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. I remember my first time going to VCFMW. It was in a dark .
. hotel basement somewhere, with a few rooms stuffed full .
. with c=64's, some unix pc's... Having grown up in Europe .
. where such gatherings are even more rare than they are .
. stateside, this was my first time ever going to such an .
. event. I sat down at someone's table who was running a .
. "unix on a coco computer" display. I had never played with.
. a coco before, and was quite astonished that it could run .
. some unix variant, thus naturally I had to play with it! .
. .
. There was something quite exciting about being in a room .
. full of similarly-minded people with similar interests and.
. being able to just sit down and hack away on a machine .
. you don't normally have access to. I've gone every year .
. since then. And it kept getting bigger. The next year, .
. coming out of the elevator, and turning into the hallway, .
. I was greeted by a huge VAX someone dragged in. That was .
. neat! The year after that, they had outgrown the basement,.
. and they moved to a bigger hotel. That year was the first .
. year I decided to also grab a table and drag my own junk .
. out there, and I've been jotting down reports similar to .
. this one ever since. .
. .
. Last year VCFMW outgrew their venue again, and they moved .
. to an even bigger, fancier (and more expensive) hotel .
. once again. To say the feel is different from the old .
. basement days would be an understatement. And as you might.
. assertain from my previous vcfmw reports, it's grown a bit.
. past my comfort level, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this..
. (it's of course, still a blast! and more to see! tradeoffs.
. and all that) .
. .
. Thankfully, just a stone's throw away, there is a new and .
. exciting smaller conference, reminiscent of VCFMW's early .
. basement days: INDYCLASSIC in Indianapolis Indiana. .
. .
. I went last year and had a lot of fun, and naturally I had.
. to go again this year. This year, there was even more .
. familiar faces than there was last year, as a good portion.
. of the regular VCFMW regulars showed up. .
. .
. Like last year, I spent most of my time there hanging out .
. with AJ from Forgotten Machines - This year I spent a .
. bunch of time tinkering with his SUPERBRAIN QD computer. .
. .
. The QD referring to 'quad density', which is what it uses .
. for it's floppy storage. It also featured in knight rider .
. so hence AJ's interest, as he owns one of the show's cars .
. and also is involved with knight rider historians. .
. This is a dual-z80 cpu machine, and as such, does seem to .
. perform a bit better than the typical z80 computer. It .
. offloads some IO to the second cpu is my understanding. .
. Most of my time was spent trying to work around the quirks.
. of it's built-in mbasic (BASIC-80) which is quite similar .
. to what you might find on other z80 machines with CP/M. .
. In fact, I was able to get a similar mbasic running on .
. GNU+Linux with xtrs, which is actually an emulator for the.
. TRS-80. Some interesting quirks of it's flavour of basic .
. are that it's a bit more type strict than most variants. .
. Trying to read a variable containing a double-word value .
. may result in an overflow error if you don't use the right.
. suffix (#=double, !=single, etc,...) - Indeed, per the .
. freaking manual: "In the 8K version of BASIC-80, all .
. numeric constants are single precision numbers. They are .
. stored with 7 digits of precision, and printed with up to .
. 6 digits. <snip> A double precision constant is any .
. numeric constant that has: .
. 1. eight or more digits, or .
. 2. exponential form using D, or .
. 3. a trailing number sign (#) .
. - this all seems pretty straight forward, but when you're .
. hacking away on the tradeshow floor with no reference, and.
. the only manual access you have is on a tiny shitty phone .
. screen, I can assure you it takes a looong time to figure .
. stuff out, hah ;) - Another thing we ran into, was not .
. being able to assign some things to variables, like eg: .
. .
. 1 FOO=PEEK(I) .
. .
. You actually need: .
. .
. 1 LET FOO=PEEK(I) .
. .
. While the LET keyword is normally entirely optional, it .
. can be required, specifically, for assigning the result of.
. an expression. .
. .
. In any event, all of this hacking was such that we could .
. build a little memory dumper in order to find the location.
. of screen memory. Of course, as soon as i got to a proper .
. computer where I could actually have a better look at the .
. manual, the address is listed in there. Figures. :) .
. Either way, fun was had. - Other things we tried was to .
. try and get turbo pascal to compile things, but the TP .
. editor frustratingly requires function keys to perform .
. many important actions, keys which, alas, are missing on .
. this computer. We did eventually get some files compiled .
. by editing the .pas files with ed first, and then having .
. turbo just compile them. But this proved to be a lot more .
. hassle than simply using mbasic. .
. Besides, that particular version of TP did not recognize .
. the 'ASM' keyword, which was my main motivation for trying.
. it in the first place ;) .
. After the show, we dragged the SUPERBRAIN cart into the .
. lobby, and just kept hacking away - as is kind of starting.
. to become a tradition, started at vcfmw, and now at Indy .
. Classic as well :) - At the end of the night, we got to .
. drag the cart with the SUPERBRAIN up into our hotel room, .
. for safe-keeping, as AJ was staying at a different hotel. .
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(DIR) Random small video clips from the event.