Meetup #26 – 2022-03-26

Our 26th meetup got off to a slow start, as Sean brought accessories and games for an X68000 that didn’t make it, and a PC-8801 believed not to display to any of our available devices using any of our available connectors. Bad timing, we had just removed the MSX from the locker the month before. So he and Edoardo just hung out for a while, chatting. Justin and Sven showed up a bit later, Sven with his Z-80 computer project, but without the means necessary to complete it.

Then Sean had a bright idea – “just try the PC-8801 anyway.” It actually displayed on a VGA monitor available at the venue. Initially tested at 24kHz, it started out looking pretty awful, but Sven played with some advanced monitor settings and got it looking acceptable. But then we tried it at 15kHz and after the settings treatment, it ended up looking really good! Relics was the only game we had, but it held our attention for quite a while.

Michelle showed up a bit later with her faulty NES. Edoardo narrowed the problem down to a short pretty quickly and managed to get it running stably. And it was good to have some extra games to play, even if photographic evidence of it didn’t surface.

Suddenly, an unexpected visitor dropped by. It was new member Andy, who had contacted Sean through this website and got enough information to attend the meetup. All these writeups finally served a purpose! He brought in his recently purchased X1 to diagnose and ordered some parts to hopefully get it up and running again.