January 2017 - vcf-midatlantic

The Real Mad Men of Advertising
by Joseph Oprysko 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

Smithsonian Channel will be airing a show on Sunday nights at 9PM through January called The Real Mad Men of Advertising. I haven't seen the previews for it, but on the 4th week (Jan 29th), I know they're covering the 1980's, including a cameo appearance by a Mac 128k. (Provided by yours truly). Should be an interesting watch covering Advertising from the 1950's through the 1980's. -- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?

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Galileo spacecraft computer documentation
by Herb Johnson 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

I've dealt with looking for Galileo spacecraft information: www.retrotechnology.com/galileo/galileo_1802.html www.retrotechnology.com/memship/galileo.txt www.retrotechnology.com/memship/1802_spacecraft.html ...because of its RCA COSMAC 1802 processors. In the past it was a challenge to find technical details of 20th century spacecraft, because of fears of hacking; because it was on paper and not electronic media; because few were interested. In the 21st century, so much info is thrown online now, and a lot of archives get digitized. So what's not online today, may be online tomorrow. I'd say, Web search from time to time. But if you have a strong interest, find out where the former engineers for the project hang out on the Web, and see if they can point you to more resources. Don't wait too long: these guys/gals won't last forever. The Galileo spacecraft used several 1802's for its instruments, and I believe it had a bus architecture for communicating to some other 1802's for communications, data archiving and so on. It won't be a simple architecture or simple software. Chances are, there were professional journal publications in the era, which described the general architecture. I may point to some of them on my Web pages. If you find a good resource, let me know, I'll add it to my Web site. Herb Johnson William O'Neil Research Base Juno, Jupiter

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Semi-OT: Cheap tablets for museum
by Evan Koblentz 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

Everyone, We're going to use some tablets in the museum as information kiosks. I bought a fifty-dollar Amazon Kindle Fire 7. Going to return it. It's a nice tablet, but I found out that Amazon's version of Android limits a bunch of things that we would need for a kiosk mode. Nevermind the details of how/why; that's a long story. Bottom line is we need something with conventional Android. I'd like recommendations for other sub-$100 Android tablets (the more sub-$100, the better). Performance is not an issue: all they have to do is run a browser. Android 5.x and minimal hardware specs is good enough.

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Logic simulator
by Mike Loewen 02 Jan '17

02 Jan '17

What's a nice (and free) TTL logic simulator for Linux? Something you can both clock and single-step, and has the basic building block (flip-flops, gates) some higher level components like encoders/decoders. Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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Floppy Days #68 - Interview with Bill Kemper, HP Series 80 Software Engineer
by Randall Kindig 01 Jan '17

01 Jan '17

http://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-68-interview-with-bill-kemper-hp-s… <http://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-68-interview-with-bill-kemper-hp-s…> Randy Kindig host, Floppy Days Podcast http://www.floppydays.com <http://www.floppydays.com/>

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What The Dormouse Said by John Markoff
by Douglas Crawford 31 Dec '16

31 Dec '16

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Galileo spacecraft computer documentation
by Jeffrey Brace 31 Dec '16

31 Dec '16

Try Frank O'Brien from InfoAge. He know a lot about NASA especially the Apollo guidance computer. On Sat, Dec 31, 2016 at 6:55 AM Ben Greenfield via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: > Hey all, > > > > I stumbled across this page and it left me wanting more. > > > > Anyone have any ideas. I tried Bitsavers but couldn’t find. I’m also not > sure how it would be listed. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Ben

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