- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

MARCHIAN invasion of Trenton
by Jeffrey Jonas 20 Mar '17

20 Mar '17

Michael Kato and Jeff Galinat were venders. I got to chat with Bill Inderrieden, Wm Dudley, Rebecca Mercuri, Neil Cherry, Herb, Dean & Drew and "the usual suspects". Despite being compressed into one day, I felt satisfied. I got some goodies in the dealer's den - displays from Galinat - books from Kato - bags of 1,000 leds and VFD modules from Ott Neil Cherry's home automation presentation had new things from last year. With 13 presentations at a time, everyone's sure to be disappointed and miss things. I missed the earlier C++ talk and the later one was cancelled. -- jeffj

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Museum report
by Evan Koblentz 20 Mar '17

20 Mar '17

Moderate amount of visitors today. About a dozen people in four or five groups of families. I continued setting up the tablets. Finished most of the physical installation. Ordered a few USB extension cables on Amazon so we can power everything without daisy-chaining regular extension cords or power strips. The USB extensions should be here later this week. Me, Adam, and possibly others will be there again next weekend. I have a long list of museum things to get done in time for VCF East. Next weekend will almost be a reality TV episode: can disorganized Evan lead a crew to finish a dozen overlapping projects by the deadline? We'll see! ------------------------- 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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DEC stuff available
by Richard Cini 19 Mar '17

19 Mar '17

All – I was contacted last week by a gentleman in Fitchburg, MA, who used to work for DEC and has a huge load of DEC hardware, manuals, print sets and other stuff. Based on his email, he worked on RSTS and RT-11 (checking to see if he knows Megan G.). Here’s a sample: · If you have a MicroVAX, i might have some extra memory boards for that. · i have a lot of manuals, the logic manual, the PDP-11 manuals, and unibus peripherals manuals... all handbooks · I have an 11/05 cpu, with box, backplane, power supply, front control panel. not sure about the memory, these had core · i have an 11/34 in the large box with the programmers keyboard and a 9-slot expansion bus and a full schematic set for it. · i have several sorts of LSI-11 backplanes including the ones that make a VT-100 into a VT-103. · and i have the kits to turn a VT-100 into a ReGis graphics terminal... VT125 · i have 11/23 boards, which do 22-bit addressing, and a bunch of 512K OEM memory boards (clearpoint or Camminton) · and the MXV-11 boards with the EPROM sockets, some RAM and 2 serial ports are in abundance. · also DLV-11J quad serial port boards, mostly OEM stuff, · some of these boards i have schematics for... · for the hard-core hackers, i have several wire-wrap-roll-your-own boards, dual height and quad. · i also have software... mostly RT-11 but i also have some Micro-RSX · also have some DECUS software, esp a cross-assembler for the 6502... I fixed some bugs and improved the functionality of this tool and used it myself extensively. He also said that he’s still into PDP projects. If anyone’s remotely interested, contact me off-list and I’ll pass his info on to you. Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

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Trenton report
by Evan Koblentz 19 Mar '17

19 Mar '17

All went well in Trenton yesterday. Jeff B.'s Commodore/Capsella robot and my Apple/Lego robot both worked perfectly and everyone who stopped at our booth seemed impressed. Herb pointed out that some college students were showing a modern $40,000 robot but were unable to explain how it works nor do much more than our designs. :) Group members spotted in addition to me, Jeff, and Herb: Jeff Galinat, Jeff Golas, Jeff Jonas, Neil, Dean, Drew, Brian Stuart, Bill I., and Steve ... sorry if I forgot anyone. Plus the usual groupies :) who attend Trenton, VCF East, etc. but aren't official members. Brace and I gave a successful lecture. The audience wasn't huge (about 10 people) but they seemed very interested and I think we did a good job presenting historical and technical information. They asked some smart questions afterward. A while ago Gini Mauchly offered us a desk fan that her father brought home from Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company. At the show yesterday we took delivery of it. Me, Brace, Dean, and Drew went to dinner. Burgers and beer.... om nom nom nom. ------------------------- 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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Commodore Inside Story Kickstarter Funded
by John Heritage 19 Mar '17

19 Mar '17

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/469255657/commodore-the-inside-story/d… Looks like the "Commodore: The Inside Story" told by David Pleasance is already fully funded :) I've watched a few of this guys interviews and he seems to be a no-BS kinda leader from Commodore.. I'm looking forward to the book..

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help dumping rom of rare coin-op arcade game
by Herb Johnson 18 Mar '17

18 Mar '17

> The CPU is a Signetics 2650 and the ROM > looks to be a Signetics N82S115N (it's the only socketed chip on the board > that I can see). Google tells me 82S115 is a 512 X 8 TTL bipolar PROM, by finding datasheets. Most ordinary and old PROM programmers don't support that whole class of PROMs to program. But reading it is a different matter. http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/fuse_bipolar_prom.html Build a reader. Or fake a common 5V EPROM and read THAT. It's doable. You're welcome. Herb -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Seattle Gazelle question
by Richard Cini 18 Mar '17

18 Mar '17

All – Back in 2014, I posted a message to the group about the Seattle Gazelle. I don’t have one, but I was basically trying to re-create it using the boards I had in-stock. Jim Scheef sent me a reply back then, but I wanted to follow-up with the whole group on this since I only just located the needed support board (300F model). I think I have all the pieces now: SCP 8086 board, SCP 300F support board, CompuPro RAM22 (128k), and the Cromemco 16FDC controller. I’m using the 16FDC because the source code for the v1.5 SCP BIOS has a compilation switch for it (the other options are Tarbell, SCP and Northstar) and I didn’t have the others. All of the board jumpers are “default” per the manual, other than disabling the RDOS on the 16FDC. This week, I put everything together and the boards work individually but not together (the 16FDC tests OK with the built-in RDOS and a Z80 board). I’ve confirmed basic things like port locations and the like match the v1.5 ROM. I’ve also done some manual testing – I can turn the drive motor on and off by outputting port I/O commands from the monitor, for example, so I know that intra-board communications work. For drives, I have available to me TM100-2A (5.25” DSDD) and Qume QT242 (8” DSDD). The drives test good with a PC using the default jumpers (I use a floppy adapter board from DBIT for the 8”; I now have MSDOS 6.22 on an 8” disk ☺). Straight floppy cables; DS0 strapping. The TM100 (SSSD version) is mentioned specifically in the Cromemco manual, but the Qume is not. When issuing the “B” (boot) command in the SCP ROM, there is no drive activity at all. Controller-specific code is in two places – the monitor ROM (for the bootstrap) and in the DOSIO module. The ROM version I have is for the Cromemco board, so it should work. I also have disk images so eventually I can make a bootable 8” disk if I can fix the rest of it. So, maybe a few basic questions: · Have I missed anything in the above? · What drives were used in the Gazelle and did SCP really use a controller other than the SCP one? · In the system VCFMA has, what drives and controller are used? Thanks again for any help. Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Commodore Inside Story Kickstarter Funded
by Steven Michelsen 18 Mar '17

18 Mar '17

I am really looking forward to reading that. On the kickstarter page, I like how it's noted that the book "will be 236 pages in length." Sent from my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S7. -------- Original message --------From: John Heritage via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Date: 3/18/17 9:21 AM (GMT-05:00) To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Cc: John Heritage <john.heritage(a)gmail.com> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Commodore Inside Story Kickstarter Funded https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/469255657/commodore-the-inside-story/d… Looks like the "Commodore: The Inside Story" told by David Pleasance is already fully funded :) I've watched a few of this guys interviews and he seems to be a no-BS kinda leader from Commodore.. I'm looking forward to the book..

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OT: free ATAPI/IDE CD drives
by Jeffrey Jonas 18 Mar '17

18 Mar '17

I salvaged way too many ATAPI/IDE interface CD drives: read to 52x, read/write too. Free if you take them at VCF. I didn't think of it soon enough for Trenton :-/ -- jeff jonas

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a fellow's doing a 68030 homebrew board
by Jeffrey Jonas 18 Mar '17

18 Mar '17

just forwarding the reference, unsure if it has merit Newsgroups: comp.sys.m68k Subject: 68030 home brew computer From: xagdin(a)gmail.com Injection-Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 10:42:24 +0000 Looking for people interested in getting a 68030 board & build and test https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=boards:sbc:gryphon_68030:sta… https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=64&start=0& 100% open source home brew 68030 project

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