April 2019 - vcf-midatlantic

Drive repairs, was Hard drive art
by Herb Johnson 21 Apr '19

21 Apr '19

> 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

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Hard drive art
by Dave McGuire 19 Apr '19

19 Apr '19

On 4/16/19 1:51 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > This is becoming an argument. That's understandable, but that's not my > goal. > > My point of throwing the "old guy" card, is to say some interest in > vintage computing is persistent, is beyond keeping one's computer > running, but in goals you refer to as "museum". Most museums put a > computer on a shelf, don't touch: the work I describe re-engages > people with now-working computers. Your work also engages others; > I don't question the value of art, or oblige it to be for purpose. > This is what engagement looks like. Herb, this has nothing to do with you being an "old guy". Let's just face facts: Most of us try very hard every day to keep rare and valuable hardware out of the hands of people like the original poster, and I'm know for a fact that I'm not the only one who thought "this guy had better hope he doesn't run into me on the street". "Hey, there's a complete Model T Ford, I'm gonna grab it, tear our the seat and use it for a couch!" Nobody in their right mind would every dream of doing that, yet people do stuff like this and actually feel justified. Unbelievable. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

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Cool -- double emulation!
by Evan Koblentz 18 Apr '19

18 Apr '19

Here's the "APPalm" (Apple II) emulator inside PHEM (Palm Hardware Emulator) on my brand-new Galaxy S10e phone. :) http://tinyurl.com/y3thepoy

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New acquisition
by Richard Cini 18 Apr '19

18 Apr '19

All — I was able to get my hands on another Seattle Gazelle. I will mostly use this for spare parts for my main machine but this one came with original manuals and an 8” diskette. No floppy controller or drives, though, which is fine with me since I already have those. What’s interesting is that this is the second system of this type I’ve seen that uses the TEi enclosure. The one in the VCF collection is a 22-slot version and I have a 12-slot version. More to come as I restore this one. It was working as of when it was stored 20 years ago. Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

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OT: NJARC YouTube
by Evan Koblentz 18 Apr '19

18 Apr '19

Off-topic: Our museum neighbors in the NJ Antique Radio Club said they need 1,000 subscribers to do live streaming, but they are a long way off at 300-something. They're asking for subscribers among like-minded people: https://www.youtube.com/user/njarc?fbclid=IwAR0DTOIO-_DH70ZvdyW8XWS_iSqqn-2….

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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 17 Apr '19

17 Apr '19

Today was shockingly busy for a non-summer Wednesday, but Jeff B. pointed out that it's spring break for local schools so that explains it. Tons of visitors today! I used the small amount of downtime between visitors to do some more work on the information kiosk + random VCF East tasks.

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InfoAge campus clean-up
by Evan Koblentz 17 Apr '19

17 Apr '19

InfoAge is having a campus clean-up day on Saturday, April 27 from 9am-noon. They (rightfully) want all the groups to help. I told them VCF supports the project, but that it's a terrible time for us because of our event next weekend. Jeff B. and I will be going nuts (hard to tell the difference, I know!) doing final show preparations. But if anyone is interested in helping with this project, then let me know.

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Cool - Activision developer found us
by Evan Koblentz 16 Apr '19

16 Apr '19

Got a phone call from Dan Kitchen today. Never heard of him, but he pointed me to his website: https://www.dankitchengames.com/game-credits Says he lives here in NJ, heard about VCF East, and is looking forward to attending.

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Exhibit reg- Closed
by Evan Koblentz 16 Apr '19

16 Apr '19

VCF East exhibit registration is closed. For special consideration, procrastinators may grovel to me off-list.

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InfoAge is closed this Sunday - EOM
by Evan Koblentz 16 Apr '19

16 Apr '19

Nothing to read here.

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