- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

OT: Vintage Heathkit, Not Computers
by Chris Fala 21 Jan '22

21 Jan '22

I wish I had the discretionary funds to throw at this, even though I would never use it. It's just so pretty! https://www.ebay.com/itm/133994743821

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OpenVMS 6.2 DNS Support
by Christian Liendo 20 Jan '22

20 Jan '22

Can someone help me with this. Does OpenVMS 6.2 support DNS/BIND? I wm being told the following: "Correct the OpenVMS 8.4 support the DNS we are running OpenVMS V6.2-1H3" "It is running older TCP/IP from Digitial call UCX" I looked up UCX and I see a DNS config, but I cannot tell if it is supported in a newer or older version. Does anyone know?

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Bill von Hagen, computer scientist and Pittsburgh punk pioneer, dies at 66
by Christian Liendo 19 Jan '22

19 Jan '22

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/obituaries/2022/01/18/Bill-Von-Hagen-bore… Some people might know him as he too was into vintage computing http://www.vonhagen.org/ Very sad to hear.

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[OT] light bulb collector/museum
by Herb Johnson 19 Jan '22

19 Jan '22

Chris Fala: > To the collector in us all. [link to YouTube video] The cited YouTube clip was from a CBS news feature by David Pogue (that guy who used to host PBS Nova episodes by playing dumb about technology). So Pogue asks the collector, "light bulbs? really?" - because of course modern bulbs are not only dirt-common, but obsolete, and therefore uninteresting twice. The collector starts to explain their historic significance as the video shows various bulbs and sockets and accessories. I stopped watching at that point, I know the drill. Later in the thread, Jeff Jonas suggests the point I was about to make, so I'll join his thread. Vintage "light bulbs" is not a trivial subject or some personal oddity. It was an advanced technology that was initially exciting, became necessary, and then invisible. Just like personal computing. And it happens, it's history relevant to New Jersey where VCFed-Midatlantic resides. In the terminology of vintage computing: the incandescent electric lamp, was the "killer app" for the distribution and personal and industrial use of electrical power at the turn of the 20th century. Edison did much of his electrical work and production in New Jersey. What makes a light bulb even interesting? Electrical distribution didn't exist until around 1900. Why electrically wire up a city, in an era of ZERO commercial or consumer electrical devices? To provide smokeless, fireless, constant illumination; for work and safety and entertainment. Cities were in constant risk from fire, used for heating and cooking and illumination (natural gas, coal, wood, kerosene). And all that smoke filled rooms and cities with haze - and of course created carbon monoxide and gas poisoning. Illumination of streets at night, extended business hours and increased safety. Electric illumination was celebrated as a miracle of modern technology - much like computing was half a century later, and personal computing a century later. It was a centerpiece of expositions (public tech shows). And it was one of many technologies pursued by powerful rich people, who financed the "electrical wizards" of the day - Edison, Tesla, JP Morgan. All this played out in the newspapers of the day (their "information highway"). With electric light to provide a revenue stream and incentive to wire cities, electric motors became a replacement for steam. Later, small electric motors over large steam engines. For awhile, electric cars challenged gasoline cars. And Edison's General Electric and Westinghouse fought the AC/DC "current wars" in courts and newspapers. Remind you of Microsoft vs Apple? There's a few Edison museums in New Jersey, one near Edison NJ (yeah), At East Orange NJ is the Edison National Park (his research facility and nearby his mansion). If you are a techie, and you were thrown back in time to 1900, what research facility would YOU build? Edison beat you to it, in East Orange, go look at it. So. The "light bulb" represents early personal electricity, just as vintage computers represent early personal computing. The YouTube video about light-bulb collecting, "illuminates" what most people today think about common technology turned vintage - "huh?". And it shows what a few people are doing to preserve and curate it. 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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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] [OT] light bulb collector/museum
by Jeffrey Jonas 18 Jan '22

18 Jan '22

Chris Fala noted this interview with a light bulb collector: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5EOHEWJCxs My take is that the interviewer was somewhat condescending. Worst of all: no links or information on how to visit the museum in the video or the accompanying text. I was hoping to follow up because I'm curious about other lighting technologies such as The Nernst lamp: didn't require a vacuum! https://edisontechcenter.org/NernstLamps.html The "Moore lamp" refers to a neon bulb used in a Nipkow disk, and long Carbon Dioxide tubes that first lit a NJ store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_McFarlan_Moore The Cooper-Hewitt mercury lamp was an early technology that photographers loved despite the odd color: http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Documents/M6%20Cooper%20Hewitt.htm Jason Perkins noted > I used to have a collection of burnt out lamps > of all different kinds and sizes. Annoyingly, > I added the pram battery from an original Mac > to the bin at one point, which leaked and off gassed, > ruining all the bases of the lamps. I'm having similar problems with things stored as properly-as-possible. Some plastics, rubber or foam deteriorates into dust, or just cracks when flexed. Equipment rubber feet love to turn into a gooey slime that ruins anything beneath it. I even had a drafting template outgass and destroy all those near it. -- jeff jonas

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Internal Amdahl T-Shirt preservation
by Adam Michlin 17 Jan '22

17 Jan '22

Hi Everyone, As some of you know, my father worked at Amdahl from 1984 to 1993. He held many roles, including Product Planning. Director of Design Automation, and ultimately Director of Storage, before moving on to other things. He has a t-shirt that was produced for internal usage only (it was not traditional swag) that Dean Notarnicola was kind enough to scan and Javier Rivera was kind enough to clean up for reprinting. Javier is also making it available for purchase, although neither Dean nor I receive any funds. I absolutely love Javier's store (check it out even if you aren't interested in Amdahl!) and look at it as my small contribution to support him. My only concern was making sure the history lived on. Here's the t-shirt: https://www.8bittees.com/product/amdahl-5990-tee/ And here's the history behind the shirt in my father's own words (although we're still trying to figure out the significance of the bees): --- The Story of the Amdahl 5990 During the 1970s era it took roughly 7 years from the time a mainframe project was initiated until the product actually shipped to customers. The technology of the time required advancing the semiconductors, then advancing the packaging and cooling, then advancing the architecture based on them, then tuning an operating system to support them and finally going through a tortuous bring-up and test process to assure that the mainframe – at prices ranging from $1 million or so up to perhaps $9-10 million – didn’t fail in embarrassing ways on a customer’s data center. This 7-year cycle applied to both IBM itself and Amdahl, its major plug-compatible competitor, and both knew it. Therefore each felt fairly secure in the competition to market their high end mainframes without fear of any short term surprises. But Amdahl was a partner, both technologically and financially with Fujitsu, a Japanese company. Fujitsu was offering mainframes of its own design under its own brand. They were sold mostly in the Japanese market and didn’t compete with IBM products as directly as Amdahl did. If Fujitsu needed to field a product directly competing with IBM, it offered an Amdahl. Japanese mainframe users often valued fast numerical (floating point) performance for scientific programs, and Fujitsu tended to design with this in mind. By contrast, American users were running more commercially oriented workloads, and IBM was known for designing to this requirement. Amdahl’s key competitive claim was high performance for various workloads including both scientific and commercial. So it came to pass that Fujitsu was well along in developing its next mainframe at a time when Amdahl and IBM were each only a year or two into their 7-year cycle. On a visit to Japan, Amdahl engineers learned about the coming Fujitsu product and decided that with some work to make it meet Amdahl’s “100% IBM plug-compatible” promise, it could compete with IBM in the U.S. And it would be a huge surprise since it would enter the market years before anyone expected a new, higher performance product from Amdahl, or IBM. As a result, it was treated as a top secret within Amdahl and quietly perfected under the code name “Hawk.” As it progressed from an engineering project toward seeing the light of day as a full fledged Amdahl product, it looked more and more promising, and secrecy became more and more critical. At one point as the code name “Hawk” seemed to be leaking, the project name was changed to “Lynx.” The rest is history. Hawk/Lynx was announced and shipped as the Amdahl model 5990. It was a big surprise to IBM and a market success, especially for scientific users. As a memento of the project, participants received a custom T-shirt, a common Silicon Valley tradition. The words on this T-shirt said “Amdahl 5990,” and the image combined a bird of prey – a Hawk – and a Lynx – a relatively large and wild bobcat. And those who had worked on the secret project knew exactly what it referred to. JM: 1/10/2022 --- Best wishes, -Adam

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Off Topic But Relatable
by Jason Perkins 17 Jan '22

17 Jan '22

I used to have a collection of burnt out lamps of all different kinds and sizes. Annoyingly, I added the pram battery from an original Mac to the bin at one point, which leaked and off gassed, ruining all the bases of the lamps. -J On Sun, Jan 16, 2022 at 1:35 PM Sentrytv via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > At least this guy had the bright idea of collecting bulbs! > > Sent from: > My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device. > > > On Jan 16, 2022, at 12:25 PM, Chris Fala via vcf-midatlantic < > vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > > > > To the collector in us all. > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5EOHEWJCxs > > -- Jason Perkins 313 355 0085 Sent from my iPhone

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Totally Worth it
by Bill Degnan 17 Jan '22

17 Jan '22

https://www.ebay.com/itm/313742149778 For $60 you too can have no idea what you just bought.

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Off Topic But Relatable
by Chris Fala 17 Jan '22

17 Jan '22

To the collector in us all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5EOHEWJCxs

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Flyers and paraphernalia from Vintage Computer Festival Past
by Jeffrey Brace 15 Jan '22

15 Jan '22

I'm looking for flyers, program books and other paraphernalia from Vintage Computer Festivals. I have them from the past 5 years, I'm looking to preserve the history of the show and the organization. The organization has been around 17 years and hopefully for a long time so it's a good idea to preserve the history for posterity. The founders had no idea of what the organization would become and how long it would last. I'm hoping that those who have been around "since the beginning" can send me a scan of items. If you have anything, then please let me know privately and we will take it from there. Thanks! ========================================= 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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