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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 05 May '18

05 May '18

Don C. and I met at the museum at 10am today. We worked on various projects for VCF East and the museum itself. Most notably, we constructed a wall/backdrop for the featured artifact exhibit. It is L-shaped: 6.5 feet tall and 4 feet on each side. We painted it the usual gray. Next time I'm there, I'll trim the sides/top (probably with dark green) to make it stand out. ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, executive director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit evan(a)vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation

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VCF East Hotels
by Jason Perkins 04 May '18

04 May '18

VCFers, Those of you staying at a hotel this year: What do you recommend? I've stayed at the Red Roof Inn and found it was fine. Are there any other places near InfoAge that you've found a good deal? Thanks, -- Jason Perkins 313 355 0085

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talk at VCF-East on audio cassettes for data
by Herb Johnson 04 May '18

04 May '18

I've agreed to give a casual talk at VCF-East, on the use of audio cassettes and recorders for program storage on first-generation (1970's) vintage computers. I'll describe how a "TTL logic gate" can create audio waveforms and interpret them, with little more than software and hardware. I'll try to point to early Altair/IMSAI class S-100 computers, early COSMAC (RCA 1802) computers, possibly others. I'll try to reference the earliest efforts to create various standards. And I'll point to current recovery work on some old cassettes. I'll likely point to various Web pages for details and images - no PowerPoint presentations, no exciting videos. Maybe one wailing audio tape. Some stuff I won't know - I have an idea about that. So why do this? There's recent and successful efforts, to recover programs today from COSMAC tapes 40 years old now - that's interesting. Many period micros are operated today, with MPEG music players acting as the audio source; so it's still in use that way. I mentioned the techie bits of cassette storage and retrieval - I'll draw some schematics. And unfortunately, experience with audio cassettes is becoming "lost" - a generation of young adults have NEVER handled such a thing. (shrug) so it's a teaching moment for those folks. Unaccustomed as I am with public speaking (snort!), I'll welcome some discussion from the audience. I'm sure some attendees to VCF-East will know more than I, about some part of vintage-time use (or modern use) of audio cassettes for data. So people with an interest or experience, may want to think in advance about what they might say, bring props, whatever; but keep to the point and be brief. I'm simply making a point, that cassettes-as-storage was a REAL THING that mattered with first-gen microcomputers; it wasn't that hard; and these things are surviving pretty well. One thing I'd like to hear from others about, was the volume of cassettes available for 1980's video-gaming "systems", for instance the Timex/Sinclair 1000. Early Apple IIs and TRS-80's used cassettes. Those systems weren't on my radar at that time. My impression is that a lot of little companies, computer clubs, individuals, distributed bunches of those program cassettes in the period. If anyone remembers cassettes for their system, consider speaking up at the talk. If you are so moved about some notions on the subject, email me via my retrotechnology.com site. A Web search of my domain will find plenty of cassette material, but it might spoil any surprises from my talk! ;) Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Request from another dimension.
by murph 03 May '18

03 May '18

Someone on the Mastodon/GNU social network is trying to identify an old part, I was hoping that maybe someone could help. https://octodon.social/@phooky/99960546962469308 I'll be happy to pass any info along to them, so no sign up is required.

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Here's the speaker grid for VCF East
by Evan Koblentz 03 May '18

03 May '18

At long last: the Friday speaker grid! Made with high-tech HTML4..... http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/classes/ ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, executive director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit evan(a)vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation instagram.com/vcfederation

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Anyone Have a Functional C128DCR (or C128) Board to Sell?
by J. Alexander Jacocks 02 May '18

02 May '18

All, I spent all this past workshop attempting to repair my C128DCR's luma/chroma output, which seems to have lost the chroma. Does anyone have a spare board? I need to get something working by VCFe, and I also could use another board, to compare. Drop me a line, if so. Better, if you're somewhere near DC, so I can come and get it. Thanks! - Alex

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Finalized VCF Workshop Dates for June, August
by Jeffrey Brace 02 May '18

02 May '18

OK. I checked with all the appropriate people and here are the finalized dates: June 9 & June 10 June 30 & July 1 August 11 & 12 In case anyone asks, we cannot do any in July because of conflicts with other events (Hamfests, K-Fest, etc.) and availability of the room at InfoAge.

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Ascii keyboard and Televideo Personal Terminal
by Jeff G 01 May '18

01 May '18

First question - does anyone have a 7-bit ascii keyboard I could borrow or potentially buy? Second question - Does anyone have extra parts and/or a manual to a Televideo Personal Terminal? Not even sure of the model of this as I can't find much documentation, but do see a few Youtube vids on it. Its a pretty small terminal. This one is badly yellowed, missing the spacebar, and I think it has some corrupt nvram (from just sitting) but I have no idea how to clear or fix it. On the "personal terminal" front, I also have an old At&t "Personal Terminal" that has a mushy touch screen on it (literally). I used to have a keyboard for this and got rid of it years ago like an idiot. Would anyone have such a keyboard for one laying around? The connector on it would be similar to the one that goes into the IBM model M, sort of a flat wide connector. The keyboard is fairly short/small and came with a "garage", sort of a shallow stand that the entire thing would sit on and provide a space to slide in the keyboard. Wish I could find one again. Thanks! Jeff aka Bags

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A few workshop notes
by Herb Johnson 01 May '18

01 May '18

I was able to come out to the workshop on Sunday, and work on an unusual computer I obtained. It's a Motorola EXORset 30. It's a 6809 development system running an XDOS OS on floppy, and supported by Motorola's EXORbus bussed backplane. It came up without a lot of fuss. It needed some careful AC power conditioning to the power electrolytics. http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/exorset.html I gave some support to Adam, who was able to operate his SGI Indigo computer for the first time, thanks to a keyboard and mouse I provided. I chatted with several people attending, providing sage wisdom about problems with RAM, switching speeds of diodes, pressure rollers on tape drives. I removed some rust from a couple of dot-matrix printers, and was surprised to find they could still print! Thanks to Jeff Galinat, who leant me AC cables and a 360K diskette; and to Jeff Brace for his support of and at the Workshop. Of course, I learned a lot about how my friends were diagnosing these issues. The depth of talent on site Sunday was amazing. It's rare and informative, to discuss 3-volt negative logic and the switching speeds of diodes at one point, then the problems of aged hard-rubber rollers at the next moment. I learned more about the early history of Apple II products. I got under the hood of some early Commodore PET's to see the less-than-industrial designs they produced early on. Any of these repair and preparation activities could be discussed at length. And it's a pleasure to see what the Museum's UNIVAC is able to do, even as more work is in progress. To think that other shipboard computers like that, were operating at sea in the late 1970's is astounding. Then to have one operational today, that's a great gift. That's also true of the PDP-8 "straight-eight", which was under repair at the diode level this weekend. And it's good to see my friends again, see and hear about them and their work and history with vintage computing. Even the weather was cooperative. Herb Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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NASA - FORTRAN
by Tony Bogan 01 May '18

01 May '18

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/01/fortran_data_galileo_ganymede_moon/ Tony

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