July 2016 - vcf-midatlantic

OT: Anyone have an old laserdisc player?
by Herb Johnson 28 Jul '16

28 Jul '16

Matt Patoray said: > The best player for those discs is a Pioneer VP-1100 or a >Sylvania VP-7200. The Pioneer VP-660 also works well. > Avoid the Sony LDP-1000 as almost all of them have laser tubes > that have gone to air. I'm sorry to hear about the Sony; I have a Sony LDP-1500 model I've not run in years. I'll have to check it out. If others bring their laserdisk players to Infoage, maybe I'll bring mine for sale. Matt: an old trick to restore HeNe laser tubes, is to put the tube in a plastic bag and fill the bag with helium. Yes, the helium will leak out of the baggy, but it will hold for a day or so. That seems to be sufficient to restore the helium lost from the gas tube. Comments? Also: I think the topic of laserdisks is marginally "on" for vintage computing. Early commercial video arcade games used laserdisks. I think the first was "Dragon's Lair" if memory serves. Laserdisks were supported by personal computers in the era as used in education - commercial, military, and K-12. (My Sony model has a serial? interface and some kind of command set.) The vintage arcade collectors/restorers are important members of the vintage computing community. Many of the dealers, offer vintage digital parts that cross over to 1970's-80's vintage computers. They are active in the emulation community of course; many also own vintage computers. For myself, early on, I had a summer job repairing those early microprocessor-based video game boards. I also had a contract job, documenting software which supported a set of training videodisks on a PC. Laserdisks (and RCA's SelectaVision Capacitance Electronic Disc or CED) were an important development in multimedia computing for industry and home. Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Extremely Rare Celebration Apple-1 Computer on Charity Buzz Auction
by madodel 27 Jul '16

27 Jul '16

*Extremely Rare Celebration Apple-1 Computer* https://www.charitybuzz.com/catalog_items/extremely-rare-celebration-apple-… Estimated Value: $1,000,000 Current Bid: $270,000 "The"Celebration" Apple-1 <http://apple1.charitybuzz.com/>is an original Apple-1 pre-NTI board that has many unique features, period correct power supply, original Apple-1 ACI cassette board (also populated with Robinson Nugent sockets), early Apple-1 BASIC cassettes, original marketing material, and the most complete documentation set of the known Apple-1 boards. The "Celebration" Apple-1 is extremely rare not only because of the scarcity of Apple-1 computers, but according to Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, no known PCB boards of this type were ever sold to the public. At this time, this is the only known Apple-1 to show the signs of starting out as a blank original-run board and not part of the two known production runs, so this board appears to be unique from all other known Apple-1 boards."

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Macintosh Floppy drive repair guide
by Matt Patoray 26 Jul '16

26 Jul '16

Hi all, I rember that someone in the group had done a presentation of Macintosh floppy drive repair (it might have been Ian P, not sure). I have decided that my pile of bad 1 and 2 MB Mac floppy drives needs attended to, they are all Sony auto inject drives. Was there a resentation ever done, and if so, was there a powerpoint that was with it? Or if anyone knows of a website with a good tutorial. Thanks, -- Matt Patoray Owner, MSP Productions KD8AMG

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Z80 Starter Kit
by Mike Loewen 26 Jul '16

26 Jul '16

I dug out an unbuilt SD Systems Z80 Starter Kit (1978) that I acquired some years back in a trade, and started soldering. Sacrilege, some may say, but kits are meant to be built. :-) It took me about 9 hours from bare PCB to finished product, and worked the first time! http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Z80_Starter.jpg Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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How to use an oscilloscope
by Mike Loewen 26 Jul '16

26 Jul '16

This may interest some of you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niBGkqlh2XY Alan Wolke's presentation for NJARC. "It covers the basic controls and operation of an analog oscilloscope (the first 50 minutes or so), and then how you would setup the scope to measuring the signals in various locations in a typical antique AM radio (staring about 52 minutes in)." Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Z80 Starter Kit
by Mike Loewen 25 Jul '16

25 Jul '16

On Sun, 24 Jul 2016, Bob Aviles via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > On 07/23/2016 07:42 PM, Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic wrote: >> >> I dug out an unbuilt SD Systems Z80 Starter Kit (1978) that I acquired >> some years back in a trade, and started soldering. Sacrilege, some may >> say, but kits are meant to be built. :) It took about 9 hours from >> bare PCB to finished product, and worked the first time! >> >> http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Z80_Starter.jpg > > I wish you video tape the process of building it, that would have been > great! > Bobby Editing nine hours of video? I don't think so. :-) Here are some progress shots: http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Z80_Bare.jpg http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Z80_Sockets.jpg http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Z80_Components.jpg Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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yes, we have no bananas
by Herb Johnson 24 Jul '16

24 Jul '16

The lyric quality of Jeff's message was lost in translation, which I've tried to restore as below: Ode to banana plugs The analog computers are programmed by wires which walked away, when the computers retired. To other loves with banana lugs and everyone loves the piggyback plugs. So fight entropy and bring the wires home For love of analog and the law of Ohm. - translated from the original by Herb Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Paging Ben Greenfield
by Evan Koblentz 23 Jul '16

23 Jul '16

Ben, please call/text me: 646-546-9999. Need to ask you a question here at HOPE.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] yes, we have no bananas
by Brian L. Stuart 23 Jul '16

23 Jul '16

> The lyric quality of Jeff's message was lost in translation, which I've > tried to restore as below: > > Ode to banana plugs > > The analog computers are programmed by wires > which walked away, when the computers retired. > To other loves with banana lugs > and everyone loves the piggyback plugs. > > So fight entropy and bring the wires home > For love of analog and the law of Ohm. > > - translated from the original by > Herb Johnson Excellent. That's one for the archives. BLS

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At hope fri
by william degnan 22 Jul '16

22 Jul '16

So far I have seen jim sheet and Jon chapman Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net

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