We had a great turnout and good times at the 3rd SEA-CCC meet-up last night with seven total members in attendance.
Matt M. brought his exceptional A600 MiSTer, which really is a sight to behold. It has stability and power (if you want it), plus the graphics looked spot on. Very eye-opening to see that compact form factor kick so much butt. Definitely not a DIY project for everyone; it’s not exactly plug-and-play. But if you have the determination, passion and know-how – wow. It was really impressive. And at least according to Matt it’s way more “real” feeling than his rPi experiments.
Eric H. brought his breadbin C64 with WiFi WiModem, UII cart, Magic Voice synth cart and 1702. Eric gave a demo of the Magic Voice synth voice which no one in attendance had seen (or heard) before, which was cool. Shame so few consumer programs were ever made for it:
Recreational: Gorf and Wizard of Wor
Educational: Counting Bee, A Bee C’s, The Spelling Bee, and The Magic Garden Talking Book Series
Business: Magic Desk 1+
We played some Gorf with the voice turned on. Ha. Ha. Ha. 😉
Christian S. brought his mind-bending GBA1000 computer for all of us to drool over. Over “42 total hours” of work to get the machine flying, according to Christian. After looking at the insanely tiny surface mounted solders he performed by hand (and the zoom on his phone’s camera) I couldn’t believe it. I know it would have taken me more like 400 hours, and I still would have failed. Simply remarkable level of skill required. But wow – the machine was essentially an A3000 tucked inside the A1000’s beautiful frame. Simply gorgeous. Thanks for bringing that to the user group for us to see, Christian!
Finally, based on the generous 8-bit donation the club received recently, most folks went home with something to play with or turn into a future project.
It was a great time. Can’t wait for the next one! (Details for Meet-up #4 will be available soon.)
— Eric (aka intric8)