Meeting: 4th March, 2006

First of the year

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The setting was the warm function room of the Keadby working men's club over looking the River Trent. I was the first to arrive actually at the venue, before Darren our "CEO" but wasn't long before the gang turned up, Darren (aka Ryu) and Michael (aka Rockape) shortly followed by Robert (aka Robert17) and his set of gear, Then Gaz (aka Gaz-God) and Mark (aka Macmiga.)

It was a pleasant day, if a little chilly but that was to be expected since it was cold enough to sustain snow in the shade. This also proved to be a negative for one member Kevin (aka KevM) who wasn't able to attend due to being snowed in at his place of residence.

Once Darren had let us all in it was full steam ahead with the setting up of the various machines that everyone had brought with them. First in was Darren's A1200T running the latest development of OS 4 and Blackwidow (aka Bambi 2) as it was dubbed that day. Next up was Michael's uA1 again running the latest development of OS 4. Those were the easy machines to bring up stairs to the function room. We next tackled Rober17's car. I must add all the time we unloaded Michael's car Mark and Gaz stuffed their faces on McDonald's. :) We unloaded the 4000 running on a 233 MHz 604 and a 50 MHz 060, this one of Robert was running AOS 3.9. At about this Point Rodney Who travelled from Manchester (we assume) arrived and assisted in the unloading of the equipment. Next to be taken upstairs was Robert 3000 and the A1200. Michael also brought along a CD-32 :). Mark Brought along his most recently acquired Mac and Gaz show cased his Pegasus running Morph OS at the SCAG meet.

After all the unloading of the cars it was time to set up all the machines. The joys started. The A1 went up with no hitches. Then the blackwidow which was routing the internet connections to all the machines present, this was a 56k connection BUT the blackwidow performed flawlessly and did us all proud. This was proven to be a viable method by Michael's A1 which was the first to get on the network. The MorphOS machine went together with little or no hitches as with all other machines, until we got to Darren's 1200T which seemed to be not wanting to go on the network. Darren later figured out he was powering his hub incorrectly, powering it with 4.5 volts where 6.5 volts was required. Once Darren had stopped ripping his hair out and wearing holes in the carpet worrying about his machine he finally managed to get it on the network.

At this point Mark was playing about with his Mac clone but it appeared to have trouble booting up properly with his G4 upgrade onboard. However, replacing his old 604 processor running at 200 MHz if memory serves me correctly, seemed to solve this issue.

He later commented that OSX 10.3 installed on Robert's G4 (Yikes model *no AGP*) was the only version of OSX to have no PCI support. This was very unfortunate as the mac only had a PCI graphics card onboard. Making it useless for 3D games, and how it displayed anything at all still remains a mystery to me. I believe later the machine was sold to Gaz, who intended to install a version of OSX (10.4.x) to correct this problem and to install a couple of new HDDs, and possibly OS9 for a few legacy applications.

Once all machines were set up Mike (aka Killermike) turned up and there was a fair bit of chatter about various all time favourite games and SCI-FI things, with many a discussion sparked by Rodney. The show wouldn't have been quite so entertaining without his presence! :)

Not long after doors opening I was instructed to attach the SCAG sign to the front of the building. This was later to attract two new members to SCAG. At about 2pm Ed (*who is actually another Mike* aka ED-209) appeared. His presence was expected and as ever he was late, but that's dear old Ed. Customary to SCAG meets there was linkup between Robert's 1200 and 600. The link up was between Stunt car racer, this ran at a scary 40 fps on the 1200 but was extremely good fun.

I'm not quite sure at what time but the two 'would be' members of SCAG appeared through the most unlikely of entrances, the way to the toilets, which was a little bit surprising. Those two people were from Grimsby and found out about the show on the off chance via google. They initiated conversation with the rest of the SCAG members while I was playing various games on Robert's 1200. One of the things that got me intrigued was how well Robert's 4000 was playing various scene demo's which kept Rodney busy for the first 20 minutes or so. After that he would talk to anyone and everyone about one thing or another mostly about ruling the universe and quantum mechanics the usual every day topics. Unfortunately for the 3000, it had a few issues and was never able to show off it's full potential. I am told all is will be sorted in time for it's next outing, so fingers crossed I look forwards to seeing it in all it's fully functioning glory. I'd never seen a 3000 in the flesh before this Satur day.

About half an hour from the official end of the meet in the Keadby working men's club the pair of Amgians from Grimsby departed through the same method the made their surprise entrance. This way had us all baffled because there was an official route to the floor bellow, but they had joined us and departed via the fire escape. This amused the rest of us. Once all was packed away into the various assortment of cars we had all arrived in we (being myself, Darren, Michael, Robert, Ed, Gaz and Mark) went on to the Barge Inn a little bit further up the road. I on the other hand, I had to make a quick detour to Tesco to grab some cash for the after meet meal.

While I was off at Tesco Michael had got in a round for everyone but we found out that the Barge Inn's chef had been sacked and the other had gone on holiday so they weren't serving food. This caused a slight break in tradition and we chose to go to the Queens Way pub.

After a brief reflection of the show and some chatter on a couple of other topics we all headed off in a convoy to the Queensway pub. There was a joke made about Darren's navigational skills. Since I was the first car to leave the Barge Inn I was the lead car, after a few teething troubles on my side about me leaving poor Gaz and Mark in my dust. I eventually managed to keep a pace that was acceptable to those carrying computer gear. I and Gaz and Mark were the first to arrive at the new pub. We both parked up and waited for the rest to converge on our position. Sure enough Michael, Darren and Robert turned up not long after we arrived but no Ed! This was met with confusion and the excuse from Robert "I was busy watching the road." After a phone call to Ed we requested he turn around. Which he did, but it felt like a long time as it was getting rather quite cold outside. His excuse was that he was stuck in heavy traffic and at that the traffic lights half way down the duel carriageway took an age to change. Amongst the freezing festivities of waiting for Ed to arrive at the pub was the traditional Scunthorpe boyracer group who drove by. The pride of the pack being a Vauxhall Nova which as Michael said Òlooked like the owner had spent £15 on it." and the group was intent on making fools of themselves beeping horns and smiling at Michael as he looked on in disgust. Once Ed did turn up we went inside and found a table and then commandeered another table to enlarge our table to accommodate the 7 of us. Once we were settled we were graced with the unusual practice of table waitresses at the Queens Way. To which this particular waitress took a liking to Michael, His "wounded veteran card" seemed to be working and everyone enjoyed Michael coming out of his shell as he put it. He then produced a line only Michael could get away with, we needed some pictures taking with Michael's digital cam. There were a couple of Japanese people on the next table. This couple didn't spea k English too well this piece of information was passed off with "they understand they make them over there" line from Michael. After a very enjoyable meal and Michael's great lines and a entertaining call to "Menworth hill operations" from the "dragon" or as Darren puts it "The Leprechaun Matron" amidst the jumble of excuses in operation that Michael uses when his Mrs phones, Mark added "You want flied lice?" as a continuation of the Chinese themed excuse. Another good one was Robert's "Hello war room!" line, which had Mark in stitches for a good stretch of time. After some of us ordered out desserts, which consisted of lots of chocolate and cream, Michael requested from his waitress the bill. This was in my opinion rather cheap to say there were seven of us. Once we were in receipt of the bill we delegated the working out of the bill into who pays what to Mark. That was the most logical choice as he had consumed 2 pints of Guinness. So it only seemed right. Once We had Exited the pu b and Michael received his wink from the waitress we had a chat and bid each other fair well.

Robert who wasn't staying at Darren's departed towards Norwich. and Gaz and Mark left towards Louth with a window open for ventilation for Mark's Guinness. We which is by this point Michael, Darren, Ed and my self headed towards Darren's and managed to get their without loosing Ed, which was a relief as I don't think I could stand standing out in the cold for another 10-15 minutes again as it was getting rather cold now. Once we had unloaded Darren's gear from Michael's car we requested a lift to the priory from Michael.

The plan was to have a few beers and a game or two of pool. This how ever went out the window once we got to the priory. Once inside we decided it was too noisy and crowded so departed and headed back for the Queensway. After the 5 minute walk we found a table and had a pint each. Though I wouldn't call Ed's pint a pint, was a pint of IPA Green King. After that we decided to move onto Bonds. Again we found it was rather full and noisy so we moved onto Weatherspoons. Here it was packed but we decided to stay and have a pint each. This was however only my second pint so I was rather somewhat lagging behind Ed and Darren. After That pint we moved onto a joint called "PJ's." Here we were drinking Smiths well Darren and I was. Ed was drinking something rather fizzy and went by the name of Stella. The female peoples in the pubs were getting a fair bit more attractive, bar one or two exceptions of typical Scunthorpe's mutton dressed as lamb. After we finished our pints we headed off to a pla ce called "Cre8" This was where Ed became known as "The Incredible Ed!" and a few more pints were consumed.

After about 9pm or so Ed spent more time on the dance floor dancing with some middle aged lass. Darren and I were trying to get photographic evidence but sadly Darren's cam phone doesn't perform to well in the dark, even with night mode engaged. Then Ed decided he was going to drag everyone he could onto the dance floor. Darren had a brief dance with him while I was too busy trying to keep my self looking like a twit. After many a dances for Ed with many a random person we decided to leave after a succession of extremely bad songs were chosen by the DJ.

The walk back to Darren's was entertaining too. since on the way to the chip shop we were walking near some police and Darren spotted some person doing something he shouldn't, To which Darren spoke loud enough so the law would hear and talk to the bloke being illegal. Once we arrived safely at the chip shop Darren ordered chips and curry sauce and a can of Coca-cola. I also ordered the same. Ed had chips and curry sauce and a bottle of water. We softly got these and carried on walking to Darren's. The walk was at a drunk mans pace so took us a lot longer to walk to his. At the next shop I proceeded to buy some cheap cola and 2 jumbo sausage rolls. Darren purchased 3 chomp bars. All of which were consumed on the walk back to Darren's house. Once we reached Darren's we all headed to our designated sleeping spaces and crashed out.

Written By Liam Hustler (aka Cyka)

Editors Note:

For those of you intersted, the "BlackWidow" machine was an A1200 in its original case, with slimline internal CD-Rom drive fitted, an el'cheapo 030 turbo card and 8MB of RAM, oh and a few hundred MB HDD. It was running MiamiDX, which was dialing up to the internal and with the use of a network card routing the internal to all the machines in the room. We also had a WiFi bridge in use so wireless machines could get on too.

Also im sure Liam would also like to add that he'd like to thank me and my Dad for our hospitality.. he neglected to say ate an entire Vianetta to himself after a big sunday lunch :-)

Date 08 March 2006

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