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As soon as the doors opened at 10:00, there was a line going down into the
basement of Alderwood United Church, where the expo was held...
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...and we knew we were welcome when we saw this! I was told it came from
Commodore's headquarters back in the day.
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Upstairs, there was a room dedicated to the memory of Jim Butterfield, with
some mementos and a DVD player showing footage of his appearances on TV and at
Commodore expos. There was also a book for people to sign, which was given to
Jim's widow, Vicky, who attended the expo.
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Karl Hildon, who edited the Transactor magazine, told us some great stories
about Jim. He also introduced Vicky, who shared her own fond memories.
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Jim's Commodore 128 was donated to
the Personal Computer Museum (held in
this picture by the museum's curator, Syd Bolton)...
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...as was his slide rule (shown with one of Jim's business cards).
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Brian Lyons showed the VIC-20 megacart (which contains more games than you
probably ever knew were released for that machine). On reset, it shows a menu
system with games arranged by category.
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The VIC-20 experts at the show. Left to right: Leif (Schema), Golan, Jason,
François (Eslapion), Paul, Robin (Macbeth/PSW).
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An interesting variation on the multicart is the BehrBonz cart, shown here by
Eslapion. It is simpler to make and contains a few less games.
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Here's a closeup of the board Eslapion demonstrated.
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LimeMack shows that the C64 emulator on his iPAQ can even run demos!
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He also had a copy of the debugger he's working on. Note the status register
display for each instruction and the color coding of mnemonics to show which
registers they affect.
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One of the more spectacular demos was by James Long and his brother, who
showed a novel MIDI setup involving a C64.
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Here it is in the exhibit hall, with their custom cross-development
environment on the screen.
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The C64's SID chip is used to play the MIDI notes, and some extra processing
was done as the signal passed through a PC.
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Curious onlookers try to figure out where all the cables are going. The MIDI
cartridge was one
of Fotios' boards.
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The C64's software was hard-coded for this specific instrument (note the
labels on the sliders and knobs).
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A special treat was this talk by Georg Feil, who wrote the Synth Sample demo
we all remember seeing. After all these years, Georg
has re-released it
with the editor he used to create it.
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Dr. Joe works to resuscitate a Commodore 128.
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Jim brought his Plus4, this time with a stylish matching monitor.
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Leif gives a talk about the various options for "real" networking on a C64
(standards are naturally a problem).
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Greg, current TPUG president, conducts the raffle. Prizes included a 1750
clone and an Aprospand cartridge port expander.
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In the evening, we went to dinner at The Grille, where our tables stretched
all across the dining room. FireflyST smiles for the camera.
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Jason Compton and Vicky Butterfield contemplate the conundrum of the
inconsistent cheesecakes.
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The after-party, back at the hotel during a snowstorm. Occasionally, someone
was sent upstairs to see if the real world was still there. I left at about
03:30.
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Eric and Eslapion study the inner secrets of a third-party Commodore
device that is unfortunately no longer available except to the most dedicated
collectors.
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