October 2021 - vcf-midatlantic

MOS 6501 in an Ohio Scientific 400 Board
by Jonathan Chapman 27 Oct '21

27 Oct '21

imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/8jIj1dS We built up an Ohio Scientific 400 board for a Motorola 6800, and then plugged in a MOS 6501 and got it running! Thanks, Jonathan

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VOLUNTEERS NEEDED October 30 @ InfoAge
by Jeffrey Brace 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

Hello everyone, InfoAge now has FIOS and we need help to complete the upgrade to all the buildings. I will be there to help, but Martin from CDL needs volunteers to help with the completion of the upgrades. Martin will need help on October 30 starting at 10:30 AM and ending around 4:30PM with the following: - Running the fiber between 9059 and 9032. It is likely that we will be pulling the fiber for both the 9032A and the 9032D furnace rooms. - Drilling the hole in the Gift Shop floor for the network drop for the Credit card terminal (It's currently on WiFi, however it needs to be put on the wired network) - Running the network cables to the data recovery work area on the second floor of the hotel. Let's see if we can get him help on that day. We want this to be a team effort between CDL and VCF to benefit not only these two groups, but InfoAge as whole! Send me a message if you can volunteer that day. Thanks so much! ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Ultimate Festivus 2021!!! December 11 & 12
by Jeffrey Brace 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

OK. Now that VCF East is over. It's time for all of us to take a break, relax and celebrate the year in vintage computing! We only had a virtual Festivus last year, so we have to make up for the "lost" year ;) START: Saturday, December 11 at 10AM END: Sunday, December 12 at 5PM ANNUAL VCF MA Town Hall: December 11 at 8PM FYI: The Steering Committee, myself and Corey will be making our annual VCF Mid-Atlantic Town Hall at 8PM to review what has been going on, and what our plans are and to answer any questions by members. WHERE: 9010-C = Cafeteria where we will eat and drink. 9010-C = Mini Festivus Swap Meet where we can buy and sell 9010-C = Game room across from cafeteria 9059 = Festivus Repair workshop COST: $20 per person covers the whole event $25 per person per night for overnight stay Buy tickets through Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/festivus-2021-tickets-194874814817 If you want to pay at the door, then you also have that option. I can have the iPad ready to take cash or credit, etc. I will be doing the traditional burger and hot dog grilling outside. VCF will be buying soft drinks. Ian will be bringing his vintage video games. Everyone brings a food or beverage item. Here is the potluck signup sheet for food and drinks: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UtSrLUdnIcRjY3LErfukhYltF1oHno0V6Nk… Here is the buy/sell list for the mini swap meet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19jpgyvVoKaxAuUxQU-7_b3Grk9LWOQ6aAbQ… The swap meet rules are you bring your own table(s) and are responsible for selling things yourself. We will be using the same area that we used for consignment during VCF East. So in other words there is *plenty* of room. Festivus Repair workshop signup: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14C_OObkhtzCsA-LF7rzNhoagb3RovLDsXtB… For those of you who don't know what Festivus is: This is our annual party where we get together to strictly socialize. We eat, drink, and Be Nerdy! We play vintage video games. Last year we added our mini-swap meet where we buy and sell to each other. This was a success, so we are doing it again. New for this year: We will be having a Festivus repair workshop. There will also be the InfoAge Holiday Model Train show in the hotel and 9032-A buildings. The name Festivus has two origins: 1) It was taken from the title of a Seinfeld episode, 2) A variation of "Festival" which is our show (e.g. Vintage Computer *Festival*), whereas Festivus is our party. Any questions? Send me an e-mail. ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Museum Report 2021-10-23 & 2021-10-24
by Jeffrey Brace 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

Deborah was the docent for the museum on 10/23/2021 had 15 high interest visitors. This is highly unusual, but most welcome. Perhaps the lasting effects of VCF East for those who heard about and couldn't make the show. Usually this time of year we get very few visitors and usually they are of low interest, but we have had increasing numbers of high interest visitors. It is expected that visitors will be high in December as the model train show will be coming in InfoAge again. Today I met a 17 year old who was an exhibitor at VCF West, who goes to school in Connecticut and has a massive interest in IBM computers. His family currently lives in Boca Raton and knows about a quarter century club where former (current?) IBMers meet to socialize. A second 17 year old came by and had a massive interest in mainframe computers and is interested in becoming Bill Dromgoole's Univac 1219 apprentice. This will benefit us a lot to have an additional person who knows about this machine and can operate and demo the machine. After docenting today, I went to the warehouse to organize the VCF East stuff so that it will be ready for Festivus and VCF East 2022 (April 22,23,24) That is all for now. Please drive through. ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Research on Sphere company and Mike Wise's Talk at VCF West 1999
by Jeffrey Brace 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

Someone named Ben Zotto sent me an e-mail researching for information about the mid-70s Sphere company out of Utah. He is hoping that someone has audio or video of Mike Wise's talk at VCF West in 1999. If anyone has anything, please let me know and I will forward it to him. Thanks! ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Volunteers requested for work in the hotel (second floor)
by Jeffrey Brace 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

Martin is requesting volunteers for next Saturday (Oct. 30) to assist with cable management in the building 9001 (the hotel). Volunteers need to be comfortable drilling 1/4" holes in masonry walls to set anchors to attach wiremold raceway. Some work on a ladder is required. This benefits VCF as well as InfoAge. If anyone is interested contact me or Martin: martin(a)infoage.org Thanks! ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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hypertext tools from the 80s
by Herb Johnson 22 Oct '21

22 Oct '21

> > https://fibery.io/blog/hypertext-tools-from-the-80s/ > > An Interesting Follow up from to the Sunday VCF East 2021 'Ted' Talk. The author of the linked document, actually wrote it in April 2021, it's not strictly a follow up. The author makes a claim, that Xanadu was too ambitious, too hard, took the wrong ideas in the wrong direction. It picks a known winner, and sets that as the target. Unfortunately, that's a typical mistake to make in retrospective history. That's blaming the past, for not being the future yet. Then asking "why didn't those losers look forward and be like what won?" Hindsight is easy. Maybe - because the resources available in the future, *weren't available in the past*? Maybe - the vision that won, simply matched what was possible and available at the time? I could spell out, what was available in 1991 (the Netscape/WWW/HTML era). And what was / was not available in the 1980's when Project Xanadu was working in Ann Arbor MI. But it's just too long to detail. I'll just have to say - Xanadu in the 80's didn't have the PC hardware or software or graphics of 1991 PC's. (Even Windows became productive by 1991.) Or high speed dialup modems. Or a just-released private access to "DARPAnet". Or millions of PC users who already were doing desktop publishing, graphic documents, business data processing and content (spreadsheets). Or who were calling up BBS's at night to exchange PC programs, or calling COmpuserve to post in discussion groups. Universities, their content, their servers and networking, that was also a resource for early Internet-ing. So: Netscape glued that all together, into a browser on a PC under Windows, onto a network, with graphics. The networking, connected all that content (initially from university computers), by fast dialup, under graphical-mouse control. Netscape needed ALL of that, to work on 1991 technology. And: most of that was "free" (or already paid for, or newly available like that Arpanet, or part of your monthly phone bill). That's how a "killer app" works. It glues things together, to make a new service or product, that sells like crazy. But it can't happen, until it's about to happen, until everything else is ready. As for Xanadu? almost NONE of that technology I just described - hardware or software or networking or graphics or storage or memory - was commonly available in the 1980's. What was available, was expensive. Most people reading this list, can look at their own shelves, or memories, for what was available then. So: The world wasn't ready, and then it was ready. --------------------------------- As for the argument that "Xanadu was too ambitious". The interesting thing I got from Ted Nelson's VCFed talk, was that Netscape and its kin, some "wysiwyg" systems prior to it, actually watered down what a "hypertext" version of *traditional* paper publishing could have been. They reduced it to something that looked simple: a single column of text, a static page. ".. what you get *when you print a page on paper*", Ted pointed out. Ted envisioned interactive screens, on his first view of a *terminal in the 1960's*. It wasn't what he wanted; it was his vision of what could be. So the counter argument to "Xanadu was too ambitious" is, "Netscape wasn't ambitious enough; but it was implementable on the available technology". The bad news, says Ted Nelson, is that the 1991 implementation became the standard; and now we are stuck with it, and it's become normalized. It's an interesting observation. It suggests to me: What can we learn from computing *before* Netscape? Or even about information, before computers? The past, as a learning opportunity today. Regards, Herb Johnson -- 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 comcast DOT net

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VCF East 2022 Dates
by Jeffrey Brace 21 Oct '21

21 Oct '21

We're thinking about moving the date for VCF East 2022 one week earlier to April 22,23,24. Here is our reasoning why these are better dates: 1) Our teachers, including Jeff and Adam, don’t need to take extra days off work (unpaid) for setup because it is spring break and many schools are closed. 2) Children can come to classes on Friday because most schools are closed for spring break. Tony and Adam will be setting up the Apple 2 classroom and many schools have spring break so we hope more kids will attend. 3) InfoAge has another event the same weekend and we don't want to interfere. 4) It does not conflict with Easter and most who celebrate Passover. 5) Hotel rates are lower than the Shore Season. -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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hypertext tools from the 80s
by Andrew Diller 21 Oct '21

21 Oct '21

Link: https://fibery.io/blog/hypertext-tools-from-the-80s/ An Interesting Follow up from to the Sunday VCF East 2021 'Ted' Talk. Interesting read about Hypertext systems and how much we still don't have today in terms of functionality. Contrained systems led to more focused software IMHO. Also how some of these must have informed the generation of the modern web. -andy

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Large format scanner
by Mike Loewen 20 Oct '21

20 Oct '21

I have a pile of schematics and logic diagrams to be scanned, measuring 17" by up to 36" long, double-sided. Does anyone around PA, MD, VA, OH, NY, NJ have a scanner that could handle it? I'm willing to do the manual labor part, just need access to the scanner. These are training materials from the SAGE Air Defense system, and are the only ones known to exist in the wild. Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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