World of Commodore 2014

The World of Commodore 2014 show was held in Toronto on December 6, 2014, and was a big success. It's put on by the Toronto PET Users Group, the longest continually operating Commodore users group in the world. There were more of the older Commodore machines than usual, which was a real treat. I gave a presentation on the Abacus Super Pascal compiler and got some interesting questions from the audience. Click the pictures to make them more bigger!

Show attendees. There was a steady stream of people coming in all day, and I had to come back to some exhibits several times to get a chance to see them.

Another shot of the crowd. The TPUG banner was out with its colours flying!

This year, TPUG sold shirts and bags. Definitely must-have items for the collection.

The presentation schedule.

Friday night dinner at East Side Mario's. From left, clockwise: John (CRT/Censor), Joey (JPPBM), Ella, Leif (Schema), Chiron, Andreas.

Can their famous 16-layer lasagna compete with Aurelio's? The jury is out!

John Hammarberg (CRT/Censor) brought a PAL machine and showed the latest European demos. I spent some time hypnotized by "We Are All Connected" and "Comaland".

An Amiga looking for a new home gets tested. There was some head-shaking over this particular machine, although others fared better.

Leif had something new to tell us about his motion-sensing glove... a Kickstarter, which will start up in January 2015. Stay tuned!

Leif also showed an Arduino project... is your LCD screen this small?

Steve Gray showed his Colour PET, which caused some double-takes...

...as did this bitmapped PET. The picture took about 20 minutes to draw, but it was written in BASIC. Still!

But Steve's real prize is his recently-restored "BX720D" machine, discussed recently on the cbm-hackers mailing list.

Here's the inside of this never-released machine.

Here's the legendary SuperPET, shown by Mike Naberezny.

And here it is running OS-9.

But wait... there's more! Here's the same machine running CP/M...

...from a SoftBox! Bet you've never seen that!

Another PET, belonging to Jeff Brown.

Dr Brown performs PET therapy.

Chiron Bramberger showing the same Amiga he used as a child. It has new clothes now.

Chiron later played some music, with a PET (using PETSynth), a Commodore 64 (using Cynthcart), and an Amiga (using Dynamic Drums).

Josh Bensadon raised some eyebrows with a non-Commodore exhibit that was nonetheless one of the most popular at the show. Ever see a fully-restored Altair?

...with a paper tape reader? Josh read in 4K Basic from the tape and demonstrated it running (link to video).