PDXCUG Meeting Highlights
Vol. 3, No. 3 - March 8, 2012 - Meeting Highlights
Koala Painter
We had a Koala Painter station set up to play around with. Notice the less-common cartridge and super rare stylus. The stylus actually has Koala Pad molded into the plastic, along with the Koala logo. Nice touch!
Turtle Graphics II
We also had a Turtle Graphics II station set up where you could write your own LOGO programs. We had a nice cheat sheet printed for easy reference. Richard made a program that housed the text PDXCUG.org inside a box.
Demo: Commodore Flyer on CommodoreServer
Members enjoyed a first-look demo on using the Flyer with CommodoreServer.com. Goog has integrated several new features for using the Flyer with CommodoreServer, to be released soon.
Commodore Flyer Sneak Peek
Brandon showed us a sneak peek at a terminal program he is working on for the Flyer.
Setting Up for the Group Activity
This month we tried a group activity where everyone got to sit in front of a Commodore computer and type-in a program from RUN magazine. We had the VIC-Switch set up so people could save their work to a single disk drive, sort of like the old Commodore classrooms.
Group Activity
We took a few short programs from RUN magazine from the Tips & Tricks section and typed them in. Members got to choose which program to type in. Brandon was the first to finish (he picked the shortest program - wise move) while the Rocket Launch took quite a bit of time with all those DATA statements.
Typing in programs reminded us how tedious it was. It literally made Alan gag. Amazing what we put ourselves through before the Internet!
Dan took it a step further and hacked the program to display Portland Commodore Users Group, Portland Oregon, USA. Nice work, Dan!
Commodore Flyer and Comet64 Internet Modem
Goog set up both a Flyer and Comet64 on the same system - sometimes two Internet connections are better than one.
Demoscene
We took some time to check out the this demo from DataStorm 2012, One Quarter by Fairlight. Good stuff! Download One Quarter because the photos just don't do it justice.
I Heart Commodore 64
Brittney just loves her newly-found hobby and is really getting into the C64.
Member Snapshots
Just a few inconspicuous photos of the goings-on during the meeting.
Retro Head
What's this Atari stuff? That's okay - we all love retro computing, so we still allowed him entrance.
Commodore Hardware
Here's just a taste of some of the hardware we had available. Richard brought his Plus/4 to share. Aaron used the Plus/4 to type in the group assignment (which was a Commodore 64-specific program), saved it to disk and then brought it over to a C64 to run it.
RUN Magazine
We had a few issues of RUN magazine on-hand for perusal.
Gaming Time
Goog wired up this desktop arcade joystick so that it could be used on a C64. It was originally designed to work with multiple gaming systems such as Nintendo64, Dreamcast and Playstation (or in this case, a PC via a PS/2 connector). Of course, only the joystick and one fire button works for the C64, but Goog also wired up two of the buttons to work as left and right so we could play Track & Field, just like in the arcade.
