I'm planning on going to the #VCF Vintage Computer Federation's Montreal convention (January 24, 25 2026), to see a couple of #NabuPC talks by Leo Binkowski and D.J. Sures. https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal has show info.

I hope to be in the audience, since I'm writing #NthPongWars initially for the #Nabu. I might be able to demo it.

I also hope to see CuriousMarc of Apollo guidance computer restoration fame demoing his recreation of the space radio data transmission system.

Looks like a fun weekend!

I finally got my #BeOS virtual machine working on my new AMD Zen 5 system.

AMD is missing some Intel secret sauce, so using a hardware VM doesn't work (Guru Meditation errors in VirtualBox, abrupt reboots in KVM). But QEMU's software emulation does!

After more fuss trying to make a network bridge in Fedora Linux, I got it all working, though reduced to classic computer speeds. Blog with pictures at:

https://web.ncf.ca/au829/WeekendReports/20251001/20251001VirtualBeOSOnAMDZen5.html

Finally had a look inside my second hand PowerComputing PowerTower 225 Pro computer. Removed this 30 year old clock battery which fortunately hadn’t started leaking.

The machine is used for compiling #BeOS programs for the #PowerPC CPU; things like BeShare. Probably nobody else uses PPC, but it’s still kind of nifty to get online from this antique.

Had fun adding the first power-ups to #NthPongWars, a game for the Z80 #NabuPC. Of course, got many more ideas. The challenge is fitting them in 64K of memory, and making overall game-play coherent.

Details, discussion and video script in the longer blog post at http://web.ncf.ca/au829/WeekendReports/20240207/NthPongWarsBlog.html#2025.09.03

More #NthPongWars progress - now with AI players. One is trying to draw "N" while the others bounce around the sides, until they spot a Human player.

Blog post about it at
https://web.ncf.ca/au829/WeekendReports/20240207/NthPongWarsBlog.html#2025.08.19

Procrastinating again, I added player vs player collisions to #NthPongWars rather than working on the AI.

The collision part was easy, it's the aftermath that needed fixing. The players just kept on colliding and getting stuck on each other. After a hack didn't accomplish much, I figured out the root cause - players bouncing off the tile the other player had laid down and heading back into the collision.

That and a Z80 ldir opcode disappointment are in my blog at http://www.agmsmith.ca/WeekendReports/20240207/NthPongWarsBlog.html#2025.07.24

Finally had time to get back to #NthPongWars #Nabu Z80 programming. I've started the AI, making the players harvest / thrust to maintain speed. Steering is next. But I had to fix the harvest sound effects, since they're used so much now! The sounds are now much shorter (1 frame) and customised to each player by changing the pitch of the Tracker's Instrument setting for that sound. So now you can tell when harvesting / thrusting is being done and who is doing it.

https://web.ncf.ca/au829/WeekendReports/20240207/NthPongWarsBlog.html#2025.07.16