- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Looking for help on dealing with monitor cataracts on VR201 monitors.
by Dave Shevett 29 Dec '25

29 Dec '25

I have 3-4 DEC VR201 monitors that have the dreaded cataracts problem. In short the glue on the front of the crt has deteriorated, and the front of the screen is all blotchy and icky. The monitors work, it just looks terrible. I am extremely nervous working on CRTs (I did field repairs on Wang OIS and WPS terminals all through the late 80s, and absolutely hated doing the ole "ground the anode to the chassis" bit (scary), but in this case you also need to disassemble the tube frame and scrape / heatgun off all the goo, while still making sure the tube isn't going to implode. I'm happy to work with someone (supervised repairs) or give these to whomever wants to fix them. Goal is to get my Pro-380 and my DECmates up and running with a clean video again soon (hopefully before VCF-east). Thanks! -d

3 2

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Oregon Trail Hallmark ornament
by bernieS 28 Dec '25

28 Dec '25

Here's a link to a YouTube video of the Oregon Trail Hallmark ornament in operation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPA2sWnrDmc (Start at 3:30 in the video if you want to skip the unboxing part.) The display appears to be a LED backlit lenticular image, which requires viewing from different lateral angles to switch between two surprisingly high-resolution images: the Oregon Trail menu screen, and the status message, "You Have Died from Dysentery". It's a clever design. Power consumption from the (3) 1.5V LR44 'button' batteries is kept to a minimum this way. Some people have hacked these Hallmark 'Keepsake' ornaments by instead attaching (3) AAA or AAA batteries hardwired to the battery terminals. Three such batteries--especially if they're long-life lithium cells--would likely keep the ornament illuminated for weeks or longer. Hallmark has long been innovatively incorporating electronics technology into its greeting cards, holiday ornaments, and other products. In the early 1990's they introduced the first greeting card with a digital audio recorder/playback device incorporated into a surprisingly thin greeting card for $7.95 retail. The idea was you could record ten-second audio message to your loved one in a greeting card, which when opened would play to them loud and clear. Clever! Phone phreaks and hackers quickly recognized this as a golden opportunity and removed the tiny electronics module from the card and used it to record Automated Coin Totalling System (ACTS) coin-deposit audio signals emanating from the handset earpiece on payphones of local exchange carriers--or better yet from the handset of a phone you called and then depositing more quarters because the ACTS tones were attenuated in the payphone earpiece but were loud and clear in the called party's phone which allowed better recording quality. Then the user could make payphone calls and play back the recorded coin-deposit tones into the handset's microphone by pressing the module's momentary switch to spoof the phone company's ACTS system after it verbally prompted them to "Please Deposit 25 Cents For The First 5 Minutes" (or much more money for Long-Distance calls) in lieu of depositing coins. Such a device, in its various incarnations spanning more than three decades while ACTS was in use, was called a Red Box by the phreak/hacker community. The so-called Hallmark Red Box was hands-down the least expensive and simplest way to create a Red Box, and was popularized by an article entitled "A Gift From Hallmark" that was published in 2600 Magazine back then. I'd read in an electronics trade publication that Hallmark bought millions of digital audio recording chips from Information Storage Devices, Inc. for use in a talking greeting card they planned to release on a certain date. On that day I bought one as soon as the Hallmark store nearest me opened. Phone company payphones by design never returned change for unused call minutes. Cheating callers out of their change was more profitable. With many millions of payphone calls made each day around the U.S. back then, these unearned profits quickly added up to millions of dollars per week for local phone companies and A&T. Some people would keep a running total of how much money the phone company stole from them this way and use their 'credits' to make payphone calls with their Red Box. This led to controversy about who was actually defrauding whom. Thanks for the memories, Hallmark! -bernieS

1 0

Hello Computer? (Star Trek IV Scotty talking to Mac 512k)
by Jeffrey Brace 28 Dec '25

28 Dec '25

Apparently for 40 years people have been speculating how the creators of Star Trek IV (1986) put what was on the screen of the Mac 512k in the scene where Scotty talks to the computer to create transparent aluminum ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpWhugUmV5U) . Hint: It wasn't real Macintosh graphics. It seems that Ron's Computer Videos investigated and solved the mystery! Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHqiiPGPHFY Enjoy! Jeff Brace <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>

2 1

Oregon Trail Hallmark ornament
by Jeffrey Jonas 27 Dec '25

27 Dec '25

It's just 2 screens alternating (probably projection, not LCD) https://www.hallmark.com/ornaments/keepsake-ornaments/the-oregon-trail-orna…

3 2

InfoAge & VCF Museums Closed Dec. 27, 28, 31, 2025
by Jeffrey Brace 26 Dec '25

26 Dec '25

Due to the upcoming snowstorm InfoAge and VCF museums will be closed this coming weekend Sat & Sun, Dec. 27 & 28. They will also be closed on Dec. 31 for New Year's Eve. Reopening on January 3, 2026. Take care everyone and see you in the new year! 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>

1 0

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Merry Christmas Everyone
by Brian L 25 Dec '25

25 Dec '25

Merry Christmas! Passing along some brief appreciation.. Thank you to everyone who participated in VCFE this past year, and to all the familiar faces who showed up to Festivus a few weeks back. Wishing good health to everyone in the New Year!

1 0

Merry Christmas Everyone
by Christian Liendo 25 Dec '25

25 Dec '25

I wasn't able to be there and I hope to be at VCFE. So I couldn't say be before. I hope you guys have a great day. It will be nice to see you all again.

4 3

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Early delivery from Santa's sleigh
by Bill Degnan 23 Dec '25

23 Dec '25

Thanks. I added a link to the ENAIC drawings here: https://vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=147 This is my list of vintage computing-related links. On Sun, Dec 21, 2025 at 8:15 PM Brian L. Stuart via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > 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 >

2 1

Call for speakers - VCF East 2026
by Jeffrey Brace 22 Dec '25

22 Dec '25

Register to give a talk here: https://forms.gle/6BW1tayfcD5Wqfx96 Jeff Brace VCF East Showrunner

1 0

OT: Return to the Moon: Artemis Update by Frank O'Brien
by Jeffrey Brace 22 Dec '25

22 Dec '25

I interviewed Frank O'Brien back in October about the Artemis mission to the moon: https://youtu.be/2NSAfLyIjVU Enjoy! Jeff Brace

1 0