- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

changing my bus route
by Herb Johnson 13 Jan '22

13 Jan '22

[A lot of old-school tech chatter today!] Discussion of Multibus vs S-100 bus Joe apparently missed both Jeff's message about retrobrew computers, and my message on auction-site prices for S-100 boards. On price S-100 boards will be cheaper than Multibus (except collectables). I imagine he's caught up now. And a S-100 board of 5 X 10 inches is an awful lot of space. Multibus is about 6 X 12: whadda gonna do with either size? It's a lot of chips, especially modern chips. Jonathan makes the point: do something with something, then see where you go next. You don't have to start with your destination design, in fact it's advisable to start simpler and make your mistakes early. I'm relatively active in vintage Multibus. Certainly enough to agree with Jonathan Chapman's assessment of Multibus. It's a little more complicated than S-100 and IEEE-696. It can get a lot MORE complicated because these were used in complex industrial settings and industrial products (as were some S-100 systems). As David Guesswein suggests, there's not widespread vintage interests in Multibus, as those who worked on Multibus have aged-out of the vintage computing discussion. Also Multibus was an industrial product, whereas S-100 was both industrial and popular-computing in its lifetime. Essentially S-100 was the cheaper alternative to Multibus. Today there's a somewhat private Google group who have revived Intel-based Multibus development systems. https://groups.google.com/g/intel-devsys Otherwise a Web search may find various Multibus pages and sites with information (including mine). I'm not aware of all that many, but i don't engage much with many online discussion groups. If you find more activity online about Multibus, let me know! So discussion about Multibus that I'm aware of, quickly becomes discussions with engineers of decades of experience in programming or hardware design, about fairly busy systems that performed control or ran 20th century operating systems. I get intimidated, and I know some stuff. But the early bussed stuff - Multibus or S-100 bus or say STDbus - is approachable for the technically minded. Jon Chapman has revived the old OSI bussed systems and one 8080 multibus board. There's SWTPC, the SS-50 bus, with some revived new boards by corshamtech.com, that's a 6800 6809 classic bus. Busses get more obscure from there. There's many points of entry, for people who want to design up something at the vintage processor-chip level. and for each kind of "entry", there's of course people who have been there and know what's went on. But some of these are pretty complicated and busy, with lots of legacy stuff that can be intimidating or simply not of interest. Others are simpler: the single-board stuff was intended to be simpler and introductory. As I and others said: Joe, where you start may not be where you end up. There's good reason to make a few simpler things first, then more complicated things later. from the experience of doing so, you'll know what to look for and what's of interest to you in the next step. Put another way: I've had lots of people contact me (I have some reputation in the S-100 world) about their "ultimate S-100 system" who never got there. One reason may be, they didn't get enough prior experience on simpler systems or projects, and so were not able to "get traction" on critical S-100 concepts or complexities or about CP/M (the predominant OS for S-100). So they gave up. 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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Memories of 1977
by Joseph Giliberti 13 Jan '22

13 Jan '22

Greetings! I'm still in planning stages for my homebrew computer and one of my goals is to keep it period appropriate. Part of that is not using any parts or technologies introduced later than 1977. I want my computer to have at least 32k of SRAM. So, by the end of 1977, what was the densest chip commonly available which I won't have to go bonkers trying to locate? Thanks Joe Giliberti

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Females in computing list: VCF East 2022
by Jeffrey Brace 12 Jan '22

12 Jan '22

This is the list of female speakers that I have contacted or will contact. If you have any other suggestions that are not on this list, then please let me know. Margaret Morabito Jeri Ellsworth Quinn Dunki Cynthia Solomon - LOGO Carol Shaw - Mary Allen Wilkes - Linc 8 programmer Limor Fried - Ada Fruit Dona Bailey - Centipede programmer Burger Becky (Rebecca Heinmann) - Apple 2 programmer - Margaret Hamilton - Kim Swift - Rebecca Mercuri - STEM Radio technology classes for females Atari women - Mar Hicks - https://marhicks.com/ Betsy Ahl - Editor of Creative Computing Magazine Roberta Williams - Co-founder of Sierra Online ========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner VCF Mid-Atlantic Executive Director Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Females in computing list: VCF East 2022
by Jeffrey Jonas 12 Jan '22

12 Jan '22

Grace Hopper, the Eniac programmers and "Secret Rosies" are fascinating people but I fear many cannot appear because they're no longer living :-0 However, Melissa Pierce's documentary "Born with Curiosity: The Story of Grace Murray Hopper" seems to be a work in progress, with a stage-show https://bornwithcuriosity.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Pierce https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjx49LtuSFY -- jeff jonas

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Females in computing list: VCF East 2022
by Jeffrey Brace 12 Jan '22

12 Jan '22

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 10:59 AM Brian L. Stuart via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > Good point, Bill, and it brings to mind Kathy Kleiman who > has done a great deal of research on the group of women > who became the first programmers of the ENIAC. She > conducted interviews with them while they were still living > and she has produced a short-form documentary film > about them. While I wouldn't want to speak for her, I'm > pretty sure she'd be happy to give a talk and a screening > of the film. > Wow! Great suggestion Brian! I didn't know about her, but she would be a great candidate for a speaker at our show. I will contact her. > BLS > > > > > > > On Wednesday, January 12, 2022, 01:02:28 PM UTC, Bill Degnan via > vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > > > > > *Living* pioneers of computing.who would draw a reasonable crowd as a > keynote speaker? Not so easy. Picking a high level manager at a software > company who happens to be a woman is not going to be on the same level as > past keynote speakers and it kind of looks like you're more trying to fill > the slot with someone who checks the box "woman" before you realized the > obvious problem.of your category choice. > > Consider finding an expert on the history of women in computing, regardless > of their demographic characteristics, who can give a good informative talk > on the subject of "women in computing". A good speaker who knows the > subject. This way you can *cover them all* with >respect<. Find an author > of a good book on the subject. Find a historian. > > Having this discussuon like this on an open forum? Wouldnt you want to > keep this kind of debate within management until you finalized your plans? > > Bill > Former.v.p. vcfed > > On Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 5:34 AM Mark Whittington via vcf-midatlantic < > vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > > Margaret Hamilton > > > > On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 5:24 AM skogkatt007--- via vcf-midatlantic < > > vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > > > > Grace Hopper, Gina Smith. > > > > > > > > > > > >

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Females in computing list: VCF East 2022
by Mark Whittington 12 Jan '22

12 Jan '22

Margaret Hamilton On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 5:24 AM skogkatt007--- via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > Grace Hopper, Gina Smith. > > >

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Females in computing list: VCF East 2022
by Jeffrey Brace 12 Jan '22

12 Jan '22

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 5:24 AM skogkatt007--- via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > Grace Hopper, Gina Smith. > Great suggestions!

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retro vacuum tube computer and circuits
by Jeffrey Jonas 11 Jan '22

11 Jan '22

Usagi Electric makes tube systems Usagi Electric - YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/c/Nakazoto/videos> such as Vacuum Tube Computer P.22 – Processor Finished! - YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9oB-6963DU> -- jeff jonas

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Add-on card edge fingers for mock S-100 boards
by Joseph Giliberti 10 Jan '22

10 Jan '22

Greetings, I've been making basic design plans for my 8080- based homebrew computer. I want to build the system using the S-100 standard so that I could potentially add on commercially-built boards later. I've decided on wire-wrap board construction since the connections are solid and resistant to damage or corrosion. Plus it just looks so damn cool! I figure I can use plain perfboard to make the cards, but I need some way of grafting card-edge fingers onto the board and wrap them into the circuit, allowing me to connect to card to a standard S-100 backplane. Is there a premade part in existence to accomplish this, of will this be a project in and of itself? Thanks Everyone! Joe Giliberti

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Another great workshop this weekend 1/8 & 1/9, 2022
by Jeffrey Brace 10 Jan '22

10 Jan '22

This past weekend there was a smaller turnout due to the cold and snowy weather, but we still got a lot of stuff done and enjoyed ourselves in a safe way. Jeff Salzman worked on TRS-80 and Commodore PET 4032 stuff. Ian worked on TVs and a Oscilloscope. Connor worked on a lot of various things CJ worked on TVs and other items. Ryan B worked don a Macintosh SE Gregg worked on an emulator. Perhaps they can elaborate on what they did. I took care of some maintenance stuff in the musem. Not sure what others were working on. So the next repair workshop is @ System Source Jan 29 & 30. Next e-mail will give details. ========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner VCF Mid-Atlantic Executive Director Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org

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