Meet-Up Galleries – Tokyo Retro Computer Users

Meetup #14 – 2021-03-20

We started our 14th meetup with Sean’s Sharp MZ-1500. Its most outstanding feature is the QuickDisk, a format that fell by the wayside as the battle for supremacy was eventually won by 3.5″ floppy disks. The MZ-1500 has some excellent renditions of arcade classics, like Pac-Man and Dig Dug.

There was some 8-bit love in the forms of Curt’s Atari 800XL and Greg’s Commodore 64 G. The 800XL came equipped with the Ultimate 1MB, a modern-day memory expansion and OS management device. The Commodore 64 G was put to good gaming use, including playing some classics and some modern developments.

Edoardo couldn’t stand watching us eat convenience store food, so he whipped up some homemade Italian food and brought it in from home, and Christian supplied us with a bottle of wine and some German beer for all to enjoy. It was quite a feast, thanks for that, guys!

After a brief lapse last meetup, more technical pursuits were resumed, including Justin attaching a keyboard cable and Edoardo soldering a new battery into a PC-8201, and trying to pin down the sordid details of the mod performed on Michelle’s Famicom.

Meetup #13 – 2021-02-06

Back for another meetup, we took a slightly different course this time around. By far and large, it was a gaming day. The only technical thing anyone did was the upgrade on Sven’s Amiga 500. which now has a 68030 processor and an unimaginable 64MB of RAM. Looks slick, though!

Besides that, we spent some time on Sean’s Sanyo PHC-30N MSX machine, playing Bokosuka Wars, Highway Star, and an unexpectedly large amount of Antarctic Adventure!

And we played on Greg’s MiSTer, including some arcade classics like Metal Slug and Kung Fu, and one of the Amiga’s legendary titles, Defender of the Crown.

We were down a couple of members this month and there wasn’t much technical analysis going on, so we started a big later than usual and left a bit earlier than usual, but a good time was still had by those who could make it!

Meetup #12 – 2021-01-09

Another productive meeting was had by Tokyo Retro Computer Users to kick off the new year.
– Edoardo repaired Sean’s finnicky (and temporary) PC-8201. A leaky battery and a couple of bad caps were the culprits but it’s well on the way to recovery.
– Sven diagnosed the bejeezus out of his Pi-1541, with the help of Curt, Justin, and Edoardo. Mysteries remain surrounding its behavior but Sven will continue fighting.
– Edoardo brought in his prototype digital to analog RGB converter card, and for a prototype card, it sure looked crisp and clean as it converted Curt’s JR-200 to display on Sean’s PVM.

While not busy with more productive tasks, some of us took turns with Sean’s SC-3000, which he brought along with cartridges for BASIC, Space Invaders, Hustle Chumy, and Shinnyushain Tohru (AKA Mikie in the western world).