Hello everyone, I thought someone from the Steering Committee would have replied by now. I haven't had the time until now, but will explain. A little frazzled and sorry for the delay. I haven't been reading my emails for the last few days. Just catching up now, but wanted to respond now that I have the time. I've been focused on job interviews for a teaching job. I did the first interview, then 2nd (a demo lesson), and a 3rd interview. Had my last interview yesterday (Monday). I hope to find out soon if I got the job. I have a meeting with the superintendent soon. I've had to prioritize my job search recently (from Dec to May) because I had put it on hold while I planned and implemented VCF East. Then on Friday and Saturday I had to prepare t-shirts and swag that are being taken to VCF West by System Source. I had already spent about 10 hours over the past few weeks in the warehouse preparing the swag. I've started organizing all the swag, supplies, etc from VCF East. There is still more to do. I missed the System Source swap meet because of last minute swag gathering, but heard that it went well. I got there around 9PM on Saturday, stayed overnight at a hotel and stuck around Sunday until 5PM. I transferred the 7 containers going to VCF West which will go on a truck driven by Ryan Schiff of System Source who is going to bring a number of artifacts from System Source for exhibiting. On Thu, Jun 16, 2022 at 5:26 PM Adam Michlin via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

Hi Everyone,

As discussed and approved, I took the PowerPC OS/2 machine and will get that to Connor. Either he'll fix it at the workshop or he will take it home, fix it, and bring it back to the July workshop. I'll communicate here either way.

Ian wasn't able to work in this machine as he had other projects that he was working on and ran out of time. So as per Adam and Ian, I took it back to the VCF museum for him to work on at the next VCF workshop which is July 30 & 31. Visitors were turning on the PowerPC when it didn't work. Don't know if this could damage it by turning it on and off, but it frustrated the visitors with a non operational machine. So the docents put the ENIAC picture in front of the monitor until the machines are repaired.

I'm bringing three recently donated 486 class machines to the System Source Workshop. One is for my project of building a DesqView machine (which may never become an exhibit - just a fun project for me). Hopefully either Dean or Alex (or both) can take one or both of the other machines on for the Linux 1992 exhibit.

That sounds great!

I'm a bit confused by the changes in the museum, I initially thought the Pong machine was missing, but realized it is now hidden. I'm

The Pong machine has been great to have. Lots of interest by visitors and they find it enjoyable. The docents felt that putting it at the end of the tour was a sort of reward at the end of the tour. They have all given a lot of positive feedback about this idea. Visitors had a lot of fun playing the machine.

concerned that this might upset one of our most important volunteers and one of the owners of the machine, Bill Lange, and I don't quite understand why it was done without discussion. Can someone enlighten me? Hopefully before Bill sees it. At the very least, I hope we can communicate with him before he visits again.

Of course. As per discussion and approval by the Steering Committee on May 10, 2022 they agreed with my plan to realign the artifacts in the museum back to the original chronological order. In recent years machines placed in the museum were out of order and confusing to the docents. It was difficult to have an organized tour for new docents with the order in a non chronological order. Right after VCF East I got back to recruiting docents and improving the museum. I added four new docents to the museum: Rick Lewis, Bart Hirst, Ian Litchfield and Doug Crawford. I've since given them training, made a schedule and helped to plan the numerous school and other group tours (mostly on Wednesdays) that we had in May and June. When doing organized tours of 15 people at a time it became frustrating for the docents to give tours with machines that were out of order chronologically. The docents asked for my help and I asked the Steering Committee and they approved. The docents did the work and now things look very well laid out. This is in line with the unstated museum mission which is implied by the original "Everything on this wall fits into your pocket" and the present "Processor exhibit". These exhibits told the story of the evolution of computers. Our museum starts with the history of the ENIAC through 1995ish. Before Fox Nation came to do filming of our museum, I got emergency approval from the Steering Committee for the addition of signs by the artifacts. They are simply 4" x 6" note cards printed with information and put in a plastic photo holder and then velcroed. to the plastic tarp next to the artifact. The information on the signs is half technical and half "story". So it is good for all types of visitors. There is also the year the artifact came out. This is great because the artifacts were without signs for years. I had formed a curation discussion group which gave me this idea about the signs. We also added the Data General to fill the empty spot left by the StorageTek that was taken back by Dave McGuire. Another improvement approved by the Steering Committee was the lowering of the shelves of the artifact carts. The docents noticed that children had a difficult time reaching the keyboards, so lowering the shelves (both top and bottom) by about 3 or 4 inches helped them to be able to use them more easily. Not so easy for 6' 4" people like me, but hey I'm above average height and I can sit on a stool to operate them. We see children able to use the machines a lot more easily. Rick Lewis came up with note cards with simple instructions and a short BASIC program for tour members to enter. This is mostly for children, and they seemed to really like the hands-on aspect. We have had a lot of ideas on how to improve tours in our docent groups. There was also the long ago approved by the Steering Committee replacement of wheels to flat bottoms to the stools in the museum. It was a safety hazard when children sat on them and nearly fell backwards or forwards. We've had many near accidents with children and those stools.

The Zenith machine is pinch hitting for the Mega STe for now (as I found it) and I dropped off a period correct speaker box for the Mega STe on loan from Dean so when the Mega STe returns (any day now, I understand) we will have sound for the MIDI demo. I trust we won't need a vote to put the Mega STe back in, but let me know if we need to do so. The former Zenith table is empty, which is a perfect opportunity to put in the Micro VAX (Hi Dave!). VMS lives!

Yes. Since there was only an Atari monitor sitting there while the Mega STE was being repaired I put the Atari monitor back in the box below and the Zenith in its place. After the Mega STE was repaired and returned, the plan was to take out the Zenith and put it in the museum docent office area for disk duplication.

As I found things, the Data General was moved over near the Wang, which makes sense to me, but just so everyone knows. The 1992 exhibit was moved under the Atari (regular) ST and VIC-20, which confuses me.

Everything was made chronological. The 1992 was moved from the 1974-1976 homebrew section to the 1992 section.

The mouse exhibit was moved where the Pong machine used to be, which I'm ambivalent about.

There was a rotation Data General to Mouse, Mouse to Pong, Pong to Data General.

The featured exhibit quite possibly will become the Franklin Red Lightning prototype Tony is going to donate. I suggest we hold off until next week on any motions so we can see if the OS/2 PowerPC box is going to be resurrected this weekend.

Sounds good.

The warehouse is basically as it was after East although I did grab a

Yes. The only thing that I have been doing is organizing VCF East stuff in there with lots more work to be done with that. Hope to get it done before it gets too hot.

piece of the UNIVAC that was accidentally left by System Source. Dave and I are on the look out for a PDP-11 clone in a nondescript carrying case, so if anyone sees such a thing, let us know.

Take care everyone! Jeff Brace

Best wishes,

-Adam