Atari Invasion 2k20

[SenorRossie]

Season greetings!

 

The preparations for the first lustrum edition of our annual 'Atari Invasion' are in full swing: #5 is alive!

 

The take-over of the HCC Commodore Club meeting has 'Systems with guides' as working title and as details are still under wraps -in fact they are so secret we do not even know them yet- all we know is that each invader will present his/her system of choice to the crowd. With new additions to the crew, we seem to have all bases covered.

 

As every year, the museum rack and display cabinet will be present, filled with new/different content. The info-beamer presentation is being updated with new code and content. Support has been added for dynamic updates so we can add and update content during the invasion. Hopefully the cameras for the live stream and time-lapse will stay put during this event, we ordered some new stands to ensure they do. There will be games, demonstrations and lots of time for socializing. Want to join in on the fun as part of the crew, let us known. If you just want to take a look around, we will be in 'het Trefpunt' all day on February 15 2020. Doors open at 10.00 and close at 16.00.

 

Hope to see you in Maarssen!

The Atari Invasion team

 

Edited December 27, 2019 by SenorRossie
Updated image

[Lamer Deluxe tm]

I'll be there showing some Lynx stuff. Really enjoyed this event last year.

[F#READY]

Yes! Have to be there of course

[SenorRossie]

Good morning (local time),
 

<propaganda>

The fifth edition of our commodore club invasion was a huge success, we met no resistance from the members present.

</propaganda>

 

We started the invasion early saturday morning when three invaders with cars full of equipment and decorations arrived at 'het Trefpunt' in Maarssen, others were to arrive later for varying reasons. Buildup started shortly after, but it took quite the effort to get everything setup and ready, it was around noon that everything was up and running. In the meantime people were already enjoying some of the things that we brought.

 

The oldest system had the most fans, as people kept coming back to the 'stunt cycle' we brought. Its neighbor, the 2600 was fitted with an Harmony cart and AtariVox+. Our 5200 (2 port edition) had been modded with a Sophia RGB, but unfortunately the B&O TV could not cope with the signal, so it had to share the LG screen with the 7800 we brought. We had some people play the games we put on the AtariMax SD cart and as expected, some liked the 5200 controller while others hated it, we also showed our invaders and attendees the 5200 Galaga WiP and saw some jaws drop. On the 7800 we played a few rounds of Rikki & Vikki and someone gave Baby Pac-Man a go and found it really hard. The 7800 was also used to demonstrate the 2600 homebrews Galagon and Scramble we bought from the AA store.

 

In our A8 corner, mr. Atari was live coding a new driver for his litedos and F#Ready was showing demo releases from 2019 on his XL with Turbo Freezer. The rack was transformed into an atari eXperience Location, with all three released models running games and demos on a shared screen. Lamer Deluxe brought and borrowed a big amount of Lynxes for which we had bought a couple of agacarts. Visitors and fellow invaders enjoyed head to head competing over the ComLynx connection. Robert brought a heavily modified 520ST, running games and demos of the builtin IDE controller with Compact Flash adapter was lightning fast. Not entirely Atari were the two modern solutions, a raspberry pi running Lakka and the MiSTer that ran several Atari cores.

You can find pictures of this and past events in our FlickR albums. A few shots of our corner of the meeting space:

 

 

 

 

[Lamer Deluxe tm]

I really enjoyed the event. Reading the recap I notice I missed some of the things on display (Scramble is one of my favorite games), there was just so much to see.

 

Right before travelling to the event I was able to fix my VGA cable for my McWill modded Lynx II, it has an edge connector where the brightness wheel was, so no case modifications. The VGA output turned out to work very well.

 

My Lynx I has an overclocking switch, but only to 20Mhz, still need to get a 24Mhz crystal for it. My original Lynx II is autographed by RJ Mical.

 

I showed some demos from Silly Venture using the excellent AGA carts and we played some four player Slime World.

 

Also brought my Portfolio, which has both a parallel and serial interface module and a 64KB (!) memory card. Sadly I didn't succeed in transferring any applications to it.

 

As a small stunt some of us invaded the Commodore club wearing alien masks and kidnapped their leader, while shouting 'Atari!'. We returned him converted to an Alien and were now shouting 'Atari' as well as 'Commodore', 'Amiga', 'MSX' and 'Spectrum' ?

Edited February 16, 2020 by Lamer Deluxe tm