PDXCUG Meeting Highlights

Vol. 2, No. 2 - February 10, 2011 - Meeting Highlights

02.10.2011 by Goog

PDXCUG Commodore Club Meeting LIVE Online

With the aid of CommodoreServer's recently-launched gaming service and Agent Friday's Group Zork program, the Portland Commodore Users Group was able to hold an online chat session with members from around the globe, making this Commodore club meeting completely virtual to anyone who wanted to attend. Here's a small section of the online chat that was going on during the meeting.

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VIC-Switch

Having the VIC-Switch is very handy at a Commodore meeting. I only had to bring one disk drive this time.

The VIC-Switch allows up to eight Commodore computers to connect to a single disk drive. The VIC-Switch keeps track of who is currently using the device and prevents access to all other computers who might be requesting it at the same time. Once the first computer is done using it, the VIC-Switch will then give access to the next computer.

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Tinker Time at PDXCUG

Members enjoyed the time to bring in all of their Commodore projects to work on. It seems that just about everyone had something to do or look at. A lot of projects were started but not all were completed. But that's okay - we have plenty more meetings ahead to finish up all those neglected projects.

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Installing a Compact Flash Drive on an Amiga 600 Computer

Goog was going to modify his A600 with a Compact Flash drive, but there were just too many projects going on. Gencom64 brough his to the meeting to test out the CF card, but we never even got as far as opening them up.

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Fixing a Botched SX-64 Repair

Gencom64 reports that he recently brought his Commodore SX-64 to someone in the area who said he could fix it. However, it came back in worse shape than when he dropped it off. After investigation, it appears that the guy who offered to fix it took some of the good parts that were in there (such as the SID chip and disk drive mechanism) and replaced them with bad or damaged parts. To make matters worse, it was sabotaged with stripped screws but we were still able to get into it to find the horrifying truths.

Good thing we have some talented people in our group who were able to help out.

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Commodore MAX Machine Video Mod

Goog brought his Commodore MAX Machine to tinker with. In order to see video, a wire must be soldered onto the bottom of the board where the video processing is done. This is because there is no composite video output on a MAX Machine - the only way to see video is to use the RF connection, but since this computer was released in Japan, the frequency is tuned for televisions in that country. Those frequencies are differnet than ours so they will not work on standard televisions here in the U.S.

After the connections were made and hooked up to a 1702 monitor, we were only able to see a quick flicker when the power switch was turned on. Still no video, but we're getting closer. We suspect a faulty VIC chip, but none were on-hand.

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