Digital Nationz - Back again! (Museum)

[mrad01]

Some pics...

[kevman3d]

Nice photo's! My cheap camera was just taking grainy, underlit and motion blurred pics. I'll have to upgrade it at some stage.

[mrad01]

Nice photo's! My cheap camera was just taking grainy, underlit and motion blurred pics. I'll have to upgrade it at some stage.

Cheers! Cameras are another one of my bottomless pit hobbies.... Taken with a Canon 5D mkIII, 10000iso, 24-70 f2.8-f4.0. Post processed with DxO OpticsPro 9 Elite, spun out to jpgs by Adobe Lightroom 5.5.

Just re-read that. What a geek....

[Radar]

Another huge weekend - and I'm happy to report (all bar 2 small items that got nicked Sat.) that all my gear is safely back in the shed.
Huge thanks to everyone that assisted / visited! - Clinton from Dunedin, Clym5, Kev, MrRad, Nick & Glen (SC3000 Survivors) + Techvana crew

Had 1000's through the Museum and so much positive feedback it was unreal.
2 days of setup and we had it down and packed in 3 hours!

In terms of reliability of running old Computer equipment in a "hands-on" public event we did pretty well...
The following survived been plugged in and on continually (with restarts to change games etc) for 3 days for 10 hours (Press day Friday + 2 show days)

- Spectrum+
- Acorn Electron
- Atari 800XL
- C64 (1 day C64c, 2 days C64 breadbin)
- Apple IIe
- Apple IIGS (running on 110V stepdown)
- Amiga 500
- Amiga 1200
+ 4 1084S
+ Apple Monitor II that I recapped the day before the show

Problems:
- Commodore 1942 monitor (DOA sync issue), 1804S DOA
- C64c - dodgy Cart Connector & Joystick1 down not working
- Apple III - worked (finally!) day before show and then no power (no lights on MB) at all once it arrived it show - next on project line)

No issues with the 15+ other game consoles either apart from Fountain Force which was flakey but had a backup on hand.

[tezza]

Good one.

Whose is the Apple III? Yours Radar? Who owns the iic?

[Radar]

Good one.
Whose is the Apple III? Yours Radar? Who owns the iic?

In that line - Apple III, IIe, IIGS are mine, IIC (& box) and II+ are Mark's (and he also bought all the other Apple machines on display including Newtons etc.)

For the the show computer wide I concentrating on having working playable systems on display.
Where possible with Joystick input and simple "push button" to start games.

[tezza]

For the the show computer wide I concentrating on having working playable systems on display.
Where possible with Joystick input and simple "push button" to start games.

Yes otherwise it becomes "what the hell do you do with this? Mind you, Realising how unintuitive these early machines would be an education in itself for many.

[Radar]

For the the show computer wide I concentrating on having working playable systems on display.
Where possible with Joystick input and simple "push button" to start games.

Yes otherwise it becomes "what the hell do you do with this? Mind you, Realising how unintuitive these early machines would be an education in itself for many.

Yes, that's a real challenge, while most games are much simpler (1 button!) and don't have a 10minute video to sit through before they start the method of starting a new game is often completely arbitrary.
Spectrum is the worst as you often have to select the joystick type as well - "sinclair", "kempston" etc.

Games that worked well for single button start
- XE - Dropzone (single button start, gorgeous looking)
- C64 - Canabalt, Nemesis, Commando
- Spectrum - Defenda (Lightforce was ok but needed to pick joystick type)
- Acorn Electron - just ran the "Demonstration" cartridge which is a very nice demo of the units graphics - has the added bonus that if you push a button it jumps to a "Biorhythms" program and people can enter DOB/Date etc. and it graphs it out
- Apple II - Microwave, Wavy Navy

[honestbob]

Hi All

I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition, thanks. It was great to finally meet radar, and I think I saw mrad floating around with that bazooka he calls a camera somewhere too

Best of luck for the Techvana initiative, Mark.

If I had to pick some personal highlights, they would be (in no particular order)

Vectrex
The mini arcade games (including a little electro mechanical one)
The enormous hard drive - 2 feet tall and a huge 168MB of storage
The Wireless World Digital Computer (made on a breadboard)
The truly ridiculous controllers on the late 70s / early 80s consoles

Here are some more snaps from Saturday morning. I kept to 1024 x 768 for everything except the Wireless World Digital Computer information board photo, so sorry if that blows your display width out.

Cheers

[mrad01]

Yes, well after watching Radar playing Aztec for a bit on the IIGS - I realised how complex some of the control systems used to be. Great game though!

For the the show computer wide I concentrating on having working playable systems on display.
Where possible with Joystick input and simple "push button" to start games.

Yes otherwise it becomes "what the hell do you do with this? Mind you, Realising how unintuitive these early machines would be an education in itself for many.

Yes, that's a real challenge, while most games are much simpler (1 button!) and don't have a 10minute video to sit through before they start the method of starting a new game is often completely arbitrary.
Spectrum is the worst as you often have to select the joystick type as well - "sinclair", "kempston" etc.

Games that worked well for single button start
- XE - Dropzone (single button start, gorgeous looking)
- C64 - Canabalt, Nemesis, Commando
- Spectrum - Defenda (Lightforce was ok but needed to pick joystick type)
- Acorn Electron - just ran the "Demonstration" cartridge which is a very nice demo of the units graphics - has the added bonus that if you push a button it jumps to a "Biorhythms" program and people can enter DOB/Date etc. and it graphs it out
- Apple II - Microwave, Wavy Navy

[kevman3d]

Cameras are another one of my bottomless pit hobbies.... Taken with a Canon 5D mkIII, 10000iso, 24-70 f2.8-f4.0. Post processed with DxO OpticsPro 9 Elite, spun out to jpgs by Adobe Lightroom 5.5.
Just re-read that. What a geek....

lol! Yes, that's definitely geeky -

Nice gear! When I think of that, I now think I should have borrowed a camera from work (we have a 5D MkII, a few 60D's and a load of lens (mostly prime))... Maybe next time. Here's a few pics (a very few) from DNZ (not all retro) with a couple someone took during my presentation (for those who didn't pop in - which I suspect is probably everybody here ).

[Radar]

Nice quick (4min) run through of the Techvana Museum area via. Skip from Geeksphere.
http://youtu.be/zZ3nX1VrKm8