July 2022 - vcf-midatlantic

HOPE - who's going?
by Jim Scheef 09 Jul '22

09 Jul '22

Hello all, Is anyone else going to HOPE at the new location in Queens in a couple weeks? Jim

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Museum Report 2022-07-07
by Jeffrey Brace 09 Jul '22

09 Jul '22

Rick, Doug, Bill I and I opened up the museum at 10 AM for a special tour group of 70 STEM students from STEM Academies of Chesterfield and Montgomery, NJ. We didn't know the exact ages and expected 10 to 14 year olds. To our surprise we were met with the first group who were ten 3 to 5 year olds. But we quickly adapted our tour to their age level. The groups were broken up into 10 students per group and ranged in age from 3 to 11 years old. There was a lot of adjusting on the fly in our tour and improvised based on the availability of time for each group. Some we had plenty of time, some came at unexpected times, some had little time. We had originally expected 30 minute tours. After lunch we had back to back tours that were spaced 5 to 7 minutes apart. Luckily we had 4 docents to handle them and to do 2 tours at the same time. Overall we learned a lot about adjusting to different age groups, adjusting the time for the tour and crowd control. We appreciated the chaperones keeping the children under control. We now have a better sense of how to adjust for different age groups, especially a new age group of under 5 which we never had in an organized group before. After the tours were finished at 2PM, the 4 of us discussed what went well, and not so well as well as to give each other updates on the museum and come up with suggestions for any changes or improvements. It's exciting to have such activity and collaboration amongst the docents! And to have lots of students coming through the InfoAge museums. ========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/> jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Holmes Engineering VID-80
by Mike Loewen 09 Jul '22

09 Jul '22

Does anyone have the CP/M software for the Holmes Engineering VID-80 board for the TRS-80 Model III? Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Does anyone want to watch Tron for our holiday event?
by Ethan O'Toole 08 Jul '22

08 Jul '22

re: Sharpvision... Mmmm watching TV through a screen door. I remember when those first came out. There was this futuristic electronics store in Virginia Beach called F/X. You rode a people mover (flat treadmill thing like in airports) down a hall with a bunch of CRT TVs and stuff and landed at a floor with a lighting grid above overlooking the store. Ramps into the various sections. It was cool. They had the Sharpvision when it first came out. It was pretty amazing at the time. The F/X places went out of business, though Circuit City remained. F/X building became a massive flea market, then went unused and homeless people caused fire damage I think. Crazy times. I just remember that store had style and things like the Sharpvision. [NON-Text Body part not included]

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Does anyone want to watch Tron for our holiday event?
by Christian Liendo 08 Jul '22

08 Jul '22

It's 40 years old this year and I think I have a DVD. Next year will be the 40th anniversary of War Games.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Best source for capacitors
by Bob Shuster 07 Jul '22

07 Jul '22

Just a follow-up. Thanks to Dave McGuire (thanks Dave!) I received a replacement polyester film cap today and replaced the old exploded paper film cap on the 1980 TRS-80 Model 4 floppy drive power supply! Haven’t tested it in the machine yet, but thought I’d share the process! Photos in the directory below: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1C_F28AXjqI8P7baLBs8Y5WPEwESNZMjl?us… - Bob Shuster > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2022 12:55:08 -0400 > From: Bob Shuster <bob(a)theshusters.com> > To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> > Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Best source for capacitors (Bob > Shuster) > Message-ID: <7D474446-788F-4F77-9D75-D8D6457A0DFE(a)theshusters.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > While Dave searches for this, does anyone else maybe have one available? On the Model 4, it?s C21 on the Astec #AA11320 power board, 0.1?F, 250V AC, metalized. Spacing on the leads is about 18mm? I should probably replace it with a polyester version if available. > > Bob Shuster > >> ------------------------------ >> Message: 4 >> Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:13:16 -0400 >> From: Dave McGuire <mcguire(a)neurotica.com> >> To: Bob Shuster via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> >> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Best source for capacitors >> Message-ID: <34763b3f-3914-b903-04a8-ed8b27877654(a)neurotica.com> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed >> >> On 6/27/22 17:11, Bob Shuster via vcf-midatlantic wrote: >> In all my years of collecting and using computers, and that?s 100s of computers and video game systems, I?ve never had a capacitor go or needed to replace one. Until now! Power supply filter cap on a TRS-80 Model 4. So where do you guys go for parts? I?m not looking to stock up, just need some one-offs (probably the X caps.) Do you just go to Mouser or Digi-Key? >> >> Mouser or DigiKey. >> >> Does anyone have spares? >> >> I have tens of thousands of capacitors here. What do you need? >> >> -Dave >> >> -- >> Dave McGuire, AK4HZ >> New Kensington, PA >> >> >> ------------------------------

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Museum Report 2022-07-06
by Jeffrey Brace 06 Jul '22

06 Jul '22

Hello everyone, Very busy day at the museum. There was an organized tour of 60 broken up into groups of 10, plus another group of 14 mixed in. Rick Lewis, Bill Inderrieden and I started at 10AM and went to 2PM with a 30 minute lunch break. After 2PM there was the regular stream of visitors which Bill took care of and Rick and I left to go home. It was great working with them and it was nice to see how we each did tours differently. We learned from each other. We also discussed how to make our tours better, how to adjust for different interest levels on a tour. I feel that we did a great job today. This group ended up being a general interest group from a summer camp that was approximately 12 to 18 years old, with a mixed of interest levels. We felt we did a good job of teaching them and keeping it fun. The one question that stood out for me was how one kid asked me if we could run Fortnite on the Commodore 64. *facepalm* But there was also the kid who remarked how there was some people upset when the iMac came out and floppy drives were eliminated. Tomorrow 2022-07-07 will be another group of about 50. This is a special day where all the museums are open specifically for this tour group. Thursday the museums are normally closed. Rick, myself, and Doug will be there. ========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/> jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Lemmings for the Apple II
by Christian Liendo 06 Jul '22

06 Jul '22

What's more to say, other than I wish there was a C64/128 version http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/lemm/

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Could older Ethernet/ARCNet NICs be overclocked successfully?
by John Heritage 05 Jul '22

05 Jul '22

Really silly question but something I always wondered about... Back in the days of 386 and 486 I overclocked plenty of CPUs by just changing the oscillator.. I always wondered if that was also possible with network cards back in the day. I think old cards (such as LANtastic compatible cards) had a 20 MHz Oscillators to match their 10 mbps clock speeds. If you replaced this with a 25 MHz oscillator - is it possible it would have worked at the higher data speed? Is there something about the protocol or signalling that would have prevented it from working reliably, assuming the components had enough margin to handle the speed? (Note, I'm assuming you have two PCs connected, and overclock each PC's NIC to the same frequency. I'm also assuming a short enough cable can deal with higher frequencies. Also 16-bit ISA busses have ~ 64 mbps of bandwidth so I don't see a bottleneck there). Thanks! John

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Best source for capacitors (Bob Shuster)
by Bob Shuster 04 Jul '22

04 Jul '22

While Dave searches for this, does anyone else maybe have one available? On the Model 4, it’s C21 on the Astec #AA11320 power board, 0.1µF, 250V AC, metalized. Spacing on the leads is about 18mm? I should probably replace it with a polyester version if available. How about this one? https://www.ebay.com/itm/183852327087 Thoughts? Bob Shuster > ------------------------------ > Message: 4 > Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2022 17:13:16 -0400 > From: Dave McGuire <mcguire(a)neurotica.com> > To: Bob Shuster via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> > Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Best source for capacitors > Message-ID: <34763b3f-3914-b903-04a8-ed8b27877654(a)neurotica.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > On 6/27/22 17:11, Bob Shuster via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > In all my years of collecting and using computers, and that?s 100s of computers and video game systems, I?ve never had a capacitor go or needed to replace one. Until now! Power supply filter cap on a TRS-80 Model 4. So where do you guys go for parts? I?m not looking to stock up, just need some one-offs (probably the X caps.) Do you just go to Mouser or Digi-Key? > > Mouser or DigiKey. > > Does anyone have spares? > > I have tens of thousands of capacitors here. What do you need? > > -Dave > > -- > Dave McGuire, AK4HZ > New Kensington, PA > > > ------------------------------

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