Last Saturday the 3rd of May marked the start of the GEMTOS 2025 convention.
GEMTOS 2025 is located in the lovely village of Saint-Juste-en-Chaussee, north of Paris.
I planned on bringing my 1040STf but since I took out its KAOS TOS ROMs to use in my 520ST+ last year, it didn't have any TOS. And as usual I had ordered TOS 1.04 EPROMS which didn't arrive in time for GEMTOS.
So I decided on taking my CPC 6128 with me, which is also a quite popular machine in France.
With a stuffed backpack of about 15 kilograms probably I was ready for my travels.
As such this time I took the more expensive route of taking the Eurostar from Antwerp to Paris and then it was only an 1 hour local train ride to GEMTOS. With only 2 trains to take it was a more relaxed and quicker option.
After quickly picking up my keys to the AirBnB I had rented, I arrived just in time for lunch.
There I got my food tickets and a drinking cup and went to the cafetaria to eat my lunch.
First familiar faces I encountered where TheOtherDays.
I then unpacked and setup my stuff on the wrong table, my apologies once again to Medmed for the confusion, I looked at the map from the wrong end of the room.
Next to me was one of my BBS visitors, Umon, who noticed the ABBUC magazines I had brought with me and we had a nice chat about ABBUC.
Sitting across me was P0ke, one of the organizers of Shadow Party, blasting away Gabber MOD mixes using Paula on his STe.
As always a pleasure to see and talk to him, thanks for the hint on the soundbar you were using, I found a secondhand one online on my train ride back, so finally I will be able to match the sound levels of every other demo/party scener :)
GEMTOS has a nice schedule, it is quite organised, thanks to Super Ninine and Manu and all the volunteers, but still a relaxed schedule, you can easily sit around, talk, do stuff without missing anything.
The concept of GEMTOS boils down to
- online competitions which are done upfront and of which the winners are announced at the party.
- gaming competitions which take place at the event with the winner announcements and price-giving taking place at the event also.
- presentations of hardware,software projects
- fun skits happenning
After taking a picture of the timetable there was already a presentation starting by JB Fou & Thierry.
A pen-plotting setup powered by an Atari ST, the hardware controller gets its G-code data by an application running on the Atari ST.
Quite impressive.
Also worthwhile to mention, somebody had put an advertisement for Atariscne.org up on the pillar in French.
For the non-French readers, it translates to:
"For a while it has been hard to keep up to date on all Atari related news (forums,social media,youtube,etc).
That's why a group of enthusiasts have decided to bring forth ATARISCNE.ORG
Although this website is in English, your browser should easily be able to offer a translation and you will
find all the good stuff there : news,videos,rumors,indy game releases,interviews,time slices ,event reports,etc...
One website to remember and anybody can participate by sending his/her contribution in English(preferably)
to
Meanwhile the game competitions had started Vroom/JupiterMaster/Flight/Barbarian on ST and Space Invaders on the 2600.
so I took the time to wander around and look at all the hardware present.
A lot of people were already present in the early afternoon.
Some impressive machines once again, I forgot the person nick/alias again (although we had spoken extensively last year) but he had made a mini-Atari ST case for his Mistery-TangNano. Please do contact me via e-mail if you need any help in installing the firmware for it.
Atari-Inside had a videocam linked to his ST taking live video and picture of people walking by.
He also had free PC-Speed PCBs (untested) you could take, a project on which he had worked together with t0ri .
Thanks a lot for the PCB, I will be sure to test it either in my MegaST or 1040STf.
It makes the ST emulate an 8086/88 (XT)
Also demonstrated was an Atari 2600 with a Moviemaker cartridge playing back Night of the Living Dead.
(editors note: you can watch a little demonstration of the cartridge on Lastics Youtube channel)
Next to this machine, there was also an Atari Musical Quiz happening, a game using 4 paddles where you have to guess the song being played ( a mix of 8-bit/Jaguar/Lynx/St game songs) as quickly possible.
Both people playing were member of the AtariMania archivers, I had a nice talk with them about ABBUC, Fujiama and they told me to say hi to Luckybuck and Djaybee (ABBUC).
Copy Service Stuttgart sticker on my laptop gave it away that I know Djaybee :)
Some other machines I spotted:
Around 16PM the Midi-maze II competition using 16 ST's was starting, impressive to say the least. All reported to be working flawlessly as can be expected, Power without the Price !
I also played a round of Shotgun with 4 players, I own the game myself and the 4-player hardware part but yeah
I lack 3 other players at home.
Also nice to speak some German again, hehe.
Somebody (forgot to ask your name/nick) arrived with some pretty exotic hardware.
Darklord, if you are reading this, this is for you:
The C-LAB MK X machine has a SuperVidel and the processor upgrade. I won't disclose the price paid by the owner but he found a good deal when compared to the prices nowadays.
Then DMA-SC presented the new beta release of Miracle Boy in Dragon Land. I can tell you a lot of really nice levels have been added and the quality it already had, has only been increased again.
(Editors note: Here is a short video clip of the game at the party on Lastics Youtube channel - youtube shorts don't embed well).
We then had the group picture taken, as usual a funny affair, I am sure videos and picture will follow on the GEMTOS website.
I took some pictures after dinner, a lot of people were still eating so I got a chance to take some pictures without
anybody sitting in front of their machines.
An impressive amount of hardware present.
Then it was time for the announcement of the winners but first we had a tribute to m0dmate (his music playing on the background), PapyCPC and Shadow272.
As usual in a typical Manu style, some funny skits also happened which I will not reveal, I'm guessing videos of it
will appear on Manu's Youtube channel or the GEMTOS website.
Had a lot of laughs,talks, enjoying people and the vibes.
Even a -everybody in shock- moment when I plugged in 12V of my powerbank to the 6128 internal diskdrive connector, forgetting the reverse-polarity adapter, which sent sparks out of the back of the CPC and smoke out of the powerbank.
Luckily, the powerbank had shut off, and after investigating everything and using the correct adapter cables, I could load Ricky Dangerous II from 3" floppy on the CPC 6128 to compare it with P0ke playing it on the Atari STe.
Since I had to take a train in the morning unfortunately, and most people who didn't sleep at the venue had left, I said my goodbyes to everybody still awake and present around midnight, packed everything back into my backpack and headed to my AirBnB.
So no report on Sunday, I did have a nice Eurostar ride, helping 2 American ladies with the travel-adapter so they could plug in the phone into the European socket on the train and explaining them what retro-computer events/conventions are and why I travel to them.
Not always easy to explain to outsiders but we did have a lot of "remember rotary dials on analog phones moments, using actual maps when you had to drive somewhere."
I arrived back in Antwerp, fueled again by this wonderful event, unpacking all my stuff.
GEMTOS feels a lot like Fujiama, a bit more focused on the 16th bit machines but a nice gathering of people, some gaming, some nice projects.
Also nice meeting Doclands ( I loved your tune at Revision) and Rati of Overlanders. Maybe one day a collaboration could happen between OVL/CPC and OVR/ST?
Shoutout to everybody, some familiar names I have seen in a few places these past 2 years, Dma-Sc, AD, Zerkman, Gunstick, P0ke, Wulf, Umon and many more ...
Once again thank you France and the GEMTOS organisation.
THE AFTERMATH, unrelated to the event
Since a lot of people ask me about my setup, bringing only a backpack with me to events since I travel by train,
here is a breakdown of what I carried to GEMTOS.
Omnicharge powerbank, tablet stand, screen, 6128 CPC, Mini-Gotek, Competition Pro joystick, Macbook Pro M1, AMSTEAM (kinda like Sidecart online gaming database but for CPC), M4 (Fujinet alike for the CPC), GEMINI 512KB RAM expansion for the CPC,
Some more details:
I bought this when they started it on Kickstarter so a lot cheaper than the current price but sometimes you can find deals on it. It has a DC out port which can go from 1V to 24V in 0.1V increments which can be handy to power screens,and other stuff.
I mostly use composite output on all my machines, in this case for the CPC I am using the RGB4ALL.
but for my Atari ST I use a SCART cable to HDMI converter (dutch links).
I use a tiny screen (dutch links) which has composite,HDMI and VGA inputs, it runs on 12V DC and also has a 5V USB output.
I haven't tried the VGA input from a DIN13-VGA adapter on the ST.
You can find it in different brands, it usually is listed as a monitor for security cameras hence why it has a
BNC connector (something used in older CCTV cameras).
To raise it to eye-level, instead of using it's rather low monitor stand, I drilled the VESA mount holes into
a tablet stand (dutch links).
Again these go under different brands, it folds up nice to a compact size.
I hope these links might be useful to people looking for a compact setup to take with them on travels.
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