- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

List check. Please disregard.
by MailmanLists Support 04 Jun '17

04 Jun '17

22:48 AEST List check. Please disregard.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Warning: This thread involves game consoles
by jaj＠totallyamused.com 03 Jun '17

03 Jun '17

We were an Intellivision family, playing Sea Battle, whenever possible, with my brothers is a fond memory. Before it was trendy I collected video game systems, in college my roommate and I stayed up all hours of the night playing Videocart-09 Drag Race/Drag Strip on the Fairchild Channel F. We were both car guys, and the controller for that particular game was awesome. The system was dated but the concept of the game was spot on. My roommate passed away a few years ago -- I occasionally drag the system out and play and recall how fun it was to waste away hours on that game. As a tween to teen I loved the Commodore 64. Up N' Down, Dr J and Larry Bird Go 1-on-1, and Epyx Summer Games...and then the single player turn games of the early BBS days (Empire)... Great memories, no warning required for this post!! > My dad bought us kids the original Atari 2600, my first game console. I > preferred the planes over the tanks. Gen-X all the way. It is customary > to reply to a thread such as this.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Warning: This thread involves game consoles
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 02 Jun '17

02 Jun '17

Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic writes: >On 06/02/2017 02:12 PM, Tony Bogan via vcf-midatlantic wrote: >> My dad >bought us kids the original Atari 2600, my first game console. I >> >preferred the planes over the tanks. Gen-X all the way. It is >customary >> to reply to a thread such as this. > > Original Pong was my >first "console" in the mid 70s followed by Atari 2600 and intellivision >(5 kids in the family so one console didn't cut it!) > Apple II in 1978 >and it was more Apple II gaming than anything till the early 80s when >highschool and girls took precedence! > > BBS/AE line took over the >Apple II for years so it was mostly consoles for gaming and still is to >this day. > > My first game console was an Atari 2600. I bought it in 2013. I >haven't powered it up yet. Kudos!

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Warning: This thread involves game consoles
by william degnan 02 Jun '17

02 Jun '17

My dad bought us kids the original Atari 2600, my first game console. I preferred the planes over the tanks. Gen-X all the way. It is customary to reply to a thread such as this.

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Wifi232
by william degnan 02 Jun '17

02 Jun '17

Yesterday I got one of Paul Rickard ' s WIFI232 devices and I should say, Well Done! It's perfect for vintage computing. Plunk one on most any serial port and you're all set. Great documentation and features too. There is even a built-in wifi access server function. I tested on a vt240 last night to connect to telnet bbs and other telnet sites ATDT towel.blinkenlights.nl [enter] ATDT IP address of BBS Etc. http://biosrhythm.com/?page_id=1453 Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net

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Thinning out my collection
by Jonathan Gevaryahu 02 Jun '17

02 Jun '17

I'm planning to thin out my vintage computer collection, I've accumulated just too much stuff in recent years and need to clear space. Currently I'm trying to get rid of some non-vintage stuff which people may or may not have an interest in: I have three Lexmark Optra S 16xx/1855 printers; of the three, two work and one is a parts donor for the other two. I don't need any of them anymore. Between them they have two envelope feeder modules, a duplexer, as well as a 2-drawer 500 sheet input tray option. I also have a large pile of loose spare parts harvested from a fourth printer. These are basically free to a good home, pickup only from 19066. Contact me off list if interested. In the future, I have some other truly vintage computer stuff to disperse, including some IBM PS/2 stuff I don't need, and at least one old-world Beige PowerPC mac I don't need either, and several 486/pentium pc clones, but I need to assess that stuff further and clean personal info off the hard drives etc before those can be offered. -- Jonathan Gevaryahu jgevaryahu(a)gmail.com jgevaryahu(a)hotmail.com

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COBOL
by Evan Koblentz 02 Jun '17

02 Jun '17

Relax: I don't intend to learn COBOL. :) Lots of tech reporters are writing stories about why COBOL is dead/obsolete. They're wrong. I am writing a story about COBOL's merits, roadmap, etc. -- already working on setting up some interviews with people in the ISO standards community, IBM, and so on. Here's a specific question for you guys. The page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compilers#COBOL_compilers lists lists nine COBOL compilers. Other than IBM and Gnu, which are the most common ones used in industry? (banks, federal agencies, etc.) ________________________________ 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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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] COBOL: vintage vs. legacy code
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 01 Jun '17

01 Jun '17

Bob Applegate <bob(a)corshamtech.com> writes: > On May 31, 2017, at 2:36 PM, Joseph S. Barrera III via vcf-midatlantic = <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: >=20 > On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 11:00 AM, Brian Schenkenberger via = vcf-midatlantic < > vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: >=20 >> I've been writing assembly for 40+ years and fully expect to be = writing it >> for another 10+. ;) >>=20 >=20 > Are you asserting that, say, VAX assembly and 6502 assembly are the = *same > language*? :-) Somehow I missed this comment. Funny you should mention VAX; it shows how out of touch you are with the VMS world. I have written my fair share and more of VAX assembly but I've written volumes of Alpha and Itanium too. I used to play on PDPs and the micro-computers (CP/M) in the physics lab in college writting assembly. One of my first year EE classes involved 6502 processors too. >Same concepts, even if the target processor is different. Pretty much. >FWIW, I was in a code review this week for a few hundred bytes of = >assembly code. The number of people fluent in assembly at the company = >is very small, but this product sells several hundred thousand units a = >year and is very important. The code was in C using a highly optimizing = >compiler but it couldn=E2=80=99t quite squeeze the code enough once a = >new feature was added, and going to a slightly larger processor with = >more RAM (32 bytes) was about four cents more per chip, so switching to = >assembly was the best approach. > >Not all computers have 2 TB disk and 32 GB RAM. When you need to save a = >few bytes, assembly is your friend. Yeah, like the specialized processors incorporated in to satellites which I coded for in my Astrospace days.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] COBOL: vintage vs. legacy code
by Jeffrey Jonas 01 Jun '17

01 Jun '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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