- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 04 Aug '19

04 Aug '19

About 20 people visited today, mostly families. One person came by who we last heard from a decade ago -- the guy who donated his late father's PDP-11/20. He wants to join the group.

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Repair Workshop
by Douglas Perry 03 Aug '19

03 Aug '19

Excuse me if I'm coming off a bit over eager. Now that I'm signed up for this months workshop I was hoping to get some tips on how to properly prepare (supplies needed, ect..) I'm bringing a Compaq Portable which has only been owned by my family. It was stored in a guest room of a finished basement since 1993. Not sure where they kept it before that. I testing I've done so far is to simply plug it in and turn it on (after giving it a week in a temp/humidity controlled room). The PSU and fan came to life nicely, the CRT is making a familiar hum but I get nothing on the screen not even a blinking cursor. I'm not sure if I should expect an error with no disk? I also don't hear any drive noise.(I have no disks) I have a fairly decent toolkit for repairing current machines, as well as a soldering iron, and multimeter. >From my research I'm going to go ahead and assume the capacative pads for for the keyboard are bad and just order a new set. I've searched fairly well and have not found a reputable place to buy a 5.25 floppy pre-loaded with MS-DOS 3.3 (which sounds like the best option). So after that ramble here are my questions. Is there anything else you all would recommend me bringing? When is the best time show up? Is there anything else I should know or be doing to get ready? Thanks, Doug P.

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Elderly engineer?
by Jack Rubin 02 Aug '19

02 Aug '19

Mid-70’s is the new mid-50’s! Dang ankle- biters. # Sent from my mobile phone #

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Z180 questions
by Neil Cherry 01 Aug '19

01 Aug '19

Yes this is vintage. I have a large number of Z180 (HCS II boards) from Steve Ciarcia they were designed to be used for the HCS II home automation system. I think they might make decent CP/M boards (up to 33MHz perhaps) with a little hackery. Heck I might even figure out how to use the full 1M of memory space. But I'm not sure how to interface slower components (like a PIO) to the faster processor. Any pointers? BTW, I have the source to the HCS II asm so I will be looking there and I do have the z180 sheets. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies

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Anyone Near Vernon, NY Interested in an Apple IIe and Monitor?
by J. Alexander Jacocks 01 Aug '19

01 Aug '19

All, I received this, from a fellow KansasFest attendee: I just got a call from a friend who has extended family (son’s in-laws) > who live in Mount Vernon NY- (close to New York City). Sounds like they > are cleaning up accumulated stuff due to a death in the family. They have > come across an Apple IIe and monitor that they would like to get rid of. I > was asked for suggestions on what to do with it. > > I don’t think that they are willing to ship, and don’t know if they want > to sell it or just find it a good home and keep it away from the > electronics recycler. I doubt they are interested in eBay. Possibly Craig's > List or maybe donation to Goodwill or other charity. > > Is there anyone in the group that would be interested in this item? I > doubt that it has any special cards, but I assume it also has 5.25 inch > disk drives and maybe software and printer. If you are interested, provide > me with your contact information. Let me know if you are interested in > buying (at what price), or only acquiring for free. > > I get the impression that an effort free transaction is what is desired. > No interest in packing and shipping for a few dollars. I may be able to get > more specific information about what is being offered if there is an > interest. > > I will not be involved as I live on the west coast (Santa Clara CA). > If anyone is interested, please let me know, and I'll put you in contact. Thanks! - Alex

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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 01 Aug '19

01 Aug '19

Fairly slow day. A few beach tourists visited when it started raining. One guy said he visited us six years ago when we had two IBM 360s. How I wish that were true! Lol not sure how/where he got that idea... I fixed our info kiosk by installing a small program called "Caffeine" to keep the screen awake. Evan Koblentz Executive Director, Vintage Computer Federation evan(a)vcfed.org / (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org @vcfederation

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Linux orphans the floppy driver.
by Herb Johnson 31 Jul '19

31 Jul '19

I second Glitch's motion. He's got it exactly right. http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/drive.html a popular-enough Web page on floppy drive tech, now headlines this situation. http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/linux_floppy.txt has a few links and brief discussion. The original posting event on the subject seems to be at the kernel.org GIT site: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?…"> ...but did not make the news until GitHub(Torvalds) and reddit and hackaday weighed in recently. It's now a "trending" subject, whaddever that means. I don't have the chops for that work. Someone reading this, does. Don't post about "I remember"s, or "about time they killed it"s. Just. get. it. done. 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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Volunteer needed near Columbia, Maryland
by Evan Koblentz 30 Jul '19

30 Jul '19

We need someone to visit an elderly engineer (mid-70s) in Columbia MD and report back to me (privately; not on the list) with an inventory of what he's got. Then I can tell him what we'd like for the museum vs. what he can re-home with list members. The guy said his collection involves several S-100 systems and 8-bit appliance computers.

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Hello World (VCF Members)
by Douglas Perry 30 Jul '19

30 Jul '19

As a new member to the group I was told I should take a minute and introduce myself. My name is Doug and although my heart will always be with New Jersey I currently reside in Fairless Hills, PA. I found this group while researching parts for a Compaq Portable 1. It was the first computer I ever saw code on (at 8 years old) and I honestly had thought it had been sold in a yard sale many years ago. I quickly read about VCF and was disappointed to see that I missed this years amazing lecture with Ken Thompson (which I immediately watched online). My background in computers is a bit scattered but my education is in Software Engineering. Currently, I help maintain and develop a rather extensive Filemaker database. I look forward to getting down to visit the museum and I'm very interested in signing up for the next repair workshop. Pleased to meet you all, Doug P.

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IBM PCjr Keyboard and Joystick Combo
by W2HX 29 Jul '19

29 Jul '19

in case anyone is interested, I saw this come through my email... https://www.bgmicro.com/COM1237.aspx? no affiliation yada yada yada

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