- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Remember: sign up for your VCF East exhibits!
by Evan Koblentz 12 Mar '18

12 Mar '18

There are 10 registered exhibits already for VCF East XIII. We can comfortably fit 35-40 depending on the number of multi-table exhibits. As with last year, we may have to say "no" to procrastinators. I have a secret plan :) in case we ever have a demand for 50-ish exhibits. I would love it if that happens! For now, the message is REGISTER SOON: http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/vcf-east-exhib… ... you don't have to know all the details at this point, just put in the basics. This is important for our marketing.

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New museum artifact
by Evan Koblentz 12 Mar '18

12 Mar '18

Looks like we're getting a Wang 4000 soon. Exciting! I hope to know more by next weekend.

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GRI 771 Keyboard Info
by systems_glitch 12 Mar '18

12 Mar '18

All, I'm looking for info on a George Risk 771 parallel ASCII keyboard. I've got one but no documentation or existing cabling. I'd like to interface it to my Poly-88. Thanks, Jonathan

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vcf-midatlantic] Mac OS 7.1 Terminal Emulator & BBS software
by Herb Johnson 12 Mar '18

12 Mar '18

> I don’t have any of my old Zip Drives save one internal > one, nor my Jaz Drive. My Zip drives would have been useless > anyway as all the ones I owned were parallel port, not SCSI. I sell SCSI external ZIP 100 drives, and parallel external ones. USB ZIP drives were not uncommon on eBay, I don't have a stock of those. Internal SCSI ZIP drives are a little less common and my stock is limited. I have stacks of IDE/PATA ZIP drives. Also disks. Contact me privately about any of these. I'm replying publicly, because ZIP drive technology is actually a pretty good "vintage" resource. SOme people malign ZIP disks and drives. The facts are, PC's and Windows systems used them for quite a long time, you could buy ZIP disks at the office-supply stores well into the 2000's. I don't know of much removable storage, that spans Macs and PC's, and can be connected to most Macs and most Windows systems, *and* allow files to move between them. There's Mac-format and PC-format ZIP disks, but old Macs can read either and I think Windows can read either (I forget). > Oh, my mistake, [my SE/30 memory is] not 1.5 mb, it’s 8mb. > But my hard drive sounds very > gummy. Where it’ll slow down and stop spinning occasionally. Well, time to replace that drive. While you are in there, get some 4MB or 16MB SIMMS and goose up that SE/30. (you need four SIMMS of a kind.) That's a very desirable compact Mac and it's good you have it in working order. System 7 likes more than several MB of RAM. The SE/30 mobos, they need recapping soon, if they haven't been already. Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Museum report Saturday 3/10
by Herb Johnson 11 Mar '18

11 Mar '18

> Once we get a new iPod or repair the existing one >> for the Apple I replica it will be twelve! Good work on the Apple II's. Either you Tony or Jeff Brace will know: the iPod carries programs stored as audio files which the Apple I reads like an audio cassette. Do you happen to know the analog sampling frequency and sample bit-size for those files? I'm in the world of COSMAC cassettes now, and digitized WAV files. So I'd like to know plausible parameters for cassette-based data files read by actual hardware. Herb "8-track" Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 11 Mar '18

11 Mar '18

Me, Adam, Tony, and new volunteer Laura were all at the museum today. Things that got done: - Laura painted the two custom UNIVAC pallets that Drom built. (He's still building the others.) - Tony (a few days ago) installed a new custom MOBIDIC display case in the hallway. It looks great! Roddy (artist across the hall from us) volunteered to spackle some "extra" drill holes (my fault, not Tony's) and then we'll paint over it. - Martin had the new 1u SuperMicro server shipped to us. It didn't come with memory or a hard drive. I bought 4GB RAM (max that the server can take but it's plenty for our use). Dean donated a 240GB SSD: we put on Ubuntu with Mate, SSH, Apache, and (just for fun) xScreenSaver. I chose the green-font Matrix display full of hex characters. :) Racked it, attached the new keyboard/trackpad donated by Cherry Americas, and attached my old home LCD onto the VESA rack bracket from Martin. Finally we installed a rack shelf (also from Martin) which will hold the non-rackable BBS server and analog PBX. (Will post pictures when I get home in a bit.) - Laura and I sorted eight boxes of Commodore software. - Adam and I reorganized stuff to sell at VCF East (if nobody wants it at the April workshop). It's all consolidated onto three pallets in one aisle of the warehouse. - Tony played tour guide. Around a dozen visitors today.

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Museum report Saturday 3/10
by Tony Bogan 10 Mar '18

10 Mar '18

Two visitors all day today, a father and son, and they showed up literally as I was locking the outside door. Got a lot done today. Started around 10:30 this morning loading up Apple IIs from the warehouse to work on. I picked up our new server for the museum (Dan Jacobs and Martin Flynn were at IXR and had it waiting for me) and also got two more compact Macs for VCF from them (a Mac plus and Mac classic) I was able to get half a dozen apple computers tested, fixed (as needed) and working, tagged and back in the warehouse. A couple others need more repairs than I had time for and I brought another four out to evaluate. The goal is to have all the compact Macs and apple IIs (and any other machines I have time for before my busy season at work begins) tested and tagged with serial numbers, working condition, known issues etc. to facilitate entering the information in the new archiving/inventory software we will be getting soon (hopefully) I was up on Thursday and got the new MOBIDIC shelf (temporary till time permits to make a "good" one) up in the hallway and at that time got some of the tablets in the museum running again (d-link router had come unplugged!) I finished reconnecting the rest to the network today (some want to hook to the vcf wifi instead of the tablet wifi after restarting or losing the network) so for the moment all the tablets are functioning within normal operating parameters. I also made a couple super simple display programs/screens for a couple machines in the museum too. There are eleven of the micros in the museum that are running well. (Not counting ones that may work but are not hooked up to monitors) Once we get a new iPod or repair the existing one for the Apple I replica it will be twelve! There may be others ready to go but I am only familiar with twelve of them :-) Big shout out to Jeff B., Doug Crawford and Chris Fala for educating me in the ways of the commodore! Tony

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Museum shout out
by Tony Bogan 10 Mar '18

10 Mar '18

Been here at the museum since 10:30 working on tagging and fixing apple IIs from the warehouse and other jobs. Will be docent here all day if anyone has nothing to do over the next 5 1/2 hours feel free to stop by!! :-) Tony Sent from my iPhone

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OT: Mechanical Computer with Marbles
by Joseph Oprysko 10 Mar '18

10 Mar '18

I read a post elsewhere and heard that there’s also a YouTube video (but I haven’t watched it) of this rather cool looking device called Turing Tumble. Apparently it is a Kickstarter funded mechanical computer made of plastic and marbles. It kind of reminds me of the Digicomp II mechanical computer from the late 1960’s. https://www.turingtumble.com/ -- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?

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Tomorrow @ Liberty Science Center
by Evan Koblentz 10 Mar '18

10 Mar '18

I'll be at the Liberty Science Center (Jersey City, NJ) all day tomorrow demonstrating the 1987 Lego robotics kit with our Laser 128. It's as much fun for me as for kids! Feel free to come visit! Random idea: one of these days I should disassemble the forklift-style robot and make something evoking Johnny No. 5 instead. :) #nodisassemble #evanalive

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