- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Godbout Static (RAM) But Not Lost
by Herb Johnson 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

My recent post about Bill Godbout's passing, somewhat conflated two men; of course, Bill Godbout of Compupro/Viasyn/Godbout Computers. And, a man he worked with on the IEEE-696 specification, George Morrow who also produced S-100 boards as Morrow; George passed in 2003. It's hard for me to think about one person, without thinking about the other. They and others worked in the Oakland CA area, built early microcomputers, shared parts and customers and companies. Their S-100 products were of similar good quality and comparable in kind. Bill Godbout had other accomplishments of course. I'm sorry if anyone was disappointed in my effort to honor Bill Godbout while remembering both. However, the general tenor of my remarks is the same, and no apologies needed for why such persons and companies are to be remembered. I'm working on a better version of these remarks on my Web site, as part of my coverage of Morrow, Compupro and other S-100 companies of the era. A Web search for those will find the document. At this time, it's more important to consider the loss of Bill Godbout. 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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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Supercomputer is all set!
by Neil Cherry 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

On 11/08/2018 09:33 AM, Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic wrote: >>>> When is it getting hooked up and running? >> Not anytime soon. The best we can do short-term is display a portion of it in the >> museum. We swalled a large meal; now we must digest it.:) > What’s the big deal Evan?? > > We just need to remove the UNIVAC, a couple of minis, and the micro row from the Altair > through the Amiga and we can set half the new machine up!! :p > > Tony I've got a nice TV set you can use as a monitor ... wait it doesn't hook up like a commodore 64? ;-) All joking aside, I'd expect that this would be a project to get started. A lot of planning would be need but it would be cool to see it start up and play wumpus (duck as large metal objects go flying by). -- 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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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Godbout Static (RAM) But Not Lost
by Dave McGuire 15 Nov '18

15 Nov '18

On 11/13/18 12:09 PM, Brian L. Stuart via vcf-midatlantic wrote: > This is definitely a great loss for the microcomputing > community. I bought a 4K memory board kit (similar > to the one on your page) from him back around '77 > or so. I learned a lot from that board. Yes, very much so. I had some of his S-100 boards way back when, and I'm pretty sure I still have some of them. Godbout stuff was *everywhere* in the early-mid 80s. > This may be a dumb question, but I've always wondered > if I've been pronouncing his name correctly all these > years. Is it pronounced the way it appears to be spelled, > "god-bought" or does it come from a language where > the 't' would be silent or some other variation? I've wondered this myself. I've always pronounced it "god-bowt", with the second syllable rhyming with "out", but I've never been sure. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 14 Nov '18

14 Nov '18

Normally we open at 1pm, but InfoAge scheduled a school tour for 10:30am today so I arrived around 10 and found Ian waiting outside! There was a miscommunication and I wasn't expecting him. It worked out fine: we built a ramp of his design to get the many VAX 9000 racks off their pallets. We got two racks safely down, and then decided more/stronger people (vs. me) are needed to do the rest. Then we moved on to assessing the Prime 6550: Ian's been wanting to work on that one for several years. Didn't power anything today, but he now knows exactly what we have and what we need to make it run. There were also a few regular visitors today, most notably an older couple who spent a long time in our area and asked good questions.

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www locks out older browsers
by Herb Johnson 14 Nov '18

14 Nov '18

> Bill Degnan billdegnan at gmail.com > Mon Nov 12 12:31:44 EST 2018 > > I have been meaning to set up a simple proxy for older machines that don't > use SSL at all, or SSH. Just have not gotten around to it. Not too > complicated I don't think but I have not done it yet so I can't say with > 100% certainty until I do. When I do I will make the service available > somehow. > Bill "Older machines" apparently includes Windows XP. I had the same problem, last time I ran a few recently-older systems with XP on them. I gave up at that point, figured it was some kind of XP limitation. I know from nothings about networking protocols. But this matters a bit, there's still commercial stuff (point of sale, business systems, embedded stuff) still running XP or Win2K, etc. Bill, my bet is any proxy you'd come up with, would run on a Rasp Pi. just a convenient platform. Even those have a serial port, for some really ancient system (say Win 3.1/WFW). If you come up with something, put the word out. Herb -- 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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Godbout Static (RAM) But Not Lost
by Herb Johnson 14 Nov '18

14 Nov '18

I got the news about Bill Godbout from Evan, a few days ago. Today I got a request from a reporter/blogger for a Godbout catalog image. I don't have any of his early catalogs; there are of course magazine ad-pages from Godbout. Can anyone share a PDF of one of his catalogs? What I sent, was the cover shot of the 1987 Dec Morrow Owners Review, a magazine published to support the Morrow MD series desktop CP/M systems. Did ja know, Morrow produced real PC's? We mostly remember his S-100 cards, and older engineers remember his sales of components before that. I recently obtained a Morrow MD-15 system, with a pile of Morrow MOR magazines. I'm trying to get the hard-drive running, but it boots 128K CP/M right now. I'll show it on my Web site in December. Morrow also co-authored the IEEE-696 specification; essentially the Morrow/Compupro S-100 bus architecture. 16 bit data, 24 bit address - enough to run 386-class systems into the 1990's. A lot of MS-DOS development work was done with S-100 systems; video processing systems at TV stations too. That bus did good work for a long time. Morrow and Compupro S-100 cards were well built, well documented; most can still run today. A dual 8085/88 CPU can run MS-DOS and two flavors of CP/M. No small feat in 1981 or thereabouts. Those cards were produced before MS-DOS existed; designers had 8088's ready to use but no CP/M to run them, people like Morrow and others. This forced the creation of a DOS which became MS-DOS, a story often told. So, there's a fundamental reason to remember Bill Godbout, and the work he and his cohorts did. They worked at a time when resources were SCARCE, not abundant. There were no computers to help design other computers (unless you borrowed time from a university). I doubt most Morrow hardware was designed on CAD PC layout systems; most microcomputer boards were hand-taped, red and blue tape for two-sided boards! Chips were not cheap, PC boards were not cheap to produce - no offshore boards in the 1970's! And most people and businesses weren't wealthy in the 1970's. IBM sold PC's in the 80's to the Fortune 500, the 500 biggest companies in America (the world, same thing). That was much easier after Godbout et all did the groundwork. The microcomputer revolution was a bottom-up proposition, not a top-down. Bill Godbout and his colleagues, remind us how to do HARD work, start from LIMITED resources, to build an industry, and to make a market, from near-zero. There will be another time, when we will have to do that again, start from little. Do you think 21st century engineers and programmers, know how to do that? This is why history of technology matters; to preserve how they did, what they did. Do you think laptops and smart phones will run 30, 40 years from now? Or be repairable when they aren't? Another lesson to preserve. And that's my long view. 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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Anyone interested in an Atari2600 and some games?
by Neil Cherry 14 Nov '18

14 Nov '18

IXR has a 2600 and some games available. If you are interested please let me know. I'd say it's a 3rd generation of the console. Reminds me of the style of the 7800. Thanks -- 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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AIM-65 Like Clone Project
by Henry S. Courbis 13 Nov '18

13 Nov '18

Greetings and Salutations People Of The List: I hobbyist recently contacted me about a project they are considering which is a clone of the AIM-65. However I'm mostly useless to help since I have little idea how the system works, or should work. Sure I can help clone it, but that's the "simple" part. Being able to check if it's working is kind of where the magic happens. Putting parts on a board... not so much. For a starting point they have an old unit which doesn't work. We found this link for schematics: http://www.originalwoodworks.com/aim65/ They have checked the PSU and some obvious things like this, as well as replaced some of the standard ICs which were suspected to be troublesome. We don't have any ROM code to validate the ROMs to or to burn new ones. And we're both kind of in the dark as to how the system should even work, which is kind of the fun of this adventure. If you can't break a toe and bruise a shin while stumbling around in the dark for the light switch, then what real fun is it? So anyone have any advice or feedback as to getting the system to at least want to seem alive, what known trouble ares there are, to yell at us for being silly geese, etc? Please email us offlist (his email to CC: tld10091 AT gmail.com) Thanks! Henry S. Courbis Office Toll Free: (800) REACTIVE (732-2848) Office/Mobile Direct: (856) 779-1900 www.ReActiveMicro.com <http://www.ReactiveMicro.com> - Sales, Support, and News, Our Headquarters on the Internet ReActiveMicro.com/wiki - Support, Software, Manuals, and History. Create your own page today! Facebook.com/reactivemicrousa - Our Social Media Outlet and Support

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Workshop Report, System Source, Hunt Valley, MD, Sun Nov 11th
by svcatitc＠aol.com 13 Nov '18

13 Nov '18

All; I figured I would fill us all in on how it went on Sun: Due to family responsibilities, I got there about 1pm. Johathan Sturges pulled into the lot the same time as I did and we commented on "timing is everything". A good crowd. The usual suspects were there. Bill DegnanBill DromgooleDuane CrapsAlex JacocksDave Gesswein Along with a bunch I did not know because of residential distance and being a semi-newbee to the group, however we were all friends at that point working on our hobby. Bill D handed me an Epson dot matrix printer that I plan to use for the "soda can crusher" project I am working on for East.ON that note, I started resurrecting an IBM 5170 '286 for the processor to control the testing machine. I got the machine taken out of it's stock chassis, and mounted it in it's new all Plexiglas ATX case, to display the early days of the 286 and technicals. It booted to BASIC the first shot! Yeah! Boy did I forget a lot since the days of fooling with this stuff on a daily basis. Jonathan S found a link to the SETUP program to talk to the BIOS of the above referenced machine. So that will help a bunch. Duane Craps was showing me the backplane of the UNIVAC 1218 and how intricate the snap in pins were used for the interconnects. I remembered using such connectors on MUX chassis when I worked at EAI in the early 1980's. Dave G was working on some PDP model. Jonathan was working on a Tandy 100 (I believe, don't quote me on that). Alex J can fill us in on what he was doing, and what some of the other members were working on. Lastly, Bob Roswell gave the interested a tour of his museum. What a class act! He has already positioned some of the racks of his VAX 9000 in the museum. At the end of the day, a bunch of us went to a local pizza joint for dinner to wrap up the festivities. Many Thanks go out to Alex J for organizing the event. Greater Many Thanks go out to Bob Roswell for hosting us in his fantastic museum setting. Thank you to all who attended. It was great fun. Bill Inderrieden

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Godbout Static (RAM) But Not Lost
by Brian L. Stuart 13 Nov '18

13 Nov '18

On Tue, 11/13/18, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vcfed.org> wrote: > There wasn't much online about Bill Godbout so I posted a few things here > for those who did not know of Bill Godbout and his contribution to > computing. This is definitely a great loss for the microcomputing community. I bought a 4K memory board kit (similar to the one on your page) from him back around '77 or so. I learned a lot from that board. This may be a dumb question, but I've always wondered if I've been pronouncing his name correctly all these years. Is it pronounced the way it appears to be spelled, "god-bought" or does it come from a language where the 't' would be silent or some other variation? TIA, BLS

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