert
passed around the latest copy of Commodore Free, a monthly
Commodore magazine published in Robert
is becoming quite the hardware guru (he would probably decline this
designation). He showed a photo of the first prototype of the SUX
6400 (the Sound Ultimate Expander 6400 audio digitizer board for the C64)
discussed in the November report, and dropped a couple of very
obscure hints on his next project, codenamed Mr. T. Actually, there
were no hints of any type; everything about this project is
confidential for the time being, but we're expecting an announcement
of great interest to the Commodore community one of these days. Robert
brought along three recently-acquired cartridges, two of
which were related to ham radio work and which displayed a menu but
performed no observable function; it appeared the AEA Pak Ratt and
the AEA Com Fax cartridges were expecting an additional device to be
connected to the Commodore. The other cart was a terminal program,
Touchterm 3.9, which presented a fairly typical Commodore terminal
menu, but of course, with no dial-up connection, we could not test
it. We did discover when
Robert turned on his Apple Powerbook to show a
Commodore-related e-mail, that the Pizza Pit now has a wireless
connection, so we can read our email while munching Stan's
specialties. Finally, we looked at and took some photos of
Robert's Amiga CDTV
and the matching black keyboard he had acquired at the October
Amiwest Show. The only things now needed to turn this game machine
into a real computer are the matching mouse and disk drive. |
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2011 |
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January 2011 The
year kicked off with what we consider full attendance of our local
members, Robert Bernardo, Although we love the Pizza Pit for our meetings, the February
meeting date falls on the day of the Daytona 500 auto race, which
the Pit, having a racing theme, celebrates to the fullest. This is
fine but makes for an atmosphere in which we can't conduct a
meeting, so we find an alternate place. Our "normal"
backup location has closed down, so we discussed various options and
have chosen Panera Bread in Robert
brought us up to date on his hardware projects. He's still
trying to find an engineer who can and will build the needed items
for the still secret Mr. T Project, though progress continues on
prototype 2 for the SUX 6400. He showed off the various classic Commodore and Amiga pinback
buttons which he bought from a person in Roger brought his VIC-20 set-up plus cartridge expander and memory
expansions.Using that
system, Robert was able to run his newly-bought Outworld game
cartridge -- a colorful, shoot-em up game in which you defend the
bases on a planet.It
needed at least 16K of extra memory expansion on the VIC-20 in order
for it to run. For the C64/128,
Robert showed off the 64K Quick Brown Box, a
utility cartridge which holds programs in non-volatile memory.Amazingly, after all these years, the QBB's lithium battery
still was good and held the original contents of the cart.Accompanying the QBB was a very thick instruction manual that
Robert had printed from the Net. Though not connected to an Amiga 1000 at the meeting,
Robert passed
around Tom Thul's A1000 IDE adapter, a device which gives the A1000
the ability to use SD cards as a hard drive.Interestingly enough, the adapter had two SD slots, one with
a SD card for Amiga Workbench and the other with a SD card formatted
for Windows 95, the latter was to be the one used for cross-platform
transfers. Robert
also gave us some information on a bunch of Commodore
discussion websites that he visits regularly. For those who want to
check out the Commodore talk, here are a few places to go: Commodore128.org:
<http://www.commodore128.org/index.php?action=forum> http://www.commodore128.org/index.php?action=forum Commodore.ca:
<http://www.commodore.ca/forum>
http://www.commodore.ca/forum Commmodore
Computer Club http://www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk/forums CompSysCBM:<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.cbm/topics> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.cbm/topics Denial VIC-20:<http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/index.php> http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/index.php Lemon 64:<http://www.lemon64.com/>
http://www.lemon64.com/ Retro-Link:<http://retro-link.com/smf/>
http://retro-link.com/smf Plus Four World:<http://plus4world.powweb.com/>
http://plus4world.powweb.com/ PETSCII.com:<http://jledger.proboards.com/index.cgi>
http://jledger.proboards.com/index.cgi |
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February 2011 The
February 20 meeting was held at a different locale. Because our usual Pizza Pit restaurant was stuffed with
Daytona 500 fans that Sunday, we moved to Panera Bread restaurant in
the adjoining town of Under old business, we discussed the C= club troubles coming out of
the We looked through the hundreds of disks from the Fort Ord Commodore
UserS, picking a few to run.Well,
both Star Treks wouldn't run for us, but Super Kong, a Donkey Kong
clone worked perfectly. We
then viewed the 3-minute "I Adore My Commodore" commercial
from Commodore Italy, the 7-minute video of CBM
engineer Dave Haynie playing the guitar at CommVEx 2009, and the
14-minute video of Payton Byrd demonstrating the multi-C= platform
file manager, CBM
-Command v2.0.We also
played Super Pogo Stick, the rare C64 game to be re-released at this
year's CommVEx. Using the restaurant's Wi-Fi and my laptop computer, we quickly
glanced at a few Amiga-related websites -- www.amiga.org,
www.amigaworld.net, and www.amibay.com
Each site has a forum, including an area for 8-bit computers.
Amibay specifically is for buying and selling, and we looked
through the Commodore hardware and software there. We then plugged in my repaired Colecovision game console to see if
its replacement motherboard was working. Unfortunately, the LCD flatscreen t.v./monitor I brought
would not scan down to channel 3, which is where the Colecovision
was sending its RF signal. We
did not see any picture on-screen at all.Oh, well, next time a real
CRT
t.v. with RF connections. Food-wise, it was typical Panera Bread fare -- tasty, fresh, if a
bit overly-salted.The
lunchtime crowd brought the restaurant to capacity, and we were
lucky we had staked out a small area with shelf for our equipment.
The manager who had given us permission to meet was not
there, he being a former C= user who dabbled in some programming. After the meeting adjourned, we went next door to Play & Trade videogame shop and looked for C= items. The most we found were Atari 2600, Nintendo, and Super Nintendo cartridges. We had nearly the same results at the Antiques Mall. However, we found an Atari 2600 game console there, too. |
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March 2011 There's
a question that every retiree dreads - what have you been doing
lately? Most of the time I am busy all day long, but I'd have a hard
time accounting for what exactly I did. The March meeting of the Fresno Commodore User Group was somewhat
like that. We did almost nothing that was on the agenda, but we were
busy the entire time. One of the two scheduled things we did was
look at a cartridge that allows you to use the Comal 2.0 programming
language on the Commodore. The Comal command to list the directory
worked, but it would not load a Commodore basic program, rightly
telling us "not a Comal program." The other scheduled item
was to look at few minutes of the 8-Bit Weapon concert from the
March 5 SC3 Arcade Party 2011 held in Much of the time was spent chatting with our special guests, father
and son Geoff and Robert Eade from After the meeting, president
Robert tried to take the Eades to the
annual Blackie Gejeian Fresno Autorama but found that it was not
being held. The Eades had another chance to attend a classic
American car show the next weekend - the Goodguys 29th All-American
Get-Together Car Show/Swap Meet at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in
FCUG members in attendance besides our president included Brad Strait and Dick Estel. |
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April 2011 Every
meeting has three parts: the meeting before the meeting, the meeting
itself, and the meeting after the meeting. For the Fresno Commodore User Group, the transition from
"before" to "meeting" is gradual. We arrive at
the Pizza Hut around This time the official meeting was delayed even more, as we found
out that Robert's Amiga mouse for the demo Amiga 1200 was not
working correctly; it kept the mouse pointer to the far upper left
of the screen.A lot of
time was spent pounding the mouse on table, opening the mouse,
cleaning the fluff out of the mouse, and more.Eventually, we determined that the mechanical mouse needed a
real mousepad for it to work correctly.We got it to partially work with a piece of paper as the pad,
enough for the mouse pointer to move over the Amiga Workbench menus. When the food is delivered, we start eating and talking. Not
surprisingly, much of the talk relates to computers, Commodore and
others.At some point
during this conversation, Robert says "I guess it's time to
start the meeting," and we go right on talking about computers
and related matters, although we are now in the "official"
meeting, with formal requests for old and new business. Old business included an update on CommVEx, with
Robert reporting
several equipment sales to help fund the event.The website at http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex
has been updated.The
following people/companies will be or were contacted for CommVEx: Aeon Technologies for the Amiga X1000 Commodore The Multiple Classic Computer ( Update on the SUX 6400 (pre-production photos shown) The April 14-17 Notacon/PixelJam Demoparty in Cleveland After old business,
Robert showed off the A1200 with its variety of
games and demo programs, ready to be exhibited for Notacon. Robert
broke out his guitar (Guitar Hero game controller) and
demonstrated the newest version of the Shredz64 for the C64; we
discovered that the Tracker Hero program for the A1200 would not
work correctly with the Guitar Hero guitar. Finally,
Robert showed off the CommodoreOne motherboard that he
recently bought from Mike Paull of Once again, time ran out to show the unofficial Loadstar #250 disks
and the DotBasic+ program for the C64.Robert promised those would be at the top of the agenda for
the next meeting. I left the meeting after that, but Robert and member Roger V. continued for another hour with the meeting after the meeting.During that time, they viewed the G-rated version of the amateur short film, "Perspective", in which a Commodore 64 figures prominently in the story. |
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May 2011 To
add excitement to this month's meeting, Dick ordered a side of hot
wings for all to share. After eating his sandwich, Under leftover business,
Robert provided an update on CommVex
prizes, which will include an Amiga A2000 Video Toaster system. All
prizes currently planned, as well as lots of other information, can
be seen here. Robert
had been given the opportunity to share in a bonanza of
Commodore equipment; the owners of a large storage warehouse in the
San Francisco Bay Area were clearing out the building, and
everything was free. Robert brought home a couple of Pet 2001's, a
2031 drive and other odds and ends. He also took pictures inside the
building, and we hope to have a couple on the club website in the
near future. Once lunch was over,
Robert passed around the EasyFlash cartridge,
which allows the capture of programs from the Internet. They can
then be run directly from the cartridge, which was developed in
2010.The cartridge came
pre-loaded with several games, but some of them would not run,
possibly due their being We also opened up the two Pet's, finding a few interesting and
unexpected things inside. One of the machines was outfitted with a
Skyles 32K ram expansion board but also had a number of loose wires
inside, and it did not run; the other blue-labeled one worked
stubbornly, i.e., it took several power off and on's for it to show
a screen and even when it did that, the return key did not respond
well to any keypress. It
also showed less than 4K of memory rather than the usual 8K of a Pet
2001.Inside there were
strange, white, half-height chips in four of the sockets. Murphy was also present, causing the club's C128 to lose its C64
section halfway through the meeting, and causing the umpteenth
postponement of the unofficial Loadstar #250 and the DotBasic+
presentations. DotBasic+
documentation came on a CD-ROM, and we used Robert's Mac Powerbook
to read that CD. The
C128 will be replaced for the next meeting, and the broken C128 will
eventually go to Ray Carlsen for repair. |
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June 2011 The
June meeting was attended by a very select few, namely Robert and
Dick. Robert
reported that he has started ordering parts for the SUX 6400
audio digitizer. This involves very careful attention to exact parts
numbers, since an error in one digit would result in the wrong parts
being delivered. Robert expects to show a production model at
CommVEx in July. You can learn more about this event here.. Creation
of this device is further complicated by rules in Europe that
require such hardware to be "RoHS-compliant", meaning it
can contain no lead or other poisonous metals. We looked at a package donated by former Loadstar editor For the demonstration part of the program, we looked at
Robert's
Turbomaster CPU, a 4 MHz. accelerator for the C64, developed in the
early 1990s by Schnedler Systems. We also reviewed an issue of the
Loadstar 128 disk magazine, which included a database of information
on the Star Trek series and several of its later spin-offs. Those
who know Robert are aware that he is a true, classic Star Trek
fanatic, while Dick prefers the Next Generation series (but
appreciates many of the original series episodes also). Robert
also entertained us during lunch with the challenge of
meeting the requests of a Commodore user who wanted to buy a C64. We
have lots of these, and it's usually a simple matter to pull one
from one of Robert's storage facilities. However, this person wanted
a complete C64 package, with every item present including manuals,
in the original box, with the serial number on the box matching the
number on the machine. Although we both agreed that Commodore did not display the serial
number on the cartons, Robert was able to meet the rest of this
request, as well as providing two additional C64s and a 1541 drive
with the same requirements. Dick's brand new C64 purchased at Sears in 1987 included the GEOS
program. Fortunately, in the case of the above-mentioned user, Robert
is not selling later C64s which include that GEOS 1.5 disk;
finding those disks would be more difficult to do. Please don't ask
us to repeat this service again - it's pretty close to impossible to
provide every single item that you would have received buying a C64
new for $300 or more in 1984, and far too much work for the amount
we are charging. Last meeting Robert reported on his acquisition of a number of items that were being given away at a Bay Area warehouse. Robert's full report on this event is on line here. If you create a free account, you can also view his photos. There are also a couple of photos here. |
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July 2011 July's
meeting saw full attendance as far as our nearby members are
concerned - Robert Bernardo, We had a brief discussion of
CommVEx; Robert will be heading to
Las Vegas
Tuesday, and
everything is as ready as possible. Robert
gave a report on his recent trip to
England
and the
continent, including visits to the Lincoln Amiga Group and the Amiga
North Thames club in England, the offices
of AmigaKit.com in Wales, the
Dienstagstreff Commodore Club meeting in Strictly as a tourist, he also went to From
England, Robert brought home a PET 8296-D, a rare model with a sleek, rounded look.
It still needs some work to get the monitor going. The monitor and
keyboard can be easily removed from the main unit for easier
transportation. |
|
August 2011 Once
again we had the full complement of four local members for August: Robert
gave a short report on CommVEx, which was a success
financially and in all other ways. We made enough to pay more than
half of next year's room rent. Robert tried to get CommVEx back to
the Plaza Hotel, but other organizations have already reserved those
conference rooms, so we will again be at the Las Vegas Club Hotel.
Mark your calendars now: July 28 & 29, 2012. We also looked at some stuff that
Robert shipped home from We took a look at the Multiple Classic Computer ( Robert
also showed the CommodoreOne (brainchild of Jeri Ellsworth)
installed in a PC case. We didn't have all the hardware needed to
make it work, so we did not get to try it out. Robert also gave a
partial demonstration on digital sound for the Commodore. Robert's
new product, the SUX 6400 sound digitizer, sold out the first
assembly run, so we could only look at the Digimaster 64 software.
The Commodore elves are busy assembling another batch of the SUX
6400. Robert
reported on the Citadel Bulletin Board System (BBS) in the |
|
September 2011
Brad
Early this month both
Robert and Dick received an e-mail from Judith
Ranheim, the widow of John Ranheim. They operated Jason Ranheim
Company in Robert
reported that Commodore engineer Bil Herd would like to make
a virtual visit by Skype to our November meeting. We will research
Internet speeds at various possible meeting locations (the usual
meeting place is probably too noisy for a project of this type). Also in November developer Michael Hill hopes to attend and demo
PetDisk. This product plugs into the cassette port of a PET
computer, with a second piece of hardware plugged into the IEEE
port. This replaces the cassette drive and disk drive and allows
saving files to a SD card. We also learned that the Citadel Bulletin Board System (BBS) in the The annual club dinner (successor of the former club picnic) will be
held at the regular meeting time, Sunday, October 16, Upcoming Commodore and/or computer-related shows include SC3 Arcade
Party in southern Robert
demonstrated several Amiga CD32 games that were part of a
huge box of mostly software that he brought back from Next were a couple of commercial C128 games, new within the last few
years, Space Pirates and Starship Battles, from MicroDesigns of
Manassas, Virginia. Dick forgot to mention but will now write that we have created a
webpage to display a number of Loadstar
magazine covers that were given to us by former editor |
|
October 2011 Back
in the day when the club had 30 or more members attending meetings,
we had an annual picnic at the home of one of our members. As
membership declined, this event became a dinner at a restaurant,
paid for by the club. Although we've usually held these events in the evening, our regular
meeting time worked out best for everyone, so on October 16 we
gathered at Tahoe Joe's, an excellent steak house. In addition to
our four regulars (Robert Bernardo, Roger Van Pelt, Although this gathering is supposed to be "more socializing,
less Commodore," the day started with everyone gathered around Robert's gigantic Crown Vic (as always, stuffed full of Commodore
and Amiga stuff) to look over and put in a claim for some of the
equipment, software and other items donated to the club by Judith
Ranheim, widow of John Ranheim and co-owner of Jason Ranheim
Company. Brad and Roger each went away with an armload of stuff, including a
rare but interesting acoustic modem. Dick, after vowing to own no
more Commodore computers, snuck off with an SX-64. Inside the restaurant, while waiting for our food, we looked over
several bags of chips, boards, and equipment for burning and erasing
chips. There are numerous chips that might have something on them or
might just be available for burning. Since Doug's technical expertise extends to PCs, Dick picked his
brain for a little help with some work he's been doing on the PC he
won in Las Vegas during this year's CommVEx, and Doug shared some of
his Commodore knowledge also. We had a great lunch, good conversation, and enjoyed getting together with one of our "alumni," and we'll do it all again next year. |
| November
2011
(No November meeting notes found) |
|
December 2011 by Robert Bernardo Stan Hankins, owner of the Pizza Pit Restaurant, greeted me as he
walked by me sitting in my car.I had gotten to the restaurant about 10 minutes before it was
to open on Sunday, December 18.He unlocked the door of the restaurant, and I followed
in. It had been a couple of months since our last meeting there,
but all was well. Stan
was all smiles. I warned Stan that the meeting was going to be a small one, with
members having to bow out due to other commitments. However, I was prepared to spend the full time there, waiting
to see if anybody would come. After
20 minutes on the laptop computer, I went to the counter to order
food. In through the
door walked Roger
V., and with surprised relief, I enthusiastically welcomed him. I ordered some food
for Roger, and then both of us went to the task of unloading equipment out of
my car. For the next 5
hours (yes, the meeting ran overtime, even though there were just
two of us), we talked Commodore – discussing next year's July
28-29 Commodore Vegas Expo, examining the website of the new Rear
Admiral ThunderDrive, a modern-day replica of the CMD hard drive;
watching the November Bil Herd chat video filmed by me (of which I
gave a disc of video files to Roger
), playing with Arcade Retro Gaming.com’s Multiple Classic Computer
( |
|
2012 |
|
January 2012 We
started the year with full attendance by our regulars - Brad, Roger,
Robert and Dick. |
|
February 2012 By Robert Bernardo On Feb.
19 I arrived at the FCUG meeting 15 minutes late. I was coming from Because
our usual meeting place
at the Pizza Pit Restaurant was filled with a racing crowd, we had
to divert to Panera Bread for this month. Though I was late, nobody from the club was
there. The restaurant was crowded, even at that time in the morning.
I staked out a spot in the
corner, a spot that had electrical connections and a shelf for the
computer monitor. Then I
waited 15 minutes. Still
nobody showed up. I made
a phone call to Roger; he had things to do with his brother. With no phone number for Brad, I e-mailed
him. Dick was occupied in another part of the state. It looked as if the President's Day weekend was not going to
be a good one for the meeting. The
restaurant became really packed now. There were no extra tables to be had, except for outside
seating. Just in case
any visitor were to visit, I stayed for the entire meeting time. I ordered my usual chicken noodle soup and baguette, and
because it was my birthday, Panera gave me a free pastry; I got the
pecan sticky bun. I kept myself occupied by using the laptop computer, answering
e-mail and cruising through the Commodore and Amiga forums on the
Internet. At 1:45, I decided it was time to go.
Everything
that I had planned on the meeting agenda
would have to wait until the March meeting. However,
I decided against that, thinking that I should return back home in |
|
March 2012 Stormy
skies greeted the members of the Fresno Commodore User Group when we
left our homes to go to the March meeting, but it was warm and
pleasant inside the Pizza Pit. Attendees were Robert Bernardo, Roger
Van Pelt, and Dick Estel. Roger reported on what he called a "homemade, prototype
geoCable," which he made from copper wire, cardboard, and other
odds and ends that he had on hand. It worked well in a test with a
Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer. Our bank has recently imposed a $12 per month charge on our checking
account, which probably exceeds our income, so we voted to close
that account and open one at Educational Employees Credit Union. Everything is on schedule for CommVEx, despite the fact that once
again Robert is having to deal with a new person in the contact
position at the hotel. The hotel lost but finally found the signed
contract and proof of deposit. Robert had two large boxes of "stuff," Amiga-related,
which he picked up from a user from Tehachapi. An Amiga 1000 and
monitor were among the hardware items. Robert also had a bunch of
hardware that came from a Commodore computer repair shop that closed
down in A while back
Robert had acquired a device that connects the
Commodore 128’sRGB
port to a VGA monitor and displays the signal in full 80-column
color. Although the manufacturer sold 30 of them from a posting on a
single Internet forum, he is no longer making them, so Robert is
looking into manufacturing another batch. Ideally, they will be
ready in time for CommVEx. Roger took home a box of ham radio-related disks that
Robert had
acquired, along with a manual that teaches the basics of ham radio. We looked or tried to look at several programs. Laser Dreams, which
controls a laser being fired within a room, was beyond our
capability or did not work (what was needed was another
commercially-sold interface and a laser, this equipment last priced
at $900 to $1,000), but we had better luck with the Einstein Memory
Trainer, a program none of us had heard of before. It purports to
teach you how to remember names, faces, phone and other numbers,
etc.. Like a lot of programs from the early days of home computing,
the information presented could have been put into a book which a
user could probably work through faster than using the program, but
it was still an interesting concept. The first lesson teaches you
how to associate names with faces, the C64 showing a name with a
hi-res drawn face and then later asking you that name when the face
appears again. As we began to load up the equipment, the storm blew up again, and we were dodging raindrops during the loading process. This storm eventually brought snow down to the 1,000 foot level in some areas and left about four feet at a nearby ski resort at 7,000 feet. No one complains, because it's been a very dry winter and the moisture is badly needed. |
|
April
2012 In
contrast to the weather during last month's meeting (cool and
rainy), we had temperatures close to 90 for our April meeting. We
had full attendance of our four local regulars, Robert Bernardo,
Roger Van Pelt, Dick brought in the library print-out, which has been sitting unused
in the bottom of a drawer, as well as two volumes of early
newsletters for members to look through. He also showed the members
a book called, "Computer Wimp - 166 Things I Wish I Had Known
Before I Bought My First Computer", by John Bear. Despite its
1983 publishing date, the book still has great entertainment value,
although much of the advice is out of date. There's a full review of
this book here. Robert reported that Commodore pioneer Jack Tramiel died April 8 at
age 83. Jack was the driving force behind Commodore's policy of
building computers "for the masses, not the classes," and
was one of those most responsible for computers becoming a common
home device. His empire began as a simple typewriter repair shop,
Commodore Portable Typewriter, in 1953. The 2012 Commodore Vegas
Expo will be dedicated to Jack Tramiel. A nice
obituary can be found here. Dick reported that our checking account has been transferred to the
Educational Employees Credit Union, with Dick's and Robert's names
on the account. Robert had previously taken Dick's sticky SX-64 keyboard, plus two
incomplete, non-working SX-64s, to repairman Ray Carlsen in Last month Roger had told us about creating a "homemade,
prototype geoCable," which he made from copper wire, cardboard,
and other odds and ends that he had on hand. It worked well in a
test with a Hewlett-Packard 940C inkjet printer. We got to see the
device, as well as a much more sophisticated, cardboard-free version
Roger put together. Photos are on the FCUG web site. http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm Roger had looked through a box of ham radio-related disks that
Robert gave him last month, so we took a look at a few of the
programs. Without a radio set-up, we could not do very much with
them, though we did hear Morse code tones coming out of one program
when we entered alphabetic characters into it. Robert brought in his PET 8296-D, which we opened up to check on the
replacement chip that Mike Naberezny had installed. The chip,
actually an EPROM, replaced one of two PLAs that was in the PET.
Mike had done other repairs to the PET, too, in order to get it in
working condition - the internal 8250LP drive did not work, and so,
the inverter was desoldered andreplaced; the power supply came back to life after exercising
the switch a few times; and the keyboard was taken apart and all
contacts cleaned. Now Robert is looking for good programs to run on
the PET. Robert showed how he does.D64 conversions with the use of a SD2IEC
card drive, the D64it program, and the club's C128 and 1571 drive.
Because he was using the C64 version of D64it, he had to first make
sure the 1571 drive was in C64 mode first. Also the target 5
1/4" disk had to be formatted first. Then he ran D64it from the
SD2IEC, and using a.D64 of Digimaster 128 as an example, he
de-archived the program onto the floppy disk. Afterwards, he ran
Digimaster 128 from the floppy disk. When we arrived, we found a change of ownership notice in the front
window, so at the end of the meeting we introduced ourselves to
Joey, the new owner, to make sure we could continue having our
meetings at the Pizza Pit. He was very friendly and accommodating,
and looks like he will make a good owner for this long-time pizza
stop. After the meeting, as Robert drove through city streets to get
back on the freeway, he noticed a familiar man on a large motorcycle
following behind his car. It was Stan, the former owner of the Pizza
Pit, and on the back of his motorcycle was an attractive brunette.
As Stan zoomed away, Robert waved to him. Enjoy your
retirement, Stan! |
| May 2012
We had
full attendance of our now five local regulars, Robert Bernardo,
Roger
Van Pelt,
Brad
From deep inside his huge pile of Commodore "stuff," Robert
brought the leftover die-cut Commodore logos that were handed
out at CommVEx 2010 and gave them to members who did not attend that
event.
Roger
showed a sketch he had found that he had done at age 12 of his
brother using a VIC-20. We all agreed that Roger's artistic abilities far exceeded any of the rest of us.
Robert reported on Vintage Computer Festival East and showed some
video from the event, which took place May 5-6 in Wall, New Jersey. Some of
Robert's video is already on-line here
and here. The rest of Robert's video is being sent to CBM
engineer Bil Herd, who will edit it and post it separately. VCF East 8.0 photos
are on line here. For the equipment segment of our meeting, Robert showed a diagnostic test cart with loopback attachments for the Plus/4, based on the same design as the one we looked at previously for the C128. And Brad brought in his new Micro-Kim, a KIM-1 clone which he built from a kit. The only display is a numeric read-out. After about 20 minutes of entering codes, Brad made the unit function as a clock. The company, Briel Computers, also makes other kits.
Robert brought a PET 8296 keyboard without a PET - turning it over
to reveal an autograph by William Shatner. The actor was a spokesman
on TV for Commodore products for a brief time and also appeared in
print ads.
Book time brought "The Commodore 64 Book - 1982 to 199x"
by Andrew Fisher and Andrew Rollings, containing reviews of many,
many games. The information is presented in colorful, easy-to-read
charts. Also, there was
the new book, "The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga
(Platform Studies)" by Jimmy Maher, the book not being a
history book but more of why the Amiga was the multimedia computer
of its day. Then there was the return of "Computer Wimp"
by John Bear, a humorous (1983) look at the 166 things you should
know before buying your first computer. Then it was time to Relax - that is, to look at a program by that name. The Relax Stress Reduction System was developed by Synapse, and back in 1985, it sold for $139.95. You can read an archived Compute! magazine review of it here. With you as the user wearing a headband with sensors, it claims to
read various aspects of your mental state and has modules intended
to help you learn to relax. The on-screen graphing results looked
suspiciously similar whether Robert was wearing the headband
transmitter or not. However, when Robert took off the headband
during the balloon game (control a balloon with your mind), the
balloon fell to the bottom of the screen. For most of the
presentation, Robert was fiddling with the fine-tuning slider
switches on the control box in order for the program to register not
too high and not too low. Hopefully, someone can test the program
under quiet conditions with no distractions. Finally, we moved to our music lesson, with Robert revealing the Notable Phantom. In addition to the computer program, this musical item has a flexible plastic keyboard that fits over the Commodore keyboard. Pressing the notes produced typical, computer-style, SID beeps, with three voices available. None of us were capable of actually playing anything on a keyboard, but we looked at various parts of the program and loaded and played songs from the disk. There’s a photo of the keyboard here and more information about it here. |
| June 2012
For a few minutes, it looked as if the June meeting was not going to happen on time. On the door of the Pizza Pit Restaurant was a piece of paper saying that on Sundays, the restaurant would open at noon. Fortunately, owner Joey showed up a few minutes later and said that if warned beforehand, he would open at 11. Because the FCUG meeting was on Father’s Day, there were members who were MIA; only Robert and Louis were present. However, the meeting still went overtime. In old business, Robert gave an update on the July 28-29 Commodore Vegas Expo. The conference room was all paid. This time the restaurant’s Internet was working without a hitch, and they were able to log on and check out the CommVEx website. As they ate chicken garlic pizza, they watched “Amiga the Movie”, an 18-minute production filmed back in 1987 that emphasized the various advantages and the available software for the Amiga 500. A well-done movie with that 1980’s vibe. Because Louis needed a solution to easily format disks on his 1541 disk drive, Robert loaned him a Warp Speed cartridge which has a fast loader/saver and a set of utilities, including an easy formatter. Then when logged into Blip.tv, Robert showed the Commodore video he filmed while attending the May 5-6 Vintage Computer Festival East in New Jersey. Finally, an Amiga CD32 game console was examined, Louis having never before seen one. The meeting wrapped up with Robert explaining that he had to pick up an Amiga 600 from his repair person in Santa Clara and that he had to also get back the Atari 520ST he had loaned to that same person. Louis would then get the Atari, since Robert expressed no interest in it. Louis also gave a run-down on the various Atari 8-bit computers, something of which Robert had little knowledge. Still with a bit of time, they both watched the Star Trek-themed video, “Bring Back Kirk”, an 8-minute production which cleverly resurrects William Shatner’s Captain Kirk character for a big space battle! --Robert Bernardo |
|
July 2012 We
had a good turnout for the July meeting, with Robert, Robert
handed out newsletters for January-February, March-April, and
May-June, bringing us up-to-date for the first time in quite a
while. Although our editor has bemoaned falling behind, we have
nothing but the greatest appreciation for his efforts, especially
having to do everything "long-distance."
With CommVEx v8.0 just weeks away, the hotel has been pitching
knuckleballs and nasty sliders to Robert. First, they asked him to
approve a move to the Plaza Hotel, but in a different room, one
whose features are completely unknown to us. Then they said they
would have to charge extra because we were setting up a large number
of computers. Robert
stood tall at the plate and fought off both pitches, and
CommVEx remains at the Las Vegas Club. He also explained the low
power requirement of our machines, so they withdrew their threat to
charge extra for "excessive" electrical use.
Goodies and prizes at the event will include T-shirts or posters
with the Jackbusters
graphic that was worn by Commodore engineers back in the day.
(Unfortunately, those t-shirts/posters weren't ready by CommVEx
time.) We'll also have the annual specially-label wine - this year a
Jack Daniels-style label will honor the late Jack Tramiel.
Also at CommVEx a brand new C64 game and three hardware prototypes
will be introduced. And a special guest will be Jim Drew, creator of
one of the first copy programs that could back up protected disks.
Our demos included Drew's program, Gemini 2.0, a copying program
from 1984, and CCI Submarine Warfare from 1981. The program, by
Clockwork Computers, had a version which ran on the PET and a
version for the C64; we had the C64 version. Robert
brought in a pair of Haitex 3D glasses for the Amiga,
originally released in 1988, which he bought on
Finally we looked at an old-school graphic demo, complete with
scrolling greetings, and Media Player 128. Regrettably this program,
downloaded from the Internet, did not include the actual media files
that were supposed to come with it - they have to be downloaded
separately. Look for this one again at a future meeting. We
also discussed finding a new meeting place. Although the food and
service are as great as ever, the new owner did some remodeling that
covered up the electrical outlet that we normally use. This required us to
string an extension cord across the floor, creating a serious safety
issue. We have also grown weary of the loud jukebox, loud TV, and
loud patrons at the liquor store next door. Before the meeting Dick had scouted three possible locations – a
pizza parlor in Clovis (the best tables to use were right next to
the game machines); El Bajio, a place we’ve met before, but which
closed down over a year ago (still closed), and Bobby Salazar’s
Mexican restaurant, which seemed ideal. After the meeting we all headed to Salazar’s, just up the street from our present location, to look it over. We were immediately impressed with the fact that the air conditioning works. The room that is available is larger than we need, but is almost never in use Sunday mornings, so they were happy to schedule it for us. There are speakers from the restaurant’s “muzak” system, but they can be turned off, and curtains partially cover the door. In short, it’s a major step up, and we will give it a try in August, and make it our regular meeting place if it works out. |
| August 2012
As we moved to a new location, we
had almost 100% local attendance, plus a guest. The Valley regulars
included Roger
Van Pelt,
Daniel is a former U.S.
citizen who now lives and works in the Netherlands, where he teaches music. He brought an SX-64 and a Windows laptop,
and showed us some of the programs he has written or uses in his
work. Daniel discussed a project he's been working on for some time,
a musical keyboard, which includes eight
He also showed a program that he wrote to display altered character
sets which are used by music programs. These sets are altered so
that they can depict musical notes. Each note consists of several of
the altered characters. Daniel’s program can find these sets in
the program code and display them so that you can see the actual
notes. They can also be edited and resaved.
Finally, he displayed a program that composes music according to the
rules of three part harmony, and which is used by students in music
conservatories to prepare their assignments. While a graduate
student in Colorado, Daniel started to write a program which demonstrates the process.
It displays the results as it searches for solutions according to
the rules but using the random function so that each song is
different. Meanwhile, Vincent played with drawing programs on the Amiga 3000 which was borrowed from Richard Hough of Tulare. Robert
reported on plans for next year's CommVEx. We have reserved
the same location, the Left Field Room at the Las Vegas Club Hotel,
July 27 and 28, 2013. The cost has gone up about $200. Robert
will attend the AmiWest show in Sacramento
in October. This event will be at a new location due to scheduling
conflicts.
Our new meeting location proved to be everything we had hoped -
cool, quiet and roomy. It looked a bit like a mini-CommVEx, with six
systems set up and plenty of tables available. One of the systems
was Robert's CommodoreOne in a tower. On bootup, this version allows
you a choice of several different platforms. The tower has a nice
hole where there should be a disk drive, and Robert swears a 1541-II
will go in there soon. |
| September
2012
Treasurer Dick Estel was absent as was member Brad Strait, Dick traveling to a bluegrass festival and Brad Strait caring for a new family member. I myself barely made it to the meeting, having to contend with my car’s left front tire which had lost air pressure overnight. With my Coleman air compressor, I pumped the tire back up, saw that it was holding air, left for the meeting, and only arrived 10 minutes late. Member Louis and son Vincent Mazzei were waiting for me when I arrived at Bobby Salazar’s Mexican Restaurant. I apologized for my tardiness, but they didn’t mind. Piece by piece, I unloaded the Commodore hardware out of my car and into the restaurant, Louis and Vincent helping and member Roger van Pelt helping also when he showed up a few minutes later. I took an air pressure reading off the leaking car tire, and it seemed to be holding air. With my mind more at ease, I went back into the restaurant to get down to business. As usual, it took awhile to set up all of the equipment, but once done, we were able to sit down and order lunch. While waiting for the food to arrive, we started with old business – talk about the Commodore Vegas Expo for next year – and new business – our October “picnic” lunch. The meeting went along fairly efficiently. Though we ran out of time to try out SuperCPU games and utilities at http://members.optusnet.com.au/spacetaxi64/index2.htm and the new C128 slideshow, VDC Mode Mania, found at http://csdb.dk/release/?id=110966, we did have plenty of time to look over the rare, German-built VC1020 expander for the VIC-20, a PAL C64C shipped from the Czech Republic, and a Drean C64C from Argentina. Everyone at the meeting was amazed at the heavy-duty metal construction of the VC1020. Louis and son Vincent had brought one of their VIC-20’s to the meeting, and we tried it out with the VC1020. Well, when some game cartridges were inserted in the first or second ports of the expander, there was no response from the VIC-20; otherwise, the VIC-20 seemed to be working normally through the pass-through in expander. Another device for hardware tech Ray Carlsen to repair! The VC1020 was almost in perfect condition, except for a missing front label. Louis said that with the help of a friend, he could duplicate the label right down to the font, color, and material used. Later, I sent him photos taken from the Internet that showed what the label appeared to be. Now all I had to do was to get the measurements of the label to him. The PAL C64C came in a different box to what we knew was usually provided in the U.S.A.; the different languages provided on the box and the West German bottom label on the C64C were a treat to see. The Drean C64C was the most unusual item. I had to explain to the members how this machine was created, how Drean received permission from Commodore Business Machines to make its own version of the C64. Though we did not power it up (it would have just shown a black-and-white image on our NTSC monitor, due to its PAL-N 6572 video chip), we examined the casing, a crudely molded plastic case manufactured by Drean, and we laughed at how unfinished its looks seemed. Finally, with the meeting coming to a close, I showed two Commodore-related videos posted at YouTube.com. The first was “They’re Taking the Hobbits to Isengard (C64)”. With scenes taken from the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, a SID-composed music background was played while the characters spoke with digitized voices. Louis and I were skeptical that the voices had been digitized and played back through SID; they were too clear to be from an 8-bit Commodore (but anything is possible!). Then we saw the video, “Datarock – Computer Camp Love”. This video was about teenage computer nerds at computer camp, and one of the computers at the camp was… a C64. In fact, the C64 appeared a few times in the video. Though I didn’t understand everything about the video, Roger was kind enough to explain some of the esoteric parts of it. When the meeting ended, we were only a mere hour overtime, give or take half an hour. All was not well, though. The left front car tire had lost air, and I had to fill it up again. The next day after work, I went to Sears and had it replaced under warranty. --RB |
| October 2012
The annual Fresno Commodore User Group picnic started in the 1990s,
and for a number of years was held at the beautiful country home of
the late Sandy and Ingrid Dippolett. As active, local membership
declined, the event eventually became a dinner, and then a lunch,
usually at the regular monthly meeting time, but at a different
location, with the club providing the dinner. This year we gathered at the Seven Bar and Grill in
Clovis, highly recommended by Dick and various friends he’s taken there
in the past few months. Our attendance was pretty much like our
typical meetings – We hadn’t seen Brad for a while; he and his wife recently welcomed
a new baby, making three kids under four to keep them busy. Roger
had good news – a new job, after months of searching. Robert recently attended the AmiWest Show, as well as the Southern
California Commodore & Amiga Network (SCCAN) meeting in Louis has been buying up low price JiffyDOS chips to install in his VIC20s, while son Vincent has been getting a lot of use out of the VIC he won at the Las Vegas expo in July. Dick mostly keeps busy “being retired,” a task that takes all
his time, without producing any measurable results. We got caught up on everyone’s activities, discussed the state of
Commodore, and enjoyed a great lunch that lived up to Dick’s
claims for it. At the conclusion of the event, Robert handed out gift bags with a small, non-computer item to everyone; this has become a tradition each year. --DE |
| November
2012
This was not the longest-ever FCUG meeting, but it certainly came close. Dick arrived at Bobby Salazar’s Restaurant about 10:45, 15 minutes before the official start time, with Robert arriving a few minutes later. Dick had brought his cart, since we now have to transport equipment about 50 yards from parking spot to meeting room, and we made at least three trips. Eventually, we had the C128, an Apple IIGS, an iMac, an Amiga, and a VIC-20, plus all kinds of peripherals. When we had first checked this room as a possibility, it seemed bigger than we needed, but we have found a way to expand into all the available space. In addition to equipment, we had four boxes of hardware, software, manuals, and odds and ends that had been donated, all of which was made available free to whoever wanted it. On hand were Louis and Vince Mazzei, Roger Van Pelt, Robert Bernardo, and Dick Estel. Before ordering, Robert spent a long time trying to set up a Skype chat with Berry de Jager, a Commodore fan in the Netherlands, using the iMac. It took a while to get the account set up, so we took a few minutes out to order our food. Then Berry called Robert by cell phone, and they got connected via Skype. At first we could see Berry, but he could not see us, but we got that straightened out with the help of Louis, just about when our food arrived. Robert went back and forth between the talking to Berry on the computer and eating his giant burrito, while the rest of us tried to act normal while someone halfway around the world watched us eat. The chat was actually a test for a SX-64 international event that is coming up at our January meeting, so we wrapped up that part of it and began the part of our meeting where Robert tries to keep us on task, and we all get into all kinds of discussions, computer and otherwise, while we finished eating. During this time, we reminisced about Robert’s first Amiga. It was also Dick’s first and only Amiga, and he owned it for all of five minutes. Dick was trying to buy a 1084 monitor, but the seller would only sell as a package, which included an A500. Dick bought the package and immediately sold the Amiga to Robert. Robert announced that the C4 Expo (Cincinnati Commodore Computer Club), which was last held about three years ago, will return in May or June of 2013. Robert also spoke briefly about the SC3 Arcade Party in Claremont, CA last week. Photos will be on-line some time in the future. Louis reported that he bought a box of disks from a defunct user group’s library collection, about 50 disks for $8 on eBay. He will go through them and see if there is anything of interest to our members. Included in some of the odds and ends we had acquired were manuals (no software) for programs used with ham radio. No one had heard of these programs, including our ham radio expert Roger, but he took the manuals home to look at. Each year FCUG makes a donation to a charity around the holiday; for the last several years ago it has been St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis. We voted to donate $50 this year. In southern California Robert had met with Charles Gutman, our member in Fontana. Charles had received permission from the developer to make a new run of a cartridge that contains 30 games and had given Robert a prototype. It had been some time since Charles contacted the developer, and he was not able to identify two chips and two diodes on the board. The developer had moved and could not be found, so Charles had asked for help in identifying the parts. When he was in San Jose, Robert talked to an engineer who was able to identify one chip, but the number on the other had been scratched off and was nearly unreadable. Then we handed it to 11-year old Vince, whose hawk-like eyesight put the rest of us to shame. After a brief study, holding the chip under different lights to get the best letter-to-light contrast, Vince read off the part number and part of the serial number. Finally it was time for demonstrations to begin, about an hour after the “official” end time for our meeting (both the club and the restaurant are very flexible). Attempted demos on the C64 and VIC failed, but moving on to the Amiga we were able to get a good look at a new platform game called SQRXZ. As usual, after the “old folks” tried it and died quickly, Vince took over and ran up a respectable score. Finally, the agenda called for a quick look at an old 5.25” Apple disk that Roger had brought in. From his vast collection of computer equipment, Robert had unearthed an Apple IIGS, along with third-party dual 3.5 disk drives. The Apple monitor was in hiding, but this machine could be used with a Commodore monitor, so we put in Roger’s disk and tried to view it. This set off a half-hour or longer project to try and get the Apple working. Louie had used this machine in the past, but it was over 20 years ago. Still, his knowledge allowed us to get close to our goal. First, he explained that the Apple would not function with three drives attached, so he managed to disconnect one of the drives in the dual unit. After much effort and some on-line research, we brought up the graphic interface, only to be stopped dead by the fact that nothing could be done without the mouse, also in hiding. In a happy post script, back home after the meeting Roger got some help in an on-line forum and was able to use Copy II to view the file. It turned out to be a text file that was probably written by Roger’s brother in his high school days. Now the search is on for a printer cable that will allow Roger to make a printout. When we started hauling equipment out to our cars, we were surprised to realize it was nearly 4 p.m. This did not stop us from the usual “meeting after the meeting,” during which anything and everything gets discussed. Key topics this time included auto accidents and the resulting hassles with insurance companies (Louie and Dick) and buying a Hummer (Louis). Despite the length of the meeting, it was fun and interesting throughout, and we will be back to do it again in December. |
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December 2012 We had
a small attendance this month, with just Brad, Speaking of trying, although we tried many things including tons of
research on the Internet, the demo gremlin attacked every one of
today's demos. For the most part, it was something very small, like
the need for Although we couldn't get programs running on them, we got a look at
two PET's, a 4032 and 8032, and a 2031 PET floppy drive. Nevertheless, we had good time, a great lunch, and discussed a lot
of things. In addition, Next month will be a special event, an international "SX-64
Day" celebrating 30 years of this special Commodore, during
which we will video chat with Berry de Jager and others in the Netherlands. They will have several SX-64s set up, and we will bring at least
two. |
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2013 |
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January 2013 Our January meeting was no ordinary one. Sunday, January 20 was
SX-64 Day around the world, celebrating the release 30 years ago of
Commodore’s iconic “executive” computer. We were part of the
Global SX-64 Party, an international celebration of the world’s
first color transportable computer. Robert arrived about 45 minutes early to start setting up the SX’s
and the video and still camera equipment. Dick arrived with a third
unit but had trouble with the keyboard not registering all key
presses. Somehow that cleared up later (maybe just inserting the
keyboard cable better?). We were missing member Also present were
Roger
Van Pelt
and Louis and Vincent Mazzei, who brought Vincent’s rare,
silver-labeled VIC-20. To start off the meeting, we viewed a Commodore SX-64 commercial
from 1984, the commercial with the catchy Commodore tune. We took a
few photos with Dick’s Canon digital He explained that he and the Dutch users had met during the
afternoon from about 1
to We finished our lunch and headed to the SX’s so we could try out
the programs and hardware items. During that time Photos of the event are on line here.
In addition, there is more information at Berry’s site, including a list of the places and people
participating in the international event. In non-SX64 business, we selected Dick
reported on a phone conversation with Del Contreras, former Robert showed us a couple of early cartridges, Capture II, which
enables freezing and backing up protected programs, and Turbo 50, a
disk speed-up device. He also reported that Jim Brain can now
distribute JiffyDOS for the Plus/4 and VIC-20. Louis reported that Jim Drew, whom we met at CommVEx in July, is
starting a web site, www.cbmstuff.com,
to sell some of his old Commodore stuff, as well as equipment he has
developed. The site address is reserved but not yet operational.
Louis also said he has an extra Servant 128 chip if anyone in the
club needs one. The meeting ended just before 3, but it took |
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February 2013 by Robert Bernardo For the February meeting, I arrived on time, followed by Louis and his son Vincent a few minutes later. Dick Estel was absent for this meeting, but Roger and Brad did come in. I set up the tables with the SX-64 on one and my display of C64 video digitizers on the other. The digitizers included ComputerEyes from 1984, the Print Technik Video-Digitizer from 1985, Video Byte II (including Super Explode V5.0) from 1989, and the Scanntronik Video Digitizer from 1990. I also brought my broken VIC-20 for Louis to look over. As usual, while I set up everything Roger, Brad, and Louis engaged in technology-related small talk. Finally, everything was set up, and we sat down to order our food. As we waited for our food, I showed the SX-64 amateur commercial v1 and v2 that was posted to Blip.tv and to YouTube. In January we filmed parts of it at the user group meeting, at member Alfredo’s house, and at my parents’ house. I edited it all together, over 27 minutes of footage reduced to 59 seconds, a process which took over 8 hours of work. That was just for version 1 of the commercial. Some on-line users wanted a babe in the commercial (in the original, it was a bikini-clad woman diving into a pool). After 3 more hours of editing, I finished version 2 of the commercial with Amiga personality Kiki Stockhammer gyrating during one of her band’s concerts, the band being Warp 11, a Star Trek rock-and-roll band. For lunch I ordered the shrimp burrito and soda, but because it was my birthday, Brad picked up the tab! Also for dessert, Louis had brought a C= decorated chocolate cake in honor of my birthday. Yum! Thanks to everybody for making the meeting a special occasion. After the lunch, we got down to business, old and new business, that is. I reported that only one more payment was due for the July 27-28 CommVEx and that surprisingly the venue, the Las Vegas Club Hotel, was not accepting any room reservations for the date. We surmised that the LVC Hotel was going through remodeling, and that was why no one could book any accommodations. I had to advise the members to look at other nearby hotels near the LVC. Louis showed the many 6502 CPU chips that he got from Bulgaria and the many 6560 VIC-I chips he got from China. We talked about how there was so much interest in these chips from those on the Denial VIC-20 forum and how that interest just petered away. So, now we have lots of chips for any VIC-20/PET repairs for the club. We opened up my broken VIC-20 and found that the 6502 and 6560 chips were soldered to the board. Darn! O.K., I’ll have to give the VIC to Ray Carlsen so he could install sockets for both chips. Then we could replace one or both chips, one or both of which are the probable cause of the malfunction. Then we started two concurrent presentations. Louis demonstrated the method of rebuilding an Atari joystick with new parts from a supplier. I demonstrated, or should I say tried to demonstrate, the use of the various video digitizers listed above. Louis’ presentation went without a hitch, showing the method of how to make an Atari joystick as good as new. My presentation did not go as well. First, I tried the ComputerEyes digitizer. I hooked in my Canon video camera to the digitizer. No response, even though I turned the two knobs on the ComputerEyes unit. Then I tried the Print Technik. I was able to digitize one image of Vincent, but then it would not respond to further scanning. Very strange! What was happening? To my chagrin, I did not bring a gender changer for the RCA cable coming out of the Video Byte, and so, I was not able to demonstrate that one. I went to the Scanntronik Video Digitizer, the most sophisticated of the bunch because it used three separate scans -- one red, one green, and one blue -- in order to form one complete color image. I held the green transparency in front of the video camera lens and tried to do a scan of Vincent. Nothing! Just some dashed lines on the screen. Heck! I tried the process again with the red transparency. Again the same result! What was happening? The digitizers wouldn’t work or would work slightly but unreliably. Three different digitizers… They couldn’t all be bad. Oh-oh, wait… I remembered. The SX-64 user port is different than a C64/128 user port. It had different voltages (as Ray Carlsen explained to me later on, the SX-64 carried 9 volts AC grounded on one of the user port pins, which is an undocumented CBM error. To make it compatible, you’d have to cut a trace on the board, disconnecting the 9 volts to that pin.) So, that’s why the digitizers were responding in such a flaky manner. I explained to the members why the digitizers weren’t working, and I gave my apologies. I should have brought a regular C64 or C128. They understood that not all goes as planned in a meeting. I just hoped that the SX-64 did not damage the digitizers by feeding them the wrong voltage. The meeting ended way past our official end time, but that was as usual. Before I started disassembling all the gear and packing it away, I reminded the members about the date of our March meeting. I also took home the rest of the chocolate birthday cake; it was too much for the club members to finish at the meeting, and it was too much for me to finish alone at home. However, my middle school students loved it the next day. |
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March 2013 by Robert Bernardo I arrived at our meeting spot on time. Member Louis and son Vincent came in a few minutes later. As usual, my car was packed to the gills (if cars have gills) with plenty of computer equipment, more so this time because the previous weekend I had been at the Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network meeting in Northridge and the day before I had been at The Other Group of Amigoids meeting in San Jose. Going to three meetings in one month is not very common for me, but this time all the stars aligned. (Actually, the following Friday I went to Amiga engineer R.J. Mical’s dinner party, so that could be considered a fourth meeting!) Louis, Vincent, and I unpacked the computer goodies out of my car. Roger showed up in a little bit and helped unpack the car, too. As I set up the C64C, 1541, LCD monitor, VIC-20, Amiga 1200 tower, and Sony VGA monitor, Brad snuck into the meeting room, this time with two little guests, his children, Caitlin and William. Only Dick Estel was absent, gone on another journey. When everything was set up, we sat down to our usual routine, which was to order food and make small talk. Louis and Vincent had their usual appetizer tray, I had the seafood burrito, Roger had a combination lunch, and Brad ordered quesadillas for the kids. While we waited, on the Mac laptop computer I showed the two versions of the SX-64 commercial we had filmed back in January. However, with Brad’s kids being there, I knew that we’d have to make version 3 of the commercial. (Read below!) With the laptop computer, we were to Google video-chat with out-of-town member, Charles Gutman. Earlier that month, after going to a concert in Riverside, I rendezvoused with him, selling him a couple of C64s (he wanted the SID chips), and clearing out the garbage on his Windows laptop which prepped that laptop for Google video-chatting. Unfortunately, though I “rang” him at least 4 times during the FCUG meeting, he did not “pick up”. I later found out that he had forgotten to “show up” for our FCUG meeting. We talked so much during our lunch that soon it was time for Brad, Caitlin, and William to leave...and we hadn’t even gotten to the hardware presentations! Before Brad left, I tried to convince him to do a CommVEx video presentation on his Micro-KIM board. Before Caitlin and William left, I filmed them doing the Commodore “salute” which I incorporated into version 3 of the SX-64 commercial. To see the commercial, click here.. Finally, we got to the presentations. Though I had thought I brought everything, I realized that I had forgotten some of the C64 programs that I was going to show off with the SuperCPU. Nonetheless, we tried out 3D Pool with the SuperCPU, discovering that we needed more instructions on how to move the pool cue and hit the balls. However, moving around the pool table was very fluid and fast with the SuperCPU. More enjoyable was the Asteroids emulator used with the SuperCPU. The Asteroids emulator was an exact reproduction of the arcade Asteroids game. For fun, we switched back and forth from 1 MHz...well, not so much fun...to 20 MHz. SuperCPU speed...ah, much better. We discovered that the original arcade game used only about 8K of code, small enough to be modified to work within the C64’s memory. Giving video digitizers another chance to work this month, I hooked up the Video Byte II including Super Explode V5.0 to the C64 and my camcorder. Unfortunately, repeating the bad luck of last month’s meeting, the digitizer did nothing. Could it be that the user port in the C64C was dirty or was different enough in design to affect the Video Byte? Or perhaps the digitizer did not like the composite signal coming out of my hi-def camcorder? Moving forward, we ended the meeting by playing with the newly-released VIC-20 games, VICroLeague Wrestling and VICroLeague Wrestling 2. The digitized photos of wrestlers that showed up during game play was good, but the dots that represented the wrestlers during the actual wrestling were harder to understand. After reporting my findings to the creator of the games, he gave full instructions on how to control those dots. Perhaps at the next meeting, we should give those games another go now that we have those instructions. We actually didn’t devote any time to Amiga 1200 tower, though it was powered up and running. It was nearly 3 p.m., and I decided that was enough for the day. Everybody helped me pack up the car, Louis and Vincent left, and Roger and I hung around another hour just to decompress. |
April 2013 Although he is sometimes
late because he thinks the meeting starts at We had full attendance of our local regulars –
Robert Bernardo, With everyone present, we made sure our hair was combed, put on our Commodore shirts and buttons, and took a new group picture for the front page of the FCUG web site.. Last month Louis reported that he had ordered a batch of heat sinks which can be placed on chips. He brought them and gave them to whoever needed some. The club discussed who should be honored on the commemorative bottles of wine to be given as door prizes at CommVEx, and selected Jim Drew, who had a major presence at the event last year. Jim has promised to bring some new and interesting goodies again this year. Vincent told us that he is interested in learning programming, and is looking for help. Several suggestions were provided, particularly on books to use as a starting point. We also suggested studying the type-in programs that appeared in Commodore magazines to see how certain tasks are handled. Louis told of problems with his internet provider. They made changes without notice, causing his connection to nearly come to a halt. Eventually he installed a new router, which automatically recommended the correct settings. Still unanswered is the question of why Verizon didn’t let their customers know about the change. Around At last month’s meeting
Robert had filmed Brad’s two older
children giving the “Commodore Salute.” He added this footage to
the SX64 commercial that he first created after the January meeting,
and showed it at the meeting. Later Brad’s wife Jennifer, son
William, and baby Robert reported on a visit to Thomas Langham, an amateur astronomer who lives in (TOWN). Thomas previously used a VIC20 and then a C64 to record data from observations through his telescope. Robert showed video of his equipment, which includes a rotating observatory dome and a high end telescope, as well as many accessories. Robert passed around copies of some of his printouts, including data that showed when one of Jupiter’s moons went through an eclipse caused by another moon. We set up the VIC that Thomas had donated, but it would not work; fortunately, Vincent, as Poobah of the VIC20, had brought his.
We
also had a C128 donated by former member Del Contreras which worked
fine, and was found to have the Servant chip installed. In the
equipment part of the meeting, we looked at the VIC-20 hardware, a
small Cardco Cardboard/3 Expansion Interface and the bigger HesWare
HesCard-20 s- Port Cartridge Expander for the VIC-20. Dick took
photos of the inside of a MSD 24K |
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May 2013 The May
meeting once again brought full attendance - Louis reported that he has been in touch with a friend who has a
storage facility full of Commodore stuff, some of which will be
donated to the club. Robert reported that his engineer is still working on the C128 VGA
adapter, which Everything is on schedule for CommVEx, coming up July 27 and 28.
Vincent announced that he will bring his near-mint VIC 20 (which he
won at last year's event). Dick's attendance is uncertain, but Roger
brought a TPUG disk, and we explored it using VICE for the Mac.
Vincent served as chief gamer as we checked out a number of games on
the disk. It took a while to figure out which keys to use to emulate
a Commodore keyboard, but once this issue was resolved, game play
went well for most games.
The
PETdisk for the |
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June 2013 For
June, our meeting place was graced by the presence of all local
members except Brad; in other words, Robert Bernardo, Louis and
Vincent Mazzei, Roger Van Pelt, and Dick Estel. Dick announced that he will not be attending CommVEx this year, and
after the meeting it was learned that Larry Anderson will also be
absent. Louis agreed to be the registrar, seller of raffle tickets,
keeper of the attendance list, and other duties as needed. Dick and
Louis got together later to look at the spreadsheet program we've
been using to keep track of CommVEx finances, and Louis will either
borrow Dick's laptop, or see if the file will work on his wife's
Apple laptop. In other CommVEx news,
Robert had announced earlier that the show
has been moved back to the Plaza Hotel, across the street from our
location the last two years. Robert has been unable to get to The latest guest scheduled for CommVEx is Kent Sullivan, who will
discuss how he helped build the Stereo Robert reported on his trip to the Next was Ray Carlsen, one of the last Commodore repairmen. Robert picked up items he had left on his last visit and dropped off more. Finally
Robert met with Greg Alekel of the Portland
Commodore Users Group. Greg discussed the latest progress on the
Comet BBS and other ongoing projects that the club is involved with.
Greg advised Robert about a classic computer show that will
be held August 18 at Microsoft headquarters (!) in Redmond, WA,
involving some C= enthusiasts who work for the 800-pound gorilla of
the PC world. On the spot Greg and Robert came up with a name for
the show, MACCS (Most Awesome Classic Computer Show). Robert also filled us in on his attendance at Maker Faire 2013 in After the show
Robert spoke briefly with Jeri Ellsworth, hacker
extraordinaire, whose latest project is “augmented reality
glasses,” intended for gaming. And a final note on shows,
Robert will have a display at Atari
Party 2013 in Moving on to hardware and software demos,
Robert showed us a pile of
cool-looking devices that developers have recently released. They
included: 1. Two rebuilt, upgraded C64
power supplies from 2. Two SD2IEC card drives from 3. The Computer Saver from Ray
Carlsen, a protective device that
goes between the computer and the power supply to prevent damage if
the PS goes bad, i.e., goes high on the 5 4. The production model of the Multicart 64 from 8-Bit Designs
(operated by our member in |
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July 2013
It was a hot, Hot,
Recalling an earlier meeting when he had brought in some heatsinks
he had bought on-line, Louis demonstrated how a chip easily slides
into the device, a feature we had not noticed previously. He opened
up Vincent's VIC-20 to show how he had installed several heatsinks
in it.
Next we discussed final plans for CommVEx. The location has changed
once again; the event will be back in Jockey Room 1 (which became
Jockey Room 2 the day before the show) of the Plaza Hotel, the same
room we had for several years. Although somewhat smaller, this room
is more convenient for moving equipment in and out.
Shane Monroe of RetroGaming Radio will be present, interviewing
attendees and broadcasting via the Internet. It will be the first
time there has been a media presence at the event. Robert will be heading to
Las Vegas
on Tuesday. One of his pre-show duties there is to get the monitors,
computers and other equipment that are provided by Al Jackson of the
local club. Louis and Vincent will arrive Friday afternoon, in time
to help with room setup starting around Robert talked about the recent William Shatner Weekend and showed video
that included the actor signing a 1541 disk drive for Robert reported on his attendance at Atari Party 2013, held July 6 at
the Yolo County Public Library in Robert brought in a
VIC-VODER, a new speech synthesis product that
provides a more natural voice for games that have speech features,
such some of the Scott Adams adventure games. A simple program can
also be written with PRINT statements, and members had a good time
putting it through his paces, especially Vincent, who got it to talk
about his dog and cat.
The next demonstration was of two VIC-20 cassette games that
Finally
After the meeting, in the hot shade at the Bobby Salazar's parking
lot, we
transferred the many Commodore and Amiga goods headed for CommVEx
out of For
more information about products and services mentioned above, visit
the following websites: Vorpal Utility Disk: http://csdb.dk/release/?id=100535 Vic-Voder: http://www.geocities.ws/cbm/vic-voder/vic-voder.html Multiple Classic Computer 216: http://www.mcc-home.com/ CommVex: http://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=commvex:news RetroGaming Radio: http://www.retrogamingradio.com/ Atari
Party Photos: http://www.dickestel.com/atari13.htm |
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August 2013 It was
predicted to be ANOTHER hot, Hot day in Fresno, around 105, but some cloud cover came in, keeping it fairly nice
in the morning when we carried stuff into Bobby Salazar’s but
clearing off and allowing it to rise to 100 by the time we were
done. In attendance were Robert, Roger, Louis, Vincent, and Dick,
and we had a guest who came for part of the meeting. We briefly discussed the need at some future point for someone else
to take over the equipment manager job, since Dick was experiencing
some pain in his hand, making it difficult to lift the monitor.
Roger volunteered for this job; Dick will continue for the time
being. Robert reported that CommVEx was very successful, with sufficient
funds received to fully pay for the room next year. Robert investigated the possibility of getting a larger room. We all agreed
that such a financial commitment, while possible for 2014, might not
be sustainable beyond that. As we finished up our lunch, a visitor arrived, Raymond
Ciula, who
had been in touch with Robert and was donating some Amiga equipment.
He brought in an A500, an A1010 disk drive, a Commodore 1084-S
stereo monitor, some software (DeluxePaint), and several joysticks,
including a Winner 770 analog-to-digital one that worked with Commodore or
Atari. Raymond had worked for Software Etc. for about five years in
the 1990s, and his background led to an extensive discussion of
various Amiga and other games that were popular in those years. Next we viewed a sample of a video
Robert made at
CommVEx, which
showed Louis demonstrating how to repair a bad Atari joystick by
using currently available new parts. Eventually, this presentation
will be on-line. We also looked at the Google Plus site where people attending CommVEx had posted many still photos and videos. These can be seen here. Robert's photos are on the FCUG web site here. Dick was a bit appalled at seeing a
photo of what Robert had done to his Ford F150, jamming it full
of equipment. While in Robert reported that two long-time sellers of Commodore equipment
were going out of business. Jim Scabury, who gave Robert some
hardware and software to sell at CommVEx for him, was in very poor
health and had been hospitalized for several weeks. One of the rare storefronts still operating, Computer
Station in Long Beach, California announced the close-out of all
stock and will be ending eBay sales as well. The Station had been in
operation for 30 years, featuring Commodore, Amiga, Apple II, and
PC-DOS items. We looked
at their current eBay prices and were amazed that their items still
had high 1980’s prices or higher. The balance of the meeting was spent discussing everything Commodore, and checking out various computer programs. Robert showed off the refurbished VIC-20 he picked up when he visited Commodore technician Ray Carlsen on August 1; the VIC was all cleaned up and had JiffyDOS and reset switches installed. Louis plugged
in his flat C128 and ran a test provided by repair technician Ray
Carlsen to determine whether his computer had been installed with
64K video RAM. Robert had brought a complete Koalapad package for member At the end of the meeting, Louis took the A500, external disk drive,
and some joysticks; Roger grabbed the 1084-S monitor, and Robert the
Winner joystick. |
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September 2013 It was Amiga Day at the Fresno Commodore User Group's September
meeting. Whether it was this fact or just good fortune, we had full
attendance of the local members: Robert Bernardo, Roger
Van Pelt, Louis Mazzei, Vincent
Mazzei, As soon as Katelyn and William had eaten, Brad set up some
Amiga
games for them. They came for the quesadillas, but stayed for the
games! Since the last meeting Louis started the Amiga discussion by explaining how he got a modern
PC to format 3.5" disk for Commodore/Amiga. The format program
on 21st century PCs will only create a 1.44 Mb disk, while Amiga
needs 880K. Louis simply opened the DOS emulator (there's no real
MS-DOS anymore) and issued the standard format command with the
right number, and the computer complied, just as if it had Windows
98. Roger
had acquired a Magic
Voice cartridge complete with instructions. It has only a 250
word vocabulary, and he is still experimenting with it and will
bring it to a meeting when it is ready for prime time. Robert mentioned that Computer Station in
Long Beach, which is going out of business, has reduced their prices by 75%,
although the starting point is still at 1980 levels, so careful
shopping is needed to find any real bargains. Louis reported that he found a supplier in
China
offering lots of "shiny, new" He also discussed an e-mail conversation with repairman Ray
Carlsen. Ray has some non-working Blue Chip drives and is pretty
sure which chip is bad but has no source for them. The company Louis
dealt with has them, but Ray felt price they wanted was
unreasonable. Roger
told the story of a friend who experienced a small fire that did
very little damage but apparently put a great deal of soot into his
electronics. He had to have them professionally cleaned, and this
experience can serve as a warning to others who run into a problem
like this. Robert brought in a
Christmas card he obtained from the collection of a
former user. On the outside of this 1986 American Greetings card,
the cartoon character Ziggy touts it as being "the world's most
advanced Christmas card. It needs no batteries, is completely
cordless, never needs winding or recharging, and contains no messy
tubes, wires or transmitters." Inside is a 5.25" computer
disk which Ziggy instructs you to put "in your little
computer." We had only Amigas set up, so we are looking forward
some day to see what this Commodore 64 ghost of Christmas past has
in store for us. Once discussion and lunch were over, we got busy looking at a pile
of "in the box" Amiga games |
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October 2013 Back
in the 1990s the Fresno Commodore User Group held an annual picnic,
usually at the beautiful country home of the late Sandy and Ingrid
Dippolett. A few years ago the event became a dinner, and then a
lunch, usually at the regular monthly meeting time, but at a
different location, with the club providing the dinner. Vincent was a little sore, having just completed the test for his green belt in karate the day before. He did 400 pushups, 400 sit-ups, a 3.5 mile run, 4 minutes of punchout/kickout, an hour of floor exercises and 8 katas (floor maneuvers, 4 of them, once slow and once fast). We all congratulate him on his success. Robert
told about his plans for a trip to England next summer, as
well as his marathon activities of the weekend – he drove to San
Jose for a 7-hour video-editing class, then to Davis for a Warp
11 concert, and then to the lunch in Fresno. And once back home,
he had to get to a café with high-speed internet and enter grades
for his classes, which were due that night – a fact he only
learned late Friday afternoon. He
spent an "all-nighter" - 17 hours getting those grades in
and no sleep.
Dick was feeling the lingering effects of a cold, which as he
pointed out, lingers a lot longer as you got older.
All of us enjoyed our food, got barbecue sauce on our hands, faces
and clothing, and left with full, happy stomachs. In a tradition that has gone on for many years, Robert handed out gift bags with a small, non-computer item to everyone. |
|
November 2103 We
had the largest attendance in a long time, with all the local
regulars and several guests. This included Robert Bernardo, Dick
Estel, Louis Mazzei and son Vincent, My notes may be a bit hard to figure out, because I had some
secretarial “help.” Katelyn received crayons from the waitress
and quickly used up a lot of the white space on the paper that came
with them. She then proceeded to “borrow” my notebook to write
on. Being in kindergarten, she printed very well (better than me),
but few of the words she wrote pertained to Commodore. Greg was interested in all types of vintage computers, but his big
love was arcade games, and he had several in his garage. He was an
Atari user, as was Louis, so they spent a good part of the meeting
discussing that subject. In fact, with the number of people present,
there was a lot of discussion about all kinds of things, and it was
hard to actually conduct business (not that we do much of that
anyway). Early in the meeting, there was a tragedy. When Vincent’s beloved
VIC-20 was plugged into power and into a monitor, the blue smoke
escaped. When that happened, we knew well that a machine can no
longer function. Ray Carlsen had repaired two VIC-20 motherboards
for Louis, one of which hopefully can replace the smoked one.
Later when Louis opened the machine, he found out that a
component (resistor, capacitor?) had melted. Looking ahead to the Commodore Vegas Expo 2014,
Robert reported that
an Amiga 1000 will be among the major raffle prizes, and all the
planning seemed to be on schedule. You can keep up with what’s in
store here,
or log on to the FCUG home page
and click on “CommVEx 2014” near the top. Robert
will be seeing Commodore repair tech Ray Carlsen at
Thanksgiving time and offered to take any equipment that needs
service, including the damaged VIC-20 mentioned above.
Also Robert reported that the Brian Bagnall’s book about
the Amiga years of Commodore Business Machines had been cancelled.
Several years ago Bagnall produced the book, “On the Edge: the
Rise and Fall of Commodore,” which covered the entire history of
Commodore Business Machines. Then he wrote an expanded version,
“Commodore: A Company on the Edge,” covering the With help from Louis and others,
Robert will slowly and surely be
transferring his Commodore and Amiga videos from Blip.tv to YouTube.
Blip changed its terms of service (now only entertainment videos and
no videos about meetings/presentations), making it impossible to
continue to use that site. While
at the AmiWest Show in
Sacramento, Robert obtained a Commodore B128, along with software, a monitor,
and a During the show,
Robert was honored with the John Zacharias Award
from AmiWest and the Sacramento Amiga Computer Club, in recognition
of outstanding support and technical assistance to the club and the
show. Since the early 2000’s, his filming and subsequent Internet
posting of the videos of the AmiWest speeches and presentations have
provided historical perspective on the development of the Amiga
computer. Robert
brought a table of
stuff he acquired at the Computer Station
in Robert
is working with a group of |
|
December 2013 Illness
and family obligations kept half our members away from the December
meeting, so it was just Greg and Gregory Dodd, We still had plenty to talk about and hardware and software to look
at. Dick brought a device that will convert a PC signal to VGA for
connection to a TV. He had won this at CommVEx several years ago but
had no need for it, so Greg happily took it off his hands. Roberthad been to We had a wide-ranging discussion of the SX-64, which Greg knew about
but had never owned. There was also an Amiga discussion, with The software part of the meeting included a look at the disk library
from FUNHUG (Fremont, Union City, Newark, Hayward User Group) which
disbanded a number of years ago. We ran several of the programs from
a few of their many disks. Their disks-of-the-month were "flippy"
disks with a C64 side and a C128 side. The C128 side of one examined
disk had utilities and a demo which ran in 80-column mode.
Although
not present,
|
|
January 2014 We
were back to "full" attendance this month with The meeting started with one of our occasional discussions of old
technology, in this case, reel-to-reel recorders. Roger recently
acquired a reel-to-reel machine at a yard sale, a big, high-quality
unit with dual tube amplifiers. Dick mentioned that he has a
Tandberg which still works, although the motor is noisy. The day before this month's meeting
Robert had visited the Computer
Station in The planned demo of
GEOS/Wheels did not take place, because the
program was not on Robert's CMD hard drive, one of two, and sadly,
the one that he did not bring. Instead we looked at a bunch of the
programs from Computer Station. These included several with a musical theme: Party Songs, which
played a selection of 20 or so songs and displayed the lyrics (Dick
and Robert tried singing along with that program); On Stage, which
did the same with the added bonus of graphics, some of them
animated; and Guitar Pak, which includes two different guitar tuners
and some other programs. Greg brought his Amiga 2000, and eventually convinced Gregory, who
was engrossed in a hand-held game machine, to give it a try. Gregory
found and played with the three different Star Wars games that were
on the A2000's hard drive. Describing it as the worst-looking from Robert's storage unit, Louis displayed a VIC-20 which he had painted
a bright red, making it one of the best looking VICs around. Louis
also received from Robert the two VIC-20 boards that C= repair
technician Ray
Carlsen had repaired. Looking ahead,
Robert will be attending the Vintage
East Computer Festival in Wall, |
|
February 2014 For
the Feb. 16 We took an extra long time to set up the gear, because not only was I putting up a VIC-20 (and later on, an A600 and C128) set-up, but also Greg had brought his A2000 and Louis had brought his A500. When all hardware was arranged, we finally sat down for lunch. In
old business, Louis admitted that he did not have the time nor the
facilities to check out the fifty 6581 In
new business, I reminded everybody that because Easter was set for
the third weekend in April, our usual On
the laptop tied into the room’s Wi-fi, we looked at Reset #02, the
freely-downloadable Commodore magazine which had just been released.
I showed them my article that was published in the magazine
and enhanced with photos that the editor had chosen. The members commented that it was a very colorful magazine
with all the photos and screenshots of C64 games. We got going into the software and hardware part of the meeting late, but we left extra late by meeting’s end. My presentation was to show the VIC-20 cassette game, Dodge Cars, and the VIC-20 word processor, Speedscript, printing through a Blue Chip 020/10 daisywheel printer. From Randy Abel, president of The Other Group of Amigoids in San Jose, I also had a couple of 3 1/2 inch floppies with one of the best Amiga disk copiers, X-Copy. Dodge Cars had an overhead view of your car running vertically down a playfield of opposing cars running up at you. In other words, you were going against one-way traffic, and you had to dodge the other cars by moving into different lanes. It would start slow, but then the action would speed up. We broke out of the program and were surprised that it was written in BASIC. While Dodge Cars was running, I went over to Greg’s A2000 and tried to boot up X-Copy. It didn’t want to boot up; in fact, when we tried to eject it, it got stuck in his drive mechanism. What was wrong? We found out that a sticky metal flap over the disk opening was catching in the drive mechanism. When we tried to reboot the A2000 with CONTROL – Amiga – Amiga, the computer would not get to the desktop. We tried to power cycle the computer… still nothing. After a few tries with both methods, it would boot… but only sometimes. And when it did boot up, the color on the screen was green with a horizontal stripe of normal color at the top of the screen. We opened up the casing and looked at the cables. I pushed down on the SCSI card, I tapped and pushed on the SCSI hard drive casing, I wiggled the cables and looked for any loose fittings – all to no avail. Diagnosis – for the booting problem, the surplus drive mech was shot; for the color problem, we didn’t know. I
handed the X-Copy disks to Louis, and he got them going on his A500. Meanwhile, I had other problems. With the VIC-20 set-up I had, I needed 2 serial ports – one
for the uIEC card drive and one for the Blue Chip printer.
However, the uIEC had no serial pass-through for the printer.
After wrestling through various scenarios on how to get everything
to work, With
Speedscript 3.2 loaded into the VIC, we tried to run it but were
treated with gibberish on the screen.
A few more tries... the same results.
We found out from the Speedscript instructions (which
weren’t clear in the first place) that the VIC-20 needed at least
8K Nevertheless, I got the C64 version of Speedscript 3.2 to work with the club’s C128, and we were able to print with the Blue Chip printer, notwithstanding the wrong replacement ribbon I got from Office Depot (we used the original, old ribbon). After I printed a few test lines, Vincent did some printing with a few choice words. Louis smiled, remarking that he hadn’t heard the sound of daisywheel printing in years. I discovered that the printer was more sophisticated than I originally thought; it did bi-directional printing. Also the Compute! magazine's VIC Emulator for the C64 seemed to work. It gave various options for memory, e.g., push a button for standard memory, push a different button for 24K memory, push other buttons for different memory amounts in-between. It displayed everything in 40 columns, but according to the instructions, it would switch to a 22-column screen after the software was loaded into it. Due to my oversight, Dodge Cars could have been loaded into it to see if it could run, but we didn't do that. With Greg observing, Louis carried on with X-Copy. Louis had bought brand-new, blank disks, and the game disks he was going to archive were the ones donated to the club by Raymond C. at the January meeting. The Doscopy+ option in X-Copy provided mediocre results in the copy process, so we switched to the Nibbler option. That worked better and faster on the disks that Louis was trying to copy. By the meeting’s end, Louis had archived 14 disks. Something had to be done with Greg’s A2000. During the meeting, after his A2000 wouldn’t work, Greg had played around with my A600. I offered Greg the use of my A600 while I brought his A2000 in for repair. Greg wouldn’t hear of it, saying that the A600 would sit anyways until he finished building up his game room. Greg didn't leave the meeting empty-handed; he bought a C128 and 1571 that I had gotten out of storage earlier. It
was nearly --RB |
|
March 2014 I
arrived at Bobby Salazar's Restaurant about Member
Brad had already e-mailed his apologies that he wasn't going to make
the meeting, and treasurer Dick was absent, too. As
usual, we ordered lunch first, and while we ate, I started the
meeting with old business and new business. Under old business, I
told the members that another payment was going out to the Plaza
Hotel for the July 26-27 Commodore Vegas Expo. Under new business,
we agreed that the April As we neared the end of lunch, we had a special guest visit us – Scott Lurndal. He had come all the way from Sunnyvale to visit his lady friend and also to visit our club, ostensibly to give away some Amiga items. Wow,
what items they were! A boxed Amiga 1000 with everything except for
the Kickstart and OS disks, a boxed Amiga 1080 monitor which needed
repair, a boxed 1010 disk drive, and some programming books and
hardware bits. When I asked him why he was getting rid of his items,
he said that he had not used them in years and thought that somebody
else could get enjoyment from them... but that was not the end of
the story. I gently elicited him to tell us more, and after gauging
our group for several minutes, he opened up. Boy, did he open up! He spoke at length of how he's been into computers since the 1960s. Not personal computers, not mini-computers, but mainframe computers! He spoke about how he used to work with Burroughs (among others), one of the mainframe computer manufacturers of that era. He spoke about how the processor for one mainframe was spread over 9 cards! He spoke of how Burroughs was vertically-oriented company. He spoke of paper tape, huge hard disk platters, punch cards, removable drives, 9-track computer tape on reels, the V-500, booting a PDP-8 in 10 minutes, and 5 horsepower squirrel cage fans to cool mainframe computers. He spoke of the book, “The Adolescence of P1” and the first worm (a “self-aware” program), the Morris worm. He spoke of Plato and the massively parallel game, Empire. He
spoke of Dungeon and Dragon games on mainframes. Whew! I should have
had an audio recorder or videocamera going to record all the history
he was telling. Much of it went over my head (because I didn't know
much about mainframes). These days Scott has his own company in
Sunnyvale
and consults/advises others on how
to keep their mainframe computers going, like the Living
On his Linux laptop computer, he showed us a few minutes of one of
the videos he posted to YouTube. The topic – mainframe computers
(of course). In fact, he wanted to post more about mainframes. You
can find his YouTube channel by doing a search for his YouTube
handle – slurn 45. After Scott finished with his oral presentation, we carried on. I
had a brief presentation on the new VIC-20 Multicart/Development
cart with game set 2 from Kent Rittenhouse. (A few years ago we
played with the VIC-20 Multicart/Development cart with game set 1.) Greg had brought in two C64's and two 1541's for us to test out, the
former to be tested with the Commodore Diagnostic cartridge. For one
reason or another, we did not use that cartridge. Instead, we used
the Ray Carlsen Computer Saver for testing the two C64 power
supplies. One p.s. was good; the LED indicators on the Computer
Saver reported no problem after having the p.s. running for many
minutes. However, it was a different story for the other p.s.; after
a few minutes, the Computer Saver reported that the 5V line was not
working right. Whew! If Greg were to have connected that bad p.s. to
his C64, it would have ruined the computer. Greg decided to toss the
p.s., not even saving the power connector cable. I warned him that
even the good C64 p.s. could go bad at any time and urged him to get
a better one. In more testing, we found that one C64 didn't seem to
have sound, but the other was all right. The same for the disk
drives - one o.k., one with loading difficulty. I had brought my Amiga 600 in order to show off the Jim Drew
Amiga-from/to-Mac disk utility, SYBIL with cartridge; and the
Coast-to-Coast Technologies' disk copier, Synchro Express II with
cartridge. Unfortunately, it was the A600's turn to stop working
correctly. The computer screen showed a sickly green color over much
of the screen. At first, I thought it was just color impurity from
the We discovered Boray's SD2IEC music player V2.1 for the VIC-20 would
not play any music at all (it was touted to play about an hour worth
of music). I figured that the music player was Working much better were the Flappy Bird game for the C64 (Vincent
beat all of us oldsters in scoring the most points), Reset #02
magazine's C64 cover disk (well, some programs were Finally, the meeting was adjourned around
--RB |
|
April 2014 For
the first time since 2006, Robert Bernardo was unable to attend the
meeting, but everyone else was there - Brad
The "meeting before the meeting" consisted of a discussion
of arcade games, of which Greg is a serious collector (more about
that later). Louis reported on a hardware developer in Louis also offered some equipment to anyone interested, since he is
trying to reduce the amount of "stuff" in his possession.
Dick is in the same position and offered some new VHS tape. To his
surprise, all available tapes were claimed by Roger and Greg. After a delicious lunch, we got busy with our demos. First up was an
FM radio hardware/software package that runs through the C64. The
radio itself was a very tiny
device, with a simple wire antenna. Operating required an
external speaker, and we set up a pair of PC speakers which plug
into the radio via a 1/8 inch mini-plug. Selected keys on the
Commodore are used to seek stations, or to go through the dial step
by step. Roger had prepared for the demo by creating pre-sets for a
number of local stations, entering the call letters and station
names into fields provided for this in the software.
The sound quality and reception were very clear, despite being
inside a large, old building. Greg brought his Vectrex, a mini-arcade machine with a pull-out control panel. The device had a vertical display, about six by ten inches. It took awhile for the video to come up, a condition other users have reported on-line, but once active it had a very sharp monochrome display. It used vector graphics and many games came with a plastic overlay which added some color. There is one built-in game, Minecraft (an Asteroids clone), and Greg brought two cartridges for us to look at, Scramble and Blitz, a football game. There are many web sites with Vectrex info, including a Google discussion group here and a Wiki here. We also looked at a new C64 multicart, whose name cannot yet be
revealed. It included a number of games converted from the Max
Machine, a Japanese Commodore computer that was produced after the
VIC-20 and before the C64. Continuing the game theme, Roger showed us a couple of games that he
and his brother had typed in from a book of games a number of years
ago. Several of us had done that, and we recalled the challenge of
accurately typing lengthy strings of characters, with few actual
English words. As usual, the meeting ran overtime. Two different Amiga Kickstart
ROM switchers were shown - a manually-switched one and a switcher
activated with a Control-Amiga-Amiga keypress. Because of the high
degree of interest by the club members and because the switchers are
not available anywhere, Robert is considering a small production run
of a clone. The members preferred the cheaper, easier-to-produce,
manual switcher. Robert will get together with Greg Alekel of the
Portland Commodore User Group and look into building the switchers. Greg Dodd showed off his Amiga 2000, a replacement for the other one that failed two meetings ago. Robert provided the replacement, but the machine itself was rebuilt by Duncan MacDougall of The Other Group of Amigoids. In fact, Greg's failed machine was quickly repaired by Duncan and now sits back in storage. by
DE & RB |
|
May 2014 In
case those of you following our club from a distance think our
meetings are examples of organized, structured magnificence, let me
set you straight. They are informal, chaotic, almost anarchic, and
most of all fun and interesting. As people arrive and bring in equipment, conversations take place on
a variety of subjects, often having to do with computers but not
necessarily. In May the participants in this organized mayhem were Robert
Bernardo, Roger Van Pelt, Greg Dodd, Louis and Vincent Mazzei,
and Dick Estel. After we have set up anywhere from one to four computers and
whatever other equipment is needed, we usually get around to
ordering lunch, and a semblance of order is seen. Robert formally
calls the meeting to order and makes any announcements he may have.
Of course, comments, observations, and irrelevant side conversations
may take place simultaneously. Club members brought goodies to give away – new, never-opened VHS
tapes from Dick were claimed by Roger and Greg; and Roger brought a
large box of tractor-feed paper. When new, it cost around $10; now a
rarity, you’ll pay $30 if you can find it. Robert
presented a film on the Internet that was produced by his
students at John
Robert
was able to attend the festival held at Fox Studios, and came
home with certificates of appreciation from the California State
Senate for the students. Robert
then reported and showed video on his visit to the William
Shatner Weekend in southern Robert
presented the Commodore
Vegas Expo 2014 website. This will be the 10th annual event, and
there will be an emphasis on the Commodore Plus/4 in recognition of
the 30th anniversary of that machine. It appeared that Louis will
take on the role of Robert’s “right-hand man” at the show,
taking on such duties as collecting money from ticket and raffle
sales. Even Roger and Greg expressed interest that they might be
able to make it to CommVEx. Some official business was conducted at this time. We voted to
establish a policy to divide any payments received for file
conversion service equally between the club and the technician
who does the work. The duties of equipment manager were transferred
from Dick Estel to Roger Van Pelt (Dick will be available as a
back-up). Greg informed the club that he met up with Duncan MacDougall, repair
technician for The Other Group of Amigoids (TOGA) in San Jose. In the past,
Duncan
had repaired and upgraded virtually all of Robert’s various Amiga
computers and had also upgraded C64 power supplies. Greg met Duncan
at the TOGA meeting (held the day before the FCUG meeting), and
Duncan, being a good repairman of many classic game consoles and
computers, gave Greg a beautifully-working Atari 520ST computer
system and did an on-the-spot repair for another system Greg had
brought. With Duncan
advising him, Greg felt more positive that he could now load classic
Amiga OS 1.3 games into his Amiga 2000 with OS 3.1. Robert
reported that the June FCUG meeting would be moved to the
second Sunday, instead of the third Sunday of the month. This was
due to his traveling to One of his European stops would be in Venice, and he was still trying to choose a hotel. Mike Battilana of Cloanto, the company which produced Amiga Forever and C64 Forever CD/DVDs, had invited him to that part of Italy; he would meet with Robert and show him the area. Mike had attended the Commodore Vegas Expo three times and the Amiwest Show several times. The first software demonstration was the Family Roots program by
Quinsept, one of the top genealogy programs of its time, which was
donated by Justin Jernigan of Mid-Atlantic Retro-Computing
Hobbyists. It required a data disk, and we didn't have one set up,
so we couldn't do much, but we were able to load the program and
take a look at the menus, as well as browse through the extensive
manual. Moving to hardware,
Robert brought in a Quickshot SV-2000
robotic
arm which he had purchased for only $10 from an engineer in Dick had to leave relatively early, but the members carried on.
Though Robert did not actually load anything from it, he
attached the new uCassette (microCassette, also from Tim Harris)
device to the club’s C128. With an audio player transmitting WAV
files through it into the computer, the user could load in programs
just as if he were using a datasette drive. On the Amiga front,
Robert disassembled his Amiga 3000 in order to
install the ZorRAM 256 meg memory card bought from AmigaKit.com. It
was a snug fit to install that board into one of the computer’s
Zorro Though
we had no program that would tax the Fast |
|
June 2014 Despite
the 100 degree heat outside, it was cool in Bobby Salazar’s
Mexican Restaurant on June 8, and FCUG members gathered for good
food, good conversation, and the latest in Commodore news. Enjoying the day were
Robert Bernardo, Roger Van Pelt, Greg Dodd,
Louis Mazzei, Vincent Mazzei and Dick Estel. Not computer-related but demonstrating the value of preventive
maintenance, the first thing we noticed as we each drove up to the
restaurant was that half the roof of a building across the street
was caved in, with a large air-conditioning system hanging at a
precarious angle. This was a somewhat historic building, having been
the site of Gospel Music and Supply Co. at least as far back as the
1950s, but more recently a furniture store. (See a photo here.) Our waitress told us that the owner had been warned ten years ago to
make repairs, and we observed the cost of ignoring this advice. The
three people in the building at the time of the cave-in got out
safely, but there were gas and water leaks, and Robert
brought some unexpected goodies. Long ago, probably in the
1990s, he had loaned some Commodore books to Betty Vasquez of While attending
Notacon on April
12-13 in Cleveland, Greg reported that his Amiga 2000 is taking an unreasonable amount
of time to boot up. Various causes were discussed, and it was noted
that some A2000s have displayed this behavior as a regular, if not
normal, feature. Greg may have to have the A2000 repaired again by
Duncan MacDougall of The Other Group of Amigoids in San Jose. Next up we watched part of
Robert’s video from the Vintage
Computer Festival East, which took place in Moving to vintage computers,
Robert brought in a PET 2001, a
computer which will be exhibited with cassette programs at the July
26-27 CommVEx. The PET 2001 came with a keyboard about the size of
that found on an iPad but with real keys and a cassette drive which
outwardly looked like an ordinary cassette deck complete with
microphone (photos here
and here). Roger
opened up the hood of the PET and examined the drive (it had a
volume control!) and the chips. Greg took photos of the interior,
remarking that he had never seen one before.
There was a SYS number taped to the front of the machine, and
when Roger typed that in, the screen said, “c. PAICS 1979”.
We did a Google search for that and found that it stood for
Palo Alto ICs. By typing in that SYS number, we engaged a BASIC
extension called the BASIC Programmer’s Toolkit, a 2K ROM which
contained an additional 10 commands useful for BASIC programming. We also looked through a couple of boxes of very dusty 3.5” Amiga
disks which Robert had received as part of someone’s hardware and
software donation a while back. At first we could not get any of the
disks to work, but finally after going through 50 of them, we found
one that worked flawlessly – the game, Kickstart II. The other 49
were possibly damaged by dirt and old age over the years and were
discarded. With the computer as the opponent, Vincent tried it out
and became more proficient as he went through track after track of
motorcycle jumps. Combining the ancient and modern,
Robert demonstrated two new games
for the VIC-20, FIFA World Cup (Soccer) 2014 and Ice Hockey 2014,
both programmed in BASIC by Jeff Daniels. Both games seemed
identical except for the playing field/surface. The players, five on
each side, were static and merely fired shots at the goalie. There
did not seem to be a way to control the angle of the shot, but we
agreed it was a good effort considering the computer’s limit of
3.5K free |
|
July 2014 by Robert Bernardo On
Sunday, July 20, I arrived at Bobby Salazar's Restaurant at 10:25
a.m.—very early because I had come three hours from Castaic where I
had spent the night after Saturday's meeting of the Southern
California Commodore & Amiga Network. I immediately started
setting the equipment up. Vice-president Roger was the first to show
up, and I asked him whether or not my CD of photos had been given to
I
talked more about my recent Commodore/Amiga European travels to the
United Kingdom (AmigaKit, Psytronik/Binary Zone Interactive,
Lincolnshire Amiga Group, Tim Harris, Peter Hanson), Switzerland ( Because
of his surprise visit, we had no time to try out the updates to Jeff
Jones' FIFA World Cup 2014
and Ice Hockey 2014 for the VIC-20, nor did we have time to try out
some programs to control the Quickshot However,
we did have time to play around with several of the C64 games I had
obtained from Psytronik -- Souless, Darkness, Wooley Jumper, Guns 'N
Ghosts, Flubble & Squij, and Wanted: the Wild Bunch. They all
worked with the club's |
|
August 2014 The
August meeting had a lot of lively discussion of all kinds of
things, some of them even related to Commodore computers.
Participating were Robert Bernardo, Louis and Vincent Mazzei, There was considerable interest in the offer of an Atari Falcon from
1992, Atari's final computer product and a machine that is highly
admired by our two fans of that line of products, Louis and Greg. It
was agreed that Greg will be the lucky beneficiary of this gift. At
a future meeting, the rest of the membership looks forward to
getting a look at it and comparing its features to Amiga computers
of that time. See more about this machine here. Robert
reported on this year's CommVEx in Robert
had made a trip to There was also the Kinney Image-izer, C64 software for video
digitizer you had to build; we could not fully test since we didn't
have the necessary hardware on hand. However, we did show the demo
pictures that were on the disk.
On
his recent trip to |
|
September 2014 September’s
meeting brought a rare visit by Before we did anything else, we all admired a piece of Commodore
equipment we had heard of but never had seen -- a Commodore
typewriter that In a final note from
CommVEx, Roger had claimed a Mach 128 cartridge from the material Next month we will skip our regular meeting and enjoy our annual
club dinner, open to spouses and children. The location chosen is Logan’s Roadhouse in the Robert
and Greg both attended the
Classic Gaming Expo in
Las Vegas, along with hundreds of others. The next computer event of interest is the AmiWest Show, October 24
– 26 in Sacramento. Roger reported that he is having problems with his Commodore mouse.
Dick recalled that we had published an article on one possible fix a
number of years ago. We were able to find it on the club’s
Newsletter Articles Archive page, and email the
link to Roger. Although it may not be the answer, it gives him
something to try before paying for repairs or a new mouse. After lunch and discussion, we tried out a C64 educational program
which consisted of the player trying to match jigsaw puzzle pieces
on-screen. Robert
tested the three Amiga 500’s he had picked up in Washington,
including two power supplies. Opening the units up first revealed an
amazing collection of dirt, crud, and spider webs, which we cleaned
up a little. As it turned out, only one power supply and one
computer worked, the one with the sun-yellowed keys. |
|
October 2014 Our
October meeting was actually our annual club lunch, which evolved
from a picnic that was held for several years at the home of a
former member. |
|
November 2014 The
November, 2014 meeting of the Fresno Commodore User Group marked the
33rd anniversary of the club, founded in 1981. On hand were We had a slight delay getting started - Roger, keeper of the
equipment, is without his car for a while and was unable to use his
brother's as usual. Dick made the quick trip to Roger's and brought
him and the equipment back, and all was well. Before the official start of the meeting, We also saw another short video in which Jeri Ellsworth documented the packing and shipping of the first production unit of the CastAR 3-D gaming glasses she has been working on. Vincent and Louis reported that they are working on a blue VIC-20
with white keyboard for Vincent, to complement Louis' red and white
model. Robert informed us he will be traveling to the Speaking of Ray C,
he is now offering a power supply for the Amiga 500/600/1200 to go
along with his Commodore line. In formal business, the club voted to make our annual donation to St.
Jude's Children's Hospital and to move the December meeting date
to December 14. Hardware and software activities included a lot of games, including
the C64 DTV joystick which has 30 games built in and which Katelyn
enjoyed playing with. The club was celebrating the 10th anniversary
of the C64 DTV. Robert had brought in a new, sleek, modern, joystick from
AmigaKit.com,
designed with arcade-type buttons, which we tested with the C64 and
VIC-20. It also worked with Amiga and Atari. There's a photo on-line
here. For the VIC-20, we tried out new 2014 games, Panicman - a
nicely-done PacMan game, Bounce - a slow-moving Pong-type game, and
Pulse - a snappy, sideways-scrolling shooter and the best of the
bunch. For the C64, we shot a few World War II targets in the game,
Silent Service (but we couldn't look at Silent Service II on the
Amiga 500, because we had the wrong video cable). Robert had a Plus/4 diagnostic cartridge
built by his friend |
|
December 2014 by
Robert Bernardo
I was 32 minutes late to the meeting, due to my emergency pick-up of
v.p. Roger and the club equipment. When we arrived at the
restaurant, member Greg was already there, having waited about 20
minutes. After my many profuse apologies, we hauled the equipment
out of the car and started setting it up. Eventually, members Louis
and Vincent appeared, and we got down to ordering our food.
Under old business, I told of my Thanksgiving trip to the
The A1080 monitor was a different case. Ray informed me by e-mail
that he needed a schematic to repair the beast, and none were
available on-line. Louis said that he would try to find that
schematic.
In new business, Greg talked about having an arcade party at his
house during the Christmas holidays and that we were invited – the
date to be announced. Then he gave a $10 Walmart gift card to
everyone at the meeting! We also talked about the May Maker Faire in
After lunch, we got down to hardware and software. First up, we
examined the new Amiga 500/600/1200 power supply from Ray Carlsen.
It is more powerful than the original p.s. and runs much cooler due
to its modern components. Then we tried out various programs on the
new Kerberos MIDI C64/128 cartridge from Frank Buss of
However, without more instructions on how to use them, we could only
go so far in running the programs. Because the Kerberos cartridge
also implements the EasyFlash cartridge, there was also a game or
two stored in its memory.
Before we carried on with more demonstrations, we had to do a bit of
customary December business (which I almost forgot to do!). We had
to elect the club officers. Through a simple motion and majority
acclamation, we re-elected myself as president, Roger as
vice-president, Dick Estel (in absentia) as treasurer, and Vincent
as the grand poobah of the VIC-20. |
| January 2015
Dick attached his CMD hard drive to the club C128, intending to do
some quick copies of the new member and library disks, but to no
avail. Whether it was disks or equipment we never learned, but we
switched over to the Warpspeed 2.0 cartridge and made copies the
old, slow way with three disk swaps required for each side (the hard
drive, if everything works right, allows copying a disk side in a
single pass).
We had our usual pre-meeting discussion with a wide range of topics.
During the Christmas break from his teaching duties, Robert met with
two members from the northern part of the valley, who re-joined the
club. Welcome back Alfredo Mijango and Steve Dubois. Robert
had also organized the jumble of equipment normally found in
the trunk of his Crown Victoria, putting most items into labeled
boxes.
Dick presented the annual financial report. During the year, our
treasury had decreased by over $250, with the club lunch being the
biggest expense. In the past, much of our income came from equipment
sales, but over the last few years these funds had gone to CommVEx.
With this event now pretty much self-supporting, we will apply
future software and hardware sales to rebuilding the treasury.
Turning to the hardware part of the meeting, Robert talked about the
Amiga 1200 sitting on display at our tables. He mentioned that he
had an extra Blizzard 68030 accelerator for the Amiga 1200 and
perhaps that could be sold to raise funds for the treasury. He
guessed that it could bring in about $100 to $200.
From Duncan MacDougall, our Amiga repairman in the Bay Area, Robert received an Atari 5200, a cartridge-based game machine. This was met
with great interest and excitement by Greg Dodd, whose email name
says it all - ArcadeDude. The device can be connected to a TV or a
monitor, and we tested several of the games, like Pac-Man and
Breakout. Dick gave a short demonstration of the CMD Hard Drive, especially
the menu system that can be programmed to load programs from any
partition on the drive or from an external drive. Robert
had a disk of file conversion utilities that had been compiled by Al
Jackson of |
|
February 2015 by Robert Bernardo I arrived a few minutes before our appointed meeting time and
started setting up my hardware immediately. Vice-president Roger
came in a few minutes later and started unloading and setting up the
club equipment. A bit later Louis and Grand Poobah of the VIC 20,
Vincent, showed up.
As we ordered lunch, talk centered on websites from which to
download C64 software -- CSDB.dk, C64.com, and Pokefinder.org. From
master programmer Jim Butterfield, we saw a few minutes of the
beginning of his C64
Training Video, which formerly was on VHS tape and now has been
archived at YouTube.com. Though outsiders think the video to be dry
and uninteresting, we found it to be very informative.
Vincent informed us that he was going to display his classic VIC-20
set-up at the Commodore Vegas Expo this year, and I thought it was a
good idea, because I wouldn’t have to bring that set-up in my
crowded car. Roger told of a specific VIC-20 joystick that was
marketed back in the day by
This month was the “catch-up” meeting, that is, we were to catch
up on the VIC-20, C64, Plus/4, and Amiga hardware and software that
we had not reviewed in previous meetings due to lack of time. One of
the bits of hardware was a Ray Carlsen-refurbished Sony GVM-1311Q
monitor, and we were going to try Commodores and Amigas with it.
We got to the new VIC-20 game, Super
Starship Attack from Flinale. It required 16K of
We had the C16 up and running. We didn’t have any software to run
with it, but it was still a treat to see this VIC-20 successor. The
number 3 key was broken, and its remaining shaft would fall back
into the board, thus touching off dozens of 3’s across its
40-column screen. Vincent had a cure for that; hold the C16 upside
down, and it would work properly!
Next up was some Plus/4 software to try, the newly-released SVS-Calc
2.0 spreadsheet. Unfortunately, both
Roger had brought the new C64 game, Donkey
Kong Jr. 2014. He remarked that it was supposed to be a more
accurate representation of the arcade game. It played very smoothly,
and the graphics were more detailed than previous C64 Donkey Kongs.
Finally, we tried the Amiga 600 through the Sony monitor. Repaired
once before for its video, the A600 video problem was back. Its
Overall, it was a productive meeting, and the Sony monitor was
superb. I wonder how good the picture is on its big brother, the
Sony GVM-2020, which is for
sale at |
|
March 2015 by Robert
Bernardo
& We had
a small group this time, just Robert reported that he had purchased a used C64 game disk, Jump Jet,
for $23 on Somehow
we got on the topic of dishwasher technology, which was of interest
to all three of us present, all having worked in restaurants where
the job was partially or completely manual. Dick had also served on
KP in the Army, where machinery took care of the “regular”
dishes, but big pots and pans had to be scrubbed by hand. We agreed
that this experience helped build character. Robert went over a list of coming shows of interest to computer
hobbyists: Atari Party in Davis, CA on May 2 Maker
Faire in CommVEx v11 in Las Vegas on July 18 and 19 Amiga
30th Anniversary at the
Computer
Robert will be attending Maker Faire, and of course,
CommVEx. Robert also told us about a project by Dallas Moore, who has acquired
the molds used to make Commodore computer cases, each mold weighing
about 5,000 pounds. He is running a Kickstarter campaign to raise
funds to make a run of C64C cases in red, white, blue, clear, and
beige, which will be available to contributors. More information can
be found here.
We had a show-and-tell session with some hardware items and on-line
previews of new software. This included a new C64 game, Hyperion,
with excellent graphics. You can see it here on
YouTube: Looking at it, the opening was reminiscent of the high
quality Commodore demos that were popular in the 1990s. We also looked at an advance preview of a new C64 basketball
game, Stick It, coming soon.
From
Sweden,
Moving on to demos, we focused on the Commodore 128, celebrating its
30th anniversary, with the usual mixture of success and failure.
GEOS 128 refused to boot from
However,
Noticing
Write Stuff 128 on the hard drive, we also took a brief look at that
program and even read some archived e-mail messages that |
|
April 2015 After missing a few meetings, For Show-and-Tell, Dick brought volume 1 of the newsletter archives,
which includes the very
first issue, dating from November, 1981. It was single
page which apparently was created with a typewriter and photocopied,
and contained eight practical tips for the Commodore user. This was
the focus of the first few issues -- no "articles" as
such. The members were very interested in the colorful Reset magazine,
issue #06, which came from Robert reported on the Kickstarter campaign to provide funding for
the Amiga 30th
anniversary observation, July 25 and 26. The project achieved
its funding goal, and will move forward. That reminded some of those present of other Kickstarter or similar
fund-raising campaigns which had been successful, often unexpectedly
so. In other show news, Vintage Computer Festival East was going on as
we met. Our friend from Canada, Leif Bloomquist, has posted photos
on Facebook. Everything is on track for CommVEx,
July 18 and 19 in Las Vegas. Major raffle prizes include a C128D, 1581 floppy drive, and a CMD
RAMLink. The biggest news was that C128 engineer Bil Herd will be
present and will speak. Robert will be participating in the 2015 Maker
Faire, May 15, 16, and 17 in San Mateo. Since this date conflicts with our meeting date, the May meeting
will be held on the 24th. Last year at CommVEx Louis rebuilt an Atari CX40 joystick,
using modern parts to give a better feel to the stick movement and
fire button (action on the original was "mushy"). He
reported that the required parts are either no longer available or
are in very limited supply, and a rebuild such as he did would no
longer be possible. Dick was going to a conference in southern
California
and had to leave after lunch and the business meeting, but he wanted
to see the GEOS 128 presentation. We agreed to delay that until the next meeting. Robert
carried on with the hardware/software part of the meeting. First up was Jump Jet for the C64. Having had a non-working cassette version of the program for
years, Robert recently had bought the disk version from eBay, and the disk worked. With
very little practice, he and the other club members tried to fly the
Harrier jump jet off the deck of the aircraft carrier. Time and time again, they crashed the plane, but with each
practice they became better with the computer controls and stayed in
the air longer. Probably
after a good deal of practice, they would have had no problem flying
the plane and would be able to hunt the enemy airplanes in the game. Afterwards, Roger gave a brief presentation of the
MMC
64 cartridge with add-on MP3@64 board. The Finally, |
|
May 2015
We had a good meeting for May, with Louis, Vincent, Roger, Robert,
Greg and Dick in attendance. Robert
had an exciting announcement regarding CommVEx.
At Maker Faire the previous weekend, a man came up and started
asking Robert questions about his Commodore background. The person
turned out to be Leonard Tramiel, son of late Commodore founder Jack
Tramiel. Leonard will be in Robert
had many observations regarding the Nostalgic Computers
exhibit of which he was a part of at Maker Faire. He noted that with
hundreds of attendees going through the exhibit, it was standing
room only, and Robert stood for hours just to let others sit and use
the Commodore 128D and Amiga 3000 he had brought. Many attendees did
not know there was still hardware and software development for
Commodore and Amiga. Many did not know that there were still clubs
and shows devoted to these computers. Many did not know that the C64
Super Mario Bros was a re-done Great Giana Sisters game which itself
was a clone of the real Nintendo Super Mario Bros game. Many did not
know that the games Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi
had been converted to run on an Amiga. Robert will be in Europe on our regular June meeting date, so we rescheduled the meeting to June 14. Robert will attend Amiga30 in Amsterdam, a celebration for the 30th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga computer. Many Amiga VIP 's will be there. Our demonstrations began with the long-delayed look at GEOS
128. The program booted up flawlessly from disk, and Robert did
a short demonstration of geoWrite. The 80-column version offers a
number of benefits over the original 40-column program, most notably
the display of the entire page width, instead of the annoying
sideways scrolling required in the C64 version. Several of us took a
turn typing some brief text, then experimenting with changing the
font selection and size. The demo was of special interest to Dick. He no longer has a
Commodore set-up, but he used GEOS extensively in the past,
including producing the newsletter in geoPublish. We also tried out geoPaint in both 80 and 40-column mode. The former
is limited to black and white, including various fill patterns, but
again allows viewing a full-page width. Next
Robert set up his Amiga
CDTV, first released in 1991. Designed as a game machine, it
contains what is essentially a complete Amiga 500, and with the
optional mouse, keyboard and floppy drive, it can be used as a
computer. However, we inserted a couple of the CDTV's proprietary
game discs, Wrath of the Demon and Defender of the Crown II. The
device has a large keypad, remote controller with numerous
specialized buttons in addition to the normal joystick commands. The Mazzei boys had brought their fire engine red
VIC-20, and our first step was to run a joystick test program,
Contact, which advised us that the item we were using was "a
piece of cr*p." Regardless, the Wico joystick worked OK when we
tried out Panicman, a PacMan clone that both Louis and Greg put
through its paces, running up a respectable score. We also tried out
Address Book, an April Fool's program which looks like a boring
productivity program. However, when you picked most of the menu
choices, you'd get a rude beep and a notice which displayed,
"Access Denied." When you chose Play a Game, then you
would be led to a type of math game. Then we tried Knossoss, a maze
game which would show you a map of the maze at first, and then you'd
have to go down corridors in first-person, 3D perspective, trying to
figure out the maze. Back
to the C128, Robert ran an IPaint viewer for 16K video RAM
C128's. We looked at various, 80-column IPaint graphics which
natively displayed in 640 x 200, but because of the club's C128 with
16K video Finally from
YouTube, Robert brought up a Computer
Chronicles show from 1985 on his Mac laptop, and we learned
about the "new" products coming from Commodore, including
the C128 and the Commodore LCD computer that never made it past the
prototype stage. When the members had left,
Robert and Roger stayed to do further
experimentation on the We'd like to take a paragraph or two here for a salute to Bobby
Salazar's Cantina, where we hold our meetings every month. They
have a small banquet room which they make available to us, despite
our small numbers. The service and the food are always good. Our
waitresses go out of their way to take care of us, and we are
allowed to occupy the room from The business started as Sal's in 1942 when Bobby's father, Sal, a
Mexican immigrant, decided there was more to life than picking
peaches and opened a restaurant in Selma, about 20 miles south of
Fresno. The family now operates several Bobby Salazar's locations,
and in Fresno, Madera
and Selma
under the Sal's
name. Thanks to the management and staff for providing Fresno Commodore User Group with one of the best meeting places we've had in many years. |
|
June 2015 by The June meeting was one of the rare ones; only two members were going to be there, the other local members bowing out due to other commitments. Nonetheless, Robert brought a carload of C= items as usual.
He arrived to the meeting on-time but had to tell the workers at
Bobby Salazar's Restaurant that he was going to leave briefly in
order to pick up another member (Roger) and that if any other
members appeared, they were to wait until his return. Over a half
hour later, Because Robert had to transport Roger, there was no room in the car to bring the planned Amiga 1000. After another half hour of setting up equipment, they finally settled down to order lunch. Robert talked about his plans to leave for Europe soon in order to attend the June 20 Back In Time Live concert of C64 music in Brighton, England, and the June 27 Amiga 30th anniversary celebration in Amsterdam. On the laptop computer, they looked at the updated web pages for the July 18-19 Commodore Vegas Expo. Interspersed with all this Commodore talk was discussion about Roger's rebuild of a classic 1980's Fisher boombox. Then they viewed a new Bil Herd interview which was posted to YouTube by Polish C= fans. The interviewer was a young man who was going to university, and some of his questions were unexpected ones which asked Bil for career advice. For the fourth month in a row, the 30th anniversary celebration of the C128 continued at the meeting; in honor of that computer, they tried out some C128 games, courtesy of the GEnie Commodore File Library at CBMFiles.com. The
games were all text-based – Star Trek 80, Keno 128, Starfighter
128, and Trucker 128. They spent most of the time on Trucker128 –
a simulation which had the player drive a semi truck across the The rest of the time was spent going through the various programs on Robert's MMC 64 cartridge and loading in more 128-bit Star Trek: Original Series music which was played through its MP3@64 board. Robert had to meet his sister in north |
|
July 2015 by
Robert Bernardo & Dick
arrived on time, just before So
he waited. He checked email on his iPad. He ate chips and salsa and
waited. Finally
about But without No answer. Dick decided that if Dick then left to get Roger and the equipment, and soon all was
well, with only a 90-minute delay in getting things started. The focus of conversation was
CommVEx, coming up the following
weekend. For the first time all the club officers will be present - Being a first-timer to
CommVEx, Roger had several questions about
the show, and Dick and Having returned from a quick trip to He also showed the BenQ
monitor (pronounced Ben-Q), acquired in Robert
then showed some video of bands he saw at the June 20 Back In
Time Live 2015 in Brighton, England, playing Commodore and Amiga game music on real instruments. Finally he reported on his trip to
Amsterdam, Netherlands, for the Amiga 30th anniversary show. Speakers included Amiga
developers Dave Haynie, RJ Mical, and Carl Sassenrath. We watched
brief video excerpts from their talks. For our software demos, we tested the games We also tried out classic C128 applications -- The Hunter (a hunting
test which showed we did not have good hunting knowledge), Morse
Code Tutor (which played back sounds that vice-president Roger could
decode), and Typing Tutor |
|
August 2015 by
Robert Bernardo & The
Mazzeis, Louis and Vincent, as well as Greg Dodd, made an
appearance after being absent the last month or two. Also present
were Robert Bernardo, Roger Van Pelt, and Dick Estel. While we waited for our food, we looked at two photos of Robert at
the recent Star Trek Convention in Next we had a lengthy discussion of funding for future CommVEx shows
in Dick presented an analysis of sources and amounts of income for the
past five years, and estimates for what we would receive under
various methods discussed. It was decided to continue with the
business model that has sustained CommVEx for the past ten years –
a flat admission for both days, no charge for table space, and no
change in raffle ticket prices. Since the cost of the larger room is
nearly double, the admission price will be set at $20, covering both
Saturday and Sunday. Greg advised us that he would like to host a meeting at his house.
We will try to schedule this for November or December. Louis stated that he is always on the lookout for supplies of
Commodore computer chips, so there will be some available for
members as needed. He also plans to give some to Ray Carlsen, who
recently gave him a power supply. Greg brought in a rare Atari
Falcon computer, which had been highly modified, and which had
been given to him recently. Despite various attempts, it would not
work, and it will eventually go to Duncan MacDougall of The Other
Group of Amigoids for repairs. Robert set up a VIC-20 and plugged in a new product, the Mini 32K Robert also made a Commodore disk from a D64 image using D64it for
the C64. That took several minutes, but after the process was over,
he had a disk of the latest graphics slideshow, Botticelli
Bilderdisk 40, for the Plus/4. Using a As the meeting wound down, Robert powered up the Amiga CDTV, which now boasts a matching keyboard and mouse. |
|
September 2015 by
Robert Bernardo & Meanwhile,
Louis determined what was the problem in his VIC -- the JiffyDOS. As
soon as that chip was removed, the computer was fine. |
October 2015 As always, our October meeting was
actually our annual club lunch, which evolved from a picnic that was
held for several years at the home of a former member. Since this is not a “meeting,” the rules are different: 1.
No official business is discussed. 2. There are no hardware or software demonstrations (I was about to
say there are no computers allowed, but let's face it, everyone has
their smart phone with them). 3. Families are invited. 4. The club pays for lunch. 5. We go to a different restaurant from the one at which we
regularly meet. This year
Everyone enjoyed their choices, from appetizers to sinfully delicious desserts (mainly chocolate brownie cake with ice cream and caramel topping). We had a fun discussion of various topics, naturally including computers. In another tradition (or is it rule #6?), at the end of the meal
Robert distributed gift grab bags to all the members. Considering the success of this year’s event, it’s 100% guaranteed to be repeated again in 2016. |
|
November 2015 by
Robert Bernardo & We had the usual attendance, Robert, Roger, Greg, Louis, Vincent and
Dick, all hungry and ready for a good Mexican dinner, good talk
about Commodore, and some interesting software and hardware demos.
It was noted that this month marks the 34th anniversary
of the founding of the club. Obtained from the SC3 Arcade Party and the Southern California
Commodore & Amiga Network meeting, Robert once again had some
items to give away, including an empty C64 case, and a rare Tandy
102 laptop, both claimed by Louis. There was also a Commodore However, there were also
C64 game cartridges and a broken C64, the
C64 and a few of the cartridges being claimed by Roger. Greg advised us that he has a conflict and can’t host the December
meeting, so it will be at our regular Fresno location, and we will
travel to Patterson, about 100 miles northwest, for the January 17
meeting. The issue of admission vs. table rental for
CommVEx (July 30-31 in Robert reported that the Vintage Computer Festival will return in
2016 to Attendance was up at the recent Amiga show, AmiWest in In presentations, for the VIC-20 we tried out a couple of new games
- the very entertaining, action-packed, space-shooter Pulse, and the
more strategy-based Demons of Dex. For the C64, we tried out the
preview of the adventure, Athanor: The Awakening, but Robert
couldn’t get very far with his limited knowledge of the parser
vocabulary; he kept going around and around in the same area of the
adventure without any exploration farther out. For the C128, Roger understood how to play Monty Hall, a text
simulation which uses the Basic 7.0’s RANDOM function and
challenges the player to pick among 3 choices in order to earn
money. We also tried Robert Willie’s alpha version of For the classic Amiga, we tried out a few random, graphics, and
games disks from the massive disk collection of Jason Forster. We
used an Amiga 500 with 1 meg. of Chip |
|
December 2015 |
|
2016 |
|
January,
2016 The long-awaited visit to Greg Dodd’s home in Patterson, about two
hours north of Fresno, finally took place on January 17. The
main reason to have our meeting there, of course, was to see and
play with Greg’s collection of arcade games, and it was everything
we expected and more. Roger rode with Dick from
Fresno, while Robert drove in from his
parents’ house in Stockton, a short half hour trip. Since we had not had lunch, we all got in Greg’s SUV and went
across town to the Pizza Factory,
a chain that specializes in putting their restaurants in smaller
towns. Pizza Factory started in the Sierra foothill communities of
Oakhurst and Mariposa and spread throughout the western states. Dick
had eaten in nearly a dozen of their locations and recommended them
without reservation. Greg and his acquaintances were happy that the
chain had just opened in Patterson. When we arrived at the Pizza Factory, we met Duncan MacDougall.
Duncan, a member of The Other Group of Amigoids (Amiga club) in San Jose, came from his home in that area and had
been invited to join the meeting at Greg’s. For lunch, Dick had a
sandwich while Roger, Duncan, Robert, and Greg had the pizza buffet. Back at Greg’s, our first stop was his computer room. It was the
first time for us, and our jaws dropped as we gazed on an amazing
collection of game machines, controllers, and software. It’s
probably not true, but the first impression was that Greg had one of
every game machine ever made, as well as Atari and Commodore
computers. Cartridges and boxed software were displayed neatly on a number of
shelves around the room, and it would not be exaggerating to say
that this is what gamer’s heaven must look like. Next we went out to what was once the garage and had been converted
to an arcade; Robert had been there before. Narrow walkways wound
around a dozen or so game consoles – pinball, sit-down racing
machines, Pac-Man, Star Wars, and classic shooter games. From then on it was “kids in a candy store” time, with everyone
going from game to game, testing his skill. Even Dick, who has never
been very interested in games, tried his hand at pinball and Pac-Man,
complaining that the latter was too fast compared to the Commodore
version (in other words, he died a lot). All too soon Dick and Roger had to leave, with a two-hour trip back
to Fresno. Robert and Duncan stayed and retired
with Greg to the computer room. There they talked about the
consoles, about the computers, and about modding and hacking the
machines. Duncan, the hardware repairperson, examined
Greg’s Amiga 500 and two of Robert’s A500’s, giving
suggestions on how to improve them and how to repair certain
defects. As the sun started to set, Robert and Duncan decided it was time to
leave. Clearly having enjoyed their visit, they thanked Greg for his
hospitality. |
|
February 2016 By |
|
By Robert Bernardo
&
Greg was under the weather and not up for the two hour drive from
Patterson, but the rest of the regulars gathered at Bobby Salazar's
Cantina on March 13, a week earlier than usual.
Once again we enjoyed the unusual music of Robert will be attending Silicon
Valley Comic Con in
At the last meeting we were unable to create .D81 files of some
Commodore graphics that an out-of-state user had requested. Roger
thought he had a method that would work and took the original disks
home. He used a null modem cable, RS232 adaptor, and the Novaterm
9.6 terminal program. On the PC end he connected a VIC-1011A
cartridge with the Mincom terminal editor to his Linux PC, and used
zmodem protocol to transfer the files. At 2400 baud it was a slow
process, but all 200 files made the trip successfully.
He then used Directory Master to create empty .D81 images and
imported the files into them. The finished results were sent by
email, and the recipient replied that they worked perfectly. Roger
and
When lunch was concluded, we watched part 2 of the newly-released
video, "Growing the 8-Bit Generation," which features Jack
Tramiel's last interview. This is a high quality, professional
production, and we look forward to seeing more of it in the future.
Louis had what appeared to be an ordinary C64C sitting on the table,
but he began describing what's inside
the case. It's something completely alien to Commodore - a
Windows XP PC complete with a one GHz. Pentium processor, one Gb of
It was a tight fit, but he got everything in it; with everything
plugged in, it has just a 16 watt power draw, less than some compact
fluorescent bulbs. The total cost was around $150, not including
some recycled parts that he had "lying around." He was
hoping not to open it up until CommVEx, but when it did not boot up
during his demonstration, he removed the cover and we got a look
inside.
Louis was supposed to show how the ZoomFloppy device installed in
his "C64bit" machine could easily create and dearchive
.D64's, .D71's, and .D81's. However, for the rest of the meeting, he
tried to troubleshoot its boot-up problems. By meeting's end, he
diagnosed it to an underpowered power supply that was not giving
enough juice to all the devices in the machine. When he removed
nearly everything from the electric buss, then it would boot
properly. He promised to have a more powerful power supply to run
the machine at the next meeting. Robert was having his own computer problems, too. With D64it, he was
supposed to dearchive the .D64 of the latest
What was a success was Bomberland is a 1 to 4-player game and features large sprites for the characters, colorful passages for the characters to go through, and great music. Though the characters move somewhat slower than the earlier Bombmania, the game still has plenty of action to satisfy gamers. |
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April 2016 By Robert Bernardo
&
Everyone was back in good health this month, so we had full
attendance on April 17, our normal meeting date, but an hour earlier
than usual. Greg,
There was plenty of new business on the agenda, including an
announcement by Greg that he will host a barbecue/swim party/gaming
event at his home this summer.
We also heard about a new Commodore game box, reminiscent of the
failed C64x, which is trying to be crowd-funded on Indiegogo. It
will be available as The 64 desk computer or The 64SX hand-held
device with its own screen. Robert mentioned a brand new Commodore club, the Bay Area Commodore
Collective, founded in February of this year. There’s a separate
article on this historic event in this issue of the Interface.
Louis told of son Vincent’s latest achievement, adding a purple
belt in goju-ryu,
a variation of karate. Just hearing the effort involved made us
older folks tired. Arriving at the test location at
Louis regretfully announced that Lucille, the PC in a C64C case, had
been laid to rest, the challenges of getting enough power to run the
expanded machine having stopped him for the time being. The project
will be resurrected in the future as soon as he gets a new Pico
We learned that Athana
in southern
California
had ended production of 5.25 inch floppies, Athana being the last
such facility to produce disks in the U.S. Remaining stock will be
available while it lasts at $11 for ten disks. Also no longer made
in the
U.S.A.
, new
Commodore cases produced from the original molds. The molds had
been sold to Jens Schoenfeld in
Germany
, who is expected to make the product available in the future, at
premium prices.
Francois “Eslapion” Leveille of Montreal, Canada is distributing
the new PLAnkton and PLAkate boards which replace the classic MOS
The September meeting will be held one week later, because
When lunch was concluded, we watched part 3 of the just-released
video, "Growing the 8-Bit Generation." Although much of
the film focuses on Commodore, this particular segment included
discussion of Apple’s place in the early days and featured Steve
Wozniak.
With time running out, we got busy with the demonstration part of
the meeting.
Several months ago Roger took home
The PowerPad system consisted of operating software (on a
cartridge), the input device (the pad measuring 17 by 14 inches with
a 12-inch square drawing surface), and individual program overlay
(which is placed on the pad’s drawing surface). We tried out a
golf game, which first required pressing the pad for club selection.
Then the player had to input the desired azimuth on a 360 degree
circle and press another button to take the shot.
Since none of us had any type of golf skills, we tended to run up
double-digit scores on our first attempts. Roger had practiced at
home and did manage a few respectable holes. Louis likened the game
to that of Artillery Duel in that the player had to input trajectory
and force.
The only other demo we had time for was a blast from the past. From
the hardware/software collection of Gerald Oborn,
We tried out several things on the disk, including an Academy Awards
trivia quiz (that needs updating to 2016) and a graphics display
program that brought up several Doodle and Koala pictures that none
of us had ever seen before.
The collection included half a dozen of our old |
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May 2016 By
Everyone
was on board for a fast-paced May meeting – Louis, Vincent, Greg, Over
lunch we discussed CommVEx,
films about Jack Tramiel, Maker Faire, and a variety of other
topics.
In addition to watching another installment of "Growing the
8-Bit Generation," we learned that an overseas filmmaker is
planning another film focusing on Jack Tramiel, but taking “a
different approach,” whatever that may be.
Robert will be going to Maker Faire the coming weekend, showing off
Commodore
VIC-20 and Amiga 1200 set-up's. And Dick offered to contact two
individuals who may be willing to make presentations at CommVEx.
Dick announced that he will be reducing his participation in club
meetings and will probably attend four to six meetings per year. He
will continue to handle all other club duties.
He also advised members that he will be sending out questionnaires
in order to write biographical articles on each member for the
Interface.
Dick reported that he had received an email from a new club, the New
England Commodore Enthusiasts. It is essentially a Facebook
group, with no actual meetings at this time.
During the meeting we had a visit from Randy
Smith, who was a member long ago in the 1980s and 90s. He is
still a Commodore user and needed a new monitor for use with his
C128D.
Robert and Dick enjoyed getting back in touch with Randy, who was meeting the
other members for the first time.
Robert set up his VIC-20 which has been modified to use S-video and loaded up
the demo version of a game called “Pulse,” which several members
tried out.
Robert also showed the Behr-Bonz
cartridge, a newly released game cart with 127 classic VIC-20
games. There was no case, but the device will fit into a standard
VIC-20 cartridge case.
Finally, Robert hooked up a
dusty Blue Chip 128 (1571 clone) drive that he pulled from storage,
only to discover that it would not work. It will make a trip to
Washington and Ray Carlsen’s shop next time
We also took a quick look at another 25-year old
While these demos were going on, Louis opened up his red
VIC-20 to install a new 65C02 P4 4 Mhz chip from Rockwell. The
computer won’t run at that speed, but the chip runs cooler than
the standard CPU. At the end of the meeting, he also installed one
in |
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June 2016 by Robert Bernardo I was the first to arrive to our scheduled meeting on June 12, followed by Greg, Louis and Vincent, and Roger. Treasurer/secretary Dick was absent. With the arrival of Roger, he and I immediately got to setting up the equipment, Roger with the club C128 set-up and me with the VIC-20 and Amiga 1200 set-up's. While eating lunch, we started the meeting. There was no old business that anyone could think of. However, we did have discussion about the July 30-31 Commodore Vegas Expo; Jim Drew had new hardware to exhibit at the show, and CBM engineer Bill Seiler was coming in to speak about his involvement with the VIC-20. Though Louis had his doubts about attending CommVEx, when he and Vincent heard about Bill attending the expo, he definitely said that they would be attending, Vincent wanting to get his VIC-20 autographed by Bill. Under new business, Louis started off with a reports about the C64 Reloaded and the proposed Amiga Reloaded boards from Individual Computers. I followed with my report on another successful Vintage Computer Festivalers' exhibit at the Bay Area Maker Faire this year. Once again hundreds of faire attendees went through the exhibit with me showing off the VIC-20, Amiga 1200, and Texas Instruments TI-99/A. Once again the reactions of the attendees ranged from “Oh, my God... I'm in heaven” to “Thank you very much doing this” to “I used this/these when I was growing up” to “This is a floppy disk/cassette/cartridge and we would load our programs from it.” Once again the exhibit won an award as being one of the best at Maker Faire. Finally, Greg ended the new business segment of the meeting with a downer. He reported that he might be moving to South Haven in northern Mississippi. Almost his entire computer and arcade machine collection would be following him there. We would lose a faithful member. Next we saw another 20 minutes of the video, Growing the 8-Bit Generation. While we were doing so, Randy Smith visited in order to turn in the Commodore monitor which he received at the May meeting. The 40/80-column switch on it was acting up, and I said that the monitor would go to Ray Carlsen for repair. Randy also gave a CMD hard drive for Ray to repair, the front panel switches not working reliably on the unit. After watching a bit of the video with us, Randy then departed. We then started the hardware portion of the meeting. In order to use the ZoomFloppy, Louis tried to install applications on the two Windows XP laptops that I brought. Without the applications the ZoomFloppy would not be able to convert disk images into real floppy disks that the Commodores could use. Ultimately, by the end of the meeting, Louis was unsuccessful in installing the applications. On the Amiga 1200 I showed off two of the most popular games that were played at Maker Faire – Rodland, a cute Japanese-style platformer, and Fightin' Spirit, an arcade-style fighting game. Vincent and Greg amused themselves with the many vintage games which were in the Behr-Bonz cartridge installed in the VIC-20. In fact, at that moment Greg e-mailed the creator of the cartridge, Francois “Eslapion” Leveille, in order to buy a cartridge, even though Greg did not have a VIC-20 in his collection. We took a brief look at the Chalkboard PowerPad tablet, this time with Leo's Lectric Paintbrush for the C64, though we did not run .D64 for the program. We'll have to schedule more time for it at the next meeting. As usual, the meeting ran late, and the last of us did not leave until almost 5 p.m. |
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July by Robert Bernardo We had our FCUG meeting one week later than usual, because I was out-of-town in the Pacific Northwest and member Greg was out-of-town at the California Extreme pinball show. In attendance at the meeting were myself, Greg, Roger, Louis, and Vincent. We actually stayed on-schedule and on-agenda. We ordered lunch and went about talking about old business and new business. Not having any old business, in new business we talked about the upcoming Commodore Vegas Expo. Louis and Vincent were excited that they were going to meet CBM engineer Bill Seiler at the show. I reported that on my trip to Oregon I had bought hundreds of dollars of electrical extension cables and 12-outlet power strips (no sales tax in Oregon) for the expanded CommVEx room. I told that I had met with the Portland Commodore User Group and had a contact who would send the UNIX installation CD for my Amiga 3000. I also reported that Ray Carlsen had donated much Commodore PET hardware for CommVEx and that it was still sitting in the back seat of my car. I reported that I had a successful meeting with the events coordinator of Seattle's Living Computer Museum and that a new show, the Pacific Commodore Expo NW, was to be held there. Finally, I reported that I had gone to the Commodore 64 Users of Greater Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) and that they were lending their support for the new show. At the end of lunch, we finished watching the video documentary, "Growing the 8-Bit Generation," and then watched the trailer for the new Viva Amiga film. In hardware, Louis opened up the Ray Carlsen-modded, early VIC-20 and Carlsen-modded Plus/4 that I had brought back from Ray. Louis opened up his VIC-20 to compare it with the Carlsen-modded one, noting that Carlsen did a s-video modification and built a homemade heatsink which was placed on the CPU. The Plus/4 had a heatsink placed over most of the chips and also a cooling fan installed. For the fourth month in a row, the Chalkboard PowerPad returned, this time with the music-composing program, MicroMaestro. Roger was very interested in trying out this addition to the PowerPad line of applications, and he did his best in trying to compose a tune with it. For CommVEx, Roger also agreed to videotape presentations on C64-to-Linux transfers and the Chalkboard PowerPad applications. We would film those on Monday in Fresno. We also punched the buttons on the Kim Uno, a modern clone of the classic KIM-1, but being that we weren't programmers, we didn't get very far. As usual, we ended late, but we were thoroughly happy with the meeting. |
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August It was a fun meeting on August 21, with good attendance - Robert, Roger, Greg, Louis, Vincent, and Dick. Robert, Louis and Dick reported on CommVEx, which was a big success. We had a larger room with plenty of room for exhibits, sales tables and presentations. Admission and raffle sales brought in enough that we need only an additional $100 to pay for the large room for 2017. Robert also told the group about a new Commodore show that we will help present in 2017. PaCommEx, the Pacific Commodore Expo Northwest, will be held June 9 and 10 at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle. Clubs from Oregon, Washington and British Columbia will join FCUG in putting on the show. There will be no rental fee, no sales, and no raffles, and admission will be paid to the museum, greatly simplifying preparation for the event. Louis reported that he may be ordering from China some original MOS technology TED chips, which are the sound and video chips for the Commodore 16 and the Plus/4. Robert, who stayed in Las Vegas for five days of the Creation Star Trek Convention, will beam up again, or at least beam out on the ocean, for a January Star Trek Caribbean cruise which will be graced by William Shatner. The cruise had been sold out for months, but at the convention he found out that cabins had opened up. He immediately reserved the cheapest cabin. Now that he is assured of getting on the cruise, his main problem will be what Commodore item he would have Shatner autograph. Robert will be traveling even before that, with a trip to New Zealand and Australia in September. He will meet with Commodore individuals and groups in both countries. As always, our conversation veered off in multiple directions, with a long bull session about Star Trek, CommVEx, and the use of drones. Moving over to the hardware table, we drooled over Robert's very sharp-looking Commodore electro-mechanical adding machine. It seemed to have some sticky keys, but once they had been properly exercised, it worked fine. Robert also showed a West German-made VIC 20 which he purchased in England some years ago. He had never powered it up, due to a two-prong electrical input only used in Europe. He will look into having Ray Carlsen modify the motherboard with an input used in North America so that he could use North American power supplies. Greg was not to be outdone in the hardware department, having brought in a giant Atari Edladdin Super 78 Joystick which he won at the recent Atari Party in Davis. Moving to software, Robert demonstrated some 40-column C-128 games and a drawing program written by our member in Los Gatos, Ricardo Quesada. They were created when he was still in his native Argentina in the late 80's and early 90's, and the text was in Spanish, but we were able to figure out how to play some of them. Robert also had a bunch of assorted C128 programs, including a CP/M productivity packages that included a word processor and a database program. The September meeting will be one week later than usual, September 25. |
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September
With the temperature close to 100 degrees, only the calendar told us
it was fall as we gathered for the September meeting. We had full
attendance, plus two guests. Members included
Louis passed around his Raspberry
Pi, which is described on a web
site as “a tiny and affordable computer that you can use to learn
programming through fun, practical projects.” It’s about the
size of a deck of cards. The Pi recently reached the 10 million unit
mark in sales, and the news said that it would be challenging the
C64’s 17-30 million record in sales. Robert announced that the website for the Pacific Commodore Expo
North (PaCommEx) was now live. The event will be held at the
Living
In Commodore Vegas Expo matters, Greg talked about his dream arcade room that he hopes to set up at his place in Patterson. If it gets done, it will be a large, insulated building with blacklight carpet and his collection of classic arcade game consoles.
Louis offered free of charge some new HD 3.5” floppy disks which
he rescued from being thrown in the trash at his workplace. He had
about eight boxes of 20 disks each.
When we moved to the hardware area, Chris showed us his pride and
joy, an Atari 2600 recreated as a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).
He had been working on it for a decade and recently came up with his
idea for the box to put it in. It’s designed to look like a
Walkman cassette player but accepts Atari cartridges, as well as
some original hardware Chris designed for various purposes that fit
in the port. It all fed into an HDMI monitor that allowed the
selection of various resolutions.
Among the things he showed us, in addition to Atari games, were
perfect renditions of the PacMan and Ms. PacMan arcade games
(vertical layout), and a
Chris could not make it to CommVEx this year, and he had a standing
invitation for next year. His more immediate need was whether he
could exhibit his device at the Amiwest Show 2016 on October 9-10.
The president of the Sacramento Amiga Computer Club, the club which
runs Amiwest, had not responded to any of Chris’ e-mails. Robert brought in a composite/s-video-to-VGA converter, borrowed from
In software,
Meanwhile, Vincent took photographs of the various Amiga screen
modes outputted by
At the very end of the meeting, Louis tested Greg’s newly-bought,
very clean VIC-20. After checking that it worked properly, Louis
opened it up and attached a heatsink to the computer’s CPU. Then
he tested the machine again to determine that all was well. |
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October 2016 by
Once
upon a time the Fresno Commodore User Group had an outdoor picnic in
the beautiful backyard of the late Sandy and Ingrid Dippolet. After
their passing, at least one picnic was held in the little, somewhat
scuzzy backyard of However,
it's NOT a regular meeting, because: 1.
No official business is discussed. 2.
There are no hardware or software demonstrations, and no Commodore
computers. 3.
Families are invited. 4.
The club pays for lunch. 5.
We go to a different restaurant from the one at which we regularly
meet. This
year Everyone
enjoyed their choices, with one member declaring his meal the best
hamburger he had ever had. Dick could only eat half his French dip
beef sandwich and was heading out of town right from lunch, so he
offered the leftovers to the group. Louis claimed the goodies,
stating that Vincent (age 14) would be hungry before they got home.
In fairness to Vincent, it's at least an hour's drive. We
had a fun discussion of various topics, naturally including
computers. Robert was dismayed when he realized that he had forgotten another
tradition of the lunch; he failed to bring the gift grab bags he
always hands out to all the members. He promised to remedy this
oversight at the next regular meeting. Throughout
the years, these events have always brought good food and good
company, and we hope they continue for many years. |
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November 2016 by RB At the November meeting, president Robert Bernardo arrived on time a few minutes before vice-president Roger arrived. As usual, the systems had to be set up, and Robert and Roger attended to that immediately. Eventually, members Louis, Vincent, and Greg showed up, and we ordered our food. Near the end of lunch, Robert asked for old and new business. Robert gave the latest update on the June Pacific Commodore Expo NW at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, remarking that he would make a trip in the spring to the LCM to check up on how preparations were going for the show. Also he mentioned that November marked the 35th anniversary of the Fresno Commodore User Group, and in celebration, he brought a German chocolate cake from Save Mart. The cake was quickly wolfed down by all the members! In general conversation, we talked a great deal about Commodore, Amiga, and non-CBM hardware. Though Roger had bought his various RAM expanders for the VIC-20, we did not have time to go through the latest and/or rediscovered games for the VIC-20. Instead, we concentrated on the various C64 games which Robert obtained while at the November SC3 Arcade Party in Claremont, California. One of those was the fighting game, Bruce Lee, and a lot of time was spent on that. For the classic Amiga, Robert showed the various games and applications picked up from the October Amiwest Show. These were freely obtained! At the Saturday Amiwest Banquet, various programs were left on the tables as gifts for the banquet goers. Many left the programs sitting there on the tables, but Robert had picked up those leftovers. One of those was the desktop publishing program, Page Setter for Postscript printers. Because Robert had Postscript printers, this program would be useful for him. |
December 2016 All our regular members were in attendance except Greg Dodd, but to help make up for his absence, we had an unexpected guest and possible future member. Bruce Nieman started with a MS-DOS machine but became an Amiga user in 1987. He hadn't used it lately but had an A2000 that he'd like to get back in service. He planned to join us again in January. His presence naturally triggered lengthy discussion of all things Amiga, including the need to replace the battery in his machine, since old Ni-Cad batteries have had a 100% failure rate over the years, leaking all over the computer's innards and pretty much destroying it. On his laptop, Robert brought up the page for a new game, Unknown Realm. In 2012, game programmer Bruce Gottlieb showed this then top-secret game to the attendees at the Commodore Vegas Expo. Available for the Commodore 64 (NTSC and PAL), Windows, and Mac, Unknown Realm is a new, 8-bit, role-playing game in the style of Ultima RPG's. It was so secret that no one from outside his team was allowed to photograph or videotape his session. The CommVEx attendees saw a potential game full of fun, and they were excited that it was to be released. That early version of Unknown Realm is now graduating to the release version, "Unknown Realm: The Siege Perilous," and Bruce is putting it up on Kickstarter. There you can see all the details of the game release, including video shots, screenshots, and screen animation. Also at the page, you'll be able to see the many and various pledge amounts to get this game released. In official business, we voted to make our annual donation to St. Jude Children's Hospital, in the amount of $50. We also voted to re-elect by acclaim all present club officers. We also agreed to change the January meeting date to January 22, since Robert will be arriving in Florida from the Star Trek cruise on the regular meeting date. Dick brought in several binders of old newsletters for the members to look at, including the very first issue from February, 1983. He also showed us a binder containing printouts of hundreds of Print Shop Graphics, available in the club library for both Print Shop and Printmaster. Having concluded lunch, general conversation, and business, we moved to the equipment tables for our demonstrations. Robert had brought a large collection of Loadstar disks and hoped to run some Christmas programs. Unfortunately, the index disk would not work, and we were forced to try and find December disks by guesswork, since they are only numbered, not dated. From the 1986 Loadstar disks, we ended up settling on a Koala image of Halley's Comet, looking at an astronomical program which plotted the course of Halley's Comet with respect to the horizon, and listening to 15 minutes of Mozart music. Not Christmasy but more fun was Aces, in which the player has 255 bullets and must target as many enemy planes as possible. Louis proved to be our best fighter pilot. For the expanded VIC-20, we looked at Minisketch, a drawing program with which we used a Flexidraw light pen. The results were mixed artistically, although Vincent eventually managed to create a respectable "FCUG." The Flexidraw light pen may have been too sensitive; Roger said he will take the program and test it with his VIC-20 and less sensitive McPen light pen. Robert plugged the Moses Assembler cartridge into the VIC, and we were able to look at the menu; we didn't really have anything to assemble except for the sample programs in the manual nor was anyone familiar with machine language programming. Next we tried VIC-20 educational games. First up was the business and marketing game, In the Chips. What we first thought was a failure to read the instructions proved instead to be keyboard problems. One of the bad keys was the space bar, which was used to trigger various steps in the game, so we may be watching Louis replace the keyboard at the next meeting. Then we tried Spills & Fills, a game which taught proportion and coordination. This one did not need any keyboard commands, everything being controlled by joystick. The user had to fill various-sized beakers, move the beakers by using the game's “winch”, and pour their contents into various-sized containers. Fill the container correctly, and points would be recorded. Overfill the container, and the user would be greeted by a nasty beep and points would be subtracted. Louis really got the hang of the game and was using it smoothly and expertly. For the AmigaOne G4, we played around with the OS 4.1 game, Deathchase3d, described as a “very fast, 3d, Star Wars game based on Star Wars VI”. It was more of a simple-looking, 3-D driving game in which the user shoots the speeder bike ahead. With its stark landscape and the look of the trees flying by, Robert was reminded of the C64 game, Encounter. At the end of the meeting, Robert passed out the gifts that were originally supposed to be distributed at the October picnic dinner. Dick got an audio Y-adapter cable, Roger received a LED puck light in the shape of a blue pig, Louis got a USB charger, and Vincent received the best one, a selfie stick, which he immediately made use of by attaching his cellphone to it and taking our photos. |
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This page is sponsored by the Fresno Commodore User Group |
