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FCUG Meeting Reports Page 3 |
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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, 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. Some months are missing and will be added if and when they become available. |
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Latest Meeting Report Older Meeting Reports Commodore Links 2010 - 2016 are on Page 1 2017 - 2022 are on Page 2 2023 Reports 2024 Reports 2025 Reports |
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Latest Meeting Report February 2025 Four members were in attendance at the Panera Bread restaurant on Sunday, February 16 – Robert, Bruce, Dave, and Dick. Roger was with us in spirit, but physically at home with a bad case of flu. We wished him a speedy recovery. |
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Older Meeting Reports Below this point, reports are in chronological order, oldest first |
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2023 January February March April May June |
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January 2023 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel The third Sunday of the year was cold, with dark, cloudy skies, and
rain expected any time. This was on the heels of weeks of record
rain that brought deadly flooding to California. However, it was warm and welcoming inside the Panera Bread
restaurant at Shaw and Marty in Fresno, as members of the Fresno Commodore User Group gathered for lunch,
conversation, and computer stuff. On hand were Robert Bernardo,
Roger Van Pelt, Bruce Nieman, Dick Estel and Michael Calkin. Pre-meeting conversation during lunch touched on the variety of
drones now available and enhanced movie experiences in theatres,
such as 3-D, ScreenX, 4DX, and even Sensurround, the much older
technology of theater seats that shook during the 1974 Charlton
Heston disaster epic, “Earthquake.” Plans are pretty well set for the 2023 edition of the Commodore L.A.
Super Show (CLASS) in April. A generous donation from Lenard Roach
covered the last $121 of the 2022 deficit, as well as providing $20
toward 2023 rental costs. The show will feature a class on using
BASIC 7.0/7.8 to create a simple C128 game, and a possible Zoom
visit from the owner of the Commodore name, based in Italy
. Also in April, Robert will show various vintage computers at the Los
Angeles Maker Faire at the Los Angeles
Robert is looking forward to receiving a Mega65 from Trenz
Electronics in Germany. This update of the almost legendary C65 (fewer than 200 prototypes
were produced) comes in at $830, including Euro conversion,
shipping, and the wire transfer fee (no other payment options were
offered). Robert let us know that the jillions of things available on the Internet now include an archive of Radio Shack catalogs from 1939 to 2011 when this iconic chain slowly faded out of existence. Our attention next turned to a demonstration of TheC64 (none dare
call it a Commodore), with the newly acquired C64 Enhancer flash
drive containing over 800 C64 games and over 100 VIC-20 games.
Another flash drive from Retro8BitShop offered the top 100 games.
Member Michael got on TheC64, bouncing from game to game without
ever really concentrating on one. He had that same attitude when Robert brought out the Amiga 600 with
its Arcade Game Selector II, a menu system that showed a thumbnail
picture of each game screen on the Amiga’s hard drive. With the
AGS II and hundreds of games loaded on the hard drive, it was easy
for him to select one to play… much too easy because he looked
from thumbnail to thumbnail without really deciding on one. Robert
finally picked one for him, ML Tank, an Amiga version of the
classic, wire-frame Tank game. Even on the A600’s unaccelerated
7.14 MHz speed, the game ran very quickly, the tanks zooming around
the landscape on the screen. Michael became engrossed in the game
for... a few minutes. Next, Roger’s venerable VIC-20 was powered up, running the
TRIANGULAR microOS. This upgrade required use of a RAM
expander. Another variation of the TRIANGULAR microOS for the
C128 was also presented. As
old-time GEOS users, everybody appreciated the effort done to make
TRIANGULAR easy to use, and though it came with a few built-in
applications, was it really necessary to boot up a graphical user
interface in order to use a Commodore? Michael played with the
settings of the OS and changed the colors and screen pattern. Instead of using a classic ham radio, Roger loaded up a ham radio
program on his laptop PC that accessed weather stations in Germany
and the Netherlands. Incoming data was then fed through a Kantronics device to
translate it into plain text on the club’s Commodore 128 (in C64
mode). This was a fairly specialized version of “plain text,”
much of it consisting of radio shorthand comprehensible only to
Roger. Later, Roger tuned into stations in the The end of the meeting had Michael playing several of the games on THEC64. |
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February 2023 For a while it looked as if the February meeting might have only
Robert and Dick. However, two more of our regulars soon arrived, Roger
and Bruce. Being Super Bowl Sunday probably did not affect our
attendance; the game would not start till well after the end of the
meeting, and most of us are not major football fanatics. Robert announced that we have recently received a total donation of
$60 from Editor Lenard Roach toward the room rental for the Commodore
LA Super Show (CLASS), coming up in April. In March Robert will be filming a commercial for CLASS and a
presentation by Roger on the use of Commodore with ham radio. This
triggered a discussion of how radio waves are bounced off the
ionosphere and variations in signal strength caused by the lowering of
the ionosphere after dark. Robert informed us that there may be a demonstration of ChatGPT
at CLASS. This is a chatbot that interacts in a conversational way and
is able “to answer follow up questions, admit its mistakes,
challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.” Robert brought a number of print magazines, which were passed around.
They included C64 Gaming from Australia, Retro Gamer from the United
Kingdom but also distributed in the U.S., Amiga Addict from the U.K.
and Amiga Future, published in Germany but available in an English
edition. C64 Gaming was a download, but a real print version would
cost over $40 US to have it shipped here. Amiga Addict was primarily a
British magazine and generally only available at British newsstands
(Robert had bought it when he was in Hardware/software explorations started off with the Mega65, the
enhanced replica of the never-produced Commodore 65 of the late
1980’s. Robert had received the computer just a few days before the
meeting. Included in the box was the comprehensive Mega65 User’s
Guide, designed to look exactly like a classic Commodore guide right
down to the spiral binding. Robert also had printed out the Mega65
specifications from the C64-Wiki, the Mega65 Welcome Guide by Dan
Sanderson, and the List of Alternative Cores for the Mega65 (cores
being Apple II, Commodore 64 (more compatible than the C64 mode built
into the Mega65), GameBoy and GameBoy Color, and ZX Spectrum). Robert showed that the first time the Mega65 is powered up the user
must set the time and select the video mode (PAL or NTSC). Once this
is done, it would power up with the correct settings until they are
changed. Then he went into showing what programs came in “Demo Disk
#1,” the .D81 image which came pre-installed on the internal SD card
of the Mega65. Staying in Mega65 mode (the computer came with two modes – Mega65
mode and C64 mode), he demonstrated several programs through the Demo
Disk menu. The splash screen of the Demo Disk had animation running
around the circumference of the screen. Ordinarily, the Mega65 booted
into 40 MHz.. With the use of computer’s built-in freeze menu
(accessed by pressing RESTORE for a second and then releasing it),
Robert slowed the computer to 1 MHz. (C64 speed) and showed the effect
that it had on the animation. Needless to say, the animation was very
slow! Then he sped the computer to 2 MHz. (C128 Fast speed), and the
animation was faster. Then he ran the computer at 3.5 MHz. (original
C65 speed), and the animation was faster. Finally, back to 40 MHz. and
the animation was back to full speed. The Demo Disk menu was coded in BASIC 65, the Mega65’s enhanced
version of BASIC 10 which came with the Commodore 65. In fact, a
majority of the programs on the Demo Disk was coded in BASIC 65. The
Demo Disk menu was divided into 4 categories – 1. Demos, 2. Games,
3. Music, and 4. Utility. The rest of the meeting was devoted to
running programs off the Demo Disk. Under the Demos category, the club members saw such demos as 2
Bitplane Cube (a rotating cube spinning quickly), Mand65 (a mandelbrot
graphic generated quickly), and Snow (a Christmas demo). Under the
Game category, they played with games, such as Tetris, Poopie, and
Blaster. Under the Music category, they listened to Cheek2Cheek and
the DualSIDCompo which included five compositions including X-Files,
Black Adder, and M. Impossible. Under Utility, they looked at Vector
Clock and saw the sub-menu option of GO64. In fact, GO64 was a direct command on the Mega65 screen. Just type GO64, the computer would respond with “Are you sure?”, and then by pressing “y” and then ENTER, the user would be brought into C64 mode. For the next meeting, Robert promised that the members would investigate more of the C64 mode of the Mega65. |
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March 2023 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel A day with just a few rain showers seemed like a “dry” day after
several atmospheric rivers in January, February, and March had brought
heavy rainfall to the On March 19, members of the Fresno Commodore Use Group braved the light sprinkles, and Dave, Robert, Roger and Dick appeared at the Panera Bread restaurant for our monthly meeting. Robert placed on the table a 3D-printed version of the club name and
logo, made on a 3D printer by Randy Abel, the leader of The Other
Group of Amigoids in Robert had re-activated Bernardo Studios to film demos with Roger and a commercial for the Commodore LA Super Show (CLASS). He took the production on location to Vasquez Rocks, just off of State Highway 14 northeast of Santa Clarita. This was where a number of scenes from Star Trek were filmed, and of course, Robert filmed a Commodore next to Kirk’s Rock, where the good captain fought the Gorn in episode 18. Watch for this commercial to appear on YouTube in the near future. CLASS is coming up April 15 and 16, and a few more things have been
added to the agenda. David Pleasance, head of Commodore Roger talked about the method of sending BASIC code via a flashing
square on a television screen. A
1985 BBC TV show about computers used this method. There is a video
about this here
and an article here.
Hypothetically, the interface for the Commodore and the software could
be re-created, but how would the signal be sent to a CRT monitor and
would the software be dependent on a European PAL signal ( We moved on to software, starting with the Mega65 in C64 mode and various C64 games on the SD card that functions as a disk drive for this retro-futuristic machine. Various hiccups were encountered, but most games worked fine. Solitaire requires a working mouse, and the one Robert had, which had belonged to our late member Meredyth Dixon, was NOT working (it may have been non-functional, because Robert had set the machine for an Amiga mouse instead of a Commodore mouse). Super Bread Box, a jumping and shooting game, was partly functional, but the “bullets” Robert fired did nothing when they hit the target. Canabalt was a running game in which all you had to do was jump between buildings as the tempo between jumps became faster and faster. Finally, a game that we all enjoyed was “Frogs,” in which you scored points by pushing other frogs into the water. We agreed that Frogs would be especially enjoyable if preceded by a drinking game. (To digress, what is this business that frogs cannot live in water? Falling in the river in Frogger is fatal. Have all the game developers failed biology?) One other game, Shotgun, kept us entertained for a few minutes. In this two-player game, you had to pick up your shotgun and shoot the opposing enemy before he shot you with his shotgun. The tricky part was that the shotguns disappear after a short time, and then the players had to start over in trying to destroy each other. |
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April 2023 April 2023 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel We had an unexpected and very special guest at this month’s meeting.
In the early days of Commodore, Kurt Madden operated a computer store
in He decided to visit our meeting place, and to his delight and surprise, there we were. We were equally delighted to meet him and learn more about the club’s beginnings. He had a store,
Micro
Under the name Mirage Concepts, his company developed a Commodore word processor that was a big seller. He also produced a number of other software products. Eventually, the company went out of business and Kurt moved on to other projects. In 2019 we talked by phone with another club founder, Chuck Yrulegui, who could only remember the first name, Kurt, of his colleague from the early 1980s. We were happy to fill in the blanks, and get some correct information that will be posted in the article that appeared in the March/April 2022 Interface. Kurt was unable to stay for the meeting, which left it up to Robert, Bruce, Dick and Michael to carry on (Michael was late and missed out on the history lesson). Robert gave a very positive report on the Commodore LA Super Show
(CLASS), held earlier this month in Robert also attended the LA Maker Faire April 1 in downtown Los Angeles. He had a table with Commodore, Amiga and another one or two vintage computers, which drew curious looks and questions from some of the thousands who attended. We began the demonstration part of the meeting listening to some Amiga music (MOD) files, played not on an Amiga but on the Ultimate 64, which is a multi-talented modern computer, disguised in a classic C64 case. Basically, Robert redid the presentation he had at CLASS, a presentation that our newsletter editor, Lenard Roach, had hoped to present at the show, but in his absence, Robert stepped in. Robert showed some Christian graphics with an interlaced picture of Jesus and then a PETSCII picture of Jesus. Then Robert ran the game, Satan’s Hollow, a classic game marketed by Commodore Business Machines, a game in which the player shot down the horde of demons flying around and then tried to shoot a fire-breathing Satan. Michael played that game in full cheat mode and was pleased with its speed and the number of baddies to destroy. We then put Michael to work with a reading comprehension game, the Baker Street Kids. The program displayed a series of paragraphs based on the Bible, with questions about various specifics. Michael got a B+, missing only one question. Next it was Robert vs. Michael in a fight game, SNK vs. Capcom. A Super Street Fighter look-alike, the game had each player pick his particular character (different characters had different fighting skills) and then pick a country in which the fight was to occur. It was a rousing game. Robert and Michael kicked, somersaulted, jumped, and punched to the eventual winner who was… and then the game reset itself! Hmm, that had never happened before. Then Michael played against his father. Pick character, pick country, fight! Though it was fun, it wasn’t long before the game reset itself again… in the middle of play! It was time for the meeting to end, and as Robert was packing up, he checked the joystick connections. Joystick #2 was loose in its port, i.e., it was not plugged in all the way. Perhaps, that was the reason why the game kept resetting itself. |
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May 2023 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel |
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June 2023 by Robert Bernardo Robert came in a few minutes late, and then it took longer for him to set up, because he had an Amiga 2000 to assemble with two LCD monitors. Unfortunately, one of the monitors, a Dell U2410, didn’t survive the trip, having a cracked screen with only a partial view and at a bad resolution. That was the second Dell to die in 2 years! Robert would have to order another Dell and make sure that any others would be protected better during transport. From Stephen Jones, the Amiga 2000 needed two monitors due to its special configuration, i.e., it was 3 computers-in-one -- an Amiga running OS 3.1, a Mac running System 6.01 (both usable from one monitor via RGB-to-VGA), and a PC running DOS 5.0 (which needed a separate monitor for VGA). With only one monitor, Robert could only show off the Amiga and Mac sides of this system. Roger set up the club C128 and its peripherals, along with his VIC-20. After the longer-than-usual set-up time, Roger, Robert, Dave, Michael, and Bruce ordered their food. However, Bruce, our big Amiga aficionado, did not stay very long. A family emergency called him away, and thus he missed out on the A2000 presentation. The meeting started with old business and new business. Discussion included the June 24-25 Pacific Commodore Expo NW in Seattle (Robert will be there with many Commodore and Amiga systems and associated monitors) and William Shatner (the July meeting being delayed until the 23rd due to Robert going to New York state to see Shatner at the Star Trek Tour set). Presentations started with Robert showing off a Youtube video in which a user took PC/Mac/Amiga Blender objects and converted them so they could be displayed on a Commodore Plus/4. Michael was very interested in how the objects were created and manipulated in the 3-D environment in Blender. Robert urged Roger, our Blender expert, to study this video and see if he could re-create the image-making process for the next meeting. Then Robert presented TRIANGULAR microOS for the C128 in 40-column
mode. For some reason, he couldn’t get v1.35 Beta to run, so he
had to revert to v1.34. TRIANGULAR
was written in BASIC 7.0, and so, it was slow in its use.
Using a joystick as the controller, Robert would move the
pointer in a leisurely manner to the desktop icons seemingly built
of PETSCII characters. He
handed the joystick over to Roger, and Roger tried out some of the
icons. In Games, there
was a Crab in Robert went to the A2000 presentation while Roger disassembled the C128 and put the VIC-20 in its place. The A2000 had extra RAM but no accelerator, and so, going through the menus was a relatively slow process. He ran a few Amiga demos and some Amiga music, but the really big thing was when he ran the Mac emulator on the Amiga. He used the rare A-Max module which connected to the disk drive port
of the Amiga. Inside the
module were Mac ROMs. When
he clicked the A-Max Start icon on the Amiga, the application would
call the data on the ROMs, load them into the Amiga memory, and then
run the rest of the Mac OS desktop.
In a few minutes, the classic, monochrome Mac desktop would
appear. He and Roger
tried out some of the applications available on the Mac, like Word,
Photoshop 1.0, and David and Michael had to leave, but Robert and Roger carried on with the VIC-20. Like the previous meeting, they tried to get the Chip-8 emulator to run on the VIC. However, they failed again. They couldn’t get the Chip-8 desktop to run from device 9 of the SD2IEC with a real, applications disk in the 1571 set as device 8. Perhaps they couldn't configure the SD2IEC correctly. Perhaps Chip-8 could only be run from device 8. With this failure, Robert decided that next time everything from Chip-8 had to be on real disks – the Chip-8 desktop on a real disk, the applications on a real disk (a flippy?). With everything on real disks, it should be able to run. |
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July 2023 by Robert Bernardo As in previous FCUG meetings, the July meeting started off normally. Robert got to Panera Bread first and started setting up the equipment. However, he noticed that a few tables away, someone kept looking at him. Eventually, that someone walked over to Robert and asked if this was the classic computer club. Robert said yes, and Phillip Lima introduced himself, saying that he had brought in more than 3 bins of C64 equipment, software, and literature. |
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August 2023
By Robert Bernardo & Dick Estel This month those customers included Robert Bernardo, Roger Van Pelt,
Bruce Nieman, Dave Smith, and Dick Estel. Robert and Dick each had
been members more than 25 years, and Roger joined us long ago enough
that we estimated his time at well over 15 years. Bruce and Dave
joined more recently, although Dave was a member back in the late
20th century. Only Dick was really old, however. Pre-meeting discussion covered a wide range of topics. One had to do
with the registering of domain names that took place in the early
days of the World Wide Web, when enterprising computer users
registered such names as red.com, blue.com, and various commercial
and government names for the users to sell at a profit. This
included the once notorious whitehouse.com which eventually became
far less interesting. Whitehouse.net still provided some
entertainment, though. Hit the refresh button for endless fun. But seriously, we had a good lunch and an informative meeting.
Robert will be going to see Ray Carlsen in October to pick up and
deliver equipment for repair. Ray had announced that he was stepping
back from his repair service but will continue to help special
customers such as Robert. During a recent trip to Las Vegas, Robert visited Al Jackson, former
president of the now-defunct Clark County Commodore Computer Club
and a reliable supporter of our Commodore Vegas Expo (CommVEx)
exhibitions in his city. He’s doing fairly well but is doing less
with his computers and is considering getting rid of them. For decades, FCUG has held the annual October “picnic”, which
now is actually a lunch at a different restaurant each year. Family
members are invited, the club pays for lunch, and there are no
computer demos. Due to conflicts with our normal third Sunday, the
event will take place on October 8, location to be announced. Demonstrations got under way with a look at a Commodore PC20-III, a
machine from Commodore’s ill-fated venture into the pre-Windows PC
market. When Robert acquired the machine, it had been sitting
unwanted and unloved in someone’s damp and moldy shed in northern
Washington state. The hard drive was frozen and many other issues
were apparent when Robert turned it over to Duncan MacDougall for
repair. Duncan did a number of modifications, most interesting of
which was adding a Snarker Barker (Sound Blaster clone) 8-bit sound
card. Robert showed off a few PC games. Paku
Paku, a PacMan-type game,
used the better sound from the sound card, but another game, an
Arkanoid clone, used the PC’s one-bit internal speaker. Robert and
Roger used the keyboard to control the games; a PC joystick was not
available, though Duncan was repairing one to eventually give to
Robert. Robert wondered whether he should buy Geoworks Ensemble
(GEOS for
the PC) from eBay so that he could have a GUI desktop instead of
having to go through the prompts of DOS 6.0 on the PC. In fact, all
of members at the meeting were rusty on their knowledge of DOS
commands, e.g., what is the command to go back to the root
directory? Robert then showed off an Amiga 3000, recently repaired and upgraded
by Duncan. The upgrades included a Spectrum 24-bit video card and an
Ethernet board. With the desktop display controlled by the video
card, all desktop movements were speeded up; windows opened up
quickly and were easily resized and moved around without any of the
slowdown of the original Amiga video system. However, when it came
to displaying a list of applications in each window, there was no
speed-up, because that relied on data transfer limitations of the
hard drive and CPU. Speaking of transfers, that was the last item on the demonstration
agenda. At a meeting of our sister club, the Southern California
Commodore & Amiga Network, Robert had been given a box of C64
floppy disks. His job was to transfer the PaperClip word-processed
files on those floppy disks to text files that a PC could read. At
our FCUG meeting, he demonstrated his method of doing the transfers. With the club C128 in 80-column mode, the club 1571 disk drive, and
a SD2IEC card drive, he ran the text processor, ZED 0.77. He set ZED
to read “screen code” which was the format of saved PaperClip
files, and he set ZED to write “ASCII CL” files. He loaded up a
PaperClip file from the floppy disk. Though the screen formatting
was wrong and though ZED did not do line-wrap on words that go past
the 80-column screen limit, the file was still readable to the naked
eye. Then he saved the converted file to the SD card on the SD2IEC
drive. However, the file was still not ready to be read by PC. He took the SD card out of the SD2IEC and inserted it into his
laptop. He then ran DirMaster 3.51, a PC application. Within
DirMaster, he ran a directory on the SD card, and it showed the
converted file with a .S00 suffix. Still within DirMaster, he loaded
the file and then saved it as a text (.TXT) file. After the save, he
opened up the text file to prove that it was readable in the PC. He had used the above method to transfer many PaperClip files to
text files, and he had e-mailed those text files to the owner of the
floppy disks. Roger said there that WinVICE would convert files, but
Robert never used VICE. Robert had used a method that he himself
understood. |
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September 2023 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel Turnout was unusually low for this final summer meeting. When Dick
arrived, Robert was nearly done setting up the equipment, and no one
else was around. Roger and Dave had both let Robert know they would
not be present, and we recalled a period when membership was at an
all time low and meetings were sometimes just Robert and Dick. An hour later Bruce arrived, increasing the crowd by 50%. The
pre-meeting conversation ranged far and wide, and included our
condolences to Robert on the loss of his mother, who passed away
recently at the age of 93. Robert also noted that he will be attending his 50-year high school
reunion soon. This prompted brief discussion of Dick’s 50th, 16
years ago. In a blast from the past, Robert gave everyone a punch card, one of
those 3 by 7.5 inch pieces of lightweight cardboard with holes that
constituted a code that can be read by a computer. The basic
technology dates back to the late 19th century. Dick recalled that a
TV station where he worked used these cards to create the daily log
of programs, commercials, and announcements. Driven by idle
curiosity, Dick determined that there are approximately 800 spots
where a hole could be punched on each card. The first matter of official business was the club “picnic,”
which is now actually a lunch at the usual time but at a different
restaurant. At a club picnic, there is no official business and no
demos, and family members are invited. The location chosen for this
year is the Andiamo Italian restaurant in Robert will be the official videographer at AmiWest Show, October 12
through 15 in Meanwhile, the Interim Computer Festival will take place in Robert is planning to attend the Bay Area Maker Faire October 20 –
22. Plans are for Duncan MacDougall to join him, although Robert has
not yet received an acknowledgment of his request to attend. In any
case, Robert will be going to Robert had brought the books, “From Vultures to Vampires,”
volumes 1 and 2. The books told the story of the Amiga computer
starting in 1984 and going to present day. Volume 2 even told the
story of how the Commodore name eventually landed with a Dutch
company. Volume 3 will come out later this year. Bruce expressed his
interest in buying his own copies of the books, but when Robert told
him the price of each volume, he quickly lost interest. Moving on to software demos, Robert let us look at rarely seen
classics from long ago, the Hayden Software Temperature Lab and the
accompanying Light Lab. Besides software, the boxes included
sensors, an interface for the sensors, a thermometer, extensive
manuals, and a lot of other items. An example of experiments that
could be performed with Temperature Lab was to determine how long it
takes ice to cool a soda (a rather inexact phrase). The burning
question of “How do fireflies give off light?” was also
answered. Robert had some disappointing news about his other planned demonstrations. He had brought his Commodore PC20-III DOS machine and hoped to run a PC version of GEOS. The program had installed correctly, and the machine pretended to be booting up this graphical operating system but just displayed the word “Loading” until the user gave up and moved on to something else. Robert had also brought the Mega65 (C65 clone) and was going to give a presentation on GEOS 65, the GEOS version which was originally developed from GEOS 128 and was now converted to run on the Mega65. Unfortunately, though Robert had the microSD card with the GEOS 65, the Mega65 did not recognize the card as being compatible with its system. (Robert discovered later that he had to prep the microSD card with the Mega65, before using it with the system. Live and learn!) |
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October 2023 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel October means it’s time for the annual club picnic, which is really a lunch at a different location from our usual meeting place. Also, family members are invited, and there are no computers set up and no demonstrations. This year we had a small group. Faithful regulars Roger and his brother Aaron were taking care of some family matters and had to miss out. However, the rest of the meeting regulars were there – Dave with his daughter Megan, Bruce, Robert and Dick. Blowing off any diet plans any of us had, we went to Andiamo Ristorante Italiano and explored its huge menu. Of course, half the pages were wines, priced up to $150 per bottle, but we’re a sober bunch, at least at those prices. Instead we enjoyed calzone, linguine tutto mare, lasagna al forno, fettuccine (both Alfredo and Gamberoni), plus salad and dessert for some of us. It was the first time at this location for everyone but Dick, but the prices were very reasonable, the portions were large, and some members will be back on their own. We enjoyed the usual wide-ranging conversation, and everyone enjoyed the food and the company. We’ve been holding his event for 3/4 of the club’s life, and hopefully it will continue many more years. |
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November 2023 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel At the end of Maker Faire, Robert was badly injured when he tripped as he walked to his car in the parking lot. He had fallen onto both knees and arms with lots of skin torn off and blood flowing. After Robert spoke about that, Dick remarked, "Robert, you have to be careful. You're not young anymore!" The things Robert does for Commodore! Well
known for his travels, Robert will be visiting Traveling
closer to home, Robert recently visited Ray Carlsen in southern While
in The membership voted to donate $50 to St. Jude hospital, which has been doing excellent work with childhood cancer for over 50 years. Moving on to demos, Robert fired up THEA500 Mini. Most of the meeting was taken up with that machine and the new Aminimiga distribution which turns the Mini from a game machine to a full-fledged Amiga computer complete with desktop and folders full of productivity, graphics, music, and game software. Bruce was especially interested and concentrated on the graphics programs. As the meeting neared the end, Robert and Roger ran the brand new File Conductor for the Commodore 128 in 80-column mode. Roger found it to be an easier-to-use disk drive file organizer than older organizers. As Robert and Roger were packing up, young member Michael showed up with his family. Robert unpacked THEA500 Mini and let Michael play with that as the rest of the equipment was put away. Before leaving, Robert handed to Roger an AEA Pakratt PK-64 controller for ham radio and C64. He asked Roger to study it and make his findings known at the next meeting. |
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December 2023 By Robert Bernardo & Dick Estel It was unseasonably warm on December 17, with light rain predicted,
coming in from the south. The members had sympathy for fellow There was a good turnout, with Robert, Roger, Dave, Bruce, Michael (but just for a few minutes), Dick, and the latter's great grandson Jack, who was looking forward to exploring games on the club's ancient systems. He and his brother play on tablets where they are competing against and talking with other remote gamers. Robert and Roger were very kind in setting up games for him to play, and he explored several different games on THEA500 Mini with Aminimiga distribution, as well as Frogger and Donkey Kong on the C128 in C64 mode. Accompanying THEA500 Mini, Robert brought a 7" HDMI monitor, his new $54 Amazon.com purchase and just the right size to pack into a suitcase with the Mini. Jack found the 40-year old Commodore platforms a bit tame but enjoyed the games nonetheless. When the meeting got underway, it was time to elect officers for the coming year. As in the past, the current officers and board were re-elected by acclamation. A list of officers can be found at the end of this newsletter. With the full retirement of Ray Carlsen from repair work, the club members had been wondering where to go for repairs. The old saying, "when a door closes, a window opens," came to the rescue. Robert discovered that a Sacramento Amiga Computer Club member, Chris, did 8-bit computer repairs. Since he had a "day job," his Commodore repair time was limited, and when Robert presented him with four C64s in need of TLC, he asked to receive them one at a time. Presentations started with Bible Baseball, a game in which you advance to the bases by correctly answering multiple choice questions. Jack took the controls and concentrated on this more than all the previous games combined he had earlier played. The other members all contributed their best guesses to the answers, too. The questions were fairly obscure and seemed to all come from the Old Testament, often with three choices that left all of them scratching their heads (their own, not each other's). Dick and great grandson Jack left, but the rest of the members carried on. Roger gave a very thorough presentation on what he discovered on the AEA Pakratt PK-64 controller for ham radio and C64. He talked about the theory behind it, how it was meant to be used, and showed how far he could get it working (it crashed when being put into full operation). He thought that it may have a bad capacitor that needed replacement. On
the Commodore 128 in 40-column mode, Robert and Roger tried out the
latest TRIANGULAR microOS, now at v1.40 and released the day before
the meeting. Compared to v1.35 which was presented at the June
Pacific Commodore Expo NW in To round out the meeting, the members saw various demos from the Top 10 C64 demos according to CSDB.dk (Commodore Scene Database), such demos like Wonderland XIV and No Bounds. |
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2024 January February March April May June |
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January 2024 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel Bruce arrived much later than usual, claiming to have forgotten about the meeting (but we suspected him of getting in an extra hour of sleep). Dave was ill and had announced his non-appearance a few days earlier. |
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February 2024 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel The usual suspects were on hand for our February meeting – Robert, Roger, Dave, Bruce and Dick. Pre-lunch conversation covered electric vehicles, a source of used camera equipment, artificial intelligence (the scary, modern version), and Robert’s attendance at the final TOGA meeting hosted by 29-year president Randy Abel. The
full group name is The Other Group of Amigoids, and the club is in
the Los Gatos/San Jose area. Randy is moving to We
briefly discussed CLASS
(Commodore LA Super Show) coming up April 13 and 14. Bruce planned
to go, and Roger and Dick may be riding with him. We also expected
newsletter editor Lenard Roach and his fiancée from Speaking of whom, it was noted that Lenard had been doing the newsletter for 18 years (see separate article in this issue). Robert
commented that there would be a 3-hour Maker Faire in Everyone
was reminded that our next meeting would be in less than two weeks
on March 2, a rare Saturday meeting. Robert will be traveling to Demonstrations began with THEA500 Mini. It operated with the new software distribution of Aminimiga, which gave an Amiga desktop and provided games and other programs. Aminimiga was one huge file, essentially a hard drive image, so work files (for example, from a word processor) couldn’t be saved in the usual way. However, files could be saved in a special desktop folder. On the Ultimate 64, Robert also showed the newish TRIANGULAR Micro OS complete with word processor, calculator, and games. Because the OS was written in BASIC, desktop operations were very slow at 1 MHz. and too fast at the U64’s maximum speed of 48 MHz. Robert found that 2-4 MHz. was the sweet spot for using the OS. Afterwards, we experimented with Dancing Feats, a classic C64 music composition program, in which we set the beat, the bass sound, and other style choices, and then used the joystick to create tunes. No actual music was produced, probably because we were so bad at controlling the touchy control of the joystick. We also briefly looked at a C64 desktop publishing program called Stop Press. It was aptly named, because we were unable to actually run it. It apparently required that a real disk drive be connected, and Robert didn’t want to go through the trouble of reconfiguring the U64 to accept a real disk drive. Perhaps at the next meeting... More successful was PETSCIInoid, a version of Arkanoid but using PETSCII characters instead of sprites. The object of the game – aim the bouncing ball to remove tiles at the top of the screen. After that game, Robert showed a classic C64 application, The Complete Fireworks Celebration Kit. The app would start up with a demonstration of fireworks exploding on-screen (multi-color mode). It would continue running that same demo unless an F-key was pressed. When Robert pressed an F-key, a menu would pop up in order to customize the fireworks display. The user could make the changes in the design of the fireworks, duration, and music. However, the controls were not intuitive, and Robert had to keep referring to a .PDF of the instructions. Also, even though he inputted different designs for the fireworks’ explosions, they all seemed the same. To wrap up the meeting, Robert ran another C64 classic, Neutral Zone. In this game you turn left or right and elevate/declinate your gunsights before shooting off a fireball to destroy the enemy spaceships that are attacking your space station. No wonder Robert showed off this game; one spaceship seemed similar to a Star Trek cruiser and another spaceship looked like a Battlestar Galactica Viper! Roger and Dave were impressed at the detailed look of the game screen and the smooth game play, all from this 1983-1984 game. The meeting ended at 3, because Robert and Roger had to go to the “film studio” in order to film Roger’s presentation for CLASS. |
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March 2024 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel Exclaiming to each other, “I can’t believe it’s March
already,” four members of the Fresno Commodore User Group gathered
at Panera Bread restaurant on March 2, an extremely rare Saturday
meeting. Robert, Dave, Bruce and Dick discussed a number of topics before the
official start of the meeting, including the fact that Robert was
leaving for Dave told us about a huge treasure trove of photos that were uncovered recently. Vivian Maier took between 100 and 150 thousand photos in her life, many not even developed at the time of discovery. There is some amazing work among the thousands, and some are on line. Robert attended the Chinese New Year Parade in Robert had a chart of the various retro gaming consoles that have been
released and will be coming in the future. This is what seems to be
the THE series -- THEC64 Mini and THEC64 Maxi, THEVIC20, THEA400 Mini,
and THE400 (Atari). Bruce recently acquired a collection of nine Amazing Amiga magazines
which could be downloaded as .PDF files. After the February meeting, Robert and Roger spent about six hours at
Bernardo Studios (the University Square Hotel), filming Roger’s
presentation on Slow Scan TV, which could be used to send photos over
the air via ham radio to a Commodore 64. A similar program, FAX-64,
was available to send faxes. The filmed presentation will be shown at
CLASS. Both Robert and Roger talked about the highs and lows of filming
another presentation for CLASS, a high – having good lighting on the
set for once, a low – having difficulty in converting a PC graphic
into what the Commodore could display via Slow Scan TV. Demonstrations began with the TeensyRom device which plugged into the
Commodore 64/128 cartridge port. The device had Ethernet, USB,
microUSB, and microSD ports. The TeensyROM, which acted like a
cartridge, had flash memory that contained some pre-loaded programs
ready to use – a few games, a few graphics, a few utilities, a
terminal program (CCGMS 6.01), and music creation programs (Cynthcart
and Station64). Robert went through those built-in programs, though he
didn’t own a The TeensyROM used .CRT (cartridge) images or .PRG’s, and Robert had discovered the OneLoad C64 Collection on the Internet. All of the 2,100 games in the collection were zipped up in one big file, which he downloaded and unzipped into .CRT’s. He remarked that it took a long time to transfer all the .CRT’s onto a USB flash drive. Then when he moved from the device’s flash memory menu to the USB menu, it took awhile before anything was read onto the screen; the device was getting all the 2,100 games into its directory. When the games were finally listed, it was easy to scroll up or down through the listing and then press RETURN on the selected game. When finished with the game, to get back to the menu a user had to press the RESTART button on the device. Now that the list of games had been read into the device’s memory, the game list was presented more immediately, i.e., no having to wait for all 2,100 games to be read into the directory again. |
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April 2024 The pre-meeting discussion on April 21 was far-ranging. With Robert, Roger, Dave, Dick and Michael in attendance, we first learned that one of our former meeting places, Bobby Salazar’s Cantina, had burned down. The restaurant has been closed for a while, and the fire department described the fire as “suspicious.” (See below for a follow-up.) The building had stood there since at least the mid-1950’s, serving up food under several different names. When Dick was in college in the 1950s, it was the Ranch Kitchen and was owned by Dick’s boss at Mars Drive-In.
For most of the rest of the meeting, Robert went through several of the DOM’s and also several new C64 games. Michael, however, was more interested in playing anything associated with Super Mario Bros.. Amiga clones of SMB were not good enough for him, and Robert eventually had to boot up the SMB on the Ultimate 64 just so Michael could play it there. At the end of the meeting, Roger showed off several VIC-20 ham radio cartridges and a cassette which were given to the club several meetings ago. The cartridges and cassette had typewritten labeling with esoteric names, such as CQWPXTEST-CW and QCWA LOG CW, all from Kustom Computer Response of Helotes, Texas. Roger theorized that the former owner of the cartridges/cassette had programmed ham radio applications in BASIC and then had the programs burned onto ROM for the cartridges. Roger said he would demonstrate these cartridges at a future meeting. After the meeting, Robert drove to Bobby Salazar’s Cantina in order to assess the damage. To his surprise, he found the building standing with some windows boarded up, the front door locked with a paper sign directing customers to another Bobby Salazar’s, and furniture stacked up in the empty interior. |
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May 2024 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel The third Sunday of May was a pleasant, breezy day. Perhaps it was too
nice to want to sit inside a Panera Bread Restaurant for a few hours.
In any case, only two people showed up for the meeting, Robert
Bernardo and Dick Estel. We recalled having a few meetings like that
years ago before the club received an infusion of new blood. Our pre-meeting discussion covered various subjects, one sort of
Commodore-related. Dick had a briefcase which he brought to every
meeting, although usually the only thing he used from it was a pen and
notebook. He’d been saying, “I need to clean this out” for
months (years?) Inside the briefcase, we looked in one of the folders and found, among
other things, the Interface newsletter from December 2000 (Dick Estel,
editor). The main article was a report by Robert on his nearly 2,000
mile, 10-day “grand tour” of the Also in the briefcase was the Commodore Products Source List from
August 1997, a 38-page document maintained by Roger Long of Also catching our eye was a flyer for CommVEx V5, featuring Commodore
pin-up girl Jeri Ellsworth, and a 2017 membership list which included
all five of our current most faithful regular members, Robert, Dick,
Roger, Bruce, and Dave. As usual, Robert had future travel plans. First up was the William
Shatner Weekend in The Pacific Commodore Expo Northwest (PaCommEx) is coming up June 22
and 23 at the Old Rainier Brewery building in Robert has applied to have a table at the Bay Area Makers Faire in
October but has not yet been approved. The recent Commodore LA Super Show (CLASS) took in enough revenue to
pay for the room for 2025, with a small amount left over. Due to a conflict with Father’s Day, the June meeting will be moved
a week earlier to June 9. Next, we moved over to the computer table
where Robert’s laptop was set up and ready to show us five TV
commercials for Commodore 64 and VIC-20. These ran on Next we looked at Robert’s newest purchase, a computer case into
which he and TOGA member Duncan of Santa Clara had installed an
AmigaOne A1222+. The A1222+ came from We looked at a number of demos, games, music, videos, and emulated
computers which ran on the A1222+. Some demos ran full-screen; others
ran on a window within the screen.
One of the demos that Robert showed was the Cow3D demo.
The demo was of a computer-rendered cow that spun horizontally
against a starry background. The
demo ran in a window on the screen.
Another window on the screen gave a text read-out of how many
frames per second the demo was running its animated cow.
Robert started the demo, the cow spun extremely fast, and the
read-out said anywhere from 200 to 280 frames per second.
But Robert was not finished! As that one demo was running in
its window, Robert started another Cow3D demo in another window.
Now there were two spinning cows on the desktop, the cows
spinning too fast. Robert
continued; he opened up another Cow3D demo in another window and then
another and then another. Robert
finally had six windows open with six cows spinning.
When he tried to open a seventh window with a spinning cow, the
A1222+ locked up, refusing to run the demo, though it did open a
window. Six cows was a new
record, because the previous day with Games had the same video limitations, i.e., some ran at full-screen
while others ran within a window.
Some games ran natively on the Amiga OS4.1 system; others
required the A1222+ to run an emulator emulating the older OS 3.1
system. Robert found out
that playing more modern games on OS 4.1 was a hit-or-miss
proposition. The more
modern games were coded for older AmigaOnes which had different
architectures than the A1222+. For
example, Wings (World War I flying game) for OS 4.1 supposedly ran
smoothly on the older A1’s, but on Robert’s A1222+, it would run a
bit through the game and then freeze when the sound effects of bullets
were played. The game was
unusable. However, when
Robert tried the older version of Wings made in the 1990’s for OS
3.1, it was smooth and enjoyable. Playing music was no problem; Amiga MOD’s and MP3’s played very
nicely. An older Amiga would have had trouble playing the MP3’s. Playing hi-def videos was far less of a problem on A1222+ than on
older Amigas. Though the DVPlayer on the A1222+ did not like certain
video formats in hi-def (they ran slowly or had huge artifacts in the
picture), MP4’s encoded as H265 files and MPEG-2’s played fairly
smoothly and with synced sound. Robert showed a scene from the classic
1995 Babylon 5 TV episode, “Severed Dreams,” and the
computer-rendered spaceships (rendered on Amiga computers!) slid
across the screen with very little video “stutter.” (When Robert
asked why certain quick-moving scenes had the hesitation, Robert showed that the A1222+ could emulate other, older computers.
Using the VICE application, Robert was able to run a Commodore
64, a VIC-20, and a 40-column PET.
Using the Hatari app, he was able to run an All in all, the consensus was that the A1222+ was good, usable computer. Dick remarked that it was modern but still had some of the old quirks (which Robert took to mean that certain apps would lock up the computer and then the machine had to be switched off and then back on). |
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June 2024 By Robert Bernado Robert arrived from That’s when member David walked in. For awhile, it seemed that only Robert and David would be at the meeting. They ordered their food from the Panera Bread counter, and then member Bruce dropped in to join the festivities. Lunch discussion consisted of old cameras (Robert had brought a 1955-56 Neoca rangefinder film camera), the price of fast food (Panera was cutting back choices, and other places were too high), and color printers (the Epson ET series with their refillable ink tanks were very economical). The meeting proper began with old business. Bruce wanted to know if
any surveys had been passed out to the Commodore Los Angeles Super
Show attendees. Robert replied no. Bruce emphasized that it would be
good to find out what attendees wanted in a show, what would they
like to see. For Bruce’s part, he wanted tutorials, like a
tutorial on the Amiga graphics program, Imagine. Robert thought that
having surveys was a good idea, and he will implement them at the
June 22-23 Pacific Commodore Expo NW in Under new business, Robert showed off the William Shatner-autographed VIC-20 for Duncan M. of The Other Group of Amigoids, the Shatner-autographed Amiga 1000 keyboard for Robert, and the Shatner-autographed T.J. Hooker TV show script, complete with color screen captures from the episode. Robert said that his station wagon was mostly packed up for the long trip to PaCommEx, but he bemoaned the fact that the Dell HDMI/VGA/composite monitor, the one that was being used in the meeting and would also be used at PaCommEx, was having difficulty displaying a stable hi-def picture. David reminded Robert that he was taking the Dell monitor everywhere, the monitor being bumped and jostled in the car, and that problems with it were inevitable. Before the hardware presentations began, Robert repeated what he had done at the last meeting, that is, to show Commodore commercials that were shown during the 1984 TV movie, The Day After. David and Bruce chided Robert by asking him if there was any new
Commodore/Amiga computer out for sale. To their surprise, Robert
told them at the May meeting he had exhibited the new, 2024 AmigaOne
A1222+ from A-EON. Robert said that they had missed out on his
presentation of the A1222+ but that he would bring it again for the
next meeting. When they asked him the cost, he said it was about
$1,500, and that’s including the case and power supply he bought
for it in For this month, Robert presented his Amiga 1000 which had been modded with the Apollo Firebird, the Firebird giving the computer massive CPU acceleration, HDMI, 512K of memory, AGA compatibility, and a very-compatible Workbench replacement, Coffin OS. He opened up various windows on the desktop, played some MP3 and MOD music off of the machine, ran the SysInfo benchmark program (the A1000 with Firebird accelerator was running more than 320x faster than a standard Amiga 600), tried out Lightwave and its rendering of 3D objects, ran a few fractal-building programs, and played some games, including Bruce’s requested favorite, Gods. Bruce was amazed at how quickly the game loaded and how smoothly it played. Impressed with the Firebird accelerator, Bruce asked about its cost, and when Robert said it was over $500, Bruce was less impressed. Robert basically said no matter, because Bruce already had an ‘040 accelerator in his Amiga 2000. Bruce had to leave early as did David… no further presentations on the C64C nor the VIC-20… no running the meeting until 4 this time. With that, Robert closed the meeting, David waiting to help move the gear back to Robert’s car. |
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July 2024 By Robert Bernardo & Dick Estel Pre-meeting discussion focused on technology, and when Robert brought up the idea of art deco radios of the 1930’s and 40’s, everybody discussed old console and other tube radios in particular. Robert had recently returned from one of his wide-ranging journeys,
this time to In the capital of French-speaking When the formal meeting got under way, Robert reported that the
Pacific Commodore Expo NW (PaCommEx) in On October 12, Robert will be participating in a 5-hour Maker Faire
at Rocklin (near Robert has also locked in the date and made a down payment to the Burbank VFW Hall for the 2025 edition of CLASS, the Commodore LA Super Show. Some schedule changes in FCUG meetings were discussed and decided. We had changed the date of the September meeting, but the reason for the change was now moot, so we went back to our regular 3rd Sunday date, September 15. Due to schedule conflicts, the annual Club Picnic (Lunch) will take place on the FIRST Sunday of the month, October 6. Moving to the demo table, Robert had again set up his AmigaOne A1222+, since most members missed the first presentation a few months ago. We started off with the “Spinning Cow” graphic demo, Cow3D. The first time Robert ran this demo at that earlier meeting, he was able to launch six spinning cows, a new record. But records are made to be broken, and this time we blinked in wonder as seven cows whirled about the screen before it locked up on number eight. To further show the capabilities of the A1222+, he ran more applications, like the classic game, Arkanoid, running under OS 3.1 emulation (the A1222+ natively runs under OS 4.1); a native version of the game, Cannon Fodder; showed a hi-def MP4/H264 clip of the Babylon 5 episode, Severed Dreams, running from DvPlayer; had member Bruce play with the AmiDoom game, easily played MOD and MP3 music, ran the ArtEffect program, ran VICE (VIrtual Commodore Emulator) with its C64 and C128 emulations, and even tried out the Odyssey web browser, though the computer was not logged into the Panera Bread wi-fi. Finally, we had a fairly short demo on the VIC-20 of some ham radio-related material. Roger had reviewed a number of custom VIC-20 cartridges, former game carts into which custom ROMs had had been installed. In one, the user could take advantage of a list of macros. A single key press would display various stock messages that ham users would typically send back and forth. In all honesty, much of this was beyond the understanding of everyone else, but we commended Roger for his work and his knowledge of this aspect of computing. |
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August 2024 For
a short while, we were powerless. When Robert had finished setting
up and had turned on the computer, nothing happened. He checked his
power strip, then another nearby outlet. Nothing. We were occupying
an area that is somewhat cut off from the main part of the Panera
Bread Restaurant, and since we were paying customers, we never had
any issues. Joining
the meeting for this adventure, in addition to Robert, were Dick,
Dave, Bruce and a rare visit from young Michael. Before the official start of the meeting, Robert told us about his
visit with Al Jackson, former president of the Clark County (NV)
Commodore Computer Club, and big supporter of the Commodore Vegas
Expo. Like all of us, Al was aging and trying to figure out what to
do with his large amount of Commodore equipment. He made a tiny dent
by insisting that Robert take home a SX-64, which needs a keyboard
cable before it is usable. We briefly discussed the permanent closure of some favorite
restaurants, especially two buffets that shut down during the Covid
pandemic, Sweet Tomatoes and Hometown Buffet. It’s believed there
are still one Hometown Buffet is still operating but none in the
Fresno area. Robert’s request to have a table at the Bay Area Maker Faire
(https://makerfaire.com/), set for late October 18-20 in Vallejo,
had been accepted. Robert will display some classic Commodore
machines, as well as some of the 21st century variations, including
the AmigaOne A1222+. Robert had set up his Ultimate 64 and planned to show several games
but discovered he had not brought a joystick. Instead we looked at
the opening screens of a number of games and demos, admiring the
graphics and music. Then for the last part of the meeting, Robert showed off the new
A600GS, a computer which can run Amiga games and applications but
also runs a new desktop called AmiBench. Housed in a small case, the
GS has modern ports – HDMI, USB 2.0, Ethernet, and USB 3.0 (for
power in) – and two traditional joystick/mouse ports. It also
comes with a wi-fi modem, though Robert did not connect it to
Panera’s wi-fi network. Robert booted up the system, and there was a terrible scratchy sound
accompanying the start-up music. This scratchy sound must have been
some kind of bug. By using the included gamepad, Robert navigated
the Game/Application screen. All games and applications had huge
icons. If the gamepad was cursored to the left, system menus opened
up where you could change video, audio, and other preference
settings. Robert showed the AmiBench desktop which looked very pretty, but
there was nothing to run from there. Returning to the
Game/Application screen, Robert demonstrated the one game that came
with the GS – Thunderhell. He started the game, but there was that
scratchy sound again. Ack! The entire gaming experience of this
outer space shooter was ruined because of that sound which overrode
any music or sound effects. Even when Robert exited the game, the
scratchy sound would continue a few seconds into the
Game/Application screen. Then Robert tried to install a new game into the GS. He took out a USB stick that had the .adf of Archon, inserted that into the GS, and using the GS’s menu prompts, he added the game. However, it wouldn’t run! No matter how many times he configured the GS, Archon just wouldn’t run. Eventually, Michael gave up in seeing Robert go through this; Michael just took out his tablet and played games on it. The meeting ended with Robert saying that he’d have to read through the GS instruction manual again and look around on the on-line forums for advice on adding and running new apps. |
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September 2024 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel |
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October 2024 By Robert Bernardo & Dick Estel A few decades ago, for members of the Fresno Commodore User Group and their families, the late Sandy and Ingrid Dippolett hosted a yearly picnic at their home on the outskirts of the Fresno-Clovis metro area. After they passed, we tried a picnic at another member’s home, but it paled in comparison to the Dippolett property, and we eventually came up with a virtual picnic. Just like every month, we eat at a restaurant. Unlike every other month, it’s not our regular meeting place, we don’t bring equipment, there are no demonstrations, and computer talk is limited. People were so happy with last year’s location, Andiamo Ristorante Italiano, that we returned again this year. A quick Internet search revealed the following: Andiamo means "we go" or "let's go" and is the first person plural of the verb, andare. When used as an imperative, andiamo! translates to "let's go!" Andiamo can express joy or encouragement, similar to "come on!" in English. (Very similar to the Spanish word, andale.) So, a pretty good choice – we all took joy in the large servings of the tasty Italian specialties we ordered; and we took joy in each other’s company, despite the small turnout. It was Dave Smith, his daughter Megan, Robert Bernardo, and Dick Estel. Everyone looked longingly at the extensive dessert menu, but everyone was too full to indulge. Maybe next year. Robert did distribute the latest Interface newsletter, the July-August edition, and as everybody was leaving, he showed off his latest acquisition, a Sony Mavica MVC-FD92 digital camera which saved 1.3 megapixel pictures to a 3.5 inch floppy disk or to a Sony Memory Stick – the height of early 2000’s technology! With a CMD FD-2000 or FD-4000 disk drive, the Commodore 64 could even read that camera floppy disk with the use of Big Blue Reader. Then the resulting JPEG image could be viewed by the C64 program, Juddpeg, or converted to a Commodore graphics format with the C64 program, Godot64. |
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November 2024 by Robert Bernardo & Dick Estel Members drifted in one by one on a cold November day, with the final count being just four – Robert, Dick, Dave and Bruce. The pre-lunch chatter turned to the subject of food served at home during our childhoods. This included liver, which some members liked and others wouldn’t touch. The least appetizing report concerned a mom who made the entire week’s school lunches on the weekend, resulting in a very soggy tuna sandwich for Friday. |
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December 2024 By Robert Bernardo From
Stockton
two hours away, Robert drove through the fog and arrived to the
Panera Bread venue about half an hour early. He immediately started
setting up the presentation equipment. By The meeting began with a call for old business. No old business, and so, Robert continued with new business. Robert reported that due to a surplus Amiga 3000 being given away, the recipient of that computer gave a generous donation for the Commodore Los Angeles Super Show, and Robert sent a check in that amount to the Burbank VFW, the CLASS venue. He also reported that the Los Angeles Maker Faire and the Bay Area Maker Faire had set their show dates for 2025, April for L.A. and September for the Bay Area. The former was already asking for exhibitors. Of course, Robert was ready to send in an application for an exhibit of classic computers. December – the month for FCUG elections. After brief discussion, Robert motioned that the current slate of officers be re-elected for 2025; Bruce seconded the motion. Robert asked for those in favor of the motion, and the motion was passed unanimously, i.e., the current FCUG officers will serve again next year. Robert had set up the A600GS, the small box powered by an Orange Pi, containing a hardware interface with USB, audio out, and classic joystick ports; and running V46 software which gave the GS an Amiga-like (emulated) experience. First, Robert showed an Internet photo of the boards inside the GS case; then he went to the running GS on table, unscrewed its case, and showed the boards again. After reassembling the case, he went on to show the method of getting new software onto the GS – save an Internet download of an .ADF (Amiga Disk File) onto a USB stick, insert that stick into one of the USB ports of the GS, click the ADD button on the GS screen, then click on the name of the USB stick, find the name of the .ADF and click on that, adjust the settings in the Edit menu for that .ADF and save, and then finally run the .ADF from the GS in order to make sure that it runs. He also showed how to save a thumbnail image of the .ADF so that it is displayed on the GS’ Games/Applications screen. Because Bruce and Dave were leaving relatively early, there was no time to do any C64 presentations on the Ultimate 64, and so, Robert continued with the A600GS. First, he ran the .ADF he had installed during the above-described .ADF procedure, the .ADF being Labyrinth, a program which the developer admitted had been inspired by the C64 Labyrinth. This Amiga version had colors, whereas the C64 version had shading against the traditional blue C64 screen background. Also Amiga Labyrinth had music, sounds, on-screen hints, a map (shown only once), and even a preface. Without all the bells and whistles, Amiga Labyrinth played pretty much like the C64 version. Then continuing with the 130 games and applications he had installed or had already been present on the GS when he bought the machine, Robert showed some of the early ones from 1985/1986, the beginning of the Amiga. He ran 3D Maze (which seemed more intriguing than Labyrinth), Star Trek (the classic text-based simulation), YachtC (Yahtzee… which couldn’t be played without instructions), Carrier Command (interesting futuristic navy simulator… but again impossible to play without instructions), PacBoy (a nice, colorful Pacman but lacking the recognizable Pacman sounds), F/A-18 Interceptor (the demo was run so that the qualities of the 3D flight animation could be appreciated), and Chessmaster 2000 (similar to the C64 version and similar in that Robert lost even when Chessmaster was set to its easiest level). In new 2024 software, Robert showed off AmiBench (the Amiga-like desktop), the new Final Writer 7 (Final Writer 6 was last updated in the early 2000’s), and Directory Opus (the classic directory manager modded to run on the GS), Bunny’s Hop (popular with Bay Area Maker Faire kids who had lightning reflexes but not with Robert who had slower reflexes), and Metro Siege (a beat‘em up in the Street Fighter vein). Bruce wanted to know if the A600GS with its Final Writer 7 could
print to modern USB printers. Robert said that FW7 could save a
document as a .PDF, and then that document could be moved to a
computer/printer that printed out PDF’s. Then Bruce and Dave
bemoaned the fact that classic Commodores and Amigas couldn’t use
modern USB printers. Robert remarked that the expensive
Retro-Printer external module was available from Bruce wanted to know if he could use .ADF’s in his classic Amiga 2000. Robert said that Bruce needed to have a minimum of Amiga OS 3.1 on the A2000, and Bruce thought that he had that on his rebuilt computer. Robert said that OS 3.2 automatically recognized .ADF’s, but for 3.1 he thought that other enhancements were needed. (After the meeting, Robert e-mailed all members that there was the Gotek solution, a bit of hardware which could be internally mounted into the A2000 or externally cased and which could read .ADF’s from a USB stick and load and run them like real floppy disks.) |
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2025 January February March April May June |
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January
2025 By Robert Bernardo and Dick Estel The Fresno Commodore User Group’s first meeting of the new year brought together the five who have become our regular attendees: Robert, Roger, Bruce, Dave and Dick. It was appropriate that we reflected on the passage of time. For a quarter of a century, we have been writing a “2” at the beginning of the number of the year. Vast numbers of people have no recollection of it being the 1900’s. Robert noted that he has been a member of FCUG for 30 years; Dick for 37. Dave was a member back in the late 1990’s, although he dropped out and returned a few years ago. During lunch, the pre-meeting conversation ranged over the usual wide array of topics. Dave brought in a book titled “Bill and I: Building William Shatner's Belle Reve Ranch,” about property the Star Trek legend owned near Three Rivers, about 70 miles southeast of Fresno. Dave also talked about visiting the Merced
National Wildlife Refuge on the west side of the A mention of seagulls caused someone to express surprise that they
appeared so far inland. In fact, about half the coastal seagulls
nest at Of course, we also discussed computer stuff, especially after the
formal meeting began. Dick talked briefly about the club’s current
budget, reminding members about their yearly dues. Robert had cash
at that moment and paid his dues. For 2025, various Commodore/Amiga
shows had been mentioned previously, so there was a quick review: Commodore
Los Angeles Super Show late April in Burbank (organized by
Robert), Los Angeles
Maker Faire in early April (Robert will have a table), Vintage
Computer Festival SoCal in Orange County in mid-February (a
member of the Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network will
exhibit there). Rocklin Maker Faire, northeast of Robert will continue his international travels in August and September, visiting the Netherlands Computer Show in Maarssen, the Amiga North Thames club and possibly the Norwich Amiga Group in England, AmigaKit in Wales, and tourist stops in Ireland, Spain, Portugal (for the first time), and Paris to see Notre Dame Cathedral. Due to his travels, the August FCUG meeting will have to be moved earlier in the month, to August 10, and the September SCCAN meeting will have to be moved later in the month. We then turned to demonstrations. Robert had set up the AmigaOne A1222+, and first he showed a fairly new application, 3D Converter, which takes image objects created by graphics programs on various computer platforms and converts those objects to be used in other graphics apps. 3D Converter could run on classic Amiga computers and on newer AmigaOnes, but Robert did mention that the computers needed to be very fast and have lots of memory. Even on Robert’s AmigaOne, which was faster and had more memory than any classic Amiga, 3D Converter took time to display an object and rotate it (slowly). The image object that Robert showed was a wireframe image of an F-86 jet, composed of over 21,000 polygons! Roger was very interested, Roger being our resident 3D app expert. We took a look at other sample objects that came with the program, too. The simplest were wireframe images of a bowl and a candlestick, both comprised of a few hundred polygons. Robert then presented some of the newest Amiga games – Rintivoorh, Super Star Wars Holiday Special, Vigilante Demo, Revenge of the Grinch, Santa Present Drop, AmiRobbo, Winterland MegaLoMania, and Yoomp!. Unfortunately, some of the games, like Winterland MegoLoMania, were complicated to use, and Robert had not read the detailed .PDF instructions. When he ran those complicated games, he could get to the opening screen, but after that, he was guessing what to do and did not get very far. Robert showed off a hardware box which encased 3.5” and 5.25 floppy disk drives. Inside was also the Greaseweazle, an electronic board from AmigaKit, which allowed the user to connect a PC to the hardware box via USB and which made it possible to transfer a disk image to a real floppy disk and vice versa. The Greaseweazle worked with disk images and disks from various computer platforms, like Commodore, Amiga, Apple II, Atari, Tandy, and more. Robert had brought a disk labeled, PET games, and he wanted to know what was on it. Roger had the club’s C128 and 1571 disk drive, but he didn’t have the PET Emulator program. He could have downloaded it from the Internet and placed it on his SD2IEC drive, but he couldn’t make the SD2IEC communicate with the 1571 (he had not brought his coaxial Y-splitter to connect both at the same time to the C128). Robert was not prepared to demonstrate the Greaseweazle in action, but he assured Roger that by the next meeting, he would have the Greaseweazle archive the PET games disk into a .D64 file. Then with the PET Emulator and PET games .D64 together on the SD2IEC, they would be able to examine what was on the PET games disk. To wrap up the meeting, Robert ran the latest C64 games, like Twintris, the Pretzelves, Soiled Iron, Santa 4, and Captain Ishtar. However, when it came to Captain Ishtar, it was another complicated game. Just like the complicated Amiga games, Captain Ishtar came with .PDF instructions on many pages… and Robert had not read the instructions. The result – Robert could get to the opening screen but then could no further in playing the game. The simple, self-evident games were the most enjoyable to play – Twintris, a Tetris clone for 1 or 2 players, and the Pretzelves, a 1 or 2-player game which combined ice-skating and basketball. Before the meeting was adjourned, Robert showed off his new carrying case for the VIC-20, which housed the VIC, a SD2IEC/memory expansion, and a Ray Carlsen miniature power supply. Robert said that the VIC-20 was not getting enough love and that the next FCUG meeting would be devoted to it. |
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February 2025 |
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March 2025 Meeting date March 16 |
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April 2025 Meeting date April 20 |
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May 2025 Meeting date May 18 |
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June 2025 Meeting date June 15 |
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July 2025 Meeting date July 20 |
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August 2025 Meeting date August 10 (CHANGE FROM REGULAR DAY) |
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September 2025 Meeting date September 21 |
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October 2025 Meeting date October 19 (Annual Club Lunch) |
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November 2025 Meeting date November 16 |
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December 2025 Meeting date December 21 |
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This page is sponsored by the Fresno Commodore User Group |
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