- vcf-midatlantic - lists.vcfed.org

January Workshop Who's Coming?
by Chris Fala 07 Jan '16

07 Jan '16

1. Jeff Brace 2. Evan 3. Dean 4. Drew 64738. Steve Toth 65535. Joseph Oprysko 0200000 David Gesswein 0111. Bill Degnan 6. Jeff Galinat (Saturday/ maybe Sunday) 5 N = 9 10 N = N + 1 20 print N;" Doug Crawford" run 10 Doug Crawford FB & 0F Chris Fala

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Blit Express Lives!
by Systems Glitch 07 Jan '16

07 Jan '16

Pictures: http://imgur.com/a/wDXnt Basically the trick to getting it working is that it hates commodity hardware. I guess being a Bell Labs product, it's above such pedestrian things as MFM/RLL controllers. More to come as it finds a permanent PC to live in. And, the RIFA caps in the ECL monitor released the magic smoke, so like all good projects it has had its "Will it Smoke?" moment. I have the ROMs/PALs for "pretend to be a MDA" mode. As you can see, it's not this unit's strong point. Thanks, Jonathan

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January Workshop Who's Coming?
by Jeffrey Brace 07 Jan '16

07 Jan '16

Happy New Year VCFins! Our January Workshop will be January 23 & 24. I will post more details later, but basically it will start at 10am Sat Jan 23 and end Sun. Jan. 24. The usual $10 per person and and in the big room 9032-A. Who's coming? 1. Jeff Brace 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

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Flashback Trenton 2005
by william degnan 06 Jan '16

06 Jan '16

http://www.vintagecomputer.net/tcf_2005/ I was browsing around and found these photos from FKA MARCH's first event. -- -Bill-

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Compuseum
by Mike Loewen 06 Jan '16

06 Jan '16

Does anyone here know about these folks? They have some grandiose plans, including: "The Compuseum's primary gallery is to include a display of sections of the ENIAC, the earliest digital computer created within the University of Pennsylvania and in step-wise fashion, show the march of forward progress." There's no real content on their web site, just a lot of goals. Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Jim Scherrer Compuseum Project Technology Center 120 Arrandale Boulevard Exton, PA 19341 484-875-1700 www.TheCompuseum.org info(a)TheCompuseum.org SKYPE = JS.Scherrer The mission of Compuseum is to stimulate the public and the technology industry to share information and to raise the public awareness of the important role the digital age has played and will continue to play in our society. Compuseum will be a springboard into various ways to teach and discuss new and emerging technologies, and their implications, within the context of prior achievement. Thank you for helping the Compuseum bring people together from across America and around the world to learn about, discuss, and celebrate the computer technology revolution. View the History of HP here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYLG_C28L7Y Did you have an HP-35? View the Worlds First PC- Kenbak 1- By John Blankenbaker http://www.retrothing.com/2007/11/kenbak-1---the.html Read about John Blankenbaker on BBC World News Our "Friend of Compuseum" http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34639183

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] VCF East - Kernighan video online
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 06 Jan '16

06 Jan '16

Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic writes: >>> You might be surprised at what a little effort in Audition, Audacity, >= or similar tools can do pressing capture noise print, select all, and >act= ive noise reduction. Much much greater gain than a $300 bump in mic >quali= ty - and cheaper too. > >Thanks, I will try that. The problem is what's been posted is audibly terrible. How it is remedied, whether by better equipment or via post-processing (and note, I have several professional sound packages and equipment, etc.), is the issue and, INMSHO, it should be addressed for the future for such historic, one-time, lectures.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire
by Todd George 06 Jan '16

06 Jan '16

Some of the comments in my report duplicated what Doug had said previously. I should have done a better job editing my summary of the day. Sorry for any annoyance there. Additionally, the total attendees number conflicted a bit. I'd personally trust Doug's numbers over mine. Nearly 30,000 is more accurate. :-) Thanks guys.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] VCF East - Kernighan video online
by VAXman＠tmesis.org 06 Jan '16

06 Jan '16

Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic writes: >Ta-da! > >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUWt_StXKsY A wonderful demonstration illustrating the difference between a $39.99 and a $399.99 microphone. The audio quality of that video is pretty awful and that's really a shame.

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OT: InfoAge needs a plumber
by Evan Koblentz 06 Jan '16

06 Jan '16

InfoAge management asked that all of the member groups forward this message: -------------------------- InfoAge has need of some major plumbing work that will include excavation and laying pipes. Before looking without, we might look within. Look through your membership lists and see if there's a plumber or two that may be able to offer us their services and expertise at low or no cost if we supply a little labor.

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Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire
by Todd George 05 Jan '16

05 Jan '16

Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 19:50:29 -0500 From: Evan Koblentz <evan(a)snarc.net> Subject: [vcf-midatlantic] Young Innovators Faire >Big thanks to you, Chris F., and Todd G. for representing us there! >Generally speaking how did it go? Here's my report from the show (slightly modified from a previous version of the report I sent to Evan, Doug and Chris)! I had a nice long talk with Gabe (co-founder of The Young Innovators Fair), he told me how much he appreciated us being there. He thought our booth was a gigantic hit, and said he thought we were one of the busier stand-alone/standard-sized booths at the event. As of ~2 pm (??? it's all a blur) on Sunday when I talked with him, they were far in excess of 20,000 (!!!) tickets sold for the weekend NOT INCLUDING something like a few thousand (rumored) free/donation/charity tickets that they gave out. Apparently those "free" tickets went unaccounted-for. Saturday was definitely the busier day, but Sunday proved to be a strong contender. I also need to brush up on my rollerskating skills, as Gabe had the brilliant idea to wear roller skates at the event. Definitely helps him get around the place in an expedient fashion. Some of my favorite moments, a dad stopped at the booth while walking by with his family, comes over to me and says "If you had asked me this morning if anything here would make me stop dead in my tracks, I'd have said 'No Way'. This is amazing and has definitely stopped me in my tracks". We also received tons of positive feedback from the booth guests. There was a girl at our booth for nearly the entire day on Saturday, she was 16 and "wants to be an engineer". She was so knowledgeable about all things computer and was really digging our booth. She was extremely smart and was chatting with us off and on all day. I also had a great long talk with a gentleman who indicated his son had two apps in the Apple App Store, had been programming since he was 8, was probably 13 or so by my guess now. He had never programmed in BASIC, so I gave him some brief instruction. He took to it like a duck to water. His first program in BASIC? "Hello World". I only told him to "Put whatever you want the computer to display inside the quotes." A few people commented how much they appreciated that our booth was "something different". I also directed a few people to actually join VCFed based on discussions I had. One guy had a bunch of Apple equipment set up on display in his basement, said he curates and restores it. He expressed interest in improving his restoration skills (participation in workshops) and really seemed interested in our group in general. He had mentioned he has no idea a group like ours existed. I also lost count of how many parents told us "how old we were making them feel", told me the story about how "Drexel made us buy that Macintosh" (at least 20 people told me some variant of this story), and indicated to their kids when we showed them the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disk props we had at the table how "they used to store all of their high school/college work on those" while the kids just looked as us with a blank stare. There was definitely an interesting combination of "parent-types" being attracted to our booth, with their children in tow explaining to them how these were the old computers they used to use. The other side of that was kids being attracted to the games we had up and running and then being suckered into listening to their parents wax nostalgic once they realized what hardware was running the games. The only failure we had at the VCF booth was our KayPro II. The floppy disks were warm when we pulled them out, but letting the machine cool down didn't "fix" the problem. Who knows, it was a long two days and this computer probably isn't used to that kind of workload. The one at the booth wasn't mine, but I still feel bad that it gave up the ghost. Funny side story, my wife is tired of hearing me curse and complain about working inside of my KayPro II. To prove it, I sent a text to her and said "Hey, the KayPro at our booth died". Her reply was "Why, did you yell at it too much?". To put this into perspective even more, my wife doesn't know many of the names of the computers I work on. So that tells you how excellently engineered the innards of the KayPro are that she knows what it's called and has heard me bitch about it that much. The venue wasn't so lucky... Apparently their failures were numerous, including the credit card processing at the concession stands failing, the ATM machines logically emptying shortly thereafter, and to top it off the vending machines emptying by around 11 am on Saturday. Apparently their credit card processing never came back online throughout the rest of the weekend. Between that and the ATM machines being empty, who knows how much potential revenue they lost due to our "cashless society". We didn't have an Apple II with us, turns out that was a bit of an error as we got lots of flack from people... "Where's Oregon Trail?", "Where's Loadrunner?". Surprisingly, the TRS-80 Model 4 was the star of the show in my opinion. I would have expected the Macintosh SE/30 to garner more attention but it did not (ran a close second though). So many people commenting "Oh I had one of these in college" (about the Macintosh) or "this was the computer I learned to program on" (about the TRS-80). I was also pleasantly amused by the sheer number of people walking up to the table and yelling "Oh my gosh a Trash 80!". I was also asked many, many times how in the world we had a working TRS-80 of any variety. Seems they have a reputation of some sort for being troublesome or something. All-in-all, a great time! I was so tired Saturday and Sunday night, tired stretched into Monday. But I'd do it again tomorrow, that's how much fun we had. :) Special thanks to Doug and Chris with whom this wouldn't have been possible. And of course Evan for putting it all together for us. See ya! -Todd

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