May 2018 - vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Head align Tape
by Duane Craps 16 Jul '18

16 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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Idea for an Exhibit - Novell
by Bill Degnan 05 Jun '18

05 Jun '18

To my knowledge no one has done an exhibit about Novell / Netware networking at least directly. I envision a simple file sharing network installed on some MS DOS 5-era machines, a simple email system, security features, etc to illustrate the product. As with VMS, Novell declined in usage when TCP/IP became dominant. Not a lot of people know that Novell helped commercialize SUSE Linux. There is a good story here, someone with experience with Novell should take it up. Bill

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Thanks & VCF
by Jeff G 04 Jun '18

04 Jun '18

First off - had a blast at VCF as usual. Glad I ended up staying on Saturday although I had some conflicting events it all came together in the end. The consignment room was NUTS this year! Next year hopefully I'll be able to volunteer or exhibit again. Also, thanks to the person that had the Altair w/video camera setup; he let me take a picture of his TI Silent 700 power supply, and going by that pic I was actually able to find one on Ebay and verify it was the correct one, so huge THANKS for checking off another item of my vintage computing todo list! Jeff G / Bags

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Bill Loguidice's Collection Auction Date 5/31 Edison NJ
by Bill Degnan 01 Jun '18

01 Jun '18

Bill Loguidice's Collection Auction Date 5/31 Edison NJ https://www.auctionzip.com/cgi-bin/auctionview.cgi?lid=3023450

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Osborne for good home
by Evan Koblentz 01 Jun '18

01 Jun '18

I received an email from plebourgeois(a)me.com who said he's in Mandeville, Lousiana and has an Osborne available with accessories/manauls to a good home for the cost of shipping. He said he'll throw it away if he does not find a home for it soon. That's all I know, do not reply to me or this list, send the guy an email directly.

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Dial-Up at Home With a Line Simulator
by systems_glitch 01 Jun '18

01 Jun '18

In case some people here aren't on the forums as well, here's: forum writeup: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?63956 imgur picture album: https://imgur.com/a/EI0e7JH I've had this Teltone TLS2 line simulator for a little while, I knew it worked with regular phones but had never tried getting a modem connection going through it. Yesterday I had some free time to get such a setup going. It works fine! I used a Microcom AX/2400 bps external modem on a SPARCstation 2 as the "ISP" end, and an internal ISA modem in an XT-compatible as the client end. Aside from a slightly weird dialtone pitch and ring cadence, and dialing 2-digit station numbers, it's just like a regular phone line. Thanks, Jonathan

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Exorset Bus docus?
by Neil Cherry 31 May '18

31 May '18

I have a couple of interesting boards that appear to follow the Exorset bus. I've been able to follow the internet docs (I'net search) only as far as finding the Motorola Exorcisor (sp?) docs. While that' helpful the Exorcisor is for the MC6800 and the Exorset the MC6809. There are some differences and I've not been able to find out what they are. Has anyone found any Exorset documents? Bitsaver seems a bit broken in that it has nothing on the Exorcisor, the Exorset or the Exormac. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies

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IBM compatible joystick needed
by Evan Koblentz 29 May '18

29 May '18

VCFed needs a joystick that is compatible with the Compaq Portable III (parallel connector, but I don't know how many pins). This is for the Lego demo station so I can do some kid-friendly classes starting this summer (and also for my HOPE lecture). Can somebody bring a known-good one to the next workshop? We may have some in the warehouse but I'd like to have a known-good unit for testing. If one of ours works, we'll use that; if not, then perhaps yours could be a donation. ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, executive 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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CGA --> VGA adapter
by Evan Koblentz 29 May '18

29 May '18

Next thing we'll need for classes/demos: a CGA-to-VGA adapter for sharing the computer output onto big screens.. I'd like to test one before purchasing. Does anybody have one to loan us in time for the next workshop?

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Offtopic - UART transistor counts?
by John Heritage 29 May '18

29 May '18

Just curious - does anyone know roughly how many transistors old serial port UART chips had? i.e. the 8250 or 16550AFN type chips?

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