Report on the 2nd PC-1600 regulars' table meeting on November 15, 2025, in Emstek,

by Harald Richter

Participants:

Christian Becker, Gernot Hermenau, Thomas Stahl, and Harald Richter

On Saturday afternoon, Thomas was the first of four guests to arrive. Over coffee and cake, a pleasant exchange began.

Tom then took care of repairing my old Sharp PC-1600. Thanks to the spare parts provided by Jörg Walenta, the device looked almost like new afterwards.

Christian and Gernot joined us around 5 p.m. This was followed by a presentation of the MEP4, in which the impressive demonstration of plot emulation on the iPad stood out in particular. Gernot also repaired his floppy disk drive and did some more work on the PC-1600. Both devices were then successfully put back into operation.

After dinner together, there was a presentation of the Filex software. It was shown that Filex is now able to process folders and subdirectories on USB media.

In the current version, Filex functions as a multi-tool that displays extensive information about connected media and their contents. For an upcoming version, there are plans to focus the range of functions more strongly on pure file operations and to further develop Filex as specialized file management software.

Christian also contributed ideas for a possible new version of Diskworks.

Later on, there was a lot of talk about how people got started collecting pocket computers.

When it came to the future, the idea of a MEP with a network connection stood out. There was even a little demo: a picture was sent via the MEP as a WhatsApp message – a fascinating step towards modern integration.

Thomas also shared his thoughts on the development and production of a universal RAM module. The goal is to design a module that can be used flexibly in both Slot 1 and Slot 2, covering memory sizes from 32 KB to 512 KB.

This approach is intended to cover the entire RAM expansion and RAM disk requirements with a single module. This eliminates the need for different modules for different applications, which significantly simplifies both handling and system configuration.

Such a universal module would offer considerable added value, as it is versatile and can be adapted to different requirements. In particular, the combination of memory expansion and RAM disk in a single module represents an efficient and user-friendly solution.

Overall, this is a very well thought-out and forward-looking concept which, if successfully implemented, would represent a significant improvement over existing individual or specialized solutions.

Follow-up:

It was a great Saturday, full of exchange, technology, inspiration, and shared enthusiasm—and it lasted well past midnight.