[vcf-midatlantic] great day at the museum

[Evan Koblentz]

Adam and I were at the museum today. Lots of awesome things happened.

- VCFed owns two Laser 128 computers. Both fire up and both have working 
drives. One computer works completely, the other has a bum keyboard. The 
good one is missing the drive door handle. We had to turn the pin 
sticking out with pliers. We took both computers apart and tried 
swapping the drives, but they are different model drives and don't fit 
quite the same. Both computers said "128" but with different logos. I 
didn't get pictures. Neither said "EX" so I am unclear about which 
version(s) we have. Tony stopped by and said he may have a Laser or two 
available to us for parts, so we'll investigate that next weekend at the 
workshop.

- We don't have any Laser power supplies, but we tried two //c supplies 
and they both worked fine with these computers.

- Using the working computer and pliers to turn the drive door handle, I 
was able to successfully test the Lego software with our replica Apple 
Lego card (from Jon C.) in the Laser's expansion slot. The slot is made 
for a two-slot expansion box, but we don't have that and it works fine 
when you plug in a card directly.

- The bad-keyboard Laser has a switch on bottom for configuring the 
expansion as slot 7 or slot 5. The working unit didn't have any switch. 
I tried the Lego software configured for slot 7 and it worked the first 
time.

- This is good news (once we get the drive door handle settled). Laser 
128 and a //c monitor use much less space than a //e and traditional 
monitor for the Lego programming demo station, and it's also much easier 
for me to bring on traveling demos. Less space, no separate drive 
needed, etc.

- The reason Tony came over was to bring part 2 of a NeXT donation that 
he began bringing on Wednesday. This is a complete system from a woman 
in the DC area. It includes all hardware and a large assortment of 
original software/manuals. Very nice!!!

- Roddy (the art guy across the hallway from our museum) finished 
putting our VCFed banner outside the building doorway. It's attached to 
a thick piece of white plexiglass which is held up by garden stakes. It 
looks very good. I'm going to get some white paint and go over the bolt 
heads.

- There were several families who visited today. They all stayed for 
full tours.

- Adam spent a couple of hours organizing part of our videogame console 
collection. He focused on systems and Atari VCF/2600 cartridges.

- Some pictures:
http://www.vcfed.org/evan/nextlogo.jpg
http://www.vcfed.org/evan/next1.jpg
http://www.vcfed.org/evan/next2.jpg
http://www.vcfed.org/evan/sign.jpg

________________________________
Evan Koblentz, director
Vintage Computer Federation
a 501(c)3 educational non-profit

evan at vcfed.org
(646) 546-9999

www.vcfed.org
facebook.com/vcfederation
twitter.com/vcfederation