Next FCUG meeting - Sunday, August 20, 2023

RobertB · August 14, 2023

Happy National Creamsicle Day, C= and Ami aficionados!

The Fresno Commodore User Group has its next meeting from 11 a.m. to 2:30+ p.m., Sunday, August 20 at

Panera Bread Restaurant

3590 W. Shaw Ave. (corner of W. Shaw Ave. and Marty Ave.)

Fresno, CA 93711

(559) 271-0104

http://www.dickestel.com/met_loc.htm

Our last meeting ran for 7 hours, a record! Let’s not try for another record this time.

For discussion, we will talk about the October Amiwest Show in Sacramento, the October Bay Area Maker Faire in Mare Island, and C= repairperson Ray Carlsen.

In presentations, I’ll go over the process of converting Paperclip word processing files (screencode files) on floppy disk to text files on SD card and readable on a PC. For that, I’ll be using Craig Bruce’s ZED 0.77 80-column text editor on the Commodore 128, a 1541/1571 disk drive, a SD2IEC card drive, and a PC laptop running DirMaster 3.1.5.

Also we’ll try out a fully functional Commodore PC20-III, newly repaired and upgraded by Duncan M. of The Other Group of Amigoids. Upgrades -- NEC V20 CPU which replaces the 8088 CPU, DOS 6.0, a 3 1/2” floppy disk drive alongside the standard 5 1/2” floppy drive, a Snarker Barker sound card (Sound Blaster clone) with 3D-printed volume control wheel, a RGBI-to-VGA video card, and a Compactflash replacing the mechanical hard drive. On the CF card, we’ll try out some of the many PC games, especially games that use sound through the sound card.

Finally, we try out an Amiga 3000, also repaired and upgraded by Duncan. The Agnus chip socket is replaced (due to battery damage), and the SCSI mechanical hard drive is replaced (too many errors on the old mech) by a CF card. Upgrades – Spectrum 24-bit video card with CybergraphX drivers, an Ariadne-II network card, and a fresh set of WHDLoad games. Still running Amiga OS 3.1, this A3000 also comes with a 256 meg ZorRAM.

Is this another 7-hour meeting?!

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group -

http://www.dickestel.com/fcug.htm