PSCUG meeting

In which a monitor breathes its last, comics are bought, and general geekery is had.

Had a pretty good Commodore club meeting at Destiny City Comics. I brought my SX-64 (a 23 pound luggable computer) and Commodore 128-D. Both have detached keyboards, sort of an interesting feature. I fired up the 128-D yesterday morning and it worked just fine; but after I got it set up at the shop, the monitor wouldn't work, except for the power light. I checked all the connections, and it output video using Steve's video cable and monitor. So maybe the trip over jostled something loose. Also was having trouble getting decent sound output from my stereo SID cartridge. It sounded very static-y, connected to external powered speakers. (The perils of 30 year old hardware, I guess.) I fell back to listening to some JCH player music, I was pleased that a disk I had downloaded years ago from a BBS read fine in the SX. When I tried archiving it on a 1571 drive a while back, the drive had trouble reading it, which really surprised me. If I can read it on the SX, I'll dump it to my hard drive.

Gordon came and brought his PET 4032.

Some folks did wander over to look at our setups, and a lady from Olympia came up with her ailing 1541 disk drive - it continually spins and doesn't settle down to its normal ready state. Steve and Gordon worked on looking at it, finding Ray Carlsen's repair instructions. I live right around the corner so I offered to loan her a working 1541. We talked about repair options for hers.

Gordon had to head off, so Steve and I milled around for a while, talking to Mike. I bought a Sam and Max comic book for a buck. Then we packed up and headed off for the nearby Hub to grab some pizza and a pint. Then we felt like dessert, so headed to a nearby A&W, only to find out their ice cream machine was down. A few doors down was a Baskin Robbins, so we had dessert.

All in all, a successful day, I suppose, despite technical problems! Thanks for your hospitality, Mike. :)

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