(For ZX Shed)

Spectranet world tour continues – RetroEuskal '09 – Bilbao, España
In case you don't already know, the Spectranet is an ethernet card for the ZX Spectrum. It's still in development – the hardware prototypes seem to function well, but there's still a mountain of work remaining on the software side. And it's caused enough of a stir in the ZX World to require a world tour. First Oxford, now Bilbao, next Huddersfield – what other exotic locales will this piece of hardware get to see?

The end of July saw the second stop. Organized by RetroAcción, a highly enthusiastic group of Spanish retroafficionados, RetroEuskal is held every year inside the second biggest LAN party in Spain, Euskal Encounter. To give you some idea of the scale of Euskal Encounter, this year there were 4096 network ports available, and nearly all of them were in use. The event runs from the Thursday afternoon until Sunday evening taking over a cavernous hall – much larger than a football pitch - in the Bilbao Exhibition Centre. Thousands of people brave the terror of having to pass the BEC's very own troll (of the under-the-bridge variety)  – lurking by the security gates, christened the Matafrikis by the organizers - the most fierce, officious and callous of security guards. If you know what a matador does to bulls, well, you have an idea what The Matafrikis does to geeks, and the terror she wields over all who wish to pass... it's obvious she had been to the Vogon School of Bureaucratic Officiousness. I'm sure there's a Spectrum game in there somewhere...definitely a CSSCGC entry, perhaps a good game too...

RetroEuskal itself probably has the largest stand at the event (slighly larger than Euskal Mainframe, another fascinating stand where you can find the big blue iron), which consists of an exhibit room and a conference room for the workshops and talks. Part of the exhibit room forms a 'mini museum' of the year's theme – this year, it was the iconic Game & Watch from Nintendo; in previous years they've had the Sinclair Spectrum (25th Anniversary in 2007).  The other half of the room is dedicated to hands-on gaming – there are numerous computers and consoles right from 1981 until the early 1990s – the Spectrum was of course featured (complete with ZX-CF to allow the visitors to try lots of different games), Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST – and amongst the consoles, the Sega Megadrive, Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System and more (including a console from Amstrad that I never knew existed). One of the more curious events lasted throughout the entire show, a huge stop-motion game of Galaxians. By that I mean held on a giant magnetic screen, with all the invaders and the player ship moved by hand, and a photo taken of each to make a stop motion video of the game. Visitors were invited to control the player ship (move left, right, and of course fire) and their names and Euskal Encounter badge numbers were recorded – since this was also going for a Guinness Record, of the largest game of Galaxians in the world!

Other events included an 8 bit gaming contest, a timed event where the players each took a turn at a different game on a different console, the winner of course the one who gained the most points. This contest of course included the Speccy, as well as the MAME cabinet and consoles. There was also an epic soldering session, making up what seemed to be dozens of RGB cables for various machines.

Charlas
As well as the games, and the display charting the history of the Game & Watch and its clones, there was a number of talks and workshops (“charlas” and “talleres” respectively) given by various people, myself included. I was the lucky person to deliver the first talk, covering the Spectranet and progress so far. Furthermore, the Spectranet faced its toughest network test to date – the Euskal Encounter LAN. As I've mentioned already – a LAN of epic propotions. Each segment was a /24 – in other words, up to 254 computers, and as far as I could tell, much of the ports were in use – there was a tremendous amount of broadcast traffic flying around. Despite this, the Spectranet's DHCP client worked flawlessly. It's a pity that the software I'd written for my PowerBook to act as a file server decided to reveal a bug during the talk. I felt a bit like Bill Gates must have felt when Windows 95 died with a blue screen of death during his keynote on how great this new operating system was – as I waited for the 'mount' command to time out for the second or third time. Of course, I had tested everything the day before, and it had worked flawlessly. It had even worked flawlessly that morning... Fortunately, with a bit of furious tinkering with my PowerBook, the fileserver started to work again, and I could demonstrate loading and saving programs over the network, tape traps, and more. Probably what got the most gasps of astonishment was the streaming video demo – a simple demo from the point of view of the code, but nonetheless very surprising to everyone who sees it for the first time.
I also showed a “Making of the Spectranet” video, which shows how to solder the fiddly little components, since many people don't realise that yes – you can solder surface mount components at home - without too much difficulty.
For me, the hardest part was the questions. I've only been learning Spanish for 14 months and I have quite a lot of trouble understanding some of the accents that people have, but fortunately Albert Valls was on hand – a native Spanish spearker who also speaks good English and could help me with anything I couldn't understand. It also appeared that my audience understood me, and I just know I have a very strong accent – Slightly Manchester Spanish must be something quite curious to hear.

Apart from my talk, there was also a highly informative workshop on the construction of your own MAME cabinet – the things you need to interface the PC motherboard with the ancient game cabinet electronics, a talk about MondoPixel 2, presented by John Tones and Javier Sánchez covering the artform of videogames – from retro to modern - this book also featured on national television a couple of days later - and a talk by the authors of La Corona Encantada, a new game for the MSX and Sinclair Spectrum. Both MondoPixel and La Corona Encantada were on sale throughout the show; La Corona was very professionally presented complete with a cassette and box with fantastic artwork just like the top games of the era – it's obvious that a tremendous amount of love, attention and effort has been put into this game. In my opinion it's tremendously important that things like this continue, because it means that while the Spectrum may not be made any more, it still obviously has a vibrant core of enthusiasts keeping the platform going.

Finally...
I have to give many thanks to everyone organizing and helping RetroEuskal – they made me feel tremendously welcome (and I don't think I've eaten quite so much food in all my life). Events like this are as much a social event where we can get to know our fellow forum members in real life, as well as a place to try out curious machines. Long may it continue!
DESCRIPTION OF PHOTOS
p1000015.jpg - “Game and Watch” display stand
p1000024.jpg – Getting ready for the Spectranet talk – testing with a Spanish +2A on the EuskalEncounter LAN
p1000044.jpg – A view of about 2/3rds of Euskal Encounter – thousands of people, thousands of machines....
P1000048.jpg – The 3-day long stop motion game of “Galaxians” is in progress...
P1000051.jpg – Visitors have a close look at the Spectranet
P1000067.jpg – The talk about “Build your own MAME cabinet” was very popular
P1000074.jpg – The 8 and 16 bit games were very popular with visitors – some of the consoles from the 80s.
P1000091.jpg – At Euskal Encounter, they sleep by day and play by night.
P1000103.jpg – The front of the Bilbao Exhibition Centre.