SYNERGY 2024 event at the LOAD ZX Museum in Cantanhede – 4th and 5th May

On the 4th and 5th of May, the SYNERGY Event will take place at the LOAD ZX Museum in Cantanhede, with the presence of the pilot Filipe Albuquerqueas well as Peter Wheelhouse, Celso Martinho, Clem Chambers It is Miguel Guerreiro. This is an organization of Associação Inércia, the LOAD ZX Museum and the Municipality of Cantanhede.

This event, in line with the one held in 2022 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of ZX Spectrum, once again brings to Portugal a group of international speakers who are extremely relevant to the Museum’s community of followers. Over the course of these two days, the recent 42 years of this mythical British computer that had a great connection with Portuguese engineering will be celebrated.

O SYNERGY (synergy in Portuguese) was so named out of the expectation of fruitful cooperation between the Inertia Association (which promotes Demoscene culture in Portugal) and the LOAD ZX Museum (which is considered an exponent for fans of the ZX Spectrum in all its aspects).

O SYNERGY aims to increase the visibility of ordinary citizens for Demoscene, which consists of the production of digital art through the creative use of these (and other) computers. The name comes from “demos”, typically small computer programs that try to push the capabilities of microcomputers to the limits. Throughout the event there will be interviews, lectures, workshops and competitions on programming, video games and hardware.

They will be present at the event BAZE (Milos Bazelides, Slovak) and ZILOG (Pavel Cimbal, Czech) creators of the DivIDE peripheral, (the first interface for using Compact Flash memory cards for ZX Spectrum computers). You will also be with them LORDCOXIS (Miguel Guerreiro, member of the Museum and Associação Inéricia volunteer team), the creator of the esxDOS system that allows you to interact with DivIDE or the more recent DivMMC.

Celso Martinhoa big name in Portuguese technology, who stood out for having founded and been the CTO of FROG in the 90s, he was also one of the prominent presences as he maintained his taste for programming and rebuilding retro machines. With it we will reflect on the importance of technology from the 80s and its connection with today.

The very eclectic program focuses on a second topic, which is Motorsport and its connection to the Spectrum world. Portugal is one of the countries with the most fans of the game FORMULA ONEreleased in 1985. This game was developed by Peter Wheelhouse and his friend, now deceased, George Munday. Peter Wheelhouse will be present at the event on the 4th and 5th of May. He is joined, coming from Monaco, Clem Chambersthe founder of the publishing house CRL who released this and several other games ZX Spectrum.

Joining the theme of car racing, we will have the presence of one of the biggest names in national motorsport, the driver Filipe Albuquerque. A driver who made history by winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans (LMP2 class), the European Le Mans Series and the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship in a single season with United Autosports. Filipe is currently racing in the maximum GTP category, of the IMSA Endurance championship, in the USA. Filipe started with a ZX Spectrum as his first computer. Participants will have the opportunity to find out more about Filipe’s career, his connection to video games and, perhaps, play a game of WEC Le Mans for ZX Spectrum with him.

The event, with free entry, starts on Saturday at 10am with the first workshops (which require prior registration via email at info@loadzx.com).

The LOAD ZX Museum will be open throughout the event.