Since the SWRAP Expo was not held this year, Jason Compton took it upon himself to organize the Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention, which was held on September 30, 2006 in Lombard, Illinois. Despite minimal publicity, it was an excellent, well-attended expo, and everyone had lots of fun. (Please send corrections to cenbe at lyonlabs.org).
Dinner at Aurelio's on Friday night (once we all found it). |
The room was full almost as soon as it opened at 08:00, and things kept going right up until Jason made the tear-down announcement at 17:30. |
Three of the dealers: FWD Computing (far left), Centsible Software (left center), and JP Products by Mail (Joe Palumbo). Rob O'Hara was also there, selling his book about the BBS scene, Commodork. |
Here's something you don't see every day... shrink-wrapped JiffyDOS for sale at Joe Palumbo's table (and Excelerator disk drives!). |
Joe Palumbo, wearing his expo button collection. |
David Murray demonstrating the latest DTV hacks. |
Craig Ernster's presentation on copy protection, "Commie Wars". Fast Hack'Em can be seen on the CRT. |
Craig brought a disk house with just about every known disk copier, and some rare documentation as well (note the Datel burst nibbler on the table). |
Craig's 1541, with a track number and density zone readout; in the upper left of the drive's faceplate is a speed control. |
The inside of the 1541, showing its SuperCard RAM expansion. |
A modified SX-64. Left to right: CRT power switch, reset, JiffyDOS on/off, same for the drive, and two switches to control device number. Also from Craig's collection. |
A CMD prototype, again from Craig. It's sitting on a JiffyDOS box that CMD never used because it was too expensive. |
Robin Harbron with an extremely rare dual FD drive from CMD. Only a few are known to exist. |
Adrian Gonzalez working on a hardware hack. |
Jack Rubin's KIM, which was a prototype board from the earliest days used to familiarize programmers with the 6502. |
Expansion boards on Jack's KIM. |
An SX-64 endures one of several surgeries. |
Despite the very best medical attention, the patient remained comatose. |
Bo Zimmerman's SX-64, in much better health. |
A closeup of the MMC64 card in Bo's machine. An SD card extends to the right, a Retro Replay toward the camera, and an RR-Net ethernet board to the left. |
My machine. I found a few minutes to code... |
My machine again, playing stereo SIDs. |
A pack of vultures descends on the freebies. |
Dinner on Saturday night. According to one story, the guys with the GPS ended up fifteen miles away at the wrong restaurant, but I'm not talking :) |