December 2016 - vcf-midatlantic

Anyone want a SunFire V880
by Christian Liendo 14 Dec '16

14 Dec '16

Someone I know is getting rid of a SunFire V880. It's a big computer. According to the owner " Its fully loaded. All power supplies. All CPU's and all memory slots filled. Its maxed out." If you are interested, let me know and I will send you the guys email address I think he gives in queens or westchester -Chris

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Order a PiDP-8/I
by Neil Cherry 14 Dec '16

14 Dec '16

My chief financier (Wifely) may let me get a PiDP-8/I. Where can I find out if I can order one ? Thanks -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Anyone want a SunFire V880
by Brian L. Stuart 14 Dec '16

14 Dec '16

On Wed, 12/14/16, Christian Liendo via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: > If no one wants it I will post to ClassicCMP. I wanted to offer it to > the group first Where is it located again? It would be the biggest Sun I have, and might be kind of fun. I could probably get away with taking it in, though getting it down into my basement might be interesting. BLS

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Semi-OT: Cheap tablets for museum
by Jeffrey Jonas 14 Dec '16

14 Dec '16

Be sure the batteries can be replaced without destroying the case. A friend cracked the screen of his generic Android tablet while trying to replace the bad battery :-( Or always run them from USB power.

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January 2017 and February 2017 Workshops
by Jeffrey Brace 13 Dec '16

13 Dec '16

I set the date for January 14 & 15 for the January workshop. For the February workshop it will be February 11 & 12. This time we will have it in 9032-A where we had it originally. The 9010-A common room that we used the last few workshops is too small. The workshops that we have had in there were cramped. We have so many people working on stuff, that we just don't have enough room in there. -- Jeff Brace - ark72axow(a)gmail.com

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Update, museum tablets
by Evan Koblentz 12 Dec '16

12 Dec '16

Here's an update on the tablet project that I mentioned a while ago. We made simple card-stock signs for all of the microcomputer shortly before VCF East last spring. The signs looked decent and served their purpose. However, after a few months, the signs began to show their age and we realized it's a hassle to make changes. We also started to realize they looked sort of amateur-ish. So we decided to experiment with tablets. Simple tablets cost as little as $50-$60 and have tolerable specs for Android and our low requirements (run a browser, maybe play an A/V file here and there). I bought an Amazon Kindle Fire 7. It's a decent little tablet, but Amazon customizes it too much. You can't run Google Play apps without all kinds of complicated changes. I'm returning it tomorrow. In its place, I bought an Insignia (BestBuy house brand) 8" tablet. $60 and pure Android. I examined 20-something apps that do kiosk mode and/or parental control. Settled on an app called Fully Web Browser. It's inexpensive, easy to configure, and locks down everything except whatever domains/features that we white-list. Home button, hidden address bar, password-protected settings, even the power/volume buttons are locked down. It would be impossible for a museum visitor to do ANYTHING except what we specifically allow. The idea (as most of you know by now) is to install one tablet for every two display carts in our microcomputer exhibit. Each cart has upper/lower artifacts. The tablet screens will be divided into four quadrants. Visitors touch the quadrant corresponding with the artifact. I'm writing the web page so they can touch anywhere in the quadrant; it doesn't have to be on the actual contents (thanks to a trick in the <td> tag: <td onclick="location.href='yourpage.html'"> which supercedes using standard hyperlinks for the cell contents.) Up top there's a headline: "Press a box to learn more about the artifacts." On bottom are our Twitter/Facebook handles. Pressing a box makes that box go full-screen with info about the artifact. The top headline changes to, "Press here to return to the menu" and the bottom social media info stays the same. I ordered a case for the tablet. If it works well, then we'll determine a system for mounting them to the carts. And if THAT works well, then we'll bulk-purchase the rest of the tablets/cases. We already have funds budgeted for this. The simplicity of paper signs has some merits, but let's face it, this is 2016 and we need to have modern artifact presentation and interpretation. Using a slick kiosk app on tablets will be welcoming to our visitors, will make young people feel more comfortable in our learning environment, will impress InfoAge management, and (along with the two TVs we installed) will raise the bar for InfoAge museums in general. I am very excited about this project! We'll post some video when the first beta is installed.

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update re: bouncing messages and also Verizon accounts on our list
by Evan Koblentz 12 Dec '16

12 Dec '16

Everyone, Got this email from our list provider just now. -------- Forwarded Message -------- Dear List Owners, Some of you will be aware that for the last week Verizon has been blocking email coming from our server in New York. As a result, customers of Verizon in the US who are subscribed to lists hosted on that server are not receiving list-emails. We are still working on getting this block lifted. As part of our routine maintenance updates on the weekend, stricter bounce rules were applied to all our servers around the world. Many lists have old and outdated email addresses that no longer work, or that mail cannot be delivered to. Any subscriber address on a list that now bounces more that twice in a month is automatically removed.

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Museum Report 20161211 - Dec. 11, 2016
by Jeffrey Brace 11 Dec '16

11 Dec '16

Lots and lots of visitors today from the run by type to the know more than me type. The Holiday train show is going on and we get lots of visitors thanks to the show and the volunteers directing them to us. Next weekend will be very busy as it is the last weekend of the Holiday Train show. -- Jeff Brace - ark72axow(a)gmail.com

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The eye
by william degnan 11 Dec '16

11 Dec '16

https://www.degnanco.com/eye.cfm

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FS: Unknown S100 Host Interface Board
by Systems Glitch 11 Dec '16

11 Dec '16

link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/272480498465 Don't know what it does, it's only labeled as "S100 Host Interface," it *is* made in the USA though! There's a 50-pin dual row connector on top, but the board is all TTL logic. Electrical tested only -- it won't blow up your S-100 box, but it's not guaranteed to do anything else! Figured perhaps someone can find a use for it, or might even know what it's for! Thanks, Jonathan

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