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Can someone please bring a 5170 diagnostic disk?
by Joseph Giliberti 13 Feb '25

13 Feb '25

Greetings, I'm planning on bringing an IBM 5170 to recap and restore this weekend. Can anyone who is attending possibly bring a diagnostic disk so I can get past POST after replacing the battery? Thanks in advance! Regards, Joe Giliberti

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February 15-16 Vintage Computer Workshop
by Jeff Salzman 13 Feb '25

13 Feb '25

Last reminder for this weekend. If you're interested in attending this workshop, please add your name to the document linked below. Repair workshops are events which are open to the general public where members of all levels technical abilities and experience get together to help each other repair vintage computer hardware. Repair workshops are a chance to work with other VCF members to help repair your vintage artifact. We are not there to do repairs for you, only to allow you the facilities and partnership to help you figure out how to repair it. Repair workshops are held about 9 times per year at the InfoAge location in Wall, NJ, 2 times per year at the System Source location. Any questions? Feel free to ask. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nHJHC4fgZdZZocCe9gkG-Vek5HlpDfyjCmG… Jeff Salzman Events Manager / Steering Committee Member Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists (MARCH)

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RetroBrite at VCF East
by Jeffrey Brace 12 Feb '25

12 Feb '25

Hey everyone, Javier can't make it to VCF East. Is there anyone else that can teach a RetroBrite class? Thanks! Jeff Brace VCF East Showrunner

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Vintage Computer Festival Montreal Survey
by Jeffrey Brace 12 Feb '25

12 Feb '25

We invite you to take part in a brief, anonymous survey about VCF Montreal. Click here https://bit.ly/vcfm2026pre-en Nous vous invitons à participer à un bref sondage anonyme sur VCF Montréal. Cliquez ici https://bit.ly/vcfm2026pre-fr We are creating a new Vintage Computer Festival franchise. We are in the very early stages. DATE: January 25 & 26, 2026. LOCATION: Montreal, QC, Canada Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President VCF East Showrunner MARCH Fundraising Manager Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/>

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Warning on a Commodore 64 Silver Label
by Christian Liendo 11 Feb '25

11 Feb '25

So I saw this come up and I thought this was kind of an odd price for this. $200 seemed cheap https://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/vgm/d/brooklyn-commodore-64-silver-label… I thought it might be fake so I wanted to do some research For giggles, I decided to just see what they were going for and found this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/235921534457 Same pictures Same serial number Out of all the things I thought people would scam over, vintage computers was not that one thing

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Atlantic Inn & Suites Hotel Block for VCF East 2025
by Jeffrey Brace 09 Feb '25

09 Feb '25

If you reserved a room at The Atlantic Inn and Suites for VCF East, then you need to do it again. The same discount still applies: $100/night for one bed and $120/night for two beds. You must mention Vintage Computer Festival when you call on the phone: (732) 974-8400. While checking how many rooms were left, I was informed that all the reservations for The Atlantic Inn and Suites were lost due to a terminated employee not recording any of them. Dawn was our contact last year and is no longer with the hotel. Jeff Brace VCF East Showrunner

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Introduction and Reason for Contact
by therenguy 07 Feb '25

07 Feb '25

Hello, My name is Randy Kaplan and I am joining this list to obtain some information and help. I am a long time computing professional (50 years or so), have built my own hardware, and have been a software developer for many years. I also have many years of teaching computer science at the University level - not entirely relevant, just for background. In any event I am the owner of an intact PDP-8/e that was operating once upon a time when I received it. A kind person gave it to me because they had too much hardware and needed a loving home for it. That is how I came to own it. At one point in my career many years ago I was invited to DEC to write code for a similar computer. I am looking for someone to help me restore it to operating condition. It has not been used for many years and has been sitting and moved between many closets. I have its power supply also. Can someone help kick off this adventure with me? I would be very interested in having a conversation with anyone who can make suggestions on how to proceed, who to contact, and if perhaps someone is interested, would like to help with such a project. I understand there are sessions help by VCF in this region, I live in PA, and I would certainly be willing to attend such a session. Please let me know with any information you might think is helpful. Thanks in advance for your assistance. Regards, Randy Kaplan

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Amiga "Chambers of Muon" and Apple "j" RPG
by John Heritage 06 Feb '25

06 Feb '25

Greetings, A long time ago there was an Amiga based multiplayer arcade game at Echelon Mall called "Chambers of Muon". I only vaguely remember playing - it had awesome sound, intereresting graphics, and you could play other players. I also remember my parents saying it was expensive for an arcade :). When I asked to go back and play the game (a month later or so), it was gone. That led me to find a blog of the ( :( ) decreased creator of Chambers of Muon - Michael J. Alan. "499 days" is his blog, warning - it's a bit bleak. Wanting to learn more, I realized his autobiography was on Amazon and I just read through the physical book. It's written in reverse order and definitely feels brtually open about his experiences. Anyway, it had three chapters I think fully relevant to this group. One chapter was on Chambers of Muon -- how it was created, how it worked, etc. It was based on a network of 7 Amiga 1000s (6 players, and 1 'control' unit). It sounds it was built in New York, with the main test in Echelon Mall in NJ. There was apparently another test at a mall in Texas, but Bally decided not to continue because the financial return wasn't as good as games like PacMan. (not unreasonable). Feedback for the game was that people thought the chamber was moving somehow - when it wasn't. It was just the graphics, and the Amiga's sound echoing loudly inside giving the sensation of movement. Another chapter covered a game called "j" (lower case) for the Apple II, an RPG I cannot find anything about. "j" was inspired by Wizardry but took place on a 'donut shaped space station', with pseudo-random generation of hallways, activities, etc. He tried to address the piracy issue by distributing it to pirates, but using a copy protection that required codes to unlock harder/higher levels that he then sold. The third 'vintage' theme chapter is around founding an Apple II related software business in 1980 - (a) financial application(s) that received some seed money from Apple and investments from other partners, and seems to have been published and supported through at least the mid 1980s. There's some intrigue with Visicalc here too whom he also approached, but there's not a lot of text. Anyway, I was curious if anyone ever heard of "j" or was familiar with Muon. I also feel like these two chapters of the book probably deserve to be scanned or archived someplace relevant for Amiga / Apple enthusiasts (copyright correctness withstanding). I'm pretty confident the software for Muon at least is long gone -- in his book, he said "about five years later" (1990?) people went to NY to try to find the Muon prototype and they basically found nothing. John

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Workshop at System Source - March 1st and 2nd
by Ryan Burke 06 Feb '25

06 Feb '25

System Source is hosting another repair workshop in Hunt Valley, Maryland on March 1st and 2nd, please check out the link below for more information and to register. https://ca.syssrc.com/wp/?page_id=105&civiwp=CiviCRM&q=civicrm%2Fevent%2Fin… <https://ca.syssrc.com/wp/?page_id=85&civiwp=CiviCRM&q=civicrm%2Fevent%2Finf…> We are also looking for volunteers! Either for the event, or in general to help out the museum. If you'd like to help out, please send an email to rburke(a)sysssrc.com

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MARCH Newsletter January '25: better late than never!
by Thomas G 05 Feb '25

05 Feb '25

Hello all, Apologies for getting this out so late, but we've been crunching the past few weeks with some pretty intense work at the MARCH museum - read all about it in this (hastily-edited) edition of the MARCH newsletter! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T5uIs35mlFHqaoAwBlNv5kXXVaop9rXB/view?usp=… -Thomas G.

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