|
FCUG Meeting Reports Page 3 |
|
|
|
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. |
|
|
|
Latest Meeting Report Older Meeting Reports Commodore Links 2010 - 2016 are on Page 1 2017 - 2022 are on Page 2 2023 Reports |
|
Latest Meeting Report |
| February: Coming soon |
|
Older Meeting Reports Below this point, reports are in chronological order, oldest first |
|
2023 January February March April May June |
|
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 |
|
February 2023 |
|
March 2023 Meeting date: March 19 |
|
April 2023 Meeting date: April 23 - Note date change |
|
May 2023 Meeting date: May 21 |
|
June 2023 Meeting date: June 18 |
|
July 2023 Meeting
date: July 16 |
|
August 2023 Meeting date: August 20 |
|
September 2023 Meeting date: September 17 |
|
October 2023 Meeting date: October 15 (Annual Club Lunch) |
|
November 2023 Meeting date: November 19 |
|
December 2023 Meeting date: December 17 Meeting date: December |
|
|
|
|
|
This page is sponsored by the Fresno Commodore User Group |
|
|
