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CUGI Meetup in Galway

03 August 2024

A CUGI (Commodore Users Group of Ireland) meetup took place in the Computer and Communications Museum of Ireland CLG in Galway today, and I made the five-hour trip down from Belfast to be there. I had a nice game of Road Or Dirt Track with Google Maps down the west coast of Ireland to pass the time.

Around 20-25 attended with a variety of machines and activities going on. Just Amiga folks doing Amiga things for a few hours. I had my A500++ running the latest (final?) version of the upcoming game RogueCraft from Thalamus and BadgerPunch Games, along with my development laptop with a somewhat playable build of my as-yet-unnamed isometric game. There was a MiSTer, a Vampire'd 1200, an early G3 OS4.x machine and several others dotted around.

The G3 machine was Walkero's and he showed me the Media Vault application he had been working on - an "application for AmigaOS 4 which can be used to discover online audio and video content.". It was impressive! It made me wonder ... maybe I should look in to getting an OS4 machine?

CUGI described how they are converting their old newsletters to HTML and GemText, and they are looking for volunteers to help clean up the OCRd versions. There was also a talk, run from an Amiga 1200, on using packet radio to access and serve Viewdata content. The Minitel console in the musem wasn't working or it could have been used for the demo too. I did a minute or two on the mic about the upcoming Amiga Belfast event - more on that soon.

We were also treated to a tour of the museum and a talk/demonstration of some extremely retro (1890s!) radio equipment, which tied in nicely with the later packet radio presentation. I'm not sure how sensible it was to have high-voltage induction coils and oscilators firing off in the vicinity of old and sensitive 1970's and 1980's computer equipment, but I guess they know what they are doing. The musem has a fascinating and varied collection of computers and games consoles and this visit was a big part of me making the long drive down.

Unfortunately the event coincided with the Galway Races, so the city was very busy and we decided to abandon plans to find somewhere for food afterwards, and at 5:30pm I was on the road back home again. It was good to just have some cordoned-off Amiga time to chat and fiddle with things though.

I'm not sure I'd do the ten hour round trip again, or soon at least, but it was worth doing once. There may be events in Dublin coming up - TBC - and that's six hours less driving than Galway and so should be doable.

See you there?

Photo Album

[IMG: CUGI Galway]

[IMG: A working Induction Coil and Oscilator]

[IMG: CCM Collection]

CUGI Meetup in Galway

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