forum.defence-force.org

Hi,

We will organize a small Oric meeting during the Vieumikro happening near Toulouse (South of France).

Details about Vieumikro (in French) are available here:
http://silicium.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=36976

Attendants currently include:
- Fabrice F. / Euphoric father ;
- Maximus ;
- Musepat ;
- myself.

If some people are interested just post here or PM me.

Just a reminder that the date is approaching.

I'll post some photos after the meeting.

ok i'll be waiting

Kenneth's Oric hardware including his Osmosa game cartridge system and a Jasmin 3 inches drive:
https://app.box.com/s/k6pd7u5vki01i3i2ynfa
https://app.box.com/s/stz3c0lu5crmudat8qvy
https://app.box.com/s/zfzijr70skpddduht6os
https://app.box.com/s/vvhplmbdn8zoyfz85btg
https://app.box.com/s/yny796vl9u66euyfaz9g

Macintosh Portable repair workbench:
https://app.box.com/s/u1z3l37p9jmte12zx9qk

Amiga 4000 with 060:
https://app.box.com/s/qy3af0356fbdi2g3a2bx

Amiga 1200 and Sharp X68000 :
https://app.box.com/s/mbq542a9xmt8m0hwlsyk
https://app.box.com/s/qokqt6l6qhxtdqzoh0bt
https://app.box.com/s/qokqt6l6qhxtdqzoh0bt

Sun Workstation with an LCD screen :
https://app.box.com/s/6nohzn0h7kwd3tncaxgb

My Oric hardware including a Cumana board, Jorodr's SD card disk emulator as well as an Apple //c with a UNISDISK emulator:
https://app.box.com/s/gz7m0wykosfu7wsi94ce
https://app.box.com/s/iu82094b4vctbq71ws1j

Here is a short summary of what I could see/talk about.

2014 was the 20th year of our retrocomputing/retrogaming association called Silicium and René our President/Dictator/Supreme Guide made a long speech similar to a SSSR congres speech

Oric related:
- Kenneth presented his cartridge system called Osmosa. He showed a first prototype as well as the final version which PCB is freely available here: http://www.petit-fichier.fr/2014/05/16/ ... mosa-oric/ He showed several games including Skool Daze (with Chema's approval).
He also showed a Jasmin 3 inches drive which unfortunately had some slight problems (just need to restart and try again as with my Cumana).
- Fabrice "Euphoric" F. showed us some of his custom hardware: a SD tape drive, a multigame cartridge system, a slim oric keyboard with Arduino+Bluetooth connected to an Android tablet running an Oric emulator. He also showed a very small computer that fits in a DIN serial connector that you can plug in the infamous french minitel 1B. It's not an Oric but very impressive anyway. The SOC is as small as half a fingernail. So far Fabrice only coded a monitor/disassembler but he promised a Basic for next year.
- Patrice/musepat showed us his Jasmin drive that seems to be a prototype.
- Jean-François/jotd showed us several adaptations of Oric and other 8 bits games running on a PC with SDL or a Nintendo DS. He then talked a lot with Kenneth and their goal is to make a cartridge containing Defence Force (the game). This doesn't seem trivial.
- Philippe S. showed us one of his Telestrats. The PSU seems dead but Fabrice had a generic PSU adapted for Oric hardware that managed to make it running.
- Jeff/Pocket got us his Cumulus but we didn't have much time to test it. I borrowed it and will test it ASAP. I'll post another message about that.
- I brought my Atmos, Cumana board made by Jean B. from CEO with a PC disk drive. I showed several games like Athanor, Aigle d'Or, Space 1999 and even the beta version of Tyrann 3 which is being developed by Maximus and I. I also showed the SD disk drive emulator made by Jorodr.

There were also some French computers called Goupil and Macintosh Portables that were being repaired.
Several other 8 bits and 16/32 computers were demonstrated. I saw several C64 with some DJ equipment, as well as a robot arm, several Amstrad, Atari ST, a Falcon 030 and even a Sharp X68000.
An Amiga 4000 with a 68060 accelerator card was being configured. It nows runs without Software Failures!
There was also a Sun workstation with an LCD screen.
Torlus showed us several FPGAs emulating old game consoles.

There was also some old game consoles and even new stuff like an XBox One and a PS4 but I don't like game consoles so I didn't look much there.

I also spent a lot of time on an Oculus Rift which refused to work as it did at home I prefer 8 bit computers

Hialmar wrote: - Patrice/musepat showed us his Jasmin drive that seems to be a prototype.

Does it was a Jasmin in a red metallic box?

There were also some French computers called Goupil and Macintosh Portables that were being repaired.

Do you know who repaired these Mac Portable, and what was the problem on them? One of my two mac portable have a hardware issue (it seems that it was somewhat strike by a power surge, it's not completely broken, but it seems that some part of the internal power supply is KO, I would like to discuss with them if they know more on this.)

Hello guys,

I really enjoyed meeting old friends at this Vieumikro, and new ones like Kenneth (who incidentally is as old as me )

Vieumikro is definitely the place to be in October, maybe other oricians will make the journey next year !

Cheers to all,

Fabrice

Ah, Kenneth, I forgot... Here is the reference for the 36-pins edge connector :

http://www.rs-particuliers.com/WebCatal ... 12238.aspx

Cheers,

Fabrice

Yes musepat's Jasmin is the one in the red metallic box. He posted about it here a few months ago.

Three people from Silicium worked on the Macintosh Portable :
- François P. ( françoisp31 on silicium forum ) ;
- Didier B. (cleesy) ;
- Eric (Gabangoto).

You can contact them on the silicium forums: http://www.silicium.org/forum/. I am not sure what was the problems.

More photos:
http://sbm.ordinotheque.free.fr/meetings/vm2014/

Hialmar wrote:Yes musepat's Jasmin is the one in the red metallic box. He posted about it here a few months ago.

So it's not a prototype, but the first run of Jasmin 1, before they make the plastic shell, I have one, and it was sold at that time

Three people from Silicium worked on the Macintosh Portable :
- François P. ( françoisp31 on silicium forum ) ;
- Didier B. (cleesy) ;
- Eric (Gabangoto).

You can contact them on the silicium forums: http://www.silicium.org/forum/. I am not sure what was the problems.

Thanks

musepat's drive has only one drive instead of two as shown here:
http://forum.defence-force.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1103

So we think it might be a prototype of the normal double drive.

Now again it could be a cheaper version of the other

Euphoric wrote:Ah, Kenneth, I forgot... Here is the reference for the 36-pins edge connector :

http://www.rs-particuliers.com/WebCatal ... 12238.aspx

Cheers,

Fabrice

if I'd known that....
Thanks.

Euphoric wrote:Hello guys,

I really enjoyed meeting old friends at this Vieumikro, and new ones like Kenneth (who incidentally is as old as me )

Vieumikro is definitely the place to be in October, maybe other oricians will make the journey next year !

Cheers to all,

Fabrice

I would definitely have attended if I was still in France

Question for you: Do you think that merging your SD card TAP emulator and Cumulus is something doable, possibly even add that on the existing Cumulus perhaps just by modifying the firmware/bootstrap?

Being able to load both TAP and DSK from a single SD Card would be kind of awesome

The One Drive version was a cheaper one (don't have to pay for both drive) and I think most of them was sold with only one drive.

Dbug wrote: Question for you: Do you think that merging your SD card TAP emulator and Cumulus is something doable, possibly even add that on the existing Cumulus perhaps just by modifying the firmware/bootstrap?

Being able to load both TAP and DSK from a single SD Card would be kind of awesome

I seriously doubt that the Cumulus in the current form is able to do this.
What may be done is to "convert" a tap to bootable dsk (not necessarily using a real DOS, we just need to load the TAP content into memory, but it will not be easy for nor "one file" TAP..