[vcf-midatlantic] question on vcfed and lists

[Evan Koblentz]

> Hi all, pretty new to the VCF stuff. Question about the various means of communications available to us. So I see a lot of infoage/camp evans/club related discussion here.  But not a lot of technical q&a.  On the VCFED website, there are various forums. Is that the right/best place for technical discussion and this is more for club-related activities? Do I have this right?
>
> In case everything is welcome everywhere, I am looking for the following DEC PDP-8/e related items:
>
> M8650(YA) or preferably M8655 (async interface)
> M8357 RX02 interface card
>
> Thanks
> 73 Eugene W2HX

Welcome Eugene!

Here's the scoop.

This list is for the Mid-Atlantic chapter of Vintage Computer Federation 
Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit user group.

As you noted, the national (and beyond!) forum is at vcfed.org. You will 
also see there, in the subforum for regional discussion, it links to 
this list for the Mid-Atlantic region. That's because this list 
pre-dated the Federation itself, and the very strong consensus among our 
members here is to keep the list format rather than moving onto the main 
web forum. So here we are. :)

A lot of us know each other offline, and our home base, headquarters, 
museum, clubhouse, whatever we like to call it is the vintage computing 
wing of the "Information Age Science-History Learning Center" in Wall, 
New Jersey. We have a $1/year lease there. Our job is to put on exhibits 
and they provide us with a building on the campus -- it's a very fair 
deal. We are one of several independent groups residing on campus.

Usually we just say InfoAge and sometimes I get lazy and write "IA".

However, before InfoAge existed, the property was a secret Army Signal 
Corps electronics R&D laboratory! It was called "Camp Evans" back then. 
And before that, it was a Marconi wireless telegraphy facility. Cool!

Naturally we discuss a lot of chapter business here. This time of year, 
chapter business tends to focus on our upcoming winter "Festivus" party.

But there's also a lot of very technical discussion. Feel free to start 
some.

The advantage to technical discussion here vs. on our own national list 
(or elsewhere) is the good signal-to-noise ratio.