- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

TDL / Apple story
by Evan Koblentz 21 May '16

21 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 20 May '16

20 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 20 May '16

20 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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German Nixdorf 820 Brochure
by Herb Johnson 18 May '16

18 May '16

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. 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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German Nixdorf 820 Brochure
by Mike Willegal 18 May '16

18 May '16

If you can’t get help elsewhere, I have a few contacts in Germany, including one that is a docent at the Nixdorf museum. regards, Mike Willegal

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

18 May '16

> Hey All, > > I just got a 65 page pdf brochure from the Nixdorf Museum in Germany. > > http://www.hnf.de/en/museum.html > > the problem is that I don’t speak or read german. I’m wondering if this group has connections to people that translate old computer docs. I would think that a normal german translator could be overwhelmed by technical explanations. > > Any thoughts? Fred @ InfoAge speaks German and worked for many years for Amdahl. He is probably qualified. Please send the specific link.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Gers greeted aittsman Nixdorf 820 Brochurez
by pikmin205 . 18 May '16

18 May '16

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