Request for help from IEEE Special Projects Direct Stephan Cass
See below for details on the request, summarized: 1. C64 Source 2. Someone to make a program selector for three demos 3. Original USB 1.0 artifacts Please offer support, off list, if you can, thanks! Douglas Crawford ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear VCF members, I am the special projects director of /IEEE Spectrum/—some of you may know me from my previous coverage of VCF East and retrocomputing-related topics in general (some sample links below!). In partnership with the IEEE History Center, we are developing a small travelling museum/conference exhibition based on our Chip Hall of Fame ( https://spectrum.ieee.org/special-reports/chip-hall-of-fame/ ). And we could really do with your help! The exhibition will include some sample chips as well as products based upon them, and we are also hoping to have an interactive Commodore 64 panel with a C64 hooked up to a screen. So here are my first two asks: Can I get recommendations for a seller who can supply 3 working C64s (three because we hope to make more than one copy of the exhibit and also need a spare on-hand in case of problems)? Ideally, these would be classic breadbox models. We will probably look to replace the case with clear acrylic versions. Can I get recommendations for someone who we can commission to put together and deliver 3 sets of a custom cartridge rig? We hope to have three arcade-style buttons on the exhibit that a visitor can press to load different ROM images: I'm imagining this would involve bank-switching and asserting a reset, maybe bundle the whole thing inside a microcontroller's memory, so I can kinda see how to do it, but really this would be best in the hands on someone with some C64 hardware experience, given the requirements for reliability and time to deliver. Incidentally, we are planning that one of the ROM images would show a simple "attract" demo for the exhibit, another one draw some kind of fractal (in homage to all of us who read "Chaos" back in the 1980s and lept to our home computers :) ), and a final one TBD, which we hope to be able to open up to some kind of demo competition!) And one last ask: we are also planning on including some very early USB silicon in the exhibit, from the Triton II Intel PC chipset. Think ye now to your mystery bins :) If you have a peripheral on the size scale of a computer mouse or a little larger that was built to USB 1.1 or, ideally 1.0 (I know how rare the latter is!), we'd like to talk to you about obtaining it! Thank you all for your time and attention. If you've any answers to the above, or questions about any of this, please drop me a line directly at cass.s@ieee.org Best, Stephen VCF coverage: https://spectrum.ieee.org/theyre-alive-vintage-computer-fans-keep-the-great-... https://spectrum.ieee.org/don-eyles-space-hacker https://www.instagram.com/p/C6ZCubprsSO/ Other retrocomputing Coverage: https://spectrum.ieee.org/yugoslavia-diy-microcomputer https://spectrum.ieee.org/upcycle-a-vintage-lcd *** Stephen Cass Special Projects Director IEEE Spectrum www.spectrum.ieee.org <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org> 347 834 7384 cass.s@ieee.org -- Douglas Crawford VCF Mid-Atlantic Museum Mgr InfoAge Science & History Museums 2201 Marconi Road Wall, NJ 07719
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Douglas Crawford