It was another busy meeting this month at the SAUG headquarters, with a good variety of retro goodies on show.
First up, Stu brought along a recently acquired SX-64 in need of a little bit of TLC, namely a new Kernal ROM, a floppy service and some work to the CRT. While not everything was completed on the day, solid progress was made.
Undoubtedly the highlight of the day was Steve’s famous robot guitar. The product of over two years of work, this marvelous device consists of a complex array of servos used to press and pluck the strings, wired through an Arduino and a custom isolator circuit back to the trusty old Commodore 64 which controls the whole thing from custom software which Steve wrote from scratch in assembly language. The software is able to read and write the score files from disk, display them on screen and then play them on the guitar at your chosen tempo, and even features mouse control! We were treated to various robotic renditions including Jingle Bells and of course Stairway to Heaven.
Chris brought along a few interesting items for show and tell, most notably a shiny new Pi1541, a slick 3D-printed EasyFlash cartridge and some very nicely made replica serial number stickers for your Commodore equipment. They look every bit as good as the originals.
Mike brought along a very handsome C64 Reloaded in transparent case with rainbow keycaps, shown here in its native entirely disassembled state.
Not to be outdone, Jordan once again brought along some interesting and quirky devices from IBM Japan’s back-catalogue, including a pre-pentium era desktop in Japan-spec double beige, and his latest 486 build Wolfendoom machine.
Alas, your humble scribe did not bring anything for show and tell this time, but then, the next project is only ever lurking just around the corner..
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