Adelaide Retro Computing Group July 2016

Sorry for the delay in posting the photos from this month's Adelaide Retro Computing Group meeting, held on July 8th. I already posted the photos to our Facebook page, But here is my meeting report with photos now!

This meeting was a free for all retro system meeting, with a Star Wars game theme.

I decided to bring along my Amiga 600, which has been extensively upgraded, covered on this blog in detail every step of the way. Here is the internals which I had on display for a while during the evening:

For most of the night though it was running Stars Wars games:

I had both Return of The Jedi and Empire Strikes Back running on the Amiga 600 - it was actually my first time to play them in all these years of Amiga ownership!

We had a lot of different Retro systems on display during the night, thanks to the efforts of lots of attendees who brought in interesting systems to play with.

Here is an Atari Jaguar playing Empire Strikes Back as well:

Llamatron 2084 and Xenon 2 also got a run on the Atari Jaguar!

This is an IBM PC compatible machine from pre-2000:

Here is a rare treat - a working Dick Smith System 80 computer:

Here you can see the 5.25 drive internals exposed - love that it is titles as a "Mini disk drive":

I had a go playing Eliminator on this system - mastering the strange cursor key layout on the keyboard was a challenge - better to let the owner show how it's done!

We also had a for sale table running for this meeting (for the first time), and lots of interesting stuff to buy on the night - I certainly picked up a few items:

Here is a Dreamcast on display, with another Star Wars game:

This Dreamcast is rather special. It has no GDROM drive in it - Just a USB stick for loading Dreamcast GDROM images!

When the lid is opened, it still returns to the Dreamcast boot menu to choose another game - very neat!

Paul also brought in his Amstrad CPC464:

Here is Paul taking the Amstrad through it's paces with a game or two:

A wonderful thing to see was this rare Vectrex game console. I used to have one of these until about 10 years ago when it failed. Great system and a lot of fun to play:

Here is some of the overlay game sheets you put in front of the vector drawn black and white screen to colourise the games:

I couldn't resist another go at the Vectrex for the first time in years - here is me having a go!

Of course I was not the only way intrigued to try out the Vectrex:

Nintendo 64 was setup on the main projector showing off yet another Star Wars game - Shadows of the Empire!

The meeting was well attended again, which was great to see!

Interestingly we also had an Atari XE Game System video output into a Sega Game Gear using it's TV tuner attachment!

Here was another Dreamcast on display, this time with Pod Racer running on it.

An iBook G3 and Toshiba laptop were also on display, running Star Wars games too of course!

A curious item was this Epson portable computer with built in tape drive and printer that Theo brought in:

As we did at the last meeting, there was a two player retro system competition with a prize of a Raspberry Pi running Emulation Station (Retro Pi), which I donated.

The retro system chosen was the Dreamcast, and the game was 2 player Pod Racer - had to be Star Wars game of course for this meeting:

It was fierce competition with lots of people keen to have a go:

Of course there can be only one winner, and here is the winner getting his Raspberry Pi prize from me at the end of the evening:

It was another great meeting and I again want to thank everyone who brought in many different and varied Retro systems to our meeting.

I can't wait for the next one!