February 2018 - vcf-midatlantic

HP dual-floppy at auction
by Mike Loewen 05 Feb '18

05 Feb '18

I noticed this HP 82901M dual DSDD HPIB drive up for auction: Ebay 263475746952 This would be a good match for an HP85/87 micro that has the HPIB cartridge and storage ROM, or a standard 87XM. No connection to the seller, and no idea if it works but it looks clean. These units have Tandon TM100-2 drives installed. Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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Need docent this Sunday Feb. 11 & for workshop
by Jeffrey Brace 05 Feb '18

05 Feb '18

Evan and I will be in Seattle for VCF PNW. We need someone for Sunday. Dromgoole will be here Saturday. Also for the workshop 3/3 & 3/4. We need one hour signups: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uJklCb5HcA1c1uKQFVCSLcHhxzhKTiFQhfu…

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Museum Report 2018-02-04 February 4, 2018
by Jeffrey Brace 04 Feb '18

04 Feb '18

A small amount of people today, due to Superbowl Sunday and rainy weather. Lou stopped by. He has an interest in the Next Machine. He couldn't make it to the last workshop, but will be here for the March 3 & 4 one. He was able to take pictures of the different machines. Tony Bogan worked on detailed diagnosis of more compact macs from the warehouse. I worked on getting docents for future dates as well as teaching Tony how to operate the C64. And Tony taught me some more about the Compact macs. Also working on the docent manual.

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Unscientific informal keyboard poll...
by Evan Koblentz 04 Feb '18

04 Feb '18

We may be getting a proper server for the museum rack. It would replace the tablet-serving Pi and have other uses too. To save space, we'll get a combination keyboard/pointing device. But which kind of pointing device -- trackpad (laptop style) or trackball? My vote would be trackpad. Curious what you all think.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] A Tale of Two NeXTstations
by Lou 04 Feb '18

04 Feb '18

Great to hear you got one of the NeXTstations working! I might actually be heading up to the museum today with the missus so it would actually be neat to see one of these working in person (especially since I will be getting my hands on a complete unit soon). As for the other unit and hardware password, have you tried booting it without the PRAM battery? I read somewhere that the PRAM stores the hardware password and booting it without the battery installed (and waiting a few minutes) it will try to boot from network but can be configured to drive. I do not know if this was attempted yet but in any case if we are heading up today we can talk more about it if the museum isn't swamped. Here's hoping we can figure this out! -Lou

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A Tale of Two NeXTstations
by Adam Michlin 04 Feb '18

04 Feb '18

Dear List, As most of you know, VCF received not one but two NeXTstations as donations over the past months. We managed to piece together a working combination for museum display as well as hack into the administrator password without too much trouble. Alas, about a month ago, the machine simply stopped turning on. This was diagnosed (thanks Ian!) at the most recent VCF workshop as a dead battery. At the same time, the hard drive appeared to be no longer functional (stay tuned for more on that). So I ordered a battery... oops, wrong battery. Oh well. Ordered the correct battery and it came in yesterday in a box with more warning labels than a one would expect on packaging for a vial of Bubonic Plague. I think lithium batteries have people just a tad spooked. It had always bothered me that both the battery and the hard drive exactly at the same time. 30 year old computers.. sure, battery will die and hard drive will die, but at the same exact time? As the NeXTperts on the list will tell you, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the hard drive. Someone at NeXT just had the bright idea to default to network boot when the battery died. So I installed the correct battery today and.. well.. nothing happened when it was turned on. Dejected, I went about other business but kept processing in the back of my mind at how replacing the battery didn't fix it. Bad leads? Did I put in the battery backwards (no, I was very careful)? Did I plug the keyboard in (for those who may not know, the NeXT uses a soft power on key on the keyboard... which, ugh, connects to the monitor). We were about to leave for the day and I figured I would give it one last shot. So I checked the keyboard cable... all good. Then it hit me... was it even plugged in? Just about everyone on the list has experienced the answer to this question. So I plugged it in, computer powered on. We looked up the key sequence to boot in to the ROM monitor and switch it to default to boot off the SCSI drive and all is well. Now, what we still can't figure out is how to disable the ROM hardware password on the other machine (not the su password... please, everyone wants to answer this question with that how-to - been there, done that). The NeXT manual at: http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/NeXTStep/3.3/nsa/ Has this to say about it: "Warning: If you set the hardware password, protect it carefully. If it should be lost, recovery is a complex procedure." Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! And yes, we have asked the person who donated the machine (he can't remember). Best wishes, -Adam

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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 04 Feb '18

04 Feb '18

Another busy day. Adam and I arrived at 1pm. Brace and Tony were already there. Tony worked on some of our Macs. I showed around a VIP for the first hour. We took in a donation of three boxes of books. Several families came through for tours. Brace, Adam, and I cleaned some warehouse items in anticipation of an upcoming prop rental deal. (I'm not at liberty to share any details.) Adam inspired us to clean the museum workbench area too. Adam got one of our Next slabs working! He will elaborate. It's a funny story.

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March 3 & 4, 2018 VCF Repair Workshop reminder
by Jeffrey Brace 03 Feb '18

03 Feb '18

Signup here if interested: < https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/123vqgOH6iteYwHwLiANXmdSUvZOTEMTArZR… >

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Terminator resistor pack
by Richard Cini 03 Feb '18

03 Feb '18

This is kind of an odd request but would anyone have a spare resistor terminator pack for a Quantum Q540 drive that they could send me? It’s a 14-pin 220/330 ohm pack I believe. Please contact me off-list if you have one. Thanks! Rich Cini Get Outlook for iOS

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ZORK1 configuration file
by Richard Cini 02 Feb '18

02 Feb '18

All – On MS-DOS, it seems that ZORK uses an ANSI driver…not sure why for a text adventure, but it does. The machine I have runs DOS but has no video board – everything is piped over the serial port, and the ANSI driver doesn’t work. Does anyone know of a way to force it to work without the ANSI driver? ZORK does run, but it displays annoying control characters on each line. I was just looking for a way to clean it up and not need the driver. Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

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