UPDATED 6-August-2024
Finally Fujiama was due to happen.
This year the event would start on Tuesday the 23rd of July at midnight until Sunday the 28th of July.
Hosted by Helmut at the Schutzenhaus in Lengenfeld.
FUJIAMA-2024
Monday the 22nd of July I embarked on my 12 hour trip starting at 07:00 AM involving
trains from Antwerp-Brussels-Koln-Hannover-Leipzig-Borna then a bus from Borna to
Zwickau and finally
the last RB train to Lengenfeld where I was greeted by DjayBee who kindly picked me up
with his car so I didn’t have to walk uphill to the Hotel.
Once we arrived there , the mandatory order of schnitzels was made to feed both us hungry
Atarians.
Hotel check-in completed, dinner completed we drove up to the Schutzenhaus and joined others , seeing old friends, chatting and having a beer.
A German now Chinese beer :) provided by Prodatron, the CPC legend and creator of SymbOS.
At midnight like tradition dictates , Helmut opened the doors to the venue and we all rushed in with our equipment and started installing tables and setting up computers.
This picture by Mathy was taken at 02:00 AM , I had already gone to the hotel at 01:00 AM ,
exhausted from the long travel.
And so here we were for another 5-6 days of Atari fun.
Mostly ABBUC members and Atari users but there are some who bring other retro computers as well.
Prodatron had his 6128 CPC with him as well as a ZXSpectrum Next.
I showed him the MemoryFull book written by Hicks/Vanity , a book about the history of the
CPC Demoscene
Norbert brought his collection of ZX Spectrums
and Stefan sitting next to him helped him document/repair/perform maintenance on his Harlequin ZX replica.
Although Stefan also brought next to his Ataris a modern ZX Spectrum replica which I
dubbed the Pink Panther.
The ABBUC members had done a group-buy of a 600XL PCB remake project so a lot of people
were soldering/completing this PCB like DjayBee and Atari4Fan.
You can find more information about this project here
600XLREMAKE
Atari4Fan actually did a lot of soldering/building and troubleshooting.
He had brought
- a 3D printed transparent case for his Atari ST
- The Atari ST H4 PCB by exxos
- The Atari 600XL Remake PCB
- a Tang Nano FPGA which I helped him flash, unfortunately he didn’t have
the M0S dock yet but at least it would boot to a GEM desktop.
- last but least a ABBUC member-created Atari ST ATX PCB.
Whilst I was trying to get the grips on the 8-bit Graphic Modes , other people were
creating text adventures, a game , or using a dot-matrix printer and an 8-bit to produce
a newszine about Fujiama.
The logo was created with NEWSROOM
and the remainder with Atari writer, printed on a dot-matrix printer.
I received help when I simply wanted to update my Fujinet, in the end it seems the micro-USB connector on the PCB is loose , it was even soldered by people with more
steady hands and better eyesight than me , we got it to update but looks like that
will be it’s finaly update.
Prodatron and iNSANE were both doing incredible work again on iNSANE-OS , SymbOS, and even
sparked an try-to-code Bubble Universe in your preferred programming language.
People were trying in C , BASIC and even FORTH , yes FORTH .
As Saturday rolled in , I traditionally started to wind down on my own projects and just
hung around, chatting with people.
Norman (SMFX) had arrived also so we had a lot of nice chats, iNSANE entertained us with a nice recollection of Anti-Atari and Anti-Amiga MOD files.
The group picture was taken a bit early since it was a bit clouded outside with risk of rain.
And as tradition dictates, Helmut fired up the grill in the yard for some really nice sausages.
Helmut and everybody who makes these events possible, once again a big thank you.
So Sunday arrived and I helped a bit before leaving again for my 12 hour trip home.
Luckily this time I had travel buddies for a part of the trip.
Around 01:00 AM I arrived at home ,tired but fueled with retro-energy for the remainder
of the year.