Museum/workshop report
I was tour guide in the museum for two or three hours today. There was only two sets of two visitors each, but they were GOOD visitors! First a man and woman in their 20s who wanted a full tour, and then two guys in their 40s/50s who said they work in IT and also wanted a full tour + stuck around for a discussion with Drom about the UNIVAC. Best part: all four of them said they visited IA specifically to see our part. The 20-somethings said they're from Philly and found us by Googling for where to see old computers. Brace and I spent about 30 minutes practicing PDP-8 front panel entry. We each got chase-the-lights working on our own (no tech support calls to Gesswein or anyone else this time) ... first time for that! Felt good to reach that milestone. Next time we'll try to load a program from paper tape, per DG's instructions. Personal comment: if you'd told me a year ago that I would ever feel totally comfortable using the front panel on HP and DEC minicomputers, demoing memory diagnostics on the UNIVAC, and (as of yesterday) starting to feel some kind of comprehension in 6502 assembly ... I might not have believed you. Thank you Mike L, DG, Drom, Adam, etc. for encouraging this former English major that I too could learn such things. Thinking in octal and understanding about opcodes!? What's happening to me??
On 2/10/19 9:39 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Personal comment: if you'd told me a year ago that I would ever feel totally comfortable using the front panel on HP and DEC minicomputers, demoing memory diagnostics on the UNIVAC, and (as of yesterday) starting to feel some kind of comprehension in 6502 assembly ... I might not have believed you. Thank you Mike L, DG, Drom, Adam, etc. for encouraging this former English major that I too could learn such things. Thinking in octal and understanding about opcodes!? What's happening to me??
<line movie="The Matrix" character="Morpheus"> Welcome...to the real world. </line> -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Personal comment: if you'd told me a year ago that I would ever feel totally comfortable using the front panel on HP and DEC minicomputers, demoing memory diagnostics on the UNIVAC, and (as of yesterday) starting to feel some kind of comprehension in 6502 assembly ... I might not have believed you. Thank you Mike L, DG, Drom, Adam, etc. for encouraging this former English major that I too could learn such things. Thinking in octal and understanding about opcodes!? What's happening to me??
Nerd! :-) Want to expand your mind? I also have a light chaser for the IMSAI 8080: http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/S100/IMSAI/Cylon.txt http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/S100/IMSAI/Cylon-S.mp4 You enter it in hexadecimal. :-) Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/
On 2/10/19 10:46 PM, Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Personal comment: if you'd told me a year ago that I would ever feel totally comfortable using the front panel on HP and DEC minicomputers, demoing memory diagnostics on the UNIVAC, and (as of yesterday) starting to feel some kind of comprehension in 6502 assembly ... I might not have believed you. Thank you Mike L, DG, Drom, Adam, etc. for encouraging this former English major that I too could learn such things. Thinking in octal and understanding about opcodes!? What's happening to me??
Nerd! :-)
Want to expand your mind? I also have a light chaser for the IMSAI 8080:
http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/S100/IMSAI/Cylon.txt
http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/S100/IMSAI/Cylon-S.mp4
You enter it in hexadecimal. :-)
Yeah, it's a bit better than octal. ;-) -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
Neil Cherry wrote:
Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
You enter it in hexadecimal. :-)
Yeah, it's a bit better than octal. ;-)
<action movie trailer announcer voice on> Before Mac versus PC... Before vi versus emacs... Before TRS-80 versus Apple II (versus C64 versus Atari...) There was: HHHEEEXXX -vs- OOOCCCTTTAAALLL!!! --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 10:56 AM William Sudbrink via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Neil Cherry wrote:
Mike Loewen via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
You enter it in hexadecimal. :-)
Yeah, it's a bit better than octal. ;-)
<action movie trailer announcer voice on>
Before Mac versus PC...
Before vi versus emacs...
Before TRS-80 versus Apple II (versus C64 versus Atari...)
There was:
HHHEEEXXX -vs- OOOCCCTTTAAALLL!!!
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
I hope all of this newfound knowledge is going in the docent wiki ;p On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 9:40 PM Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I was tour guide in the museum for two or three hours today. There was only two sets of two visitors each, but they were GOOD visitors! First a man and woman in their 20s who wanted a full tour, and then two guys in their 40s/50s who said they work in IT and also wanted a full tour + stuck around for a discussion with Drom about the UNIVAC. Best part: all four of them said they visited IA specifically to see our part. The 20-somethings said they're from Philly and found us by Googling for where to see old computers.
Brace and I spent about 30 minutes practicing PDP-8 front panel entry. We each got chase-the-lights working on our own (no tech support calls to Gesswein or anyone else this time) ... first time for that! Felt good to reach that milestone. Next time we'll try to load a program from paper tape, per DG's instructions.
Personal comment: if you'd told me a year ago that I would ever feel totally comfortable using the front panel on HP and DEC minicomputers, demoing memory diagnostics on the UNIVAC, and (as of yesterday) starting to feel some kind of comprehension in 6502 assembly ... I might not have believed you. Thank you Mike L, DG, Drom, Adam, etc. for encouraging this former English major that I too could learn such things. Thinking in octal and understanding about opcodes!? What's happening to me??
On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 3:12 PM Drew Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I hope all of this newfound knowledge is going in the docent wiki ;p
It will. Evan is too busy planning VCF East so Tony and I are working on docent guides and documents. Lots of good and helpful stuff will be available for docents soon.
On Sun, Feb 10, 2019 at 9:40 PM Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I was tour guide in the museum for two or three hours today. There was only two sets of two visitors each, but they were GOOD visitors! First a man and woman in their 20s who wanted a full tour, and then two guys in their 40s/50s who said they work in IT and also wanted a full tour + stuck around for a discussion with Drom about the UNIVAC. Best part: all four of them said they visited IA specifically to see our part. The 20-somethings said they're from Philly and found us by Googling for where to see old computers.
Brace and I spent about 30 minutes practicing PDP-8 front panel entry. We each got chase-the-lights working on our own (no tech support calls to Gesswein or anyone else this time) ... first time for that! Felt good to reach that milestone. Next time we'll try to load a program from paper tape, per DG's instructions.
Personal comment: if you'd told me a year ago that I would ever feel totally comfortable using the front panel on HP and DEC minicomputers, demoing memory diagnostics on the UNIVAC, and (as of yesterday) starting to feel some kind of comprehension in 6502 assembly ... I might not have believed you. Thank you Mike L, DG, Drom, Adam, etc. for encouraging this former English major that I too could learn such things. Thinking in octal and understanding about opcodes!? What's happening to me??
-- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President Vintage Computer Federation
participants (8)
-
Bob Flanders -
Dave McGuire -
Drew Notarnicola -
Evan Koblentz -
Jeffrey Brace -
Mike Loewen -
Neil Cherry -
William Sudbrink