December 2022 - vcf-midatlantic

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] OT: Netflix studios coming to former Army base in Monmouth NJ
by Christian Liendo 23 Dec '22

23 Dec '22

My crystal ball sees property value increases. Who knows, they may rent out the site for films, which will bring in some much needed cash flow. I say this is a good thing. Except for me because I can't move there now because it will be too expensive. On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 2:03 PM Sentrytv via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > So how will this affect InfoAge(?) in the future? >

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OT: Netflix studios coming to former Army base in Monmouth NJ
by Ethan O'Toole 23 Dec '22

23 Dec '22

"New $848M Netflix Studios Monmouth At Former New Jersey Army Base Is A Firm Go; Co-CEO Ted Sarandos Sees “Billions In Economic Output” From 12 Sound Stages – Update" "Netflix will pay $55 million for a big parcel of land in New Jersey, then invest about $850 million to build a state-of-the-art production studio, according to details of the streamer’s bid. " "The 289-acre site of Netflix Studios Fort Monmouth, a former army base, would be one of the largest fully integrated production facilities in the world and a very close second to Netflix’s biggest U.S. production hub in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which totals 300 acres." https://deadline.com/2022/12/netflix-studios-fort-monmouth-new-jersey-produ… So uh, this is really close to VCF. 10 mile drive according to the Goog but much shorter as the crow flies. - Ethan

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What we can learn from vintage computing
by Herbert Johnson 22 Dec '22

22 Dec '22

Jeff Jonas discussed the IBM 1130 front panel. He noted well-labeled controls and computer operations to the single instruction or cycle or clock. It's good information. But Jeff ends with this: > All that was lost with the microprocessor :-( All the data busses and > registers are internal with no pins, thus relying on a monitor to > view/alter registers. That's the glory of REAL font panels: they're all > HARDWARE, they can't lie :-) The MITS Altair 8800, the IMSAI 8080, the MITS 680, the Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1; all supported MITS-class front panels. The earliest 1802 computers, same era, had a byte-level, single clock/instruction front panel (and little else). Home-built early 8008 and 8080 systems, often included front panels. Terminals were expensive, memory was limited, and front panels helped debug the hardware. People looking back today, don't appreciate the limited resources (and limited wealth) during 1970's micro computing. MITS people may not have known about the IBM 1130 front panel. But certainly, Ed Roberts knew about the Data General NOVA, which sat in his office, and which has a front panel. (David Greelish interview with Roberts.) The MITS front panel, like the Nova, permitted single-cycle and single-instruction operation of the 8080 microprocessor. It could not display registers, those are internal to the 8080. So, front panels were not "lost with the microprocessor". They simply fell out of favor, by the late 1970's. Briefly: as microcomputers became more powerful and hardware stabilized, software debugging was cheaper and preferable to hardware debugging. Computers designed for the office and home, were styled like office equipment. I lived through the era, it's hard to prove why something stopped happening. On "hardware panels can't lie". They can fail too. And some devices won't run at toggle-clock speeds. Problems may not manifest on a front-panel if they are intermittent. Front panels are a tool, like other tools they have utility or not. Should I say, "all that was lost, when personal computers became commonplace"? Things change, sometimes there's reasons. Regards, Herb Johnson retrotechnology.com -- 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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NABU Disk images and Forum
by Andrew Diller 22 Dec '22

22 Dec '22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqFx9Mc6vzY <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqFx9Mc6vzY> I love that they are tracking/working this out via the VCF Forums! https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/bad-disk-image.1240644/ What a change from just a few years ago when the forum seemed to be on the verge of fading away. Props to the VCF Team that has breathed new life into it. -andy

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[The Washington Post] Remember the pay phone? This man is bringing them back at no cost.
by Glenn Roberts 22 Dec '22

22 Dec '22

Interesting article about bringing back free “pay” phones. Hopefully everyone can click on the link below to read the story… (sent with the “gift” option in Washington Post app…) Remember the pay phone? This man is bringing them back at no cost. “There are lots of people who can’t afford a cellphone or a phone bill,” PhilTel co-founder Mike Dank said. By Cathy Free https://wapo.st/3YFblYX Download The Washington Post app. Sent from my iPad

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What we can learn from vintage computing
by Jeffrey Jonas 21 Dec '22

21 Dec '22

I could go on and on about the glory of the IBM 1130 front panel until I froth at the mouth and fall over backwards (arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!) Here's an attempt to summarize all its goodness. Lookit the panel itself https://www.technikum29.de/en/computer/ibm1130.php Everything is clearly labelled, easy to read. Logically arranged: registers on the left, status in the center, instruction and interrupts on the right. First of all, you SIT at the console with the keyboard and most of the switches in easy reach. Quite the "personal computer" of the time. The number of buttons & switches was minimal because many were multi-purpose depending on the magic "mode switch" on the far right of the display. "run" mode was the usual mode: run at full speed. Too fast? Interrupt-run caused a level 5 (low priority) interrupt after every instruction for tracing, breakpoints, watchpoints, etc. Still too fast? SI: single instruction. Each press of the "START" button ran ONE instruction and the CPU halted, showing the full status on the indicators. Still too fast? Try SMC: Single Memory Cycle. Core memory was a limiting factor so each instruction had 1-7 memory cycles: I1 I2 IX IA E1 E2 E3. I cycles were instruction fetch: first word, 2nd word, indexing, indirect addressing. E cycles were execution: depending on the number of memory accesses required (single word or double-word). The 1130 was somewhat unique in that addresses were for each 16-bit word. There was no byte access, thus no need to address bytes. Still too fast? Use SS: single clock cycle. There were usually 8 clock cycles per memory cycle, sometimes many more as controlled by the cycle control counter. This is where the machine internals REALLY show. A manual gave the flowchart of every instruction for you to follow along clock cycle by clock cycle. The top center shows 1-8 for the clock cycle. The bottom indicators were available for the CE (customer engineer) to wire up as required to debug circuits. There were even a few spare gates to help with 'watchdog' circuits when debugging the hardware. All that was lost with the microprocessor :-( All the data busses and registers are internal with no pins, thus relying on a monitor to view/alter registers. That's the glory of REAL font panels: they're all HARDWARE, they can't lie :-) -- jeff jonas

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Herb's Website made front page on HackerNews
by Herbert Johnson 19 Dec '22

19 Dec '22

It's a bit hyperbolic, to say my site "made the front page" of HackerNews. So, the precipitating event, possibly was https://www.retrotechnology.com/dri/d_dri.html#gaby an update in mid-June 2022 to the license that DRDOS Inc CEO Brian Sparks gave to the CP/M archive site some years ago. Sparks essentially owns CP/M. Read the fine Web pages for details. Otherwise, someone on HackerNews noted one of my many Digital Research Web pages http://www.retrotechnology.com/dri/ - home page for DRI https://www.retrotechnology.com/dri/d_dri.html - early DRI CP/M work http://www.retrotechnology.com/dri/dri_16bit.html - later probably found while Web searching for CP/M ownership information. My pages get attention, because "content is king on the Web" still holds. Here's what I mean. Few Web sites have followed the trail of sales of Digital Research assets, ending with Brian Sparks and DRDOS Inc. associates' final purchase. Few cover all the products of DRI, and their relationship to other software products, particularly 16-bit class products. Scope of content matters. I did all that, before Kildall's story became well-known in 2004, in a biographical write up contained in "They Made America". And, before the IEEE honored Kildall's first business location on the 40th anniversary of Kildall's first boot of CP/M (a date not well-established, by the way). Persistence of content matters. The scope of DRI and CP/M is a rich story. But most accounts of CP/M focus on Dr. Gary Kildall's life when CP/M began with him, and end with MS-DOS and the IBM PC in 1981. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kildall made other contributions after Digital Research, and had other issues. These I do not cover. I followed the CP/M trail from where it started, to many products and people impacted by it, and to wherever that led. Regards Herb Johnson retrotechnology.com -- 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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Herb's Website made front page on HackerNews
by Christian Liendo 18 Dec '22

18 Dec '22

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039000

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Televideo
by Bill Degnan 17 Dec '22

17 Dec '22

My apologies about the public post....Dimitri...call me at the shop about the Televideo. I still have the 286. Sorry I lost your original message. Thanks Bill

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Micro C issues are gone
by bob＠corshamtech.com 16 Dec '22

16 Dec '22

Micro Cs are spoken for? Bob

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