September 2017 - vcf-midatlantic

Head align Tape
by Duane Craps 15 Jul '18

15 Jul '18

>>> 7 track or 9 track? The Univacs are pretty old even for "vintage". Head alignment tapes are not track specific. They have one track the width of the tape and are used to adjust time delays to time align the bits coming off the read head when reading the alignment tape. Then a "scratch tape" is used while writing all ones to adjust the write delays while looking at the read amps. We used the same alignment tape for 7 and 9 track units. Duane On 6/17/2017 11:40 AM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > 7 track or 9 track? The Univacs are pretty old even for "vintage". On 6/17/2017 11:40 AM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > On 06/17/2017 11:37 AM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote: >>> UNIVAC 1540 Magnetic Tape Unit...I wonder if anyone has a 800 BPI, >>> NRZ Master Head Alignment Tape (skew tape) to donate to VCF. >> 7 track or 9 track? The Univacs are pretty old even for "vintage". >> >> Also, as Dave McGuire noted, a lightly-used tape from a known-good drive >> will be useful. In the floppy-disk world, I use several diskettes each >> from a known good drive to validate "alignment". > That wasn't me. But yes, that can be useful for rough validation. > >> Seems to me, there's likely several boxes of mag-tapes in the inventory. > Yes, I brought a few boxes several years ago. > > -Dave > v

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Wanted: Dead ST-506
by Jason Perkins 07 Oct '17

07 Oct '17

Does anyone have a dead or otherwise very unhealthy ST-506 or ST-412 they'd want to get rid of for small / reasonable $$? I want to research replacing the bearing(s) in one of my Apple Profiles, and need a drive to experiment on. One with very noisy bearings and a snapped off head would be perfect! I do have a PC ST-506 mechanism that I think is working, but I've never tried it. The bearing sounds fine spinning it by hand. I lost the board that attaches to the bottom, but I don't want to destroy a possibly working drive. Thanks! -- Jason Perkins 313 355 0085

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Switching to Tindie, eBay Disallows Links to Documentation Now
by systems_glitch 29 Sep '17

29 Sep '17

All, I'm moving all of my open source hobby kits/projects to Tindie. I received a nastygram from eBay last night that I needed to remove all external links to my project descriptions and GitHub repos or my listings would be deleted. What good is selling a bare PC board without a link to the documentation and design files?! Anyway, my Tindie store can be found at the following address: https://www.tindie.com/stores/glitchwrks/ So far, Tindie seems to be better in all ways than eBay, except for of course viewership. Hopefully people will use it rather than shying away from an unknown. The focus at Tindie is DIY/hobby/maker projects, often open source, and often one hacker's hobby efforts. At least the "suggested items" will likely be relevant :) I did call eBay's customer service, and after wasting an hour wading through tech support hierarchy, I did get a non-call-center manager who understood the problem, but basically said, "your business is important to us, but not *that* important" -- he admitted that not having links to documentation basically made my eBay listings useless, but also admitted that there are no exceptions because eBay is scared someone will sell a $10 item outside of eBay once in a while. Thanks, Jonathan

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OT: Please volunteer for Infoage Halloween event (all October)
by Evan Koblentz 27 Sep '17

27 Sep '17

"Camp Evans Base of Terror" is Infoage's biggest annual fundraiser. It starts this Friday (September 29) and runs every Friday/Saturday night from 7pm-11pm) through October 28. They urgently need more volunteers for all sorts of roles. They're short for almost every night. Just like at VCF East, it is vital that they get firm commitments -- it's useless (if not completely counterproductive) to get responses from the "I'll try to stop by" or the "wish I could but..." people. Jeff B., Bill Drom., Duane, I are each volunteering for a few of the dates. Is anyone else available to be a volunteer for this event? If so, then which dates? Feel free to email me privately. ________________________________ 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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Commodore Fans - what is this case for?
by John Heritage 26 Sep '17

26 Sep '17

I have a soft case for a commodore product, that I inherited when picking up a bunch of Atari stuff from a friend. What is this for? https://imgur.com/hL3HzMU https://imgur.com/hom82N4 https://imgur.com/WC04CSX It's not very thick - so I don't think it would fit any kind of a floppy drive, but I may be wrong.. similar 'feeling' as to whether it would hold a casette player for the c64 or something.. Anyway I'd appreciate any knowledge on this :)

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jade z80 cpu card
by william degnan 26 Sep '17

26 Sep '17

Quick show of hands....anyone have a working Jade Z80 CPU card that they use? Are these nice worth working to restore? I got one that came with a California Computer Systems S-100 computer. 8 years ago I tested it with an in-circuit emulator that seemed to indicate it was at least able to initiaize but I have not gotten it to talk nicely to an I/O card, garbles characters. I dropped the project to move onto something else. Thinking of returning to it to see if I could make more progress. BIll

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FS: Jade Bus Probe in Original Box w/ Manual, Tested/Working
by systems_glitch 26 Sep '17

26 Sep '17

All, I'm thinning out more S-100 stuff and have an extra Jade Bus Probe. This one is in the original shipping box, with an original manual. It's tested and fully working. Pictures: https://imgur.com/a/YDprP Asking $500/best offer plus shipping. Thanks, Jonathan

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World Maker Faire report
by Evan Koblentz 25 Sep '17

25 Sep '17

Hey everyone. World (NYC) Maker Faire was fantastic. The show was maybe 10% smaller than past years, but just as busy and the crowd was great. Special thanks to booth helpers Jeff B., Dean, Drew, Adam, and Mouse. Special thanks also to Jeff for driving Adam/I and most of the equipment + booth stuff; to Dean for bringing us a cooler; and Tony for loaning us Apple/Amdex color monitors + extra //c power supplies. We did something new this year: we brought VCFed's 100-inch portable screen, put in the back of our 10x20 booth, and set up a project front/center. That way the back/center of our booth was one massive screen. We displayed our logo on the right half of the screen and an emulated Apple II in a window on the left half of the screen. We put large dark tarps above and to the side of the booth to keep out sunlight. It worked well: the booth was dark enough to clearly/sharply see our logo and the emulated Apple II display, but light enough that it didn't bother anything. We had three live demo stations (//c) along the back for kids to learn BASIC and a front desk to greet visitors. I couldn't take any pictures: dropped my phone Saturday morning when we arrived and broke its screen. Got it fixed today. $159 "stupid tax". Spotted visiting us: Chris F., Rolf, Stephen E.; David S. from the Trenton event; the 2600/HOPE crew; Stephen C. from IEEE Spectrum; Eric L. who donated the Lego robotics kit last year, and at least a dozen other friends-of-VCF. I could not possibly remember/list them all. ________________________________ 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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OT - PC related
by Martin A Flynn 23 Sep '17

23 Sep '17

OT Our host, InfoAge has a really old Dell desktop pc running the motion control system for the TLM-18 (the big white antenna up the road from the VCF museum). This is due to the I/O boards requiring 5 volt PCI slots (not PCI-e or PCI-X). I am building InfoAge a new computer, using an MSI MS-98A9 motherboard, which supports the I/O boards they have. Here's the request: Anyone have an i5Sandy Bridge Series CPU (LGA 1155 socket) floating around that they can donate? Can be anything out of that cpu family as the requirements are pretty low. Martin Flynn

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Maker Faire discount tickets
by Evan Koblentz 22 Sep '17

22 Sep '17

Maker Faire is this weekend. They gave us five extra one-day discount tickets. These are $30 each vs. regular price of $50 each. Email me off-list to get one. Limit one per person, in the name of being fair to everyone. But I might post otherwise later today if they are still available. No point wasting them. (Our booth staff -- me, Brace, Adam, Mouse, Dean, Drew -- are using our allotment of free tickets.) ________________________________ 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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