- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

museum report
by Evan Koblentz 22 May '16

22 May '16

We had a good day at the museum. TDL/Rising Star/Epson's Chris Rutkowski stopped by for a private tour before we opened to the public. There were several families/children who stopped by in the afternoon.

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Looking for PC/AT key switch with key
by Richard Cini 22 May '16

22 May '16

All – Happy Sunday all! I’m looking to restore a PC/AT working condition after many years of use. It has a barrel key on the front, which is in the unlocked position (thankfully) but I have no key. If anyone has a spare assembly with key (or even the lock and key but no panel) and is willing to part with it, please contact me off-list. It’s been many years since I used this machine. The CMOS battery exploded but fortunately only rotted the case. It’s got an ST-296N SCSI hard drive (85MB!). Hopefully it works. Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

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3490E tapes
by Mike Loewen 21 May '16

21 May '16

I have a box of 30 BASF "Extra DL" "Ultra Stabilized" tapes, NIB, still sealed. I believe they're for an IBM 3490E. Picture at: http://q7.neurotica.com/0518161742.jpg Any bids? Cat not included. :-) Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

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32k core unibus backplane
by william degnan 21 May '16

21 May '16

I inserted two 32K core backplanes in the middle of my 11/40, but I have nothing in the core planes yet, except grant cards. In front is the CPU backplane which connects to the first core backplane with an M981. The 1st core backplane ise connected to the 2nd by a M920, and the last core backplane is connected to the general purpose backplane with another M920. Do I need grant cards in *all* empty core slots, or can I just put them in the slots that don't already have a M920? Is a core backplane only for core card sets? Can I put any old card in there? Once I get a stable system and it appears the 1st/CPU backplane is talking to the back (4th) backplane (serial card, etc) then I can start testing core in a systematic way, using the serial port. thanks in advance for any suggestions. b -- @ BillDeg: Web: vintagecomputer.net Twitter: @billdeg <https://twitter.com/billdeg> Youtube: @billdeg <https://www.youtube.com/user/billdeg> Unauthorized Bio <http://www.vintagecomputer.net/readme.cfm>

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TDL / Apple story
by Evan Koblentz 20 May '16

20 May '16

Herb and I attended Roger Amidon's funeral this morning. We heard an interesting story from a TDL engineer at the luncheon afterward. Herb said Roger had previously told this story; it was new to me. As the story goes, TDL's monitor program was called Apple, so they gave Jobs/Woz permission (at the PC'76 conference in Atlantic City) to call their company Apple as long as they didn't make any Z-80 products. TDL then renamed its monitor "Zapple". I sent Woz a message to ask if he remembers this. Waiting to hear back. Bonus story #1: "Valdocs" meant "Valuable Documents" and was selected because one of the top engineers (not Roger) was a Scientologist and they used that term a lot. Bonus story #2: Rising Star (mostly TDL guys) got the Valdocs interface influence from Claude Kagan's famous "Home Reckoner" paper; they hadn't even heard of Xerox PARC.

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OT: One modern PC, two screens
by Evan Koblentz 19 May '16

19 May '16

Starting to think I need a second computer monitor. My PC is 5 years old and only has the one VGA port (no DVI/HDMI), so do I need to get a video card? For those who've done it -- do you find it distracting to have your display spread across two screens? A priority is to spend as little as possible.

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WTB: Digital Group Motherboard
by Systems Glitch 19 May '16

19 May '16

All, I'm looking for a Digital Group motherboard to use as a test bench fixture for getting a number of Digital Group boards up and going. The chassis I have has the motherboard sort of permanently wired in, it can't be removed without cutting wires which I don't want to do at the moment. Any condition is fine. Thanks, Jonathan

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Roger Amidon, RIP....
by Herb Johnson 18 May '16

18 May '16

> probably the first machine to put a Z-80 in an S-100 system The TDL S-100 ZPU board, was by Roger's account the first available Z80 Altair-compatible (S-100) board product. Roger was proud to note it was released July 4th 1976; those of us from that era recall the celebration of that 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That's one of many "firsts" or early products in microcomputing where Roger had a hand-in. Roger produced or contributed to many early microcomputer products, and worked with many people in the early era (including Claude Kagan), and later. His remarks of the last few years, suggested he was proudest of his work in gaming; that's discussed in the obituary available from nj.com (Trenton Times newspaper). Until recently, he had regular Friday lunch with several engineers and technologists in the Trenton/Princeton area, including me on occasion. He encouraged lively conversation about the impact of technology on the issues and events of the day. His presence and thoughts will be missed; my condolences to his friends and family. Herb Johnson -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net

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Ohio Scientific 32K RAM Board Upgraded to 64K!
by Systems Glitch 18 May '16

18 May '16

Finally had time to expand my 32K board to 64K: http://www.glitchwrks.com/2016/05/17/64k-ram-for-osi I think I'm going to turn this into a PC board and kit. Obviously the RAM circuit won't take up even half of the board, so I was thinking about using the rest of the space as a buffered prototype area, with control lines for the onboard Data Direction generator and bus buffers brought out. Thoughts? Thanks, Jonathan

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] German Nixdorf 820 Brochure
by Ben Greenfield 18 May '16

18 May '16

It’s a up. This folder contains the original brochure as pdf, the german text and the english text. I will now start to clean up the text files. Thanks all of the help. Ben > On May 18, 2016, at 10:46 AM, Ben Greenfield via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: > > > From: Ben Greenfield <ben(a)cogs.com> > Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] German Nixdorf 820 Brochure > Date: May 18, 2016 at 10:46:12 AM EDT > To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> > > > >> On May 18, 2016, at 10:35 AM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic(a)lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: >> >> Google Translate does adequate translation from many languages including german, if given clean ASCII text. You can likely clean up the result. Of course...google "google translate" for access. I find it convenient to have the document online, so I can present Google Translate the Web link. >> > > I will give a try. > > I was able to copy and paste the text out of preview and posted it here > > http://projects.cogs.com/Nixdorf820/ > > I will give google translate a try. > > Ben > > > >> Herb >> -- >> Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey USA >> http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net >> preservation of 1970's computing >> email: hjohnson AAT retrotechnology DOTT com >> alternate: herbjohnson ATT retrotechnology DOTT info > > >

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