Sneaking Commodore in #3 (a.k.a. Atari Party 2009)

[robertb]

"Robert!" shouted Atari Party organizer Bill Kendrick from one side of the meeting room.

"Yes, Bill!" I replied.

"Robert, who was that woman who made the DTV?"

"Jeri Ellsworth."

Bill returned back to his conversation with an attendee. I walked up to them and explained a bit more about the device, "It nominally has 30 games plus Easter eggs. Do you want me to bring one in? I have them in the car."

To my surprise, Bill said, "Bring it in, and we'll hook it up to that monitor over there as soon as he finishes playing [his game].

I rushed over to the car, pulled out a NTSC DTV, and returned to the Atari Party. Soon the DTV took the place of an Atari 8-Bit computer, and unsuspecting attendees started playing with what they thought was some fun device with many games... until they hit the reset or on/off switch and found out it was Commodore! It remained popular among the gamers.

To see more of the March 28 Atari Party 2009 with gaming and presentations (and the C64 DTV among the Ataris), BIOS has posted my video at --

blip.tv/file/1942452

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
videocam.net.au/fcug
Notacon 6 / Blockparty 3 on April 16-19
www.notacon.org , www.demoparty.us

[rrolison]

I actually watched that whole video and was on the edge of my seat the whole time. I miss the 8 bit days. I have always been a loyal Commodore user, but I did spend about 100 hours around Atari's in my teenage years. I wish 8 bit groups would pop up on the east coast here in the USA....

In the 80's, I saw rivalry between Atari/Apple/Commodore users. Nowadays I think 8 bits fans are so scarce, that it's no longer the case...

Thanks Robert. Cool video.

[robertb]

Apr 3, 2009 18:13:56 GMT -5 rrolison said:

I actually watched that whole video and was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

Too bad the event was only officially 3 hours long.

In the 80's, I saw rivalry between Atari/Apple/Commodore users. Nowadays I think 8 bits fans are so scarce, that it's no longer the case...

Yeah, it has calmed down a lot. FWIW, I went incognito... just a guy with a camcorder who hardly knew anything about Atari and who didn't want to flaunt Commodore. It was only when Bill told me to bring out the C64 DTV that I got into C= mode. If players asked questions about the DTV, I answered them. There was even one attendee who asked me about Video Toaster and Newtek; I answered him to the best of my ability.

Thanks Robert. Cool video.

There were supposed to be one or two more presentations, but I think that Bill nixed those because it would have slowed down everything too much in the limited time he had in the room. It was a free event, people chipping in money only to buy pizza and soda. Because it was free and because Davis is a relatively small university town, there was a good mix of people in the 40-45 who attended -- families, boyfriends and girlfriends, and older adults. I think I will write a full report later.

Crossing into Oregon,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
videocam.net.au/fcug
Notacon 6 / Blockparty 3 on April 16-19
www.notacon.org , www.demoparty.us