- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

Re: [vcf-midatlantic] COBOL: vintage vs. legacy code
by Jeffrey Jonas 31 May '17

31 May '17

My dad's happily retired for about 25 years now. Some of his COBOL IBM mainframe code is STILL IN PRODUCTION. Why? Because of the investment of untold man-YEARS of effort, debugging and diligence to yield nearly bullet-proof code. Because the code implements algorithms and logic that's no longer documented or understood by anyone else. Porting code introduces new bugs, thus IBM's captive audience with all the new mainframes ALWAYS being "backwards compatible". > It's not obsolete as long as it's *not* too much trouble to maintain. There's a whole wild and wacky world of backwards compatible retrofits to "legacy systems". Screen scraping interfaces new apps to programs that still think they're talking to 3270 "green screen" terminals. Dave McGuire: > Organizations are using it for a reason: > It's the right tool for their job, > based on whatever criteria they've set forth. FORTH? Did somebody say FORTH :-) Most of my dad's career was writing COBOL programs. I'll never have that stability in today's "language of the month" club: Perl, Python, Go, Ruby on Rails, Java and all its variants and environments, ADA (before it was a fruit), FORTRAN/RATFOR/WATFIV, ... -- Jeff Jonas

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Sphere 1
by Evan Koblentz 29 May '17

29 May '17

Sellam Ismail is looking to sell his Sphere 1 (missing CPU card) for $4K OBO. He's at sellam.ismail(a)gmail.com. It would be wonderful if someone could buy this and donate it to the VCFed museum. Someone offered to replicate the CPU card for us if that happens. Anyone can send me a PM here or email to evan(a)vcfed.org if you're interested in helping us. Please note that we are not looking for donations to buy the computer ourselves. We have a policy prohibiting artifact purchases regardless of the source of funds. ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, 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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testing ... ignore
by Evan Koblentz 29 May '17

29 May '17

________________________________ Evan Koblentz, 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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Animated graphic needed
by Evan Koblentz 28 May '17

28 May '17

Some of our museum info kiosks, aka the cheapest Android tablets available, are showing signs of burn-in from the VCF logo screen saver. I don't know if this is literally old-fashioned "burn it" or some other technical issue. Quick search reveals un-burn apps that display many colors etc. to undo symptoms. Anyway, to prevent this from happening on all of our tablets, we should make a screensaver more elaborate than the current one (our "ectoplasm" logo on a black background). Please note that the screensaver is a web page with an image; the kiosk app requires this vs. loading an image directly. Can someone make a version of our logo that does things such as fade in/out, bounce around, spin, etc.? I don't think HTML5 video would work because some of the tablets use older Android 4.4. ------------------------- Evan Koblentz, 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

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Museum closed today
by Evan Koblentz 28 May '17

28 May '17

Our museum is closed today and will reopen next weekend.

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Animated graphic needed
by Jonathan Sturges 28 May '17

28 May '17

So my understanding was that real burn-in required a display technology dependent on phosphor, like CRTs or plasma, so I have long understood that LCD was immune to this. What would give some handheld LCDs persistence? And would a motion GIF be sufficient? I didn't bother to check but that HAS to be compatible with Android 4.4... -Jonathan Date: Sun, 28 May 2017 04:05:15 -0400 From: Evan Koblentz <evan(a)vcfed.org> To: Vcf <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Animated graphic needed Message-ID: <79e1380f-e3ca-4638-82b9-27bfd4ab66bd(a)vcfed.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > Some of our museum info kiosks, aka the cheapest Android tablets available, are showing signs of > burn-in from the VCF logo screen saver. > I don't know if this is literally old-fashioned "burn it" or some other technical issue.

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Radio Shack archives aution
by Evan Koblentz 28 May '17

28 May '17

Fyi: http://www.electronicdesign.com/communications/radio-shack-close-most-retai… ------------------------- Evan Koblentz, 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

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ADM-3A display problem
by Garrett Nievin 26 May '17

26 May '17

I'm restoring a Lear Siegler ADM-3A, and I'm not the most CRT-savvy guy around (but I did really enjoy Ian's excellent class at the most recent VCF-E). Attached is a photo of the issue. If I crank the brightness to clearly see the raster, I can see that the text is actually displaying as dark instead of bright. Pointers? Cheers, Garrett

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sun SparcStation 2, video frequencies
by Herb Johnson 26 May '17

26 May '17

Someone asked me, about connecting modern monitors to a SparcStation 2 with a CG6 8-bit color framebuffer. If you acutally have a VGA-type or LCD type *modern* monitor hooked up and running, please send me details. Now - I know plenty about video and scan rates and fixed frequency monitors. I don't need lessons in wiring up 13W3 connectors, sync-on-green. I know about sense-pins or "ID pins" which tell these video cards, "I'm monitor X, change your video to Y". OK? I'm not asking to be "schooled" on the subject. What I'm asking is what an electrical engineer would ask (that's me). What are the damn actual, real, video signals this card puts out? As in mode X: (sense pins grounded) horizontal frequency ? vertical frequency ? frame rate ? if you want, "video frequency in Megahertz" which isn't useful And yes, I searched the Web, and it was uninformative on "cold" searching. Active users of Sun may know where to go. Lots of links are dead, or under-informative, or lessons in video. My site has such lessons already! What I did find, are references to Sony monitors sold by Sun for use, which are GDM-1662 and GDM-1962. I got what I *think* are Sony's fixed frequencies of use. I did not get the magic "sense pins grounded" on those monitors. I'll not quote here what I learned on those monitors, you can send that along if you wish, that will confirm what I found. Here's a more general question, related of course. Otherwise - people who ask me about monitors for old computers, ask for a magic box. It's variously called "a converter" or "frame buffer" or "adapter". they think it magically changes video frequencies, even stores a frame of video! But most don't; the simplest just rewire 13W3's to hook to HD-15 connectors, with some toggles for the sense pins. some may play with sync signals. But...this is the year 2017, not 1997 or even 2007. There may WELL be "magic boxes" now, that have whole computers in them, that DO capture a frame and resend it. If anyone knows of one of THESE, which costs less than $100 - and it *works*, that matters for some reason - I'd like to know. IF it costs $250, that doesn't help - these are hobbyists asking, not video engineers. Thanks. Sorry for the long post, but I'm not looking for history lessons or video-signal lessons. Herb Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Virginia guys...
by William Sudbrink 26 May '17

26 May '17

Did any of the Virginia crew see this: https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/zip/6147194618.html There's a guy in Dale City emptying out a storage shed: I am a retired engineer and am in the process of moving back home (out of state) I am emptying a 12 X 22 garage storage shed of 50 years accumulation of hardware, tools, furniture, automotive parts-filters-accessories, electronic parts and accessories, Ham Radio parts and accessories and household items. All will be placed on the curb for free pick-up hour by hour until the shed is empty.( NO BROWSING IN SHED OR GARAGE) No saving or holding, first pick-up gets it some or all FODDER FOR FLEA MARKETS OR YARD SALES! --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

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