- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

OT: Anyone working/playing with AI professionally?
by Neil Cherry 22 Dec '25

22 Dec '25

I've also posted this to the CDL mail list. Prereq: I'm not so much interested in failures, I've seen a lot. I'm interested in successes. I've been playing with AI to help me program (I haven't quite gotten to using things like LM Notebook). I've used it to quickly write data parsing scripts for testing (I do QA on software defined networks). For the quick and dirty script it usually gets me about 95% there, quickly. I've attempted to use AI to fix & improve a data tool (in browser JS). That went really badly as it would loose huge chunks of code and. When I needed to write a complex test suite (Robot Framework/Python) things got even worse as corporate security issues got in the way and the AI didn't seem to understand what was needed to fix them. This was just before my end of year vacation so I haven't been able to find the correct corp. chat to get help and none of my coworkers seem to understand (weird). Now, on to my hobby use. This gets even worse. I normally give the AI a set of requirements, something normal to anyone who does software engineering professional. I even cover the 'Business As Usual' parts that every SE fails to provide. So for my home project of C code to read, write, create, and modify Flex OS Gotek images under Linux, I gave it a nice set of requirements as assumed that the AI would not find the information on the internet. That went very badly as it had a lot of trouble with off by one errors. I've tried Python, C and 68000 asm and all come up quite short when I start testing. Has anyone created real applications with AI? I see tons of Youtube videos that claim they have. So either I'm the problem or the AI is not up to the marketing hype. And for anyone interested, I can share the requirements of my home project. I can't share my work related projects. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies KD2ZRQ

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VCF Museum and InfoAge Closed Dec. 24, 31
by Jeffrey Brace 22 Dec '25

22 Dec '25

The VCF Museum and InfoAge Museums will be closed Wednesday Dec. 24 and Dec. 31. Take care! Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President VCF East Showrunner VCF Fundraising Manager VCF Evangelist Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/> <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> Virus-free.www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

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Early delivery from Santa's sleigh
by Brian L. Stuart 21 Dec '25

21 Dec '25

So Santa had his sleigh out for some test drives tonight. For ballast (the real gifts won't be loaded until Wed night), he used a big stack of engineering drawings from the 1940s. Fortunately for us, his "spirited" driving included one turn that was too tight and out flew the drawings, where they landed on my lap. For anyone who's as eager as I am to geek out over 1940s computer design, I share them with you here: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/drawings/ There are over 900 drawings in the set. Most of these images come from scans of microfilm taken of the patent trial exhibits. There are also about 100 copies that the Smithsonian had imaged and put up on their web site. I've processed them all to approximate something like we remember from our technical drawing classes in college (well those of us old enough to have taken them). The quality varies widely, but a large subset are readable down to the measurements for the panels and the component values in the circuits. If you've read Kathy Kleiman's excellent book (Proving Ground) about the original ENIAC programmers, you may have found yourself wondering what the block diagrams from which they figured out how to program the machine looked like. Well, those are among the drawings here. So feel free to try your hand at figuing out how to program it from them. One subset of the drawings is conspicuous by its absence, the PX-15 series. From what I can tell, those were drawings of a delay line memory unit that was never built. Those drawings were not part of the trial exhibits and were not microfilmed. However, some physical copies do exist, and I am hoping to get back into the archives to scan them at some point in the future. Beyond that, there are a number of drawing numbers that are skipped, and I suspect that these are drawings that do (or did) exist, but were not microfilmed for whatever reason. So if anyone has or comes across any drawings that are not on this list, or better copies of those that are, feel free to send scans my way. For anyone wanting to grab copies of the full set, it should be pretty easy to extract a file name list from the index.html file. I'll leave the sed command for extracting the list as an exercise for the reader. For printing, all of them are sized in the PDF files for 8.5x11 or 11x17 paper. Be warned, printing all of them without duplexing and folding the 11x17s to fit into a normal binder, ends up filling 2 4-inch binders. By the way, if anyone has access to the adapter shown in drawing PX-4-119, I think there's an error in the drawing and I'd like to check to see if either there really is or if I'm missing something. Thanks and have fun, BLS

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VCF 2.0 from 1998
by Jeffrey Brace 20 Dec '25

20 Dec '25

Someone posted a video from VCF 2.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhwSmAYnDTU Enjoy! Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President VCF East Showrunner VCF Fundraising Manager VCF Evangelist Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/>

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How the RESISTORS Put Computing into 1960s Counter-culture
by Christian Liendo 19 Dec '25

19 Dec '25

I'm happy that Claude is still remembered. How the RESISTORS Put Computing into 1960s Counter-culture Teenage nerds in New Jersey were hacking before the PC and the Internet https://spectrum.ieee.org/teenage-hackers

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VCF MidAtlantic Steering Committee - Voting Results
by Jeff Salzman 17 Dec '25

17 Dec '25

The results of the VCF MidAtlantic Steering Committee were presented at the VCF Festivus event on Dec 13, 2025. The elected members are: Thomas Gilinsky August Culbert The voting breakdown was: Joe Giliberti: 19 votes August Culbert: 31 votes Thomas Gilinsky: 30 votes Please note that eight votes were invalid because they were rendered using email addresses that were NOT registered to this mailing list. It had been stated in the rules that only the mail addresses registered to this email list were eligible to vote. Please check your mailing list registration to find out what email address you used to sign up. vcf-midatlantic Info Page <https://lists.vcfed.org/mailman/listinfo/vcf-midatlantic> The invalid votes in this case DID NOT affect the results of the vote. Sincerely, Jeff Salzman VCF MidAtlantic Steering Committee

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VCF 2026 t-shirts Which two t-shirts colors do you like?
by Jeffrey Brace 17 Dec '25

17 Dec '25

Pick two: https://catalog.companycasuals.com/p/3480_HtSapphire Jeff Brace VCF East Showrunner

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VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR VCF MONTREAL JAN 24-25, 2026
by Jeffrey Brace 17 Dec '25

17 Dec '25

The Vintage Computer Federation is having its first show in Canada! I'm co-showrunner and am supporting the new showrunner Nicolas Mailloux. *DATE*: Jan 24-25 *LOCATION*: Royal Military College of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu 15 Rue Jacques-Cartier N, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC J3B 8R8 Look here for Volunteer information: https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/vcf-montreal-volunteers-faq-aide-et-benevola… Look here to register as a volunteer: https://forms.gle/ZshZerNbSD5og9cw6 General info: https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/ Take care! Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President VCF East Showrunner VCF Fundraising Manager VCF Evangelist Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/>

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] VCF East 2026 Exhibit Registration
by Bill Degnan 17 Dec '25

17 Dec '25

Is “TRS-80” a typo? PET to Amiga would make more sense in the context of the other machines in the paragraph. “… >From the *Altair 8800*, *Apple I*, and *Commodore PET* to the *TRS-80*, *IBM PC*, and *Macintosh*, this theme gives us room to showcase the innovation and competition that defined the era …..” On Wed, Dec 17, 2025 at 7:52 AM Sentrytv via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > Just curious, what is the “theme “for VCF East 2026? > > > Sent from: > My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device. > > > On Dec 17, 2025, at 12:02 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < > vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > > > Fill out this form to register an exhibit at VCF East: > > https://forms.gle/cghQMPuh366pkdfD8 > > > > Take care! > > > > Jeff Brace > > VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President > > VCF East Showrunner > > VCF Fundraising Manager > > VCF Evangelist > > Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity > > https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/> > >

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OT: InfoAge Holiday Train Show 2025
by Jeffrey Brace 17 Dec '25

17 Dec '25

Don't miss the annual InfoAge Holiday Model Train Show 2025! Last two days are this coming weekend Dec. 20 & 21. Here is a video preview: https://www.infoage.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Holiday_Train_Show_2025_… Enjoy! Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President VCF East Showrunner VCF Fundraising Manager VCF Evangelist Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/>

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