Archived SLCC Mtg Notes
Presented here are meeting notes from Feb 2, 2010 through 2017.
Feb 2, 2010 - We had a great time, talking about the iPad, 3gb hard drives, iTunes, Leo Laporte, Acer Notebooks, Genealogy and of course Atari. In attendance were Robbie, Stan, Don H, Don S and for the first time in a long time, Bill G. Door prizes were a T-shirt that read "I won't fix your computer" and the above bumper sticker, proudly adorning Bill G's bumper.
March 2, 2010 - We were in a different room, without an Internet connection, so we spent most of the time chatting and working on an old 8mm film viewer Robbie owned. Don got it working by the end of the meeting. So now Robbie can look at the old movies of his kids before he has them transferred to DVD. Robbie brought a Palm Vx to give away, but nobody was interested. All Don could say was, "Can it run Train Z?"!
July, 2010 - We assembled, the six of us, and talked about taking pictures of slides and how the iPad should be used. Next month we plan to bring an Atari 800.
August, 2010 - One person got there late, but everyone else showed up. No Atari 800, but plenty of giveaways.
September 7, 2010 - We had a new member attend, named Tom, who saw the Computer Club announcement in the Library lobby before the meeting. Photos were taken & displayed on the iPad. A DUKE NUKEM mouse pad was the first item claimed in the multi-prize door prize drawing, even though there were THREE, 4 gb thumb drives available, and subsequently chosen. Parking lot was VERY filled up this month as the auditorium next door to our room was filled a Neighborhood Watch presentation. Jim brought his hopped-up laptop with back-lit keyboard and 128 gb solid state drive. What a great computer. Discussed bringing a Wireless access point (WAP) next month, so everyone can share the internet connection. A great HP Color Deskjet printer Robbie brought, went unclaimed, partly because a CD Label slide was missing and the ink cartridge needed replacing. Too bad!
October 2010 - NO MEETING, people will be away on vacations and cruises and such.
November 2, 2010 - Vacation adventures were chronicled. Good times were had by all.
January 4, 2011 - Kind of a light turnout, the meeting now runs from 7-8pm.
February 1, 2011- Lots of giveaways including various USB cables and a wireless mouse.
March & April, 2011 - No notes.
May 3, 2011 - Everyone turned up, all 6 of us. Bill George got REAL lucky and won a $25 Best Buy certificate and a Star Wars game.
June 7, 2011 - Only four tonight, I think one got stuck on the freeway and the other is on vacation. July should be a giveaway extravaganza.
July 5,2011 - Five attendees including Tom. Robbie brought a "ton" of stuff including an HP scanner. Everyone took home "stuff". Not sure what has happened to Don.
August 2, 2011 - Robbie brought an Atari 800 but there were problems with the antenna. Nice give-aways. Good attendance.
December 6, 2011 - Robbie again brought the Atari 800 and it worked! OMG playing Missile command, typing in programs that print out "Hello World". What a great Christmas present to our group. Only problem was the fact that Robbie took the unit home with him. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everybody.
July 3, 2012 - We had a great meeting. Great giveaway, an 8gb flash drive Wow!
August 7, 2012 - Another nice meeting from 7-8pm at the Estudillo St. San Leandro City Library. Discussed the landing of Mars rover, Curiosity. Don wondered about rumors that Curiosity landed on a cat, resulting in the phrase, "Curiosity killed the cat". Everybody laughed. Robbie, Jim, Stanley, Bill and Don attended.
September 4, 2012 - Back to school meeting.
October-November, 2012 - Quiet meetings
February 5, 2013 - 9 boxes of Atari 800/1200 equipment were donated. The only person willing to take ownership was a very happy Bill George.
June, 2013 - Unfortunately all the Atari equipment had to be returned as there was a misunderstanding of the pricing.
August, 2013 - We had nearly a full house. The drawing winner, Don, took home a 32gb thumb drive.
November, 2013 - We got together and wondered why some people didn't confirm that they were attending. After a drawing and significant use of wifi, a great time was had by all. We hope Jim was having a good vacation.
December, 2013 - Robbie won the big door prize, a Samsung 7" Tablet.
May, 2014 - Bill won a 16gb USB3 drive
June, 2014 - Had an Atari setup at meeting courtesy of Bob W. It used a PC laptop as a disk drive with a cool interface board. We were told about an Atari Fest on June 14, 2014. There may be more than one venue. Read about it here.
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/atariparty/2014/.
July, 2014 -Mtg cancelled by library. Room committed to another group.
Sept, 2014 - Lots of good discussion. Bill G. won the LCD headlamp Jan, 2015 - Bob W. brought his Atari setup and showed off just-released Atari 8-bit sofware, "Dungeon Hunt". See it in actual use on an Atari 8 bit system in 2015. Door prize won by Bill G. was many printer paper products brought by Jim M
Feb-Mar 2015 - Met 2 times, one where Bob W brought Atari hardware & software. Most members attended. door prizes continue.
April 2015 - Kind of a quiet meeting. Bob W brought his Atari equip & we socialized.
May 2015 - Bob brought an Atari with a hard drive attachment. We discussed the 70th anniv of the end of WW2. Jim won the door prize, and external DVD drive. Discussed password managers (Keeppass and Lastpass.
June 2015 - The gang assembled and Robbie won the monthly of DVDs and sleeves. Vacations and repaired computers were discussed as well as an internet cable that seemed not to work. An announcement that the meeting might be cancelled, was premature.
August 2015 - Don won the prize, a 160gb 2 1/2" drive. Somebody forgot to bring the Atari computer but brought the accessories
September 2015 - Bob won a 32 gb thumb drive in the door prize. A new Atari enthusiast (Kevin) joined us this evening. Took a new sefie minus the photographer. Don S continues to insist that Train-Z is the best thing since, well... you know.
October 2015 - Kevin attended for the 2nd month, and appears to be a regular. We had a "Big" door prize for a mouse shaped like an Astin Martin. Bob assembled his Atari 1200. Robbie connected to the internet with his phone. And.... we created a Facebook page.
November 2015 - Bob W. brought an Atari 815 dual-double density floppy drive for everyone to admire. I/O is quite fast. These were only released to developers and only a handful produced. Bill, on a 12 to one shot, won a 32 gb USB 3 flash drive.
December 2015 - New member Howard attended, Kevin won the door prize (a generous gift certificate), several played Bob's Threshold game (on an Atari 800), determined that an Atari 800 needed a keyboard cleaning, assessed a nice looking Atari 130XE (it worked well) and discussed possible future meeting topics.
January 2016 - Rob McMullen from the Player/Missile Podcast attended (photos on Facebook page). Bob took a look at Rob's 1200XL that needed some work. Robbie told us about his Alaskan vacation. Bill showed a $40 "Atari Flashback 6" device with 100 games found at Bed Bath and Beyond. Jim won the power strip door prize. More detail and a photo on FB.
February 2016 - Due to vacations, only Robbie and Jim attended. Next month looks much better.
March 2016 - Much better turnout This month. Rob, Kevin, Robbie, Bob, Jim and Bill attended. Jim won the door prize, a 2800 ma portable USB power source. Rob showed his game programming skills working on an 8 bit Atari game with a Python-powered assembler editor. An 810 floppy drive was operated on and a very rare Atari PS3000 (at least I think that's what it was with an Atari Logo on it) VGA Monitor-Floppy Drive Drive combo was examined. Upcoming SF Bay Area Atari events were discussed and noted on our FaceBook Page. Couple 1991 era SLCC newsletters were reviewed. Possibility they might be provided (scanned) for the web site.
April 2016 - Modest attendance, Robbie, Kevin, Bill and Jim, for the 3rd time in four months, winning the door prize of a two usb car hub (plugs into a cigarette lighter). Tonight was nostalgia night with TRS-80 Model IV making an appearance. Tried to load an educational program from the tape-based data device, without success. Talked about going to the Atari Party July 30, 2016 in Davis and the Vintage Computer Show West at the computer Museum in Mountain View, scheduled for Sat.-Sun. August 6-7. Details on our Facebook Page.
May 2016 - Even more modest attendance than last month. It was reported that Jim, Kevin and Bob attended.
June 2016 - Kevin, Bob and Bill attended. Kevin brought a bag of giveaways for the raffle.
July 2016 - Kevin, Robbie, Jim and Bill attended. We discussed the Atari Party 2016 (July 30, 2016) and Vintage Computer Show West (Aug 6-7, 2016). Robbie brought his Compaq Portable computer & we tried to see why the hard drive couldn't be accessed. Jim won the door prize.
September, 2016 - Kevin, Jim and Bill attended. We discussed future agendas. One for next month will be getting an Atari 800 simulator running on Windows. Looks like Altirra (v2.70) is the simulator to use, and it's found at http://virtualdub.org/altirra.html. It's regularly updated and well supported. Bring your laptops with Altimira installed and let's see if we can solve any problems people have with it. Check out other 8-bit emulators on our Projects page. Several of us attended the Vintage Computer Show West, but there weren't any Atari systems displayed.
October, 2016 - Kevin, Bob W., Jim, Robbie & Bill attended. Bob W. demoed his Atari2go device (see photo on our Facebook Page). Kevin and Bill showed how to install and use the Altirra 2.80, Atari 8 Bit emulator on PC Laptops. Next month we will demo several Atari game favorites, using Altirra, which works quite well.
November, 2016 - Kevin, Bob W., Robbie & female visitor (she won the logitech speaker door prize) attended. They discussed the Altirra Atari 8 bit emulator & several games, trying Pitfall, Choplifter and Pac-Man. We continue getting up to speed on Altirra. More Altirra, next month. Thank you, attendees and Happy Thanksgiving.
December, 2016 - Nice turnout, Kevin, Bob W, Robbie, Jim, Tom. Bob brought two boxes of SLCC Newsletters from 1985 to the middle 90s. Kevin hopes to scan them... a big job! Bob W. informed that there is another Vintage Computer Show West planned in 2017. Details to come. Photos from the mtg. on our Facebook page. Jim won our 3 TB USB door prize. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone, from SLCC!
January, 2017 - Library closed for maintenance (see library web site http://www.sanleandro.org/depts/library/) from Dec 19, 2016-Jan 22, 2017. So we'll skip January's meeting. Everyone's being phoned and e-mailed. See you all next month.
February, 2017 - Robbie heard from Library that there was no power, so he advised the group and we will reconvene, same time, same place next month.
March, 2017 - Scanned copies of 1984 through 2000 SLCC newsletters were brought by Kevin. Some missing hard-copy issues and disks of the month were brought in for copying and re-distribution next month. About half of the 1984-1990 newsletters were OCR'ed (searchable PDFs) so we're trying to OCR the rest of them for next month.
April, 2017 - Kevin, Robbie, Jim and Bill attended and received the balance of scanned SLCC Newsletters. Included is the 1985, 70-page "Special Edition" Newsletter.
May, 2017 - Bob, Kevin, Robbie, Chris, Kyle (Chris' son) and Bill attended. Discussed our two booths at the upcoming Vintage Computer Festival West, Aug 5-6, 2017. We're a little burned out after dealing with all the OCR'ed SLCC newsletters, but should be back to normal next month. Robbie brought a couple items (see Facebook page) including an Atari ST.
June, 2017 - Kevin, Jim, Robbie and Bill attended. Kevin provided a boatload of scanned Atari User Group Newsletters, almost 1,000 of them. A third of them, newsletters exchanged with us by other groups, have been uploaded to the Internet Archive (http://archive.org) as a test. Kevin is uploading as "Kevin Lund with SLCC". Here is a link.... Kevin's recent uploads.
August, 2017 - Kevin, Bob, Robbie, Jim, Bill and for his first time, Edison attended. He has a background from college days, programming in 6502 Assembler. We discussed details of the VCF West coming up this weekend, August 5-6. We will have a two table booth at Booth GX3 displaying 8 and 16 bit computers. This is being organized by Kevin Lund and Bob Woolley. Kevin recently uploaded SLCC Journal newsletters from 1984 to 2000 and a number of newsletters from our "Newsletter Exchange Program", to the Internet Archive. Our Newsletter Archive page might make sorting through all the newsletters, a little bit easier.
August 5-6, 2017 SLCC Booth at the Vintage Computer Festival, West (VCFW) - Kevin, Bob, Robbie and Bill worked booth GX3 and generated a lot of Atari and SLCC enthusiasm at the 2017 VCFW in Mountain View, California, on the 2nd floor of the Computer History Museum. Kevin brought 16 bit working Atari computers and Bob brought working 8 bit Atari machines, all arranged in our three table booth. View photos taken at the VCFW by Kevin, Robbie and Bill. This is the closest thing we've had to a Computer Faire in a long time! Thank you so much, Kevin Lund for organizing this.
September, 2017 - Kevin, Robbie, Edison, Bill and new member Garrett in attendance. Kevin and Garrett brought several items for show-and-tell. Kevin brought a troubled Atari floppy drive and an Atari 1200 (I think, could have been an 800XL). Garrett had several Atari printed circuit boards, some experimental some pre-production... also an SIO to serial box. More to come, next month. Discussion about the VCFW dinner Kevin attended after the Aug. 5th session with Atari luminaries. At the 2016 VCFW, no Atari presence, this year we arrived & our booth earned two 1st place ribbons.
October, 2017 - Kevin, Robbie, Edison and Bill attended. Edison brought a Mac-Mini with "Atari800Mac" installed. Alas we didn't have the right monitor & couldn't show it. Next month for sure. Kevin won a power strip with USB connection.
November, 2017 - Bob, Robbie, Edison, Kevin, Jim in attendance. Edison showed his Basic programming on the "Atari800Mac" emulator using assembly language routines.
December, 2017 - Bob, Robbie, Phil, Kevin, Jim and Bill were in attendance. Our door prize was a Lenovo Thinkpad, won by Jim. It's been a great year with our Vintage Computer Festival West booth in August and our massive upload of past newsletters to the Internet Archive. The booth and newsletter upload would not have been possible except for Kevin's efforts. Thank you so much, Kevin! It will be hard to top, but next year, we will try. Happy Holidays everyone!