May 2021 - vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Commodore 1702 door
by svcatitc＠aol.com 21 Apr '23

21 Apr '23

Jeffrey Brace jeffrey at vcfed.org Writes:Wed Sep 2 13:48:24 EDT 2020 Sounds like an Outer Limits episode where the world was taken apart and remade every moment and sometimes they made mistakes which is why when you lose your keys you find time in a place that you already searched. I thought this was a Spielberg "Amazing Stories" episode, obviously not. The episode is: "A Matter of Minutes" is the third segment of the fifteenth episode from the first season (1985–86) of the television series The Twilight Zone. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Matter_of_Minutes I remember that scene where the couple is in the "Void of White Space" and the "Supervisor of the Maintenance of Time" says: (paraphrasing) "Ya know how you go back to look for something you know is supposed to be there multiple times and then it finally is where you thoughtit should be? That's us. We forgot something. We are now working on moving Christmas!" I personally call them the "Minute-Ahead" men and you may hear me at a workshop cursing at them!!!! I DOOO BELIEVE! Bill Inderrieden

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256 Byte - Commodore 64 Demo - A Mind is Born
by Jeffrey Brace 02 Jun '21

02 Jun '21

Apparently this has been around a while, but I think that this is amazing that you could do a demo with this little size program: https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/ ========================================= 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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IC sockets need a home
by William Dudley 01 Jun '21

01 Jun '21

Recently, there was a thread about buying IC sockets. That reminded me that I have a bunch that I will never use. Sadly, these are not machined contact sockets -- they're all "side wipe" sockets (they contact the broad side of the IC pin, not the narrow edge of the pin.) Here is the available inventory: 40 pin Robinson Nugent (RN) wire wrap - qty 9 40 pin Aries ZIF solder tail qty 1 40 pin Cambion wire wrap qty 4 40 pin "A" brand solder tail qty 34 28 pin AMP solder tail qty 60 20 pin AMP solder tail qty 105 The Museum gets first crack at these, and then y'all can figure out what to do with the rest (all) of them. All except the ZIF socket are NOS. All except the ZIF socket are tin plated. The large quantity items are in plastic "IC" tubes (the original packaging). The sockets are in Jackson, NJ. I can deliver to the Museum in Wall, NJ at the next workshop, or other arrangements can be made. Bill Dudley This email is free of malware because I run Linux.

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AES Plus 103 Word Processor Research
by Jeffrey Brace 31 May '21

31 May '21

A candaian researcher is looking for information on the AES Plus 103 word processor which was developed in Montreal, Canada. It was released in the US under the name: *Lanier No Problem* around 1978. If anyone has more info on the machine, please let me know. She had referenced this VCF forum article: https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/genres/other/46863-lanier-model-103-no-pr… 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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Nice story about getting into computers in the 80s
by Christian Liendo 31 May '21

31 May '21

https://madned.substack.com/p/a-teenagers-guide-to-avoiding-actual I thought this was a nice story because I got into IT roughly the same way. I was supposed to be a veterinarian not an IT person.

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Ken William's Sierra Book
by John Heritage 30 May '21

30 May '21

Hey All! - just a random opinion here, but I thought Ken William's book about Sierra ("Not All Fairy Tales have happy endings..") was great! I loved the variety of background and info -- on the business and how it was run at different stages, lessons learned from the various eras of Sierra, and especially the historical glimpse into what was going on behind the scenes in this market during my childhood. Lastly, having spent 20+ years in IT infrastructure, and always partnering with applications developers - it was cool to read the little interludes on 'how to be a developer', and especially how various games and even game genres came to be. I also took away that perhaps the PCjr (and Tandy 1000) were really the beginning of the end for Amiga and Atari ST -- because they set a standard for sound and graphics on x86 that made better fidelity gaming (and applications) possible in a "standard" way. Ken didn't mention the Amiga or ST, just my biased take from his discussions on what the PCjr offered (despite it's sales failures). Anyway, a lot of great stuff in the book! I'm thankful Ken took the time to write this. And I'm grateful the community is supportive of stuff like this so we get these kinds of insights. Thanks all! :).

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my first BYTE into computers (was My first computer memory was ...)
by Jeffrey Jonas 29 May '21

29 May '21

I got my first taste for computers while still in the crib. I teethed on tape write rings! Despite my dad programming computers since the 50s, it took a friend to really kick-start my interest. Ryan Junior High school had 3 programmable calculators in the vice principal's office for "independent study": a pair of Compucorp 025 Educators and an Olivetti Programma 101. Steven Popper showed me how to program them and I was hooked! I thought it was awesome being able to teach a machine to follow my directions. A key turning point was learning conditional branching. Now the machine was making DECISIONS! [using an "if" statement may sound trivial but those programmable calculators were very limited that way]. I learned the Compucorp so well that I wrote another folder of self-learn exercises and tutored others! I always adored using teeny FiloFax loose-leaf binders because I can rearrange the pages. I still have that notebook with my first programs. Francis Lewis High school in Queens may not sound prestigious but in the mid 70s, it was quite the "magnet school" with special programs such as the Math-Science Institute. The best math teachers were recruited and that spring-boarded the school's success, becoming the first public high school to achieve International Baccalaureate accredation http://ferretronix.com/flewis/#ib_footnote The math department taught computer programming as if it were a science lab experiment. Learn something (such as calculating the area under a curve), do it by hand, and then get the computer to handle the tedium of more and more points. We started by sharing one HP 9820A https://www.hpmuseum.org/hp9820.htm https://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/hp9820a.html Then we learned EDU-25 basic on the PDP8/e with 2 terminals (originally ASR33 teletypes, later ADM3A). Having our own PDP8/e was a big deal. Few schools had a computer in-house. The main computers were batch. Programs were keypunched onto cards, using IBM 029 keypunches. Operators (such as myself) ran the IBM 3777 RJE (Remote Job Entry) terminal: a card reader and line printer to a modem. https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery/equipment/ibm-3777-mod… We dialed into 3 IBM mainframes: UAPC, MIDP or CCNY. Each was slightly different, requiring their own JCL (Job Control Language cards). Some ran HASP, others JES2. CCNY (City College of NY) had the student compilers: WATFIV, PL/C, SNOBOL, etc. UAPC (University Application Processing Center) was administration only: attendance, report cards, class scheduling. MIDP (Management Information Data Processing) was the board of education's mainframe, which was tolerable after the upgrade. I learned FORTRAN/WATFIV, PL/I, BAL, JCL and the operator commands among other things. The Cooper Union Computer Center was a PDP 11/45 running Unix version 6. What a joy to finally use INTERACTIVE TERMINALS (initially Olivetti teletypes, then ADM3A and Decwriters). Of course, K&R "C" was the main language. It was fun extending the Unix utilities with new features. I took ownership of the line printer system: LPR/LPD. See: http://ferretronix.com/cucc/ That's all for now!

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Freenode IRC drama
by Jeffrey Brace 29 May '21

29 May '21

I found out about this through Hackaday's article, but this has been going on for a little while now: https://hackaday.com/2021/05/20/freenode-debacle-prompts-staff-exodus-new-n… ========================================= 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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Kennett classic news
by Herb Johnson 24 May '21

24 May '21

https://www.kennettclassic.com/freestuff/ Among KC's free items, is an ASUS M5 motherboard. Yes, it's modern stuff. It happens I could use the parts or the unlikely chance the mobo works. This could be readily shipped but Bill reasonably is not offering that service. If someone travels to Kennett and is able to pick this item up with parts, and can simply pack it and postal ship, I'd pay postage to my ZIP 08618. Flat rate Priority Mail keeps the cost under $21 but may be less. Use some discretion in packing loose parts. Contact me privately for details as per my email addresses below. to Bill: I'll get down to the Kennett site sometime this season. What does June look like? Checking their calendar, I see they had a PDP 8/e repair session in April. How did that go? 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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My first computer memory was using a terminal
by Bill Degnan 23 May '21

23 May '21

I vaguely remember when I was in elementary school in the 1970s in delaware some U of Delaware students or a teacher gave me access to a computer via a terminal. It was a simple login prompt to connect to the library and look things up and play some kind of exercises that had conditional decisions to build a story. It wasn't Plato or anything like that. That was my first memory of computers, but I must have been very young as I don't remember much else. The thing that impressed me was how you could decide what to do next and it changed a story's outcome. I think we had a picture book that went with it (?) I always wonder what that was all about. It was a one-day thing and that was it. Many years later I heard about something called project Delta at the U of Del but I have no idea if that was the same thing or if it was just some U of Del student looking for nearby kids to experiment with. I remember going to the librarian in elementary school and asking to use the computer in the back office , maybe 5th grade, but there were no computers for kids to use. I started going to RadioShack and using their computers probably in 4th grade and the Hallmark had a Timex Sinclair on display there, but I did have a family computer until the later 80s. I somehow knew BASIC, which makes me wonder if I was taught BASIC too. I remember making the computer say "Bill is Cool" over and over and I thought that was really funny at the time. Bill

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