On Mon, Dec 7, 2020 at 12:22 PM Sentrytv via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

Thank you Herb!

On that note.

Maybe VCF and InfoAge could come up with some sort of plan to have a Workshop that shows the average person what we do, as technicians and how we go about repairing computers, TVs, radios and such. I know right now it would have to be all virtual, but I don’t think it would be much different then what VCF has done recently.

Ultimately this could be done live and a setting like VCF East.

And commenting on what Herb has said that this would help show people, “why we do what we do.”

Mike Rosen

Mike That's exactly why we started workshops back in the MARCH days. I for one really wanted to learn more from others more about the methodology of old computer repair, electronics, and testing. I wanted to learn about S-100 and DEC/PDP tech, which was before my time. We did a lot more with memory maps and program listings. We played around with in-circuit emulators too. I was always impressed with how some of the folks could trace a board without a schematic to troubleshoot it. Back in the mid 2000's there were few Youtube how to videos and a lot of the knowledge that's easy to find today had to be re-learned and re-documented for the vintage computer hobbyist. It was much harder to find manuals and documentation and we used to meet just to share paper copies of manuals and hard to find parts at earlier MARCH workshops. We were more focused on S-100, diskdrives and older stuff then. Anything older than an IBM PC. I don't agree that you can easily teach old-school at a VCF unless you disallow use of the internet and electronic copies of manuals to be used to tackle a problem. In other words, you'd have to "make it hard again" to really teach what it was like. That's the kind of hacking you did with Heathkit manuals and why good manuals were the key to their business. The accomplishments at today's VCF workshops are equally impressive perhaps but tools are a mix of old and new. The nature of diagnosis and repair has evolved away from purely vintage/old school ways. Bill