April 2017 - vcf-midatlantic

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Northern VA Lunch (was: Looking for IBM TS3500 etc.)
by Ethan 09 Apr '17

09 Apr '17

> I would also be up for lunch with y'all. > A few months ago, I recall a similar thread of people saying they were > up for something in the NOVA area that ultimately went > nowhere. Anyone ever eaten at Clare & Don's Beach Shack on 29 in Falls > Church? If I had to pick a place to recommend, that would be it. That is wild, I just ate there Tuesday night. I go there monthly for the NoVA SCUBA diving meetup group. Service was slightly week but they had a business crowd in the other room that was throwing off the balance I think. Maybe some sorta MLM pitch group. The venue has a video projector and a screen as well. Anyways, should we do this on a weeknight or weekend? Mondays are bad for me due to pinball league and Tuesdays once a month due to the SCUBA diving group. Other than that, game on!

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More VCF East XII pics
by Dan Roganti 09 Apr '17

09 Apr '17

here's some more pics from VCF East XII I apologize if I missed anyone, or few pics of each exhibit It's very easy to get distracted and lose track while there But between the 4 of us in the A/V group I think we got it covered really good And Dave Riley has a ton of pics to deliver still I have the exhibit names and their exhibitors, But I couldn't fit the descriptions of the exhibits on there, it would just scroll off the screen, So I just placed a link on my site to the VCFed website, so you can refer to the complete descriptions I noticed after the show there seems to be a couple of people in the photos who I think were standing in for the exhibits. They weren't listed on the VCFed website, so I didn't know to get there names beforehand. http://www.rogtronics.net/blog/?page_id=730 Dan -- _ ____ / \__/ Scotty, We Need More Power !! \_/ _\__ Aye, Cap'n, but we've only got 80 col's !!

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VCF pictures
by Evan Koblentz 08 Apr '17

08 Apr '17

Someone posted very detailed pictures on Facebook this morning or last night. I can't find them now and I don't remember who it was. Anyone? ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit evan(a)vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation

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Game up, something to show
by Evan Koblentz 07 Apr '17

07 Apr '17

Someone on VCForum joked that I should make it "Find the kitten" -- apparently that's a thing on the internet -- so I did: https://tinyurl.com/kwalvsy It's silly but it uses everything I learned so far: how to move a sprite, how to make the joystick's 256 increments match the lores screen's 40 increments, how to combine static images with the moving image, how to generate random(ish) numbers, how to do collision detection, how to animate an image (by primitive method of redrawing over old image in background color, etc.), and how to restart by using the joystick button (already learned from previous Lego robot experiment). The real game will be a bigger challenge. Have to merge the robot code into the game framework (hey Brace and Dan, yes the main program is all subroutines), make additional collision detection for when you drive the robot over the screen boundaries, make obstacles, make a scoring system, improve the graphics, and optimize the code (even I understand it WILL get slow as it grows). Tools I learned to use in the robot + game process so far -- ADTpro, Cidepress. (Dan: turns out using Ciderpress is easier than you and I both thought. Just open the .dsk image, select your .txt file with the "convert to .BAS" option, and that's it -- it automatically adds it to your disk image; you don't have to re-save the image or use any compression formats. Discovered this by accident when I reloaded the program, but I forgot to re-save the image, and yet the new code was magically on the disk already.) ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit evan(a)vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation

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1977: The year of the appliance computer
by william degnan 07 Apr '17

07 Apr '17

Here is a PDF from the Sunday Keynote, "1977: The year of the appliance computer" http://vintagecomputer.net/vcf12/1977ApplianceComputer.pdf I will post photos asap. Bill

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iMac G4 ("iLamp") free to a good home
by William Dudley 07 Apr '17

07 Apr '17

I realize this is a bit too new, though if I was Evan I'd be playing the "long game" and collecting "soon to be classic" computers. Aaaanyway, I have the following machine to give away: iMac 800Mhz G4 OS-X 10.4.11 256M SDRAM 60GB disk DVD-RW usable screen size: 15" diagonal. It's tested and works (boots, ethernet works, sound works). It looks like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G4 The computer is in Jackson, NJ and I'm not interested in shipping. I can bring to a VCF workshop or meetup somewhere in central NJ. Bill Dudley This email is free of malware because I run Linux.

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What's wrong with my program experiment?
by Evan Koblentz 07 Apr '17

07 Apr '17

A month-ish ago I posted about my Applesoft learning experiment in which I figured out how to make a point (in lo-res and hi-res alike) move around the screen with the joystick. At the time I couldn't figure out how to keep other images stationary (vs. redrawing themselves every time the joystick-checking code looped). Last night I solved that by (duh!) drawing a stationary point first and then looping back only as far as the joystick code. At first it left a trail, but then I added a line to immediately re-draw the same coordinates in black. 10 GR:COLOR=2 20 PLOT 10,10 30 X=PDL(0):Y=PDL(1) 40 X=X/6.4:Y=Y/6.4 50 X=X+0.5:Y=Y+0.5 60 X=INT(X):Y=INT(Y) 70 IF X>39 THEN X=39:IF Y>39 THEN Y=39 (because at one point I got an illegal quantity error when I moved the stick to the right) 80 PLOT X,Y:PRINT INT(X),INT(Y) 90 FOR W=1 TO 50: NEXT W 100 COLOR=0:PLOT X,Y:COLOR=2 110 GOTO 30 This works: the point at 10,10 remains solid while only the stick-controlled point moves. (I don't want to hear any snobby insults about "spaghetti code". This is not the actual application I'm working on. It's just a code snippet for the learning experiment.) (The results are the same if I eliminate lines 50 and 60. Those lines only exist to round up the numbers on .5, because INT only rounds down, and to eliminate remainders when it prints the coordinates.) However there may be a problem with the joystick or maybe a bug that I'm not seeing. All four corners are reporting the correct values: 0,0; 0,39; 39,0; and 39,39. When the stick centers I get 21,12. :( But if I adjust the trim wheels then the corners aren't right. Is this a joystick problem or a software bug?

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FS: Two Remex RIR-PDP-11 Unibus PDP-11 Paper Tape Reader Interfaces
by Systems Glitch 06 Apr '17

06 Apr '17

Board 1 link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/272621568579 Board 2 link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/272621571035 Two Remex paper tape reader interface boards. These are Unibus boards for interfacing readers to PDP-11s. Looks like you can populate the missing circuitry to run a Remex paper tape punch, too. I don't have any documentation on these, or Remex punch/reader units to test with. They were acquired with a lot of surplus CNC Unibus boards. Presumably some old Unibus PDP-11 was controlling a CNC off of paper tape, but it looks like Remex provided readers to many OEMs for both CNC step loading as well as binary tape loading. Thanks, Jonathan

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FS: NOS MITS Disk Power Supply Board, Unassembled
by Systems Glitch 06 Apr '17

06 Apr '17

link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/272621563397 MITS Disk Power Supply board, presumably for MITS/Pertec disk drives. Probably pretty rare in that it's unassembled. Thanks, Jonathan

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FS: MITS Two Board Disk Controller Set
by Systems Glitch 06 Apr '17

06 Apr '17

link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/272621534373 Picked this up in a box of boards that appeared to have come from a scrapped out Altair 8800B Turnkey system. They've been electrically tested -- they don't draw excessive current, nothing gets hot, and they don't prevent my IMSAI 8080 from operating. I don't have disk drives so no further testing has been done. Guaranteed only not to have exploding regulators or exploding capacitors BIN price based on the kind of prices I've been seeing for the disk drives. Make an offer if you think it's too high. Do note that these controller boards are intended to work with MITS drives, not industry standard Shugart interface drives. Thanks, Jonathan

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