May 2017 - vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

ISO: Solid State Music IO-8 S-100 Serial Board Manual
by Systems Glitch 08 May '17

08 May '17

Just purchased a Solid State Music IO-8, apparently the manual is not available online, and isn't listed in Herb's documentation collection. Anyone have it? Looks like it's eight Intel 8251A serial ports. Thanks, Jonathan

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2513 Character ROM - ReActiveMicro
by Support 08 May '17

08 May '17

I met someone at VCF East a few weeks ago and they asked about a 2513 Character ROM for a system. I can't find my note so wanted to make the announcement here and in case anyone else needed one too. Also used in the Rev 4 and earlier Apple II/+. http://store.reactivemicro.com/product/apple-ii-2513-character-rom-apple-pn… Thanks! </shameless plug> Henry S. Courbis Office Toll Free: (800) REACTIVE (732-2848) Office/Mobile Direct: (856) 779-1900 www.ReActiveMicro.com <http://www.ReactiveMicro.com> - Sales, Support, and News, Our Headquarters on the Internet ReActiveMicro.com/wiki - Support, Software, Manuals, and History. Create your own page today! Facebook.com/reactivemicrousa - Our Social Media Outlet and Support

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FS: IBM 5160 PC/XT 64-256K Motherboard, Upgraded to 640K
by Systems Glitch 07 May '17

07 May '17

link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/272662031085 This board had a dead 8088 CPU, which was replaced with a similar ceramic AMD D8088 CPU. It has, at some point in the past, been modified to support 640K RAM (a common mod for 256K boards) -- this can be reversed by removing an IC and a jumper. Fully tested as stated in the listing Fully assembled and tested XT-IDE rev 3 boards are available for bundled purchase with this board -- your XT-IDE will be tested in this exact board. Thanks, Jonathan

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VCF-SE 5.0 Videos Uploaded
by Alan Hightower 07 May '17

07 May '17

[cross posted] I was able to find time to edit and post speaker videos from this year's Vintage Computer Festival Southeast held last weekend in Atlanta. Amazingly I did it within one week and not a year or more! Here is the speaker summary and bios from the VCFed website: http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southea… [1] And you can find the videos on the AHCS Vimeo channel: https://vimeo.com/user50868990 [2] Don French discusses the genesis of the TRS-80 Model I at Tandy/Radio Shack: https://vimeo.com/216109117 [3] Andy Hertzfeld from Apple talks Apple II and his journey to Cupertino: https://vimeo.com/216104204 [4] Zach Weddington hosts a special screening of his Viva Amiga documentary film followed by a panel discussion moderated by Adam Spring: https://vimeo.com/216081365 [5] Chuck Peddle via Skype discusses the history of the personal computer and his current projects: https://vimeo.com/216072422 [6] I've also continued to work on the 4.0 backlog. I've added David Larsen's discussion on the Bug Book series and his computer museum here: https://vimeo.com/216398748 [7] And as-posted from last year, Bil Herd discusses his early Commodore days: https://vimeo.com/161861581 [8] I still have Ray Holt, Jerry Mannock, Mary Hopper, and podcast videos from 4.0 in my work queue. 3.0, 2.0 and 1.0 to come (Jason Scott, Robert Uiterwyk, Jonathan Zufi, Carl Helmers, Robert Tinney, Dick Huston, Dan Kottke, and others). But no ETA on finishing as of yet, sorry. There are some flaws in video (Andy's lectern mic - doh!) and audio (damn kids!), but they turned out ok. They are all open to free download. But please give proper attribution when sharing. On behalf of the entire Atlanta Historical Computing Society who work hard every year to make this happen, thanks and enjoy! We do this stuff for you guys! Alan Hightower - President Links: ------ [1] http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southea… [2] https://vimeo.com/user50868990 [3] https://vimeo.com/216109117 [4] https://vimeo.com/216104204 [5] https://vimeo.com/216081365 [6] https://vimeo.com/216072422 [7] https://vimeo.com/216398748 [8] https://vimeo.com/161861581

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DRAM memory testing - AboveBoard AT
by Richard Cini 07 May '17

07 May '17

All – I have an Intel AboveBoard/AT that looks like it works (it backfills RAM to 640k), so I bought a bunch of extra 256kbit (41256-120) chips from Jameco and boost the memory a bit. My plan is to use this AT for diskette imaging – I bought an Adaptec Floppy-SCSI controller (AHA-1522) which is the most flexible for use with ImageDisk. I know that these boards are somewhat finicky with the address settings, but when I try to set the board memory limits and run the diagnostics it complains about at least one bad chip but doesn’t identify the row or column. Arrrgh. Too many chips to swap one at a time, then reboot and retest. Does anyone have a DRAM tester that they can loan me so I can test all of the chips at once? Also, if anyone has experience configuring this board, I’d appreciate hearing from you. The instructions I found seem simple, but I’m trying to knock off possible problems one-by-one. Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

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NJ pickup
by Mike Loewen 07 May '17

07 May '17

Is there anyone near Dunellen, NJ would be willing to pick up and hold a machine for me, if I should win? Ebay 292108393231 I've wanted to add an Eagle to my collection, but this one is listed as "pickup only". Thanks. Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 07 May '17

07 May '17

Infoage is part of the "Weekend in Old Monmouth" event, so they asked all the groups to be open extra hours today. We opened the VCF museum from 10am-5pm. It was busy all day long. Tons of visitors of all types. Workshop-wise, today's group was me, Jeff B., Bill Dromgoole, Todd, Bob F., and Bill I. ... me/Brace/Drom/Bill I. will be here tomorrow too, and we're expecting several others such as Dean/Drew, Anthony B., etc. (I don't have the full list handy). Cool project of the day: Drom is working on an RS-232 interface to connect a laptop to the Univac.

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OT: Nasa runs competition to help make old Fortran code faster
by Herb Johnson 07 May '17

07 May '17

Responding: Thanks for the responses. In general, if someone sees some way THEY could do such an exhibit, based on their interests in hardware, software, and to represent some use or users - that's great! More than one person can do such things, as far as I'm concerned. I'll respond with what I'd do, what I had in mind, for my interests. - Herb ---------------- [Jim Scheef:] For this to interest more than just a few people the physical system that is modeled must be something familiar to most people...like Lunar Lander... Is that the type of thing you had in mind? That's not a bad question. No, Jim, I do NOT have in mind something that's "familiar to most people". It's helpful but not a goal. That's because, of 40+ years of personal computing history, "most people" by sheer numbers are familiar with personal computers used as ordinary devices on the ordinary Internet, social media, gaming, Twitter; or previously, to replace paper-tasks of job or business or hobby. Computers used to be extraordinary, and unfamiliar. Those people outnumber the scientists and engineers and other technical-trained people (and their fans) that I'm talking about. I described a very specific set of circumstances. But I'd not do such an exhibit, if there was zero interest. I'm seeing some interest today. Now - for say a continuing exhibit at the VCF Museum, you may well want something that's at least known-of - say, the half-century event of landing humans on the moon. And "lunar lander" programs are about as old as BASIC, if not FORTRAN. And, the landing problem IS a problem in physics; it's not hard to visualize. Of course it's been a game available on many platforms, so it's true history. And the physics and programming may be approachable to the unfamiliar (more on that shortly). also: Lunar Lander may be reasonable for an *analog* computer - I mentioned that hardware. A challenge would be the inputs and outputs, how to make them more than dials and graphs. For instance, the analog outputs could drive a modern visualization on a modern computer. I think this was discussed when analog computer restoration was discussed. -------------------- [John Heritage:] there's actually two pieces to the NASA competition. modify source code to improve performance....and an overall software / hardware solution...[discussion of modern hardware follows] A strong coder and a math guru are part of what's needed.. experienced computer architects, and people good at logic... Of course, I know little about the NASA competition, and little about modern parallel-computing hardware. But, as a digital BSEE engineer with some master's work in computer science, and as someone who hangs out at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab; I do have a clue about issues of numeric calculation of complex physical phenomena. I know there's some personal-computing hardware around that supports parallel computation. I humbly suggest you add "physicist" and "numeric computational experience" to your list of needed skills. The changes NASA wants, have to produce better results, not just faster ones. But further discussion here, would be outside "vintage computing". I'll end by saying, that limits of hardware and software were also challenges in the era of vintage computing. Something can be learned today, by reviewing solutions of the era. In fact, that's a principle thesis of my vintage computing activities. -------------------- [Tony Bogan:] Herb, I would love to see something like what you describe at VCF next year! I have zero background in fortran...the first thing I thought of was accelerators [for Apple II? Mac? computers]. someone else would need to do the coding.. If using my hardware is feasible, I would be very interested in helping any way I can. Tony, thanks for your encouragement. I have no shortage of vintage computing hardware, thank you. And Apple II's are not my area of primary interest in vintage computing. So I'd not use them in my own exhibit. And, I'd not likely use modern accelerators, those too are not a part of my interests. But there are people today, who ARE interested in those very things. So, you might consider such an exhibit yourself, and find an Apple II programmer who'd support that effort. Or of course, learn some coding and some physics - there were books on Apple II programming for physics and engineering! - and see where that goes. "Lunar lander" isn't the worst place to start. -------------- [Kelly Leavitt:] I have my senior project from [Rutgers?] (1993) . It was a simulation of random particulate transport in groundwater written in FORTRAN. I moved this chunk of FORTRAN IV from the mainframe/mini era to the PC....It ran on my Tandy 1000A with an 8087. The vector mathematics that FORTRAN could do was amazing. ...I had offered to port the FORTRAN code to C++ at the time. The professor just laughed... He had me port this to MS FORTRAN 77 and put a C++ front end on for graphing the results. Aha! Proof! Such things WERE done, even after the 1970's and 80's. And with personal computers. Thanks, Kelly! I'd say a Tandy 1000 with 8087 8088 is "vintage" enough. And the code was even older. Kelly, see if you can resurrect your work and show how it was done to these young'uns! A decent all-in-one machine from the era I'd consider using, is a Heath/Zenith Z-120 series system - 8088 plus an 8085, same MS-DOS (or CP/M), probably similar performance. I have FORTRAN for that, a Zenith/ Microsoft product. I use a Z-120 about once a week, and on many vintage projects. The Z-120's were also bought by the US military for their classrooms, and by many universities; some sold one to EVERY student. Many people over 50 remember them; that's helpful. I could probably add an 8087...768K of memory ought to be enough....vroom vroom!..he he Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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FS: VIP TXM/10-IV 10 MHz Super XT Motherboard Repaired/Tested/Working
by Systems Glitch 07 May '17

07 May '17

link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/272660815175 This board had a few broken traces on the bottom -- looks like it was stacked up with some other boards and got scraped at some point. After fixing the traces, the board still wouldn't come up, and the POST card showed a bad DMA controller. Replaced the DMA controller with a 40-pin machine pin socket and NOS Siemens 8237A. Fully tested as described in the listing. This board has 1 MB (640K usable) of 256K x 4 DRAM installed, plus parity chips. Interestingly, it supports 16 and 20 pin DIP RAM, as well as ZIP RAM. Fully assembled and tested XT-IDE rev 3 boards are available for bundled purchase with this board -- your XT-IDE will be tested in this exact board. Thanks, Jonathan

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Workshop Breakfast Tomorrow 5/6
by Jeffrey Brace 06 May '17

06 May '17

A few of us from the workshop are going to Blue Swan diner in Ocean Township tomorrow morning at 9am. Anyone is free to join us, just let me know. -- Jeff Brace - ark72axow(a)gmail.com Sent from my Commodore 64 ========================================================

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