Saturday, December 5, 2015 marked the day of the annual World of Commodore, put
on by the Toronto Pet User’s Group at the Admiral Inn in Mississauga, Ontario. It’s an annual tradition for our household,
and a great opportunity to catch up with old friends while making new ones. It was especially nice to see my friend Bob Yewchuck, writer of one of my favourite blogs, The Bob Angle, on his birthday.
There was the ever-popular freebie table, where I scored a couple of Jumpdisk disk magazine covers that I don't yet have, an MPS 803 printer, and a 2GB CF card, while my son scored a collection of Amiga magazine cover CD's. There was also the raffle table. This year saw a lot of attendees enjoying the show; at 11:00, it was becoming so
crowded, it was sometimes difficult to move around! It was great seeing so many
people enjoying the hobby of retro computing. For me, it was nice to spend time with Dan Kovaks as he demonstrated his Commodore 128 connecting to the Internet. Thanks to Dan for selling me his spare 64NIC+ which I'm still trying to get working.
It was really good to see that Jim Brain of Retro Innovations was able to make it this year; his products are a favourite of mine, because he offers useful, well-made products at decent prices, typically in the $50-$60 range. He brought his usual bag of goodies this year.
It was also great to see Joe Palumbo of JP PBM return with his variety of products, most of which are original, some still in shrink wrap. For a mere $20, I was able to buy an upgrade Agnus chip for my Amiga 2000, so that it now can address a full megabyte of video memory instead of the 512k that was standard when I bought my Amiga. This was an upgrade I had always wanted. I was also able to buy a hard to find video adapter for my Commodore 128 for only $10, and enjoyed perusing his collection of software. Joe continues to be a valuable source of original software and hardware for the retro computing community.
There was a fire alarm at the Admiral Inn before lunch hour, which added some drama to the event. It turned out that someone left a cigarette butt by a vent and was not caused by Dan using his Commodore 128 to connect to the Illuminati as we had first suspected.
The demonstrations started after lunch, beginning with Zbigniew Stachniak's presentation of Early Microcomputers from Microsystems International Ltd.
The nice thing about these presentations is the fact that we get to see examples of these early computers.
At $150, it's a nice, comprehensive package that goes well with any modern C64 that you may want to take to Starbucks.
At 3:00, Jim Brain teamed up with Leif to demonstrate his new products for the Vic 20, including a MIDI controller that works both ways (using the Vic as a MIDI instrument as well as having the Vic controlling another instrument), along with a device for the Vic that stores game images and provides various types of expansion.
A brief demonstration of the Vic being utilized as a MIDI instrument, by the talented Leif:
All in all, it was an excellent way to spend the first Saturday of December. We got the T-shirt which I will surely show off, and look forward to next year. Who knows, maybe I'll cook up something to contribute at the 2016 World of Commodore! Meanwhile, enjoy these other pictures I took at the event.
Signed by Jack Tramiel in 2007; now signed by Leonard Tramiel
I dug these last CommVEx photos out of the SD card of my digital camera. CommVEx was very memorable this year and very rare that CBM engineer Bil Herd and Leonard Tramiel were together at the show. The attendees and I wondered when this would ever happen again.
Not pictured is the modded PAL Plus/4, originally from Peter Hanson. Bil Herd's first off-the-cuff remark was why would anyone in these days go through the trouble of adding in 256K of battery-backed RAM and all the other hacks. When I explained that it was modded in the late 1980's/early 1990's, he looked more closely at the how it was done and complimented it by saying the hacks were done very professionally.
During a break between bands, attendees gather at the vendors.
Ben Daglish reads some comedy!
Prepping before he played.
A bit of tuning up the instruments.
In concert!
Press Play on Tape
On June 20, 2015 I attended the Back in Time Live 2015 concert in Brighton, England. Though I concentrated on taking video of the event, I did take a few photos of the goings-on. The concert was very exciting, the music very loud, and the people very friendly. There was a great deal of C64 and Amiga music played. For more information, go to
The topside of the Video DAC (left) and the VGA adapter
The bottom of the Video DAC (left) and the VGA adapter
To settle some questions about the two devices, here are some photos of the older, no-longer-produced C128 Video DAC from Richard Goedeken of Fascination Software and the current C128 VGA adapter from John Carlsen of BIT-C128.com. You can see that the Video DAC is longer and thinner when compared to the VGA adapter. The Video DAC has soldered-on wires to connect to the GBS-8220 for 80-column viewing on a VGA monitor; the VGA adapter has a wire block into which you insert the wires. The VGA adapter uses surface-mounted parts with its chips mounted on the underside.
