For the third year in a row, Acorn Computer enthousiast Roland Leurs organized a 3-day ABUG meeting in the Netherlands. This year, I joined on Friday as well as Saturday in a new location in Harderwijk.
Demo: a working Econet!
This year, I again focused on Econet - but this time with a working setup!
I brought both PiEconetBridge devices; one with hub, one without. A couple of 8-bit machines with Econet fitted serve as client machines:
- Acorn BBC-B with Econet
- Acorn Electron with EENT cartridge
I wired everything up with “Roland” MIDI cables which worked fine.
PiEconetBridge
I designed and printed a prototype case for the PiEconetBridge. I was hoping to design the typical cheese wedge design, but time ran out so I had to settle for a more conventional shape.
The PiEconetBridge is running RaspberryPi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution. I configured NetworkManager with a fallback whenever the “home” WiFi is not available. In that case, it starts in Access Point mode with a known SSID and WPA2 key.
I added a small OLED display to show basic information like the IP address and currently active WiFi SSID. You can see this display in the first picture.
Acorn Electron with EENT cartridge
I brought one of my Electrons with Plus 1 and EENT (“Electron EcoNet Twee”) Econet interface.
Again, thanks to Roland Leurs for organizing, and “Big Ben Club” for sponsoring this event! Hopefully we’ll all meet again next year.