February 2020 - vcf-midatlantic

suggested viewing
by Jeffrey Jonas 27 Feb '20

27 Feb '20

Wintergatan is famous for making amazing marble music machines, and a weekly video of other mechanical music machines: https://www.youtube.com/user/wintergatan2000/videos One of his marble machines was exhibited at a museum just for music machines: https://www.museumspeelklok.nl/lang/en/ just one of many music museums: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_museums James Burke's "Connections" shows how cams and pegged cylinders evolved into punched card looms and tabulator cards episide 4 "Faith in Numbers" https://youtu.be/z6yL0_sDnX0?t=2150 "The Secret Life Of Machines" http://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/ explores computer history in the episode "The Word Processor" https://youtu.be/nN9wNvEnn-Q enjoy! -- Jeff Jonas

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Hayes 300bps SmartModem for museum exhbit?
by Adam Michlin 27 Feb '20

27 Feb '20

Hi Everyone, We're building a museum exhbit on historical modems. RIght now we have: Acoustic USR 300 bps USR Dual Standard Courier 14.4kbps (Sysop badged) Telebit T2500 Hayes 9600 bps USR Sportster V.92 The idea is feature the beginnings (acoustic) and ends (USR V.92) and several important modems in both the hobbyist space (the Dual Standard being very popular with BBSs) and the business space (Telebit). We'd like to replace the Hayes 9600 with a Hayes 300 SmartModem so people can see the modem that birthed the Hayes command set. Research indicates that the 300 is the first with the Hayes AT command set, but any corrections are welcome. Does anyone have a 300 they would be wiling to donate or lend? Museum exhibits will be changed much more frequently, although not on any set schedule as of yet, so any loan will most certainly be for less than one year. I'll add that, as it stands, this is a behind glass exhibit. There certainly is the possibility of connecting some of these (or other) modems to machines as we consider possible infrastructure capabilities on the museum. Thanks! -Adam

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Data Recovery from Jaz Cartridge
by Jeffrey Brace 26 Feb '20

26 Feb '20

Someone sent me a message requesting data recovery services. If anyone is interested or capable, then I will forward the contact info. Here is the request: I have a friend who needs data recovery for his Iomega *Jaz* Drive -- he has around a dozen 1GB disks. He asked me to help. He has (1) the drive, (2) the “*Jaz Traveller*” adapter, and (3) the cable. He has no software to install. This drive uses a SCSI interface and many people are selling (*gouging*) little SCSI to USB adapters ( Adaptec USB2xchange, Jaz Scsi to USB, and Microtech SCSI to USB) , on ebay and elsewhere for $250-$300 but noone states they were able to see a (say) File Explorer view of the files when they put the USB cable into a modern machine (say Vista, Win 7, Win8, Win10). I don't think that these adapters would work and my friend can't afford $300 for an adapter that might not work. On the other hand, I concluded that since the “*Jaz Traveller*” adapter he does have claims to convert SCSI to the Parallel Printer Port Interface (the shape and number of pins for SCSI is similar to PPP Interface), he has enough equipment to connect the cables to a PPP on a machine which has what I believe is called the guest95.exe Jaz software. This is a standalone app that runs on Windows 95 and reads from the PPP. I do have a Windows 95 machine but I cannot find guest95.exe except on very dark and evil sites where I do not trust that download to be anything but a virus and I cannot risk my machine that way. On one site, I downloaded three .rar files but they were in error with regard to a part being missing. I am thinking perhaps one of your vintage cronies still has a working Jaz Drive and can do this recovery at an affordable price if the disks were shipped to them -- all data would all fit on a $6 SanDisk 32GB thumb drive :- ). -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member, VCF East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] [Galactic] Re: Your critical thinking skills and opinion needed: Stickers!
by Michael Brutman 26 Feb '20

26 Feb '20

The idea that a FORTRAN board game existed is intriguing. The tag line "Input: Reason Output:Pleasure" is borderline horrifying ...

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ANNOUNCE: VCF East 2020 Kit, R6501Q Single Board Computer
by systems_glitch 25 Feb '20

25 Feb '20

All, After much delay due to the coronavirus outbreak in China, I now have prototypes for this year's VCF East kit project! It's a Rockwell R6501Q single-board computer, which fits with the 6502 theme for this year, but isn't "just another 6502 SBC," of which there are many fine examples available. You can read the particulars on the VCFed Forums: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?73828-ANNOUNCE-VCF-East-2020-Kit-… If you're definitely going to be at VCF East 2020 and will definitely be buying/building a kit, please visit that link and fill out the poll. That'll help me in planning for the workshop. Thanks, Jonathan

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WE WANT YOU! To be a volunteer at VCF EAST 2020!
by Jeffrey Brace 24 Feb '20

24 Feb '20

VCF East is an event accomplished entirely through the volunteer work of our wonderful members like you! We have a need for everything from camera operator, to ticket desk, to docent, to information desk to many other positions. *Not sure how you want to help?* We will work with you to find an opportunity for you to volunteer in a way most meaningful to you. We need reliable, committed people with a widely varied set of skills. Volunteers receive a show pass for the weekend and they can also sleep over in the Sandy area for $25 per night. If you are interested, then please sign up here: Volunteer Registration <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXwPptOjEr4lkiPDcxzO0EwEcqQgaMg1D…> or e-mail me at jeffrey(a)vcfed.org for questions. -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member, VCF East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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VCF East 2020 Update
by Dean Notarnicola 24 Feb '20

24 Feb '20

The Steering Committee is thrilled to share that planning for VCF East 2020 is off to a running start! With two months until the event, we already have forty exhibitors confirmed with more pending < http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/vcf-east-exhib…>. Our speaker slots are almost entirely filled with exactly one open slot remaining < http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/classes/>. Adding icing to the cake, we are excited to share with you all the wonderful improvements made in the museum. This all combines to make for a packed, exciting and informative VCF East! Ticket pre-sales have started < https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vintage-computer-festival-east-2020-tickets-92…> . Please remember, online pre-purchase gets you in the gate thirty minutes early for priority seating and ticket prices are discounted versus the day of event door price. Online sales end April 20th so don't wait!

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Asus PIII CUSC motherboard drivers needed
by Sentrytv 24 Feb '20

24 Feb '20

Good afternoon to all I'm trying to locate drivers for windows 98SE for an Asus mini PIII motherboard SIS chips on board.(mini/micro tower) I tried their website but no luck with that model. Downloaded a couple others but did not work. Does anybody have a good idea where to get windows/Dos drivers for such a motherboard besides the Asus site? I don't usually come across these old or PC's but I wanted to get this up and running to play some old Star Wars games that I have. That needs windows.(DOS) Everything is on board, sound, video, serial, joystick, parallel, IDE. Please let me know if you have any ideas where to get them, off list is OK. Thank you Mike Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.

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Museum update
by Adam Michlin 23 Feb '20

23 Feb '20

Hi Everyone, The elves have been hard at work and, as many of you may have seen on the various social media feeds, we have all sorts of new things going on in the museum. New exhibits include: A now working (thanks to member Ian Primus!) Soviet Union era Spectrum ZX clone called the Orel (not "Eagle" as I incorrectly reported recently) donated by member Bill Lange. Working, as long as long as you can figure out the unlabeled Spectrum keyboard commands on the roman/cyrillic keyboard! Insert your own "In Soviet Russia..." joke here. Anyone have a Spectrum ZX Tetris cart they want to donate? A Timex Sinclair 1000 to match up with the aforementioned Spectrum clone. Still don't have the real English ZX working, but one day! A new office display with a pristine DEC Rainbow 100 and *all* the neat toys (beautiful color monitor!) associated with it that boots into MS-DOS and runs a DEC branded word processor. A TI Professional Portable (luggable) running MS-DOS and 123. One of the last CRT based portables with an absolutely amazing color screen A pristine PCJr including a monitor that was in a sealed box (literally brand new). A Panasonic MSX on loan from member Dean Notarnicola adding Japan to our growing list in the international exhibit area of the museum. Speaking of international, a Bulgarian Apple II clone called "Pravetz" was also added to the international exhibit area on loan from member Tony Bogan. A very cool and very rare officially branded Osborne monitor for our Osborne luggable/portable A Zorba CP/M luggable that is filling in for the Superbrain QD (which was just added, as well) while we get quad density disks (TIL!) up and running.. Best of all, all the above are for museum goers to *actively* use. The modem exhibit is almost complete with several USR and Hayes modems. A Telebit modem, an acoustic coupler modem, and an S100 PMMI modem card round out as many facets of the modem world that we can fit in one display case. The video game exhibit has been changed for East to feature only the 6502 (and 65816). Atari 2600 (same one), NES, SNES, and Atari XE with carts in the machines and representative retail boxes. Post East we might put back the archived "Atari 2600 and earlier exhibit", maybe keep this around, or do something entirely different! Suggestions are most enthusiastically welcome! The "All these things on the wall.." exhibit has been archived for return at another date and we have begun the CPU exhibit in large part due to previous work done by member Jeff Jonas. This Is still very much a work in progress and an email will be sent out shortly with what we have, what we expect to be getting, and what we need. Our goal is to bake the lesson of Moore's Law into the entire museum (supremely important to our mission!) to give more flexibility to the exhibit spaces. Member Bill Inderrieden has generously taken the lead on restoring the Wang 4000. We have high hopes it will be running some time very soon but these things, of course, require a methodical approach and patience. There's an ongoing project to get some DEC equipment running some form of VMS for musuem goers spearheaded by member Connor Krukosky. We're also working on getting the CoCo 3 runnings OS/9 with a solid state solution, but would love a donation of a non-working CoCo floppy drive so people can see what it should look like. The Xerox Star still doens't work, but several members are stepping up to come up with solutions. Any leads on a mouse would be golden. A museum by the people, for the people. And reminder of all our social media feeds: https://www.facebook.com/vcfederation/ <https://www.facebook.com/vcfederation/> https://twitter.com/vcfederation <https://twitter.com/vcfederation> https://www.instagram.com/vcfederation/ <https://www.instagram.com/vcfederation/> Best wishes, -Adam --- Adam Michlin Vintage Computer Federation VCF Mid Atlantic Steering Committee Member

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Cisco 2100 series WLAN controller (and rack kit) up for grabs
by Martin Flynn 23 Feb '20

23 Feb '20

Title says it all - there is a Cisco 2100 series WLAN controller (and rack kit) up for grabs. It's sitting on the rear bench in the makerspace, so it you grab it, reply all.

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