Retro Computers

Back in March I was handed a letter from a colleague at work with the words “I think you’ll like this”. It was a letter and flyer from Gordon Sinclair about his event called Retro Reunited. Upon closer inspection as well as being right before my boyfriend’s birthday it was up in bloody Huddersfield! Us Londoners are certainly spoilt by gaming events.

This didn’t deter me, not only did the event celebrate the history of gaming and give attendees the chance to play a wide range of weird and wonderful games, but it was all in aid of the Charity Shelter. Not one to pass up an opportunity to be a geek for a good cause and do some good work for Ubisoft, I gave Gordon a call. I think I gave him a bit of a shock at first but we soon got chatting and over the next few months we arranged a space for me to take some of our TMNT themed games to play and I was also asked to do a talk on the history of Ubisoft

Continued…

The centre for computing history have released the video of Steve Furber’s talk at Acorn Work / Retro Reunited on Sunday 13th September 2009.

He talks about his involvement with the Mk14, SC/MP controlled fruit machines, the design of the BBC Micro, the development of the ARM processor and his latest project : SpiNNaker.

You can watch the video here.

Retro Reunited / Acorn World Show Report

Last weekend saw 2 days of an unadulterated retrocomputing and gaming in the form of the Retro Reunited / Acorn World events which took place the Cedar Court Hotel in Huddersfield.

After loading the hire van on friday morning I set-off on the 4 hour journey picking Andy Taylor up along the way. It wasn’t until we got to the hotel that we realised the event was on the first floor What a nightmare, we had podiums, flight cases, a large PA system, a Sinclair C5, a huge Rubiks Cube, the Asteroids cocktail cabinet and loads of boxes to get up two flights of stairs!!! By 7pm it was all up there and my bones had turned to jelly… The rest of the night was spent setting up all the gear.

You can read the rest of the report here….

Ive uploaded some of the photos I took over the weekend. You can find them at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andysretrocomputers/sets/72157622365145234/

Im currently giving the photos descriptions, will take me some time!

Acorn World is an exhibition and gathering at the Cedar Court Hotel – Huddersfield on 12th-13th September 2009 that will celebrate the importance and legacy of this uniquely British company.

Over the course of the weekend, the Emley Suite at Cedar Court will be packed to the rafters with numerous examples of Acorn computers, charting the company’s rise from the less well-known Acorn System series and Acorn Atom; through the various iterations of the BBC Microcomputer and the Electron to the ground-breaking Archimedes and RISC PC range; both of which were developed to take full advantage of Acorn’s now-ubiquitous and phenomenally successful ARM technology.

A number of talks and seminars are planned across both days and the first Acorn-themed talk to be confirmed is a presentation by the RISC OS Open Ltd team.

This event forms part of the Retro Reunited Classic Gaming & Computing convention and weekend tickets (priced £13.00 each inclusive) cover entry to both Acorn World (Emley Suite) and Retro Reunited (Presidential Suite). All proceeds less costs will be donated to the Shelter charity and it is anticipated that tickets will sell out well in advance.