March 2020 - vcf-midatlantic

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Museum report - 12/16/18
by Douglas Crawford 04 Jul '20

04 Jul '20

Again? This isn't getting through. On 12/17/2018 12:28 PM, Douglas Crawford wrote: > Great day at the museum. Visitor flow was non stop in the afternoon. > I am grateful for the assistance of Chris and Tony, with their help we > cycled > through the visitors and gave everyone good attention. > Its fun to docent in teams! > > The museum looked sharp and with Tony's help we had most everything > running that is > demo-able.

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OT: HP 660LX Color Palmtop PC available
by Bob Shuster 01 Apr '20

01 Apr '20

I was going to toss this, but thought someone in the group might be interested in this Windows CE device from 1998. In the box with manuals, two battery packs, stylus, power supply, modem card, a docking station, and an additional circuit board which I did not try to ID (perhaps leftover from a RAM upgrade?) This does power up, but I’m sure the batteries need to be replaced. Any interest? Contact-free front porch pickup in Wyndmoor, PA (near the Fort Washington exit of the PA Turnpike.) Contact me off-list if interested. Btw, I finally powered up the 2006 Dell XPS 700 Jet Black which I had offered before (nobody wanted it.) It had apparently never been powered up as the power cord is proprietary and was never out of the package. Motherboard is bad. :( I pulled the three 500GB HDs and the rest is going to electronics recycling. If anyone wants any bits of this, let me know too! Dual video cards, RAM, dual optical drives, etc., all stuff easily pulled. Look up the specs. - Bob

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] OK seriously, how rare is the real 1541-II drive?
by jaj＠totallyamused.com 31 Mar '20

31 Mar '20

>From: Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> >Date: Mon, March 30, 2020 10:40 pm >To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> >Cc: Bill Degnan <billdegnan(a)gmail.com> > >Now I wonder, compared with other CBM drives, is there a rarity ranking? > >I am thinking some of the rarest 8-bit CBM drives manufactured by CBM are >(in no particular order and without looking on the internet for the answer) > >8080 (dual 8" IEEE drive) >1540 >1551 >9060 >9090 >1570 (where these actually sold) >The drive that came with the C-65 > >am I missing anything rarer than these? > >Next would be >2040 (IEEE) >4040 (IEEE) >8250 (IEEE) >SFD-1001 I would add 8050 after SFD-1001 You said 8080 -- is that part of the 8060 series? 8060, 8061, 8062, 8280 (I've only seen pictures) Any third party drives make your list? MSD MSD-2 Indus GT

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Rare Variant CBM 1541 II on Ebay
by Bill Degnan 31 Mar '20

31 Mar '20

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Commodore-1541-II-Floppy-Disk-Drive/143557971394 Even I don't have this one! As some of you may know the Khizzopistni variant of the CBM-II was packaged in a Polaroid case briefly, before reverting back to the more familiar drive profile. I'd totally get this one, but it will probably shoot up to $4000 or more. Bill

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OK seriously, how rare is the real 1541-II drive?
by Bill Degnan 31 Mar '20

31 Mar '20

Now I wonder, compared with other CBM drives, is there a rarity ranking? I am thinking some of the rarest 8-bit CBM drives manufactured by CBM are (in no particular order and without looking on the internet for the answer) 8080 (dual 8" IEEE drive) 1540 1551 9060 9090 1570 (where these actually sold) The drive that came with the C-65 am I missing anything rarer than these? Next would be 2040 (IEEE) 4040 (IEEE) 8250 (IEEE) SFD-1001 Bill

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] How's everyone doing?
by Michael Thompson 30 Mar '20

30 Mar '20

> > Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2020 23:42:21 -0400 > Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] How's everyone doing? > > Things are rough these days. How's everyone handling it? > > -- > ========================================= > Jeff Brace > I work from home periodically and used to travel more than 50% of the time. With the VPN I can connect to anything that I need on the company network, so it really doesn't matter if I am in the office or not. I spend about 40% of my time on conference calls, and they work fine from home. So for me work is normal. Home life is a little different. We just went shopping during elder hours. There were very few people in the supermarket, so social distancing was easy. The shelves were about 80% full and were being restocked. There were no wipes or hand sanitizer. Canned vegetables were a little thin on the shelves. They did have TP today so maybe people who are hoarding it already have all they can store. Last week there were no Cheerios. This week it was buy two get one free. I think that it will be hit or miss for a while until shoppers get used to this new normal and the demand settles out. We haven't tried one of the delivery grocery services yet, and are using shopping as an excuse to get out of the house. I see lots more delivery trucks in the neighborhood, so others are ordering everything they need online. We walk in our neighborhood during the day. There are probably a lot more walkers than normal, which is a good thing. I connected a battery maintainer to my car because I haven't driven it in two weeks. I can't take advantage of lower fuel prices because the tank is still full. My trip to Germany and Sweden is probably going to get canceled. I was really looking forward to visiting another PDP-9. Maybe we can reschedule for late in the summer or next year. -- Michael Thompson

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OT: Theranos Blood Analyzer
by Dag Spicer 30 Mar '20

30 Mar '20

Hey everyone, The Computer History Museum is always looking for unique computer technology for its permanent collection, as well collecting “the classics!” Right now we’re seeking a Theranos Blood Analyzer. If you have any information, would you mind reaching out to me? dspicer(a)computerhistory.org <mailto:dspicer@computerhistory.org> Thanks everyone! Dag

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How's everyone doing? Correction
by svcatitc＠aol.com 30 Mar '20

30 Mar '20

In checking my own submission, it seems my paste of the link: https://museum.syssrc.com/artifact/251/ does not work right form the Email list, however if you manually copy and paste the link to your crawler, it gets to Roswell's page just fine. Freaky! Bill

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How's everyone doing?
by svcatitc＠aol.com 30 Mar '20

30 Mar '20

Bill I. here; This sounds like a group therapy session in a psych ward! (LOL) But as the comedian Steve Allen said "all seriousness aside folks". . . I'll chime in. We're doing OK here in Brick, NJ. Wifey and I are doing well health wise. (other than my wife's prolonged physical handicaps) The north end of town just got our 1'st Covid-19 test site at the Rent-a-Docs walk in clinic, in the parking lot. Being part care giver to my wife makes it hard to have time to work on fun stuff, however, this down time will give me the much needed time to clear out my warehouses of projects that are just not viable anymore. Before you guys start drooling, I do not havea lot of surplus CPU stuff. Most if it is industrial and lab stuff I was going to overhaul and resell. The stuff is longpast its prime and is ready to be scrapped. I spent way too much money on rent housing this stuff for the opportune time to work on it, which has come and gone. Its time to shed the overhead. Field service work has been put on hold for right now by my clients (I'm in the same boat as Dave McGuire), and my consulting contract with my affiliate in St. Louis will be terminated as of June 1. So the shedding aforementioned warehouse overhead is a must. I still have past invoices to submit, so that will also take up my time. (and get some much needed cabbage in the till) Enough of my tales of woe, (giggling). When I do have the spare time, I am working on the EAI TR 20 ground buss system for the display rack here at home. With all the peripheral displays planned (plotter, scope, etc.), a good quality analog ground summing point is required. I plan on incorporating the Comdyna GP-6 analog mini-computer into the TR-20 display as signal processing. Our unit in the warehouse is in need of some TLC (busted jacks etc.) If you want to see what a GP-6 looks like, see Bob Roswell's website,and look at the glamour shot pictured. https://museum.syssrc.com/artifact/251/ F.Y.I. Ray Spiess, founder of Comdyna, is an ex-EAI alum, so the artifact fits in the story line in our analog display. The other VCF project I got "volunteered" into (smiling) is the Wang 4000 restoration. I got two of the rack drawers,photographed, documenting each card in the file. I am working with Rick Bensene of the Old Calculator Museum, who has an immense knowledge of the Wang Calculators and informs me that some of the calculator components are incorporated in the ' 4000. That project, obviously, has been put on hold until crisis conditions improve. Best get back to the insanity! Stay Well Folks; Bill

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] How's everyone doing?
by Jeffrey Brace 29 Mar '20

29 Mar '20

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 5:58 AM ajpierson1 via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > Been working from home to keep us on the air. Fortunately, it's > much easier to keep a TV station operational when you don't have to keep > the studio spaces running, and more than half of the employees aren't > generating new trouble tickets. In the mean time, I've played through Doom > Eternal which was amazing. I've also repaired my Heathkit H89's power > problems which knocked it out of commission on Friday night of Oh, you know how to fix them? VCF has one in the museum that you could look at. I'm not sure of its condition as I haven't powered on, but I assume that it needs some repair or at least TLC. > VCF East last year. A TO-3 socket for one of the 5V regulators was > damaged, and while I was making the repairs the other day, I swapped the > old linear regulator for a drop-in switch mode supply (also in a TO-3 > package). So far, I've had good luck with those in a VIC-20 and a 1541 > drive, thus it seemed like a natural choice to reduce heat output in my > H89. I've also had way more group voice chats with friends around the > world these past few weeks, mostly talking about vintage computer topics. > In this way, a few of us helped one friend through some H89 diagnostics and > repair which has brought the machine back to life (mostly). I believe he > will be using it for his VCF exhibit soon enough. Last week, I was also > taking a crack at implementing Glitchbus on the Cactus, but that's been > sidelined for the moment. I also took a brief (and isolated) drive out to > my storage unit last week to drop off projects I don't have space for at > the moment. If any of you are familiar with the Votrax SC-01-A speech > synthesizer chip, I scored a Type'N Talk on ebay recently, and spent some > time figuring out how to interface with it properly. It sounds great, and > I was not expecting to find an entire 6802 based machine inside the tiny > chassis.I've always got a stack of projects to tackle, so this really isn't > all that different for me. We'll get thru this with a little vigilance, > patience, and isolation. -Alexander 'Z' Pierson It's nice to hear that you have time to work on projects and to keep in touch with other vintage computer friends. I plan on getting back on IRC now that I have more free time than I used to! -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member, VCF East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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