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Club
Trek
Shiuming Lai
shows how not to save £5
At the end of
September, it was time for another Cheshunt
Computer Club meeting. For a change, I had the
day off work, and so did Rob Perry of Gamebase
ST (Rob should be familiar to visitors of JagFest
UK 2004 and CGEUK 2004). Rob's got back into
Atari in a big way, having taken a break to
pursue a successful career in that branch of
computing owned by Bill Gates. It may put food
on the table but it definitely lacks soul, hence
his return to the spiritual home. Not only is
Rob involved heavily in the Gamebase ST project,
this time round, he's catching up with the Atari
8-bit range because in those days he was a Spectrum
user. If enough people write to us with requests, we may consider
starting a MySinclair magazine.
The obvious thing
to do was take Rob along to CCC, so, after my
morning's chores and a light lunch, I drove
over to East Dulwich in South East London to
meet Rob and lead the way to Cheshunt. We agreed
to meet at 15:00, thinking this was plenty of
time to reach the club - how utterly wrong
we were to be! For the uninitiated, London has
what is known as the Congestion Charge, a weekday,
business-hours penalty of £5 for driving
through the city centre, enforced by a perimeter
network of computer-controlled cameras. All
installed at a cost that could be better
spent on improving the road network in the first
place, but I digress...
Neither of us
wanted to give £5 to a seemingly unworthy cause,
but neither of us knew of a good route that
just darts around the border of the zone. Central
London is a nightmare of daft one-way systems,
massive congestion and diversions, you've got
to have passed The Knowledge, as taken by London's
black cabbies, to be confident of getting
anywhere in a reasonable time.
"No problem,
we'll just go back to where I normally make
my journey, from Kingston though Richmond, up
to Kew and then join the A406 North Circular."
to which Rob agreed, because if there's anything
we both hate as much as the Congestion Charge,
it's the M25. However, I was already thinking
what a rubbish idea this was by the time we
crawled down to Wandsworth on the A3 from Oval!
We hit bottleneck upon bottleneck, most frustrating
when all you want is to get to your local Atari
club.
Several hours
later, and with inevitable lateness for CCC
becoming a real possibility, we were finally
on the A10. Amazingly, Rob managed to not lose
me, the poor fellow must have been wondering
what in the world I was doing, taking him on
a guided tour of South East England!
We floored it
on the home run, reaching Wolsey Hall in what
seemed like a blink of an eye, compared to the
rest of the journey. Aching backs and sore bottoms
aside, Rob pointed out that one of my tail lights
was very slightly dimmer than the other. Normally
I could count on Rob of all people to notice
this, but then he had been staring at them long
enough!
![[Photo: Rob and Steve having a chat]](images/ccc01.jpg)
More than
computers For a long time it's been clear
that the very name of Cheshunt Computer Club is something
of an understatement. From my early days at
the turn of the century, when the appearance
of busted up PCs battled for attention with
the Ataris, we now get together and discuss
or dissect all manner of techie fodder. Current
hot topics are temperamental Bluetooth devices,
Mark Branson's new digital video recorder (in
addition to his CT60 Falcon which seems to be
a never-ending project), monitor repair, and
this time I was looking up sport suspension
kits to complement my new wheels, with
the help of Steve Sweet. In fact it was one
night at Ches' we were loading
my stuff back into my car, when he looked disdainfully
at the large amount of wheel gap in the arches,
and planted the apparently nonsensical idea of
beefing up the rims. That got me thinking - and
spending a whole load of money, very naughty - and I've got
to say I've really enjoyed the results (gets
me to the club quicker at least, because I can
now pull higher Gs around corners). This
should be renamed to Cheshunt Technology Club,
for the diversity of activity it breeds.
![[Image: Atari Daily news]](images/ccc02.jpg)
Rob
brought a load of new toys, and after a brief
hello-long-time-no-see chat with Steve (still
in work uniform but didn't bring his hearse
in case he scared those in the ballroom
dancing class next door), we went over to Pizza
Hut to get some lard, we were really hungry
after all that driving. The service was painfully slow,
then we went back to stink the place out with
the smell of cheese and garlic. Trying to avoid
getting grease on the Ataris was difficult as
well.
Among
Rob's computers to be repaired and
upgraded was a Falcon (fitted with 32 MHz accelerator),
STE with amnesia
and a mint condition 130XE scored off eBay,
which literally arrived that day and was still
wrapped up in a cardboard box. We couldn't wait
to see this and Rob couldn't wait to rip it
open and upgrade it, to Warp+ OS, already! Unfortunately
he'd been having trouble with the wimpy 15 W
soldering iron he got from Maplin, it took him
several hours to make an S-Video cable for his
8-bits. Mrs Perry was sent on a mission to change
it for an upgraded iron with a bit more poke
but that didn't happen in time for the club.
Not that it would have mattered, in the chaos
that ensued.
I
brought some things as well, I wanted to finally
try out Jimmy Connors Tennis for the Lynx, which
I'd bought at JagFest UK several months ago.
Mark and Derryck brought their Lynxes but both
seemed to have problems with either the AC adapter
power socket or sound outputs (I also brought
some speakers with me to make a lot more noise
than the built-in tin can). Immediately I was
struck by the nice quality sampled speech and
fluid animation, a hallmark of Lynx games back
in the day. It's a more involved game than Activision
Tennis I got for the 2600 for sure, so I didn't
manage to get much into it that night, not helped
by the washed out appearance of these old Lynx
screens. The person who comes up with a solution
for new, high quality and high contrast
displays for the Lynx will make a small
fortune. This is the one thing that really bugs
me about enjoying Lynx games and the reason
I haven't bought one yet - it's so difficult
to see. After rummaging through Mark's Lynx
bag, I found a bunch of games he also hadn't
played, or even opened from their shrink-wrap
since buying them! He totally forgot he had
Zarlor Mercenary, a really cool shoot 'em up
in the style of Raiden, and I had a lot of fun
playing many games I hadn't touched in years.
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Rob's
130XE even has the original
packaging. Here everyone is
marvelling at the lack of dust
inside this machine, it really
is in that good condition.
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Peter
West looking busy.
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It's
a baby Competition Pro!
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Ian
Smith shows Pong who's boss.
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If
it ain't broke, it needs tweaking.
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Elsewhere
in the room Ian Smith and Peter West were tapping
away on their machines. Ian had Derryck's Philips
RGB monitor on his desk (or rather, I borrowed
it from Derryck before he sold it to Felice,
and plugged it into the nearest available power
outlet), so I could plug in my Atari 10-in-1
joystick TV game device, Ian proved to be pretty
good at Pong, although a joystick isn't the
ideal method of controlling the bat. At the
moment I'm looking to buy the new 10-in-1 which
continues the same theme but is modelled on
the Atari paddle controllers.
In the middle
of the room sat, very conspicuously, my
big box of anti-static bags, I couldn't give
them away. At recent meetings I've come with
boxes full of old computer junk I don't want,
dumped them on Steve, who'll then build space
ships and time machines out of it, but nobody
wanted anti-static bags (however, I'd sneakily
stashed some inside the big box for Steve which
I then sealed...). They're good for sticking
on windows to reflect heat back out. Anyone?
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Club
coffee rocks. I'll have an ice
mocha, Mark.
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Regulars
know of Paul Gibbs' passion
for stereoscopic graphics. One
day 3D glasses will look cool
as well.
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As usual
it all ended far too soon, especially for Rob,
partly because of our late arrival, and partly
because he had so many different projects that
needed attention. We still had great fun though.
After saying our goodbyes, I led Rob down the
A10, then at the junction with the A406 he carried
on into Shoreditch, near where he used to work
(and by this time the Congestion Charge no longer
applied) and I went my way. How much petrol
did we use that day? More than £5 for
sure.
shiuming@myatari.net
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