- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Atari XE game system
by David K 20 Aug '20

20 Aug '20

Ethan, Thanks for the feedback regarding cleaning cartridges - that is often an issue but I do not think the games are the problem in this instance since they work on my Atari 800XL. My understanding is the XE is supposed to boot to Galaxian as a built-in game and if the keyboard is attached it should automatically boot and let you choose between BASIC and Galaxian. Can anyone confirm if this is true? I have no previous experience with the XE so this is all based on what I read online so far. Can anyone provide insight into what is special about the Star Raiders cartridge since from what I have seen online there is something about it that lets it boot when other games won't. David

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SYM-1 for sale
by Bob Applegate 20 Aug '20

20 Aug '20

I’m slowly working on liquidating my collection of stuff from multiple hobbies that completely fill my basement, and will be posting things as they are tested and ready to go. While looking on eBay to get a rough price for a SYM-1 I discovered this link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Museum-Item-SYM-1-With-Briefcase-Power-Supply… Well, I’ve got exactly the same thing, so some school or company must have made a few of these for portable trainers. A decent job packing it all into a briefcase. Anyway, mine is much more economically priced. http://k2ut.org/yard-sale/ I’ve got some Heathkit stuff to test, including a Hero Jr robot, and then I’ll post them. Email me privately if interested. Bob

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Museum Report: 19 August 2020
by svcatitc＠aol.com 20 Aug '20

20 Aug '20

Opened at 1p. Slow day. Only one family, of the mom and 3 small kids, the youngest tyke was constantly tugging on mom's arm. I commented jokingly "who's taking who for a walk?" We both laughed. Only casual interest. Finished the insulating mod on the EAI TR20 XY recorder rack ears so there will not be ground loops. Al Klase from NJARC came in and toured the museum a couple of Wednesday's ago and we both commented how ground and guard systems so important in analog circuits (him coming from a HiFi background, among other heavy duty electronics studies). Closed up shop at 5:30p Bill Inderrieden

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Wow! What a repair workshop! Aug 15 & 16, 2020
by Jeffrey Brace 20 Aug '20

20 Aug '20

Wonderfully messy too! Between the two repair workshop areas, museum and warehouse we had about 20+ people attending and working on "stuff". First of all I want to thank Bill Inderrieden for helping me with the logistics of the workshop. It helps me to have a "right hand man" to manage everything that I do during these weekends. I am often pulled in many directions at these workshops to manage activities, answer questions and keep the museum running as well. Somehow I was able to find a place for 16 people to eat for dinner Saturday night going with my Plan "D" when A, B, C didn't have the room or had too long a wait. Outdoor only dining limits my options, but it seemed like everyone enjoyed it. Ian won the first (and second) to smoke award while working on a Swedish computer owned by Andrew. Maybe they can give more details as to the model and what was wrong with this machine. Ian also worked on an older model TV that he had looked for a long time to find. David Gesswein got our Xerox 8010 computer mostly working with a part that needs to be ordered and modern SD drive to replace the original (failed) hard drive. He was also able to get our PDP-8 working with the "chasing lights" demo and the teletype punch demo programs. Bill Inderrieden and Jeff Jonas did lots of good work on organizing the warehouse. Jason Perkins worked on scanning and uploading documents to the internet archive as well as his own hardware. The steering committee has lots of great stuff planned for improving the condition of the warehouse and will be giving details on that soon. Maybe others can fill in what they worked on and were able to repair. Next repair workshop is September 12 & 13: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QPWVJSRL94SdHKtmkUmH6WESwckeXbn8PgV… -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org cell: 732-759-1783

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T-shirts for Vintage Computer Festival 2020 for Pickup at VCF Museum
by Jeffrey Brace 20 Aug '20

20 Aug '20

I know that for the past few months anyone can order VCF t-shirts from here: http://vcfed.org/wp/t-shirts. This is expected to continue to the end of the year, but may stop at any time. Cost is $20 + shipping. For anyone interested in saving on shipping, you can pick up your t-shirt from the VCF Museum. I am taking orders for them now. Cost for t-shirts is $20. Then I will send you a PayPal invoice. Fill out this Google Form to order one: https://forms.gle/a8PzyP9xuipgD8bL8 They come in Amber or Green. You can look here for pictures of them: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Si_Otu2kICPbNaEUpcw0kSqoh9gDh-xh?us… Deadline for ordering is September 17, 2020. Expected delivery date will be October 3 (a week before VCF East 2020). -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member Vintage Computer Festival East Show-runner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey(a)vcfed.org cell: 732-759-1783

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Free to a Good Home: Okidata Microline 84 printer
by William Dudley 19 Aug '20

19 Aug '20

The Okidata Microline 84 is a wide carriage dot matrix printer, with a "near letter quality" mode in addition to the normal "draft mode". It has a "Centronics" parallel input. A google search implies that ribbons can still be purchased. Photos here: https://www.dudley.nu/forsale/#oki84 Printer is located in Jackson, NJ. I can meet you somewhere within about 15 miles of my home, or I can deliver to the VCF museum at the next work session. It's big and heavy, so shipping will be expensive. Bill Dudley Jackson, NJ This email is free of malware because I run Linux.

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Atari XE game system
by David K 19 Aug '20

19 Aug '20

I recently bought an Atari XE game system. When I turn it on it goes right into self test. The result of the self-test is that the ROM 'slot' on the left is green (good) but the ROM 'slot' on the right is bad (red). All of the 48 RAM blocks show up as good. I get this same result every time I turn it on or reset it. I have tried starting the computer while holding 'Select' and the exact same thing happens. I am confident the power supply is good. I am actually using a 5V power supply for an Atari 800XL I have and it works for the XL just fine. I took the motherboard out of the case and can see no obvious damage (I am not an electronics or computer person by training however). I tried numerous games and none worked except one (see next paragraph). I know the games are good because they work on my XL. The one game that does work is Star Raiders. I saw something online about how this has some special testing (?) component but I do not understand the implication of this. I have the keyboard piece and it seems to work as I can use it to do various things when playing Star Raiders. But pressing the 'Help' button on the keyboard during the self test does nothing. I've left the computer on for maybe 15 minutes as it repeatedly goes through the self test and some of the chips get warm but not particularly hot. Can anyone help me get this to boot correctly and play other games? Thanks, David K

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Xerox Wildflowers - Dandelions and Daybreaks
by Andrew Diller 19 Aug '20

19 Aug '20

I know DavidG has done some amazing work (along with other members) on VCF's 8010 (Dandelion)... And strangely enough the same day (yesterday) someone on the SGI Discord I frequent posted this amazing video, which I thought I'd share to interested people here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Dlr5rY9SI <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Dlr5rY9SI> Of a Daybreak (Xerox 6085) booting up into ViewPoint 2.0 and using the apps. VCF also has a Daybreak which would be great to get fully functional again as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Daybreak <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Daybreak> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star> I'm not sure of the dates, but do people know if the Xerox Star would have been the system that Jobs and the Apple team viewed at Xerox back when they had their infamous visits? Or were those Altos? -andy

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Xerox Wildflowers - Dandelions and Daybreaks
by Herb Johnson 18 Aug '20

18 Aug '20

> in reality it was a business deal that in essence traded Apple stock for use of Xerox IP https://zurb.com/blog/steve-jobs-and-xerox-the-truth-about-inno Web search for "apple Xerox business deal" found this link pretty quickly. It links to a New York Times article from 2011. As Tony Bogan says, there's probably more such reportage. However, there's also reportage that's just crap - based on speculation and opinion and hype for various purposes. I myself, didn't know one way or another if there was a business deal between Apple/Jobs and Xerox. It was not hard to find out, presuming these are legitimate sources. The chatter after the linked article is informative, because it includes first-hand testimony, plus informed opinions from actual experienced technical persons. Other commentary is fun to see. People not part of the events or items in question, split hairs about things like "innovate" versus "copy", "real genius", and who the heroes and villains "really" were. I'm commenting, because I run across this stuff all the time, and I maintain my own Web site on vintage computing. I have to explain more and more history, because most of my site-readers now have no experience with my items from my era. I could say more about history and evidence, and why people speak or write about something for one purpose or another. But I decided, it's enough to say the following. People write or speak for some purpose. There may or may not be, evidence behind their words. Know the purposes and know the evidence, and then you can (if you wish) decide how to consider what's said and written. It's useful advice, I think. 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 retrotechnology DOT info

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Museum Report: 15 August 2020
by svcatitc＠aol.com 18 Aug '20

18 Aug '20

Very "mixed" busy day. I was adjunct docent with Dylan during the workshop over this past weekend. I got 2 family groups in. I did one full tour and a half of one up "iron row", whereby Dylan finished the other half down "8 bit row". Dylan had one other couple come in and he did the tour solo. We had Amy Jacocks (Alex's wife) join us for the Saturday, performing pro bono work, teaching us museum science and the care and maintenance of museum collections. She does this for a living. She took a tour of our warehouse and then the museum, whereby she then gave us a wrap up of her findings and evaluations. What a consummate professional. To see what we are doing right and where we need improvement was very illuminating. We got a lot of work to do!!!! Thank You Amy !!!! Thank You Alex for sharing your wife's expertise with us !!!! Bill Inderrieden

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