Final Call for West Mids Meet

[darthbob1425]

Boy time has flown over the past couple of weeks with little to no time to spare. So was a little suprised when Tim reminded me the meet is next weekend. Oooops.

Anyway please let me know whos coming and when you intend to land. I'll PM my address to you for Satnav etc. If your using a satnav to find me beware - some will send you to a completely differnet address about five miles away.

Rough plan (but I'm happy with whatever people prefer)

Friday

I'm up for meeting for a few drinks/meal on the Friday evening. Where I live has a few decent pubs that do food and a really good curry house. If anyone wants the meal option let me know preferences and I'll book a table for 9pm dependant on what time people are arriving.

Saturday

Again I'm for meeting up for the tech side as early as people want (midday ??) and am happy to work through until more evening drinking maybe.

Tim has made a good suggestion about letting everyone know what we have to work on so that we can look at scematics/spares needed etc.

So to get the ball rolling I have a number of Konami boards that don't run

NEMESIS - black screen - no sounds

TRACK AND FIELD - game plays with no red on image.

TIME PILOT - dead

ROAD FIGHT - game starts but no foreground sprites and background doesn't scroll.

GALGA CLONE - dead (I think it may be misisng a riser board)

WARDNER - starts up but won't progress past screen ful of zeros

HALLEYS COMET - black screen but occaisional flashes of white at edge of screen.

and of course my ALCA PLANET - I already have the power supply and loom, and I think I have the AR board waiting colection from the post office on Monday.

I could go on but I want to leave room for everyone else.

My Test Kit is limited - appart from the usual multimeters and logic probes I have a oscilloscope, logic comparator and a ABI Boardmster (loaner from Tim). If your going to be staying in a hotel and want to leave stuff at mine overnight - feel free.

As you can see I'm pretty easy on as far as times and fixtures go and am pretty happy to go with the flow of the weekend. Mainly I'm just looking forward to meeting some new people and putting faces to the posts.

Hope you can make it.

Rob

PS If I have failed to cover anything post it up and I'll clarify

 

[trm]

I'll be there with a +1. Can't wait!

 

[andyman]

I'll also be there with a +1 (My Asty board). I would like to check its state, with knowing bods, as I have no clue on vectors whatsoever, if thats ok with you Rob.

I too have an Alca Planet

Andy.

 

[guddler]

I'll be there. We'll be up Friday night but I don't know what time yet or where we'll be on the Friday night. Def about on Saturday, going home Sunday as and when but not too late.

I don't really have any info on any of the Konami stuff but I can help with asteroids and presumably planet. It's easy enough for me to bring my entire vector test rig including psu, ar2, rig and display. Is the planet pcb covered in the other thread? Does it share the same pinout as Atari? If not then I may need to make a loom up for it. It would be nice if someone else can cover a scope and let's see if Tim can be persuaded to bring along a fluke of some kind?

That only leaves a programmer and I would think that spares permitting the planet ought to get sorted? I'll have a catch up on the other thread...

 

[guddler]

Oh, can anyone program Intersil IM5610 proms? I need asty proms but my progger only likes the genuine Signetics ones rather annoyingly!

 

[darthbob1425]

I have a couple of cheap programmers but they don't cover those sorts of chips. Hopefully someone can bring something along next week.

 

[trm]

OK. In terms of gear I'll be bringing the following (as a minimum. I'm sure when I start locating this stuff I'll find other interesting/useful bits):

Fluke 9010 and selection of pods,

hopefully BDO leads for the ABI at Robs (for in-circuit testing),

Logic Analyser and laptop to drive it,

Scope (can never have too many scopes

),

Audio signal generator (if anybody has boards with dodgy sound stages?),

Eprom progger that'll do almost anything bar the early PROMs (although I could bring a Data IO if I can transport the VM image onto my laptop and it might be needed?),

Desolder station?

In terms of spare parts, I may just unhook the boxes from the wall and bring a couple of cases of TTL, RAMs, EPROMs and so on. If the car is looking a bit full by this point then I can just bring the likely stuff like RAMs, LS74s/244/245/16x/00/04, op-amps.

I've also got a lot of dead boards. Some are scrappers that have already been partially pulled, others are just things that have gone into the "probably not going to repair" pile for various reasons such as too grody, already got X of, not my cup of tea etc so people are welcome to help themselves to this if anybody wants some. Let me know if anybody does, otherwise there's no point in carting them over and back again

So lets get a roll-call of people who are definite then so we have an idea of what we're up to!

 

[darthbob1425]

Tim,

As always I'll take a look at anything so feel free to bring some boards over. That way I've got more to practice on and I need the practice

Rob

 

[Dex-Jay]

I hope to be able to drop round Saturday daytime, if that's OK! I'm not far away.

Rich

 

[HarrySeven]

I hope to be popping in too.

Incidentally, while peeps are in the area, I'm a few junctions down the M54, so if anyone wants to take away a cab or two (anyone fancy a reasonably-priced Robotron?), I'll not be too far away.

Cheers! )

 

[darthbob1425]

I'll PM addresses and phone numbers to everyone later.

Whose coming out for drinks on Friday? I have a babysitter and need to take advantage of the fact

Saturday - as I've said earlier I'm happy to start as early as people want to start turning up so give me some ideas.

Andy - if your ALCA is working - could you bring it along so that we can get a fluke trace off a good board - it may help me get mine sorted - finally.

Can't wait

 

[andyman]

Andy - if your ALCA is working - could you bring it along so that we can
get a fluke trace off a good board - it may help me get mine sorted -
finally

Sorry Rob, my Planet is the +1 i'm bringing (Atari Asty)

Andy.

 

[trm]

Rob - can you get some pics up of the Planets board and also the edge connectors? Need to know what pinout it uses and whether it's the same as the Atari asty too if possible.

 

[darthbob1425]

I'll have to sort some pics out later tonight but from what I understand its a direct copy with the same pinout

 

[andyman]

Same pinout Tim, hence me having an Atari board in mine

Andy.

 

[guddler]

Sorry Rob - I know this is going to be a bit of a kick in the nuts as it's late notice but i've had to cancel. At least for tonight. I've been off work for half the week and was really, really hoping to be back up and running by now, but I'm not. If I'm up for it by later or the morning then I'll come up anyway, but at the moment I've certainly had to cancel tonights hotel.

Was genuinely looking forward to this too! If I don't get up to you tomorrow then I'll definitely be up for it another time.

 

[darthbob1425]

At the moment it only looked like Tim and Guddler were coming for a drink on Friday - both are unable to come now. So I still intend to have open house on Saturday for anyone who want to come (PM me for address details - I'm in Pelsall). If anyone else still wants to meet up tonight let me know or otherwise I'll have a nice meal out with the er wife

 

[trm]

Hi all,

Just to let you know I pinged Rob earlier today letting him know I've had flu this week and still have, as well as some unpleasant additions I was hoping it might have f**ked off by this morning but that's not the case.

I realise I was bringing a big chunk of the test gear to the meet, so I'm really sorry for the inconvenience this has caused

.

If some of the nastier aspects piss off by tomorrow (I'm talking about gut related stuff, for you sickos) and my voice is anywhere near back then I'll do my best to get over there and help out in any way I can.

Sorry all for the short notice, but I was hoping that it'd be a 3-day thing or so and I'd be better towards the end of the week and it wouldn't be an issue

Have a great time, I hope it goes well and I'll come up with something to make amends for missing this when I'm not so ropey.

 

[darthbob1425]

If we don't have kit for certain test may I suggest filing the gaps with beer???

 

[darthbob1425]

It all went a bit foobar this weekend. We all seem to have had some problems to deal with (myself included this afternoon).

Anyway I am too idle to lug my two jamma cabs back into the garage so shall we try again sometime in April. I'll check my shifts on Monday and pop up some dates.

As posted to Andy this time I'll be looking for non-refundable deposits and absence will only be approved via sick note or letter from ya mum

Rob