- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Big Beautiful Vintage Computers, and Where To Find Them
by Paul Birkel 25 Oct '19

25 Oct '19

Congratulations Dave. Hittin' the "Big Time" :->. https://hackaday.com/2019/10/23/big-beautiful-vintage-computers-and-where-to -find-them/ -----

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] computer superstitions
by Jeffrey Jonas 25 Oct '19

25 Oct '19

> You need three sync's for it to work... > sync > sync > sync > halt I'm unsure there was a halt or shutdown for Unix v6. I think one just halted the CPU. There's a good reason for three syncs. The "sync" command only schedules/initiates the buffer/cache flush. The disk writes took time, so typing it 3x on a teletype was a simple way to delay the operator enough for the writes to complete before halting the system.

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computer superstitions
by Jeffrey Jonas 23 Oct '19

23 Oct '19

"Scandinavia and the World" is an online comic with an International flavor. This time literally: https://satwcomic.com/hangry-computer looking that up leads to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kuai_Kuai_culture Kuai Kuai culture is a phenomenon in Taiwan wherein workers put snacks of the "Kuai Kuai" brand next to or on top of machines. Workers who do this believe that, because the name of the snack - "Kuai Kuai" - stands for "obedient" or "well-behaved," it will make a device so adorned function without errors. As such, it can be commonly found in myriad places of work in Taiwanese society. A rigid set of best practices has arisen surrounding the proper use of Kuai Kuai snacks, such as using green bags only, and ensuring the snacks are not expired. other programming/computer superstitions: https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/opinion/opinion-pieces/programmer-supe… and kinda related to that: http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html -- jeff jonas

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MORE ado about chording keyboards
by Jeffrey Jonas 21 Oct '19

21 Oct '19

William Arthur Stewart Buxton ... is known for being one of the pioneers in the human–computer interaction field. https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/type.aspx?t=Chord%20Keyboard chording keyboards from Bill Buxton's collection of unusual computer interface devices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Buxton the photo shows Bill Buxton with a Microwriter chord input device his own web site: https://www.billbuxton.com/

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Museum Report 2019-10-19
by Jeffrey Brace 20 Oct '19

20 Oct '19

Good day at the museum. Maybe 20 people stopped by. About 1/4 of them were high interest, 1/2 medium interest and 1/4 low interest. It's always fun to see visitors who see things differently or ask questions that you have never gotten before. I love the new LED screens on the "top shelf" machines. I look forward to seeing demos for them soon. :) Steve Anderson stopped by and dropped off his Dig-Comp 1. We chatted for a while about what's new with VCF and he had some personal perspective on many of the artifacts and explained to me how some of them were used and operated. I appreciate that since I'm weaker on my knowledge of 50's and 60's machines. I also worked on my demo of Geck OS, which is Unix for the C64. Interesting piece of software. Quite impressive that it works on a C64. Mouse will be docent tomorrow. -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation

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Sep 28 2019 workshop followup
by Jeffrey Jonas 19 Oct '19

19 Oct '19

I had a wonderful time at the Sep 28 2019 workshop. I could not attend Sunday in order to start the Jewish New Year properly with family and friends. I already followed up Eric Rangell's chording keyboard prototype with "much ado about chording keyboards". I was beyond impressed with Nevell Greenough's LPG-30 emulator. The front panel looks absolutely authentic, albeit with an LCD instead of the 3-trace oscilloscope. I frobbed an LGP-21 back in high school and I remember a lot about it. We geeked out about the strange opcodes that ENCOURAGED self modifying code, mostly out of necessity due to the lack of registers or stack. For example, there are 2 instructions for modifying the address field on an instuction. One saved the program counter plus 1 in the address field of an instruction. That's how it did subroutines: store the return address in the jump/branch instruction at the END of the subroutine, then jump to the subroutine start. Another saved the accumulator to the address field of an instruction. That was probably for address calculations in lieu of index registers. It's essentially a "move under mask" since the address field was NOT the entire word. http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/lgp-30.html <<< main page http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/lgp-30-man.html <<< programming manual But those intentionally PREVENTED any address overflow into the opcode. So how did Mel use an overflow to cause a branch? We think it's possible he incremented the address of a branch instruction by loading the entire instruction into the accumulator, adding to that and storing the accumulator back into (drum) storage. That's the only way to overflow the address over the 2 unused bits between the opcode and address to increment the jump into the instruction, which is a different jump/branch. And that's why Mel is *still* a "real programmer" :-) -- jeff jonas

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Museum closing for renovations
by Evan Koblentz 18 Oct '19

18 Oct '19

We're closing the VCF museum during January 2020 to make renovations. This is only our part; InfoAge stays open and they gave us the all-clear tonight. We are discussing various renovation ideas including a new floor (epoxy), better lighting, more signs, exhibit improvements, etc. ... basically all the things I've been talking about but haven't done for the past few years!

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Kennett Classic Opens Today
by Bill Degnan 18 Oct '19

18 Oct '19

Hey all....Karen and I opened a vintage computing exhibit gallery and hobbyist shop which is located in Kennett Square, PA which is more or less between Baltimore and Philadelphia just off Rt 1. We're about 15 miles from I-95 where Delaware meets Maryland. https://www.kennettclassic.com/launch/ It's a big effort, there is still a lot of on-going set up, but starting today at 3PM the doors open and we'd love to see you. We're open 6 days a week, closed Monday. Check out the new exhibits including the Commodore Feature Wall we'll be running through Christmas. We have new vintage computing add-on hardware like Wifi modems and sd storage, plus actual vintage hardware. After this weekend we'll launch our social media (because we'll have pictures). We'll be updating the inventory of what we have for sale on our web site as it comes in, we have a 50 items to add today. We'll also start posting our weekly videocast on the subject of the computer history and vintage computing. busy busy busy! Got to go! Bill Degnan and Karen Doneker kennettclassic.com vintagecomputer.net

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Festivus Tickets
by Jeffrey Brace 18 Oct '19

18 Oct '19

This year I will be selling tickets online through Eventbrite. I am doing this because it makes it far easier for me to manage collection of money for the event. This leaves me more time to enjoy the event and less time tracking down people for money for the event. So I am much happier because I get to enjoy the event more. Tickets for the event are $10 through Eventbrite and $15 at the door. Overnight stay in the Sandy recovery area $25 through Eventbrite and $30 at the door. Click here to buy tickets: < https://www.eventbrite.com/e/festivus-2019-tickets-77436696243?aff=VCFMaili… > Thank you for your cooperation! -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation

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Introduction
by Kenneth Gober 17 Oct '19

17 Oct '19

Hi, I'm Ken (kgober on the VCF forum). A few months back, when it became increasingly clear that I was missing important local news by not subscribing to this mailing list, I signed up, but I've just been lurking until now. I live in central NJ, and work in IT (Information Security actually) for a large pharmaceutical firm. My interests far exceed the amount of time I have available for them. A big part of my interest in vintage computing is really just an extension of my interest in retro computer gaming, because of course the best platform to run old software on is the hardware it was intended for. I do resort to emulators when I have to; some hardware is just not practical for me to acquire or operate at home (the larger DEC systems, for example). I have a fairly large collection of 8-bit systems that I haven't had time to power on in years, but am unwilling to get rid of. And another fairly large collection of Macs ranging from Mac Plus through G3 that I will someday do something with. Plus of course the PC collection which is mostly Compaq and IBM models (including a bunch of PS/2 systems). Also a few Unix systems (mostly Sun, but a couple IBM RS/6000s too), oldest being a SPARCstation SLC and the newest a SPARC Enterprise T5140. I also have some interest in PDP-11s; I have an 11/23 Micro that I'm trying to get running again (power supply issues) and eventually upgraded to something that will run BSD Unix, and some day I need to get my father's H-11 running again (it's been in storage for decades). I've written some software which I've previously posted about on the VCF forum, notably VT05 and VT52 terminal emulators for Windows, and also "FSX", a command-line utility to browse and read files from old disk images (RT-11, RSX-11, Unix v5, and Commodore for now, with more to be added as time permits). Those can all be found at https://github.com/kgober I've considered attending one of the repair weekends but I can't decide what to actually work on next that's not too much trouble to unearth. The PDP-11 is probably easiest (being on top of the pile) but I do have a TRS-80 Model 4P that needs a new line filter capacitor (at least I think that's what blew up, but I still need to open it up to verify). I have a bunch of Commodore floppy drives that I acquired in 'as-is' condition that need to be checked, but checking a 4040 or 8050 would also require me to dig one of my PETs out of the pile, and I'm not even sure which of them is still working... And so on, and so on. It's kind of a disaster actually. I will certainly have no shortage or projects to work on when I retire, so I've got that going for me. -ken

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