Inércia 2023 – Celso Martinho
Filipe Cruz (aka psenough) invited me to Inércia 2023, an area Demoscene occasion organized by the Associação Inércia that happened within the notorious Incrível Almadense. I’ve completed my fair proportion of bouncing ball meeting demos within the 80s and others extra recently, however I don’t qualify as a demoscener, not even by the bottom requirements. Nonetheless, I promptly accepted the invitation. I participated in a panel that mentioned the struggles and methods of organizing group occasions. Then, later within the night, I advised the story about why and the way I constructed my Frankenstein 64. There’s some interception between retrocomputing and the demoscene, so it made sense.
Me, my MOS tee and a backpack full of retrocomputing devices, prepared for Inércia.
I’m glad I did it as a result of I had a blast. I met some outdated mates and loved attending the occasion and seeing another shows and demos; there was a lot uncooked creativity and expertise. It jogged my memory of the outdated days after we attended grassroots code hackathons, pre-Codebits, or the early levels of the Maker motion. People had been there solely to share their work and experiences and have enjoyable.
Anyway, I had plenty of enjoyable speaking about why and the way I constructed a Commodore 64 from “scratch”; it was very uncooked, with no slides or preparation; I simply obtained on the stage and advised the story whereas following my lengthy type Building a Frankenstein 64 weblog. Individuals had been genuinely engaged, which was good. After I completed, I made a decision to plug the C64 into the stage HDMI enter through a video converter, which I introduced in my backpack. I wasn’t anticipating it to work; these items are likely to cease working if you don’t use them. But it surely did. I performed The Great Sisters for 10 seconds and left the stage with a smile.
I additionally lastly met João Diogo Ramos, the founding father of the LOAD ZX Spectrum Museum. We’ve been exchanging emails for years however have by no means met in particular person. Yesterday, we did; it was nice; he’s a maker and entrepreneur with a lot of power and concepts. I owe him a go to to the museum, which I’ll manage very quickly.
I beloved the retrocomputing nook, too, clearly. Rui Martins introduced a bunch of machines to point out on the venue and helped the members with free restore jobs. One Sinclair 2068 was being mounted. A BBC Grasp and a Dragon 32, two well-known British rarities, had been displayed linked to TVs and dealing. Humorous sufficient, I crossed with Rui’s initiatives within the Interwebs earlier than; he introduced his 512Kb ROM cartridge at FOSDEM just a few years in the past, and I commented on the video as a result of I used to be impressed. He remembered — small world.
Lastly, I reconnected with Afonso Muralha. I’m a large fan of Afonso’s work. He was a Pixels Camp habitué, and in 2019, he constructed us a prototype of a lovely LED matrix display PCB badge. This yr, he went all in into the badge life and designed 30 PCB badges for the winners of the Inércia occasion. The badge has a 3½-inch floppy disk type and boasts a whole pc round an RP2-B2 ARMCortex-M0 microprocessor with GPIO pins, USB-C, mass storage, and even a speaker. If the reference sounds acquainted, the identical chip powers the favored Raspberry RP2040; that’s why, Afonso kindly gifted me one of many Inércia badges.
… and, after I least anticipated, additionally they gave me the finalized model of the Pixels Camp 2019 badge. I used to be speechless. Thanks a lot!
Anyway, nice enjoyable. It takes plenty of work to prepare occasions. Smaller or larger, discovering the suitable folks, the monetary assist, the suitable companions, and even mobilizing the group to attend them is all the time an arduous journey. I hope Filipe and the crew preserve attempting; it’s value it. I’ll be there once more subsequent yr for positive.