February 2016 - vcf-midatlantic

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Double door progess
by Evan Koblentz 08 Feb '16

08 Feb '16

> There will have to be a lighted exit sign in that general area, right? All I know is the town inspector gave a thumbs-up to the building/room in its current state.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Double door progess
by Tony Bogan 08 Feb '16

08 Feb '16

Sent from my iPhone > On Feb 8, 2016, at 12:11 PM, Bill Sudbrink via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: > > I assume that the outlet above the door is for the > "EXIT" sign? > > Bill S. Funny you should say that, I told Evan when we were moving all the computers we should get a vintage computer sign of come kind (old computer fest/data center sign from 70s/80s) and put it

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Double door progess
by Martin Flynn 08 Feb '16

08 Feb '16

Clock > On Feb 8, 2016, at 12:11 PM, Bill Sudbrink via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: > > I assume that the outlet above the door is for the > "EXIT" sign? > > Bill S. > >

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Double door progess
by Evan Koblentz 08 Feb '16

08 Feb '16

There are three doors into our new museum space. One of them is being converted into a double door, so that we can display big stuff like our UNIVAC. Check out the attached photo to see the progress!

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Printer update
by Evan Koblentz 07 Feb '16

07 Feb '16

Unfortunately the printer offered to us at the recent workshop didn't work. Its insides rattled around and made a grinding noise. But, the story has a happy ending! Corey C. is donating a brand new one to us. The new one does wide format (up to 19" wide, same as most other entry-level units), is also a copier/scanner, and has wireless printing from Android/iOS devices.

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What should be on our (tiny) workbench?
by Evan Koblentz 07 Feb '16

07 Feb '16

As previously mentioned, our new museum space will have a small bench area. This won't be a fully equipped workshop, due to space (and also because we can use the IXR hackerspace's workshop whenever needed), but it will be good for quick/simple projects. What equipment should be put in there? So far: - Martin's getting us a nice SFF computer - We will get a budget wide-format (13x19) printer - Corey donated a desoldering station - I still need to check if we already have a scope - Alex J. donated a variac We'll need a decent soldering station and a set of tools. As you would all guess, my strong preference is to have one nice matching set of tools, not a hundred mismatched parts. What else should be seek, especially re: anything of significant cost? Of course, our * other * strong preference is to have everything donated. :)

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Casters!
by Evan Koblentz 06 Feb '16

06 Feb '16

Good news about our shelving. Funding presented itself today for us to put all the new shelving units on caster wheels (as in the warehouse). That will make it waaaaaaaaay easier to move stuff around for maintenance, cabling, reorganization, etc. -- thank you to the donor!

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Moving report
by Evan Koblentz 06 Feb '16

06 Feb '16

Steve A., Tony, and I had a very productive day moving stuff from the old museum to the new one. In the first two rooms (consumer + business microcomputers), we moved ALL of our artifacts -- systems, books, peripherals, etc. -- into one corner of the new space. Steve has a station wagon and Tony has a cargo van. Both arrived with their vehicles empty, and we made several trips with each car pretty well loaded. All that's left of ours in those two rooms are the white wire shelving attached to the walls. That will be very easy to take down; we'll do it next time. We left behind the ugly metal desks and the carpet. InfoAge plans to dispose of the desks in their own way, which is fine with me! Moving those by ourselves would be very difficult and time-consuming. Next weekend (not yet sure which day), we'll tackle the homebrew-era room. That will be slightly more challenging than today's effort, because the systems are heavier. The only really heavy thing we had to move today was the IBM 5100 dual 8" floppy cabinet. You all know what's looming -- the big stuff. These include two heavy-ass display cases, Bendix G-15 and its desk, George (four full racks), IBM 1130 (computer, printer, card reader, 029 keypunch), PDP-8 + teletype, and I forget the model number of the other double-wide DEC mini -- 785? We need to plan that move carefully and have the right volunteers in place. Basically, we just have to get across the sidewalk, concrete ramp, and gravel-covered blacktop -- a distance of about 25 feet. Then we'll be indoors on perfectly flat concrete. Probably the most important thing we'll need for that move is a couple of people who are very experienced with moving the large stuff.

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Museum move
by Evan Koblentz 06 Feb '16

06 Feb '16

We closed our museum (for the next couple of months) and began moving during the workshop this weekend. So far, we moved 26 boxes of books, with several more to go. We also bought our own trash can so we don't have to keep borrowing an InfoAge one, and we bought a box of contractor-grade trash bags. Jeff J. brought in the wide printer, which printer guru Ian thinks will work. We will get new cartridges to test it. Corey C. brought in a desoldering station. We'll need to get a regular soldering station, tools, etc. (we probably already have a decent scope: I don't know much about those, but I do know IA has a few and we might too; I'm honestly not sure if there if there is one in our warehouse.) This week I'll order the shelving. Fred and the InfoAge board chairmam both asked us to show our layout plan to InfoAge's design consultant (he's a volunteer). We did that, and he gave it the okay. Several of our own members saw the design during the workshop and everyone seems to like it. A few people made very helpful suggestions that we will use. There will be several "please help us move" emails from me during the next few weeks/months.

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So, we're going to need an office computer.
by Evan Koblentz 06 Feb '16

06 Feb '16

We're going to need a computer for the new museum's office/workbench area. Requirements: 1. It must have a very small footprint. A full tower, anything rack-mounted, servers, etc. are not suitable for our current situation. Ideally a "mini" case (ha! a minicomputer...) would serve us well. 2. We don't need a laptop and would rather have a desktop anyhow, so we can more easily upgrade it and avoid proprietary stuff. 3. Its motherboard should have a sufficient CPU and enough RAM capacity to run a modern operating system. 4. Serial port. :) 5. We'll need this in the next few weeks. That's about it. I figure we can buy a cheap SSD, install Windows 7 SP1 -- which is the least-worst version of Windows -- and make it dual-boot into Linux. I can do all of that myself, but it would certainly save time if the system gets to us already configured this way. I have a spare USB keyboard/mouse to donate. VCF owns a few small-ish square LCDs, but we could definitely use a donation of a modern wide-screen LCD -- perhaps a 22-inch or around that size.

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