Adam and I were at the museum today. Lots of awesome things happened. - VCFed owns two Laser 128 computers. Both fire up and both have working drives. One computer works completely, the other has a bum keyboard. The good one is missing the drive door handle. We had to turn the pin sticking out with pliers. We took both computers apart and tried swapping the drives, but they are different model drives and don't fit quite the same. Both computers said "128" but with different logos. I didn't get pictures. Neither said "EX" so I am unclear about which version(s) we have. Tony stopped by and said he may have a Laser or two available to us for parts, so we'll investigate that next weekend at the workshop. - We don't have any Laser power supplies, but we tried two //c supplies and they both worked fine with these computers. - Using the working computer and pliers to turn the drive door handle, I was able to successfully test the Lego software with our replica Apple Lego card (from Jon C.) in the Laser's expansion slot. The slot is made for a two-slot expansion box, but we don't have that and it works fine when you plug in a card directly. - The bad-keyboard Laser has a switch on bottom for configuring the expansion as slot 7 or slot 5. The working unit didn't have any switch. I tried the Lego software configured for slot 7 and it worked the first time. - This is good news (once we get the drive door handle settled). Laser 128 and a //c monitor use much less space than a //e and traditional monitor for the Lego programming demo station, and it's also much easier for me to bring on traveling demos. Less space, no separate drive needed, etc. - The reason Tony came over was to bring part 2 of a NeXT donation that he began bringing on Wednesday. This is a complete system from a woman in the DC area. It includes all hardware and a large assortment of original software/manuals. Very nice!!! - Roddy (the art guy across the hallway from our museum) finished putting our VCFed banner outside the building doorway. It's attached to a thick piece of white plexiglass which is held up by garden stakes. It looks very good. I'm going to get some white paint and go over the bolt heads. - There were several families who visited today. They all stayed for full tours. - Adam spent a couple of hours organizing part of our videogame console collection. He focused on systems and Atari VCF/2600 cartridges. - Some pictures: http://www.vcfed.org/evan/nextlogo.jpg http://www.vcfed.org/evan/next1.jpg http://www.vcfed.org/evan/next2.jpg http://www.vcfed.org/evan/sign.jpg ________________________________ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)3 educational non-profit evan@vcfed.org (646) 546-9999 www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation