January 2016 - vcf-midatlantic

List downtime / Domain transfer happening soon
by Evan Koblentz 10 Jan '16

10 Jan '16

Guys, We are transferring our domain(s) to a different hoster. This has to do with our technical merger regarding the VC Forum. (We decided it's simpler for the Federation stuff to move to Erik's hoster than for Erik to move the forum stuff to our hoster.) I am going to transfer our domains tomorrow at noon ET. After that, I'll transfer the subdomain that connects to this mailing list (we're NOT changing list companies again). It should go smoothly. There may be a little bit of downtime.

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Cheapest way to buy nice stools?
by Evan Koblentz 10 Jan '16

10 Jan '16

We're considering putting a nice metal stool at each computer in the new museum. However, they seem to be pricey. Even very simple ones (like this: http://tinyurl.com/jhpp6ds) are $40 each, and I'd like to have 30 of them .... but that would be $1,200 which is way too much for us to spend on this. Harbor Freight has them for less than $30 each -- I have one at home and it's great -- but the tops are bright red. :) Not appropriate for our museum. Does anyone know where to get such things cheaper? (We're not looking to collect donations of mismatched stuff.)

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TTL components in Philly?
by eric F 10 Jan '16

10 Jan '16

Any chance someone knows of a businesses that I’m not aware of in Philly that would stock TTL components like the 7430 8-input NAND? I have a SLOW order coming with one, but feel impatient, especially with time to burn and projects lined up in the retro pipeline. Eric

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] TTL components in Philly?
by mark＠markesystems.com 10 Jan '16

10 Jan '16

From: David Ryskalczyk <david.rysk(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] TTL components in Philly? >> Any chance someone knows of a businesses that I’m not aware of in Philly >> that would stock TTL components like the 7430 8-input NAND? I have a SLOW >> order coming with one, but feel impatient, especially with time to burn >> and projects lined up in the retro pipeline. > Try Selectronics > http://selectro.com My, their web site is certainly annoying! And the "Chippy off" link doesn't work, either... ~~ Mark Moulding

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Blit Express Lives!
by Kenneth Seefried 09 Jan '16

09 Jan '16

From: Systems Glitch <systems.glitch(a)gmail.com> > >The Blit Express is a high resolution (1664 x 1200 mono, forget the color res) >workstation graphics card from Bell Technologies. Thats the one based on the Intel i82786, right? Awful chip. It sold as a way to turn a 386 system into an alternative to something like a Sun 3/160. As we say in the South, bless their hearts. > I'm guessing there were sort of specific system requirements for it, since it > doesn't seem to like MFM/RLL drives, which of course would've been very > common then. If it's the i82786 based one, it's kinda picky about hardware configs (I seem to recall it required an unusually big memory region) but I ran it in a bunch of different systems (Intel and Compaq PCs at least). I'd go through the normal ISA bus IRQ/mem window/IO addy/etc diagnostic dance. I don't recall if I ran them with MFM/RLL disks, but I definitely ran them with ESDI disks. > There's almost no information on the Internet about these. Apparently mine is a > beta unit (don't know if they ever made it into production). Yours might be a beta, but the Bell Tech Blit certainly went into production and was reasonably successful. I have the X10 (yes, 10 not 11 and not the home control protocol) source around here *someplace* but will probably never find it. There's some stuff out there if you look hard enough. As I recall, at least the early X11 tapes came with the support source. Nosing around whatever is left of the Interactive and SCO Unix in the i386 era history will certainly turn up something. Tangent: anyone remember the Bell Tech HUB-6? ISA bus 6-port serial cards. Sold tons of them back in the day when SCO shipped product instead of failing to profit through litigation. Good times. KJ

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Congrats to Connor!
by Evan Koblentz 09 Jan '16

09 Jan '16

Everyone, Time for some special recognition. One of our youngest members, Connor, recently posted to an IBM mainframe list for some help with the Z890 that he bought from Rutgers University. Someone involved with IBM's SHARE (mainframe user group) read it and invited Connor to speak at their Feb. 28-March 4 conference in San Antonio -- and then HP Enterprise (that's the servers and storage people, not the ink cartridge people) stepped up to pay the cost of his trip! "Ya done good, kid."

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Retro does Vintage
by Douglas Crawford 09 Jan '16

09 Jan '16

http://imgur.com/a/w3AmK So, a "flower pot" iMac G4 makes a great PDP-8/E platform. My first running of anything PDP. This emulator was pointed out a ways back on the Yahoo board I think. Good fun. Not hard to use and has good "getting started" docs. Maybe you have a good reason to go get a cheap old cool iMac :)

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