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Re: Data General MV/8000 emulator announcement (Bruce Ray)

by Evan Linwood

> A Data General MV/8000 emulator beta release is now available from my DG > legacy preservation web site: This is really something - thanks so much Bruce!

2 years

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The CMoaA is OK

by Adam Thornton

> > > was reading 16million was raised and going to charity or something?? and > > that the rest got bought by another museum > > > > > https://www.geekwire.com/2024/paul-allen-estate-sells-remaining-living-comp… > > Oh, it's the CMoA? That's actually really really good news. The last time I was in Atlanta, before my parents moved out here (so...2019?), I had a couple hours to kill on my way to visit a high school friend. So I went there, wandered around, and left their Atari on the Easter Egg screen in Adventure. One of the staff noticed that, talked to me for a bit, and asked me to wait while he phoned up Lonnie Mimms (the founder) and asked him to come in and meet me. We talked for a good hour, and it was great. I would describe what he's done there as what I would have liked to have done if I had come from a family business of real-estate-developer money, rather than (not that I'm complaining) IT consultant/sysadmin/software-developer money. The CMoA was not as hands-on as LCM, but it did have some working machines you could play with. Whatever Lonnie got his hands on from the LCM is unlikely to be sold for the metal value. Five years ago, anyway, he seemed serious and his restoration work looked pretty legit. Adam

2 years

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Dysan Alignment and Performance Testers

by Bill Degnan

I have accumulated various Dysan testers, disks and manuals. Does anyone still use these? I dont recall anyone mentioning use of this tool set but obviously Dysan sold a lot of their testers Bill

2 years

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Bonhams Auction: APPLE "TWIGGY" MACINTOSH PROTOTYPE USED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEMONSTRATION SOFTWARE.

by Christian Liendo

https://www.bonhams.com/auction/29514/preview-lot/5918785/apple-twiggy-maci… APPLE "TWIGGY" MACINTOSH PROTOTYPE USED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEMONSTRATION SOFTWARE. Macintosh Personal Computer, Apple Computers Inc, Cupertino, CA, [1983], with 5-1/4 inch "Twiggy" disk drive with corresponding slot in front panel, prototype mouse, prototype keyboard. Includes logic board 820-0086-00, copyrighted 1983, featuring Jean-Michel Folon "Mac Man" (Mr. Macintosh) on the edge, with 512 EPROM Adapter board also featuring "Mac Man," contained in pre-production plastic molded case, 330 x 245 x 250 mm, with smooth plastic front panel and with textured plastic case that bears Macintosh team signature molded to interior, but with only Apple logo on back panel and with Apple logo and Macintosh logo in reversed locations as seen only on prototypes, 3 of 4 Trend Plastics rubber feet with Apple logo. Includes prototype keyboard that bears handwritten serial number on label on lower panel and 3 of 4 Trend Plastics rubber feet with Apple logo; prototype M01000 mouse that bears serial number label, but with prototype connector. includes dual density "Twiggy" diskette labeled "Mac Word." THE MACHINE THAT "HAS CHANGED OUR LIVES FOREVER" (Wozniak). Extremely desirable Macintosh prototype with 5 1/4-inch "Twiggy" drive. Original Macintosh team member Dan Kottke on the Folklore.org website fixes the date of this iteration of the digital board to May 1983. The Macintosh began as a personal project of Jef Raskin, who envisioned a Swiss army knife of a computer: a low-cost, easy-to-use, high-volume appliance named for his favorite apple. Already by 1981, utilizing the 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 microprocessor used in the Lisa, they had the design for a machine 60% faster and much less expensive than the Lisa. It was this design that caught the attention of Steve Jobs who, after being removed from the Lisa project, was looking for something new to capture his attention. Once Jobs took interest in the project, it wasn't long before Raskin was forced out. Jobs "immediately saw that [Apple engineer] Burrell [Smith]'s machine could become the future of Apple" (Hertzfeld p 121). Jobs took over the project in January 1981 and more than changed the direction, he wanted to build a "friendly" computer: the personal computer as a tool for personal empowerment. He engendered a non-conformist attitude in his team and a shared vision of a product that was "insanely great." It was an approach that was utilized years later when Jobs returned to save Apple with the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. "The best products, he [Jobs] believed, were 'whole widgets' that were designed end-to-end, with the software closely tailored to the hardware and vice versa. This is what would distinguish the Macintosh, which had an operating system that worked only on its own hardware, from the environment of Microsoft was creating in which its operating system could be used on hardware made by many different companies" (Isaacson p 137). The Macintosh would take the GUI (graphical user interface) that Steve Jobs and the Lisa developers had borrowed from Xerox PARC as well as the WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) approach also pioneered at Xerox PARC and make it accessible to the masses. Jobs recognized the importance of third-party software developers. After all, it was the third-party spreadsheet program Visicalc, created first only for the Apple II, that drove many to adopt the personal computer—beginning with the Apple II. The team also realized that they had to show software developers how to work with this new playground. Unlike the Apple II where each piece of software could have its own key commands, they wanted to maintain a consistent user experience. The present computer was used by an in-house team member who had moved to Macintosh from the Lisa team. He was tasked with developing demonstrations to show off the computer's capabilities. Among the last-minute major changes to the Macintosh was the disk drive. The original plan was to use the new 5 ¼-inch "Twiggy" drive that was built to greatly expand the capacity of standard floppy disks. It soon became apparent with the release of the Lisa, which featured 2 of these drives, that they were very unreliable and that it would be unfeasible to rely on a single "Twiggy" drive. The team scrambled, under the direction of Jobs, to develop their own 3.5-inch drive with Japanese company Alps based on the latest Sony drive, but realized, excepting Jobs, that they would never make it in time for the projected ship date. The team had to secretly work with Sony until Jobs was ready to acknowledge this—at one point having to hide a Sony employee in the closet to maintain the secret. The finished Macintosh used the new disk format which featured the same data rate as the Twiggy, was more robust than a 5 ¼ inch floppy and small enough to fit into a shirt pocket. Reportedly, Jobs had all of the existing Twiggy prototypes destroyed. The new Macintosh was launched during Superbowl XVIII with what is considered by many to be the greatest commercial of all time, "1984" by Ridley Scott. "The ad cast Macintosh as a warrior for the latter cause—a cool, rebellious, and heroic company that was the only thing standing in the way of the big evil corporation's plan for world domination and total mind control" (Isaacson p 162). Although originally sales were sluggish, the Macintosh's all-in-one, friendly design at a reasonable price eventually won out, and the "insanely great" philosophy of Steve Jobs that it embodied informs the devices that today have been inextricably woven into the fabric of daily life. Hertzfield. Revolution in the Valley. [Sebastopol, 2005]; Isaacson. Steve Jobs NY: [2011]; Levy. Insanely Great [NY: 1995]; Kottke, Daniel. "Macintosh Prototypes." Folklore.Org. Footnotes "There are occasionally short windows in time when incredibly important things get invented that shape the lives of humans for hundreds of years. These events are impossible to anticipate, and the inventors, the participants, are often working not for reasons of money, but for the personal satisfaction of making something great. The development of the Macintosh computer was one of these events, and it has changed our lives forever. Every computer today is basically a Macintosh, a very different type of computer from those that preceded it." Steve Wozniak from the forward of Revolution in the Valley. "I'm one of those people who think that Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world a lot more than Karl Marx ever did" (Steve Jobs quoted in Levy's Insanely Great).

2 years

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93448PC ROM tube

by Bill Degnan

I have a tube of 93448PC ROMS labeled as such: 502991-01 4000-41FF 502991-02 4200-43FF 502991-03 4400-45FF 502991-04 4600-47FF 502991-04 4600-47FF 504236 PAL RM-DPS 1600-14FF 1 unmarked Any guess as to what these went to? Anyone recognize these numbers? Commodore B Series? Throwin' a hail mary pass here Bill

2 years

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Nintendo is 135 years old

by Tomasz Rola

Hi Quite classic. You would not have believed it - they were not making consoles when they started. [ Nintendo at 135: Key moments in gaming history https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/c79n845rrj0o ] -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **

2 years

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VCF Swap Meet - Wall, NJ - Oct. 26, 2024

by Jeffrey Brace

IT’S GOING TO BE A *COOL *ONE! 60 degrees, sunny and dry. So buy a VCF hoodie when you get there ;-D We are again having our popular tech swap meet on Saturday Oct. 26 and it will be bigger than ever! VENDOR SIGNUP <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfidEMst2MBUxAXSwYTz7AY3MhzNyNt-y4…> CLICK HERE FOR GENERAL INFORMATION <https://vcfed.org/vcf-swap-meet/> *FOOD TRUCK*: We will once again have John’s Cracker Barrel selling delicious food from their food truck. I will see you there! Stay warm! INFORMATION IS HERE: https://vcfed.org/vcf-swap-meet/ Blog Post is here: https://vcfed.org/2024/09/27/tech-swap-meet-sat-oct-26-near-infoage/ Take care! Jeff Brace VCF Mid-Atlantic Event Manager Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/>

2 years

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request for 5.25 floppies

by Steve Lewis

I feel a little silly asking this, I hope it is not an overly inappropriate request for this mailing list. But does anyone here in the States happen to have a stack of known-good 5.25 disks they don't want anymore? And more specifically, would it be possible for anyone to image such a disk with a copy of PC-DOS 2.0 or earlier? (and maybe on up to 3.3 or so) The later part is the service that would be more helpful to me. I finally have a drive for an old system that currently uses bubble memory cartridges to boot to PC-DOS 2.0, and so we'd like to see if (using these external drives) it could also boot to a (confirmed legit) image of IBM PC-DOS (and/or very early Microsoft DOS). Or, do we still need some kind of proprietary Sharp DOS image? (in which case, extra blank disk would be good, as I think there are tools on these bubble memory cartridges to initialize disks accordingly). An actual 160KB formatted PC DOS 1.0 would be fantastic to have on hand - but the 180KB slightly later image would be fine also (and then also to experiment how far "past 2.0" that this system might support, if at all). For shipping/delivery purposes, I'm in north Texas. When I got these drives, I then realized I no longer have any 5.25 floppies anymore - and even if I did, then I'm not quite sure how to get the images on there (did anyone ever make a "USB-to-5.25" drive? I have a couple 3.5 versions of those - maybe the power to motor the 5.25 is too much for USB? :D ). Thanks, SteveL

2 years

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LCM auction

by Brent Hilpert

2 years

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Siemens 4004 mainframe pictures on bitsavers

by P Gebhardt

Hello list, out of curiosity: Does anybody know where the two pictures of the Siemens 4004 CPU uploaded on http://bitsavers.org/pdf/siemens/4004/Model_15/pictures/ where taken? Are these from the unit being part of the SAP collection at CHM? Cheers, Pierre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.digitalheritage.de

2 years

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