exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

stephen_usher wrote: 05 Nov 2024 11:51 Having major issues with motivation (at work) at the moment due to being within a fortnight of ending employment.

Still, I have the retro computing festival to look forward to and plan for next weekend.

stephen_usher wrote: 07 Nov 2024 17:37 Well, most of the stuff is ready to transport to Cambridge tomorrow.

The boxed stuff is in the car already. I'm going to be packing the second QL and the ancillaries for the telephone exchange, QLs and One Per Desk into the bag this evening. That should just leave the loading into the car tomorrow morning.

I took the day off work today so as to finish the preparation, so did all the signage this morning and got the SAAB ready.

Why the SAAB? Well, it's got a cavernous boot so I can fit not only the items for the exhibition display but also all the machines and bits I'm giving away, such as two Apricot Xi machines, two Electrons, two Plus4s, cases, books and, of course, t-shirts. My living room and outbuilding should be a lot emptier after all that stuff has gone.

The two CRTs can go on the back seat and the LCD telly can go on the front passenger seat.

Once I've finished work I can get on with packing up the stuff people on here wanted posting to them... Gets rid of more stuff.

On the 1st December I'm off to The Cave again and can deliver more magazines. That should be most of the stuff received in the last donation rehomed and I'll have a clear living room floor.

After the event I can also move the OPD and monitors into the storage unit, which will clear up more space in the outbuilding, and finally put all the QLs back up into the loft... Or maybe not, as I may have to clear the loft for the solar panel installation. :-)

P.S. Oh yes, when doing final testing of the One Per Desk this afternoon it didn't want to load BASIC from the Gotek. It's loaded it fine all this time until now. Not really a problem as the version of SuperBASIC is so lobotomised so it's just a curiosity which can make the machine look more like a QL in use. Of course, it will load fine after the event won't it?

stephen_usher wrote: 10 Nov 2024 23:19 I'm back from Cambridge.

A very busy, tiring and fun weekend.

This was my table layout...


IMG_4052.jpeg


Setting up on Friday afternoon I found that the One Per Desk wasn't booting... More investigation found that one of the ROMs had jumped partly out of its socket! After pushing it back in through the Microdrive unit hole in the case the machine started up.

However, the machine was unstable all weekend, often starting with the modem not responding and the the whole machine locking up. It would only come back to life after being left for half an hour or so, though it spent most of Saturday working. Today it hardly worked at all. I'm going to have to investigate... but maybe not this week.

I returned, as planned, with far less than I took, with the only item not given away being a C64 (non-breadbin) case. So, a QL (Lee, More Fun Making It), two Electrons, two plus/4s, a home made BBC Master Compact dual floppy unit, a couple of AMX mice and two Apricot Xis all went to new homes.

I've only unpacked the monitor and TVs from the car so far as they were in the cab. I'll do the rest in the morning I took tomorrow off to do this and recover. The rest of the week will be taken up with leaving dos at work and an alumni dinner in London on Friday.

P.S. I've already been thinking about next year's theme... I think it will be "Rise of the 16 bits", so my Atari 520STM, a Mac Plus and I'll have to get an Amiga A500 to complete the trio.