[vcf-midatlantic] How did the System Source workshop go?

[Crawford Griffith]

Folks,

Reporting from my end of the tables (AKA the OSI corner) at the System
Source workshop last weekend…

Jonathan Chapman (Glitch) and Bill Dromgoole were working on the rare
14”Ohio Scientific hard drive that Glitch brought.  They got the OSI CD23
hard disk to give up data.  They captured 2 MB of data before the system
reset but the presence of some FORTH code showed they were getting real
data.  The magic combination was the original OSI 590 disk interface card
Glitch had restored plus Bill Dromgoole's 525 dual port RAM card. This
combo started providing believable data at 15 minutes before the 9pm
closing time on Saturday. Earlier Lou Ernst provided the LM311 comparator
that eliminated the Track zero sensor from the gremlin list.  Lou split his
time between the main work table room and the DEC room.

Bill D and Glitch helped me  (Crawford) get my OSI Challenger 1P to boot.
I got the extension RAM and disk board attached, after I got the RAM on the
mainboard sorted.  No boot from floppy disk yet, but we played with disk
lines and found some step/load functions were working.  I also got my
MicroCoreLabs MCL65+ emulator to run on an Apple II+ loaned by Alex Jacocks.

Dmitry was working at the same table as me.  He was working on Sun 3 stuff
getting some advice from Maki and others.  Dmitry was showing a California
Systems Star dual 8” floppy system he had found also.

Sunday, Maki got the power supply fixed and got monitor boot out of his
Techtronix 88k!  And also got to the monitor ROM and console via serial
port.

Alex J and Jonathan Sturges can chime in on their progress if they want.

Glitch (as usual) was helping basically *everybody*.  David Gesswein also
checked in occasionally from the DEC room and answered questions and gave
advice.

I met Justin who was working on Commodore 64 stuff, he was a first time
attendee of a VCF workshop.

Katheryn/Kat (sp?) was there with her Apple plotter and Apple II, trying to
get it all working correctly.  (Also a first time attendee).

The System Source folks, Bob Roswell, Ryan Burke, Ryan Schiff, and others
did their usual great job hosting.  It was much appreciated!

Sorry if I got any names wrong, and was not able to meet anyone.

-Crawford