April 2019 - vcf-midatlantic

OT - Anyone familiar with OpenNMS ? If so, please contact me off-list
by Martin Flynn 26 Apr '19

26 Apr '19

OT - Anyone familiar with OpenNMS ? If so, please contact me off-list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNMS https://www.opennms.com/

1 0

Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 25 Apr '19

25 Apr '19

Busy day! I got to the museum around 11am and stayed to 11pm. We had a good amount of visitors today. Several families came through, including a few engineers. Jeff B. and I worked on VCF East preparation between the visitors. After-hours, I made good progress on our new info kiosk. I used aeronautical-grade velcro (thank you Martin) to attach one of the micro form-factor PCs to the back of the 27" touchscreen monitor, configured all the OpenKiosk software settings, and learned how to connect from our office PC to the web server with SSH (thank you Bill Dudley for the telephone tech support). I know SSH is very secure, but afterward I decided to put FTP on the web server because (don't kill me) I prefer a point-and-click way to move files. Then I spent an hour or two on the kiosk content. Got the main template finished. All that's left to do is update a few content pages, tie back the kiosk cabling, and hang a sign from the ceiling pointing to the kiosk. Probably another 2 hours total and then it will be done.

5 12

Belated announcement :)
by Evan Koblentz 24 Apr '19

24 Apr '19

Emmanuel Goldstein interviewed me live for 2600's Off the Hook radio show just now. It was a 5-minute chat about VCF East. I assume they will post it as a podcast in the next day or two.

2 2

OT: How to use Stack Exchange chat rooms?
by Evan Koblentz 22 Apr '19

22 Apr '19

VCF East is being discussed at https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/38597/the-bbs (apparently I posted in the wrong place and they moved it into the retrocomputing chat room) .... I am logged into SE but I can't figure out how to participate in the chat. Help! -- Evan Koblentz, executive director Vintage Computer Federation www.vcfed.org evan(a)vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 VCF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

4 4

Help needed Wednesday 1pm
by Jeffrey Brace 22 Apr '19

22 Apr '19

Mike Ruane of Infoage needs help. I will be there, but we need more people. If available, send me a private message and I will let Mike know. Here is his message: To All – Pat and I need help getting three display cabinets from the Ocean County Historical Society in Toms River this Wednesday. We need two more guys to help us. We would leave InfoAge at 1:00 and be back by 3:00. Please get the word out to your folks and let me know if we have any volunteers. I don’t want to lose these cabinets. Thanks!! -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation

1 0

Solaris SPARC install VM?
by Ethan O'Toole 22 Apr '19

22 Apr '19

Anyone know if there is an install VM for net-installing older Solaris on Sparc like 2.6, 2.7? I know one exists for IRIX. I found some FAQs and such that indicated some issues with older Linux providing the root filesystem over NFS. Any pointers appreciated. - Ethan

2 2

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Hard drive art
by Brian Brubaker 22 Apr '19

22 Apr '19

Thank you for your thoughtful comments, I'm very sorry if I caused any agitation as a result of my art. I must admit, lurker may have been too strong of a word. I have a friend involved with vintage computers and is the one who pointed out the one 14" platter I found from this group. Since then I subscribed, but dont get a chance to read often. The majority of my art supplies have come from Ebay with a substantial investment on my part, most being sold as scrap. Some platters, spacers, and actuators were bought disassembled already. The ones not sold as scrap, I'm paying the value of a working drive. Now at this point anyone else could have purchased these drives and attempted to use them. I would be happy to work with people from this forum to sell some individual parts one might want. As for the drives themselves, I've spent over $300 in shipping alone for some of the 8" and 9" drives I've bought and disassembled from CA. I've been scanning Ebay for over a year targeting value, and specific models , I've got 60+ searches I check daily. I've invested thousands of dollars, countless hours disassembling drives, countless hours designing and creating my art, and tons of blood and sweat. That all being said, I do have an impressive collection of hard drive parts from the last 50 years, and I can understand your frustration as a vintage computer restorer. I would honestly rather use my parts for art, but I could be willing to help provide parts for sale where I could. I have sold 90% of the circuit boards on Ebay, including many from real vintage drives. I will say, when I looked into starting this project, I did tons of research into art made from hard drives, what I found was there were lots of clocks, and a few sculptures here and there, but nothing anywhere near what I had in mind to make. So, I found something new and unique and creative to reuse many old hard drives that eventually all would find their way to a scrap yard or landfill. New + unique + recycling seems a rare thing these days, and something I feel the world needs more of. I think the shelf life (or wall in my case), can out live any working vintage hard drive. That being said, I'm happy to work with those who want to prolong their own vintage computers. On Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:43 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > Brian Brubaker posts about use of hard-drive parts to create art, for > our appreciation. Well, this use of vintage electronics as art, gives me > pause. I thought about it; I wrote a lecture; I decided a lecture would > not be read or appreciated. So here's my straightforward considerations. > > Brian: I restore vintage computers to operation. So I see in parts of > your art, computers that can't be restored because they were demolished. > That's not an abstraction, for me - that is a fact. > > This situation is not your fault. However, you have posted in a group of > vintage-computer restorers; so my point is relevant in this forum. > > So: Brian, I encourage you to make available, such ancient drives and > parts as might be useful to restore ancient computers. I'm sure you can > get guidance about doing so. > > I don't mean to spoil your fun or interests. Do not go back to "lurking" > because some old-guy doesn't like your work - that is not what I said, > that's not how I said it. Art evokes responses; the artist can't > determine all those responses. This is part of my response. And > certainly, there's art today which is FAR more controversial than a > bunch of old computer parts. I'm making a point, not cursing your works, > which have artistic merit. > > Brian, thanks for showing your works in this forum. > > Herb Johnson > > -- > Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA > http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net >

7 16

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Drive repairs, was Hard drive art
by CT 22 Apr '19

22 Apr '19

Thanks Herb! I'll definitely say hi at the show and will take some pics of the drives as well to bring up. Looking forward to meeting everyone (and some of you again!) On Sun, Apr 21, 2019 at 10:47 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > I have a couple Macintosh external drives that aren't working properly. > > Would it be the right venue to bring them to VCF East to the class? Or > > should I wait for a repair workshop? > > > > Thanks, > > Eric, chesapeaketechie @... > > I deal in Apple Macintosh SCSI drives. I (and others here) can give you > some hints about making these run a while longer. Contact me after > VCF-East and say hello at the show! I'll be a vendor. > > Herb > > PS: I'm a little busy with VCF-E prep, to follow these drive repair/art > discussions. Glad people care! There's a lot of work going on in > hard-drive recovery. David Gesswein is very modest about his MFM > emulator; it's extracting good data from bad drives, and David et al are > working hard to support oddball drive controllers's oddball formats. > Dave McGuire talks about servo tracks... I have buddies struggling with > those on 8-inch hard drives. > > This is how engineers do vintage computing. Makes me hungry for silicon > and iron oxide .... > > Herb > > -- > Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA > http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net > preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing > email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com > or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info >

1 0

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Drive repairs, was Hard drive art
by Ethan Dicks 22 Apr '19

22 Apr '19

On Sun, Apr 21, 2019 at 9:47 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > I have a couple Macintosh external drives that aren't working properly. > > I deal in Apple Macintosh SCSI drives. I (and others here) can give you > some hints about making these run a while longer. Contact me after > VCF-East and say hello at the show! I'll be a vendor. I'd be interested in a conversation about Seagate ST1480N drives (found in some Quadras and in lots of Sun workstations as a "SUN0424" drive). I have a couple that work and a couple that do not. One HDA makes unhealthy "buzzsaw" noises and is likely a write-off. The other spins up then immediately spins down. I wonder if there's a rotation feedback sensor in the HDA that's not reporting correctly that's causing this behavior. I wouldn't mind being able to copy data from these drives but I know they were last used in the 1990s and the data on them was mostly the OS install and any user files were copied off long ago, but I doubt there's anything magical and wonderful to be found on them. Just getting one of them working again would be convenient. I don't have that many sub-1GB drives left anymore (I have lots and lots of Seagates and others in the 1GB-4GB range). -ethan

1 0

VCF East -- Schedule + Friday keynote change
by Evan Koblentz 21 Apr '19

21 Apr '19

Here is the full VCF East 2019 schedule: http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/vcf-east-sched… Let me know if there any mistakes. Note: Steve Bellovin is unable to be there on Friday. In his place, we're having a panel on D-I-Y computing with Alexander Pierson, Jon Chapman, and possible one or two other people.

1 0