VCF Gazette Volume 2 Issue 3

VCF Gazette Volume 2, Issue 3 A Newsletter for the Vintage Computer Festival July 4, 2004 We're busier than we've ever been here at the VCF, so this newsletter will be short... Vintage Computer Festival East 2.0 Vintage Computer Festival Europa 5.0 Wrap-Up VCF Creates PDP-1 Replica for National Science Museum of Japan Latest Additions to the VCF Archives Vintage Computer Festival East 2.0 ---------------------------------- The second Vintage Computer Festival East takes place on Friday, July 16th and Saturday, July 17th, at Burlington, Massachusetts, campus of Sun Microsystems. We are honored to have Sun Microsystems as the sponsor for VCF East! We've got an excellent line up of speakers and exhibits this time around, with nearly twice the number of exhibits of VCF East 1.0. Please note that attendees of VCF East 2.0 must register in advance. You may register here: http://www.vintage.org/2004/east/register.php For out of town guests, the VCF has arranged a hotel room block at a nearby Marriott (within walking distance to Sun's campus). Full details are available here: http://www.vintage.org/2004/east/lodging.php The VCF speaker schedule is as follows: Friday, July 16 Time Topic Speaker ------- ------------------------------------- ------------------- 10:00am Atari 7800 25th Anniversary C. Vendel/S. Golson 11:00am VCF Ramblings Sellam Ismail 12:00pm Preserving Computing's Past... Bob Supnik 1:00pm A Retrospective of Storage Technology Sun Microsystems Saturday, July 17 Time Topic Speaker ------- ------------------------------------- ------------------ 10:00am A Personal History of Computing Art Hill 11:00am Resurrecting an IBM 360/30 Lawrence Wilkinson 12:00pm PDAs 1973-1992 Evan Koblentz 1:00pm Personal Computing in the early 1970s Jon Titus More information on the VCF East 2.0 speakers can be found here: http://www.vintage.org/2004/east/speaker.php Buy, Sell and Trade at the VCF Marketplace As always, one of the most exciting aspects of the VCF is the Marketplace, where you can find a large and varied assortment of some of the most fantastical old computer thingies anywhere. Find that odd part you've been seeking out for your collection, then touch, smell, even taste it if you like, before haggling out a deal. There is simply no better place to buy and sell vintage computers than at the VCF Marketplace. Vendor booths are still available. For more information on selling at VCF East 2.0, please visit: http://www.vintage.org/2004/east/vendor.php Complete information about VCF East 2.0, including the speaker schedule and exhibit roster, as well as lodging information and driving directions, can be found on the VCF East 2.0 web pages: http://www.vintage.org/2004/east/ Vintage Computer Festival Europa 5.0 Wrap-Up -------------------------------------------- VCF Europa 5.0 was a smashing success! We had over 300 attendees and close to 40 exhibitors. Hans Franke served up another fine glass of VCF, German style. We'd hoped to have a photo gallery of VCF Europa ready by the time of this publishing but the last two months have been rather hectic for us here at VCF central. Read on below to find out why. In the meantime, the dates for VCF Europa 6.0 has already been set: April 30 through May 1, 2005. And of course, the location will be Muenchen (Munich), Germany, though the venue may change from its traditional location to a larger facility. We've added another European event to the VCF line-up: VCF Italia 1.0 will be inaugurated this September 4-5. More information will be posted shortly to the VCF website. We'll post our VCF Europa 5.0 photo gallery by the end of July, so stay tuned for that. VCF Creates PDP-1 Replica for National Science Museum of Japan -------------------------------------------------------------- The reason we've been so busy of late is because Sellam Ismail, the main guy behind the VCF, has been busy finishing up a replica of a PDP-1 that was commissioned for the National Science Museum of Japan. The NSM needed a PDP-1 for an upcoming exhibit they are unveiling on Saturday, July 16. They contacted the Computer History Museum, but they had none to loan out, so they were forwarded to the VCF since we have experience building quality replicas of vintage computers. The NSM wanted a functional replica, and so the VCF delivered. We fabricated a near exact replica of a PDP-1 CPU cabinet and CRT desk console. It features a functional front panel and a working CRT playing Spacewar! http://www.vintage.org/gallery.php?grouptag=PDP1REPLICA On the inside we have a PC running Linux with Bob Supnik's PDP-1 SIMH simulator providing the machine emulation and Phil Budne's graphics display extensions to allow for Spacewar! to play. The front panel is implemented with a custom-designed front panel controller (FPC) designed by Andre' LaMothe of Nurve Networks[1]. The FPC has 128 outputs (lights) and 64 inputs (switches) and connects to the PC's parallel port. Code was added to SIMH which sends the internal PDP-1 CPU machine registers (address bus, program counter, accumulator, etc.) to the FPC, which then populates the appropriate lamps on the front panel. The switch values are read by additional code which then populates internal data structures within SIMH to allow for user input from the front panel switches. The replica PDP-1 was crated and sent off to Tokyo on Friday, July 2. It'll go on display for three months beginning on July 16 at the National Science Museum in Tokyo. The website of the National Science Museum of Japan is here: http://www.kahaku.go.jp/english/ Want your own PDP-1 replica? The VCF will be making available for sale the Front Panel Controller and PDP-1 front panels. Heck, we'll even make you a complete replica. Please send inquiries to Sellam Ismail <sellam(a)vintage.org>rg>. Latest Additions to the VCF Archives ------------------------------------ This edition of the Latest Additions has a moral at the end, so pay attention. A couple weeks ago I was searching around in thrift stores in my local area for some classic Atari joysticks for a friend's project[1]. At one store I happened upon a nondescript electronic desk calculator. However, there was something subtle about it that caught my attention. I gave it a closer look: it was a Unicom 141P calculator. The label on the back indicated it was made in Japan. It was definitely a 1970s vintage. "Unicom" sounded familiar to me. I was trying to remember the name of the calculator company for which Intel initially designed the 4004 microprocessor (Busicom) but was drawing a blank. At any rate, the calculator had a $5 sticker on it, so I figured it was worth buying so I could research it later, and worst case I would have a nice 1970s desktop calculator to add to the collection. Well, imagine my surprise when I opened it up and found a 4004 inside along with all the Intel 4000 series support chips! Rick Bensene, one of the most prolific calculator collectors out there, provided me with this information: "Unicom was a company that was started up as a spinoff of IC maker American Microsystems (AMI). There's little out there about the history of the company in its early days, but it's possible that Unicom initially started out simply OEMing machines from Busicom, until they had developed their own chips. Busicom for a time had an exclusive on the 4004 as the result of their joint effort with Intel to develop a reconfigurable general purpose calculator chipset, which ended up morphing into a microprocessor. "I do know that Busicom did OEM their machines to a number of different marketers of early electronic calculators, and perhaps Unicom was one of them. Busicom's machine with the 4004 was the 141PF (they weren't shy about recycling model numbers, as the 141 was a lower-cost version of Busicom's first machine, the 162, which was indeed a discrete transistor machine). The 141PF was a printing only machine. Looking at patent information, the architecture of the design was such that it could be adapted (part of the whole idea that spurred the development of the 4004 in the first place) to use a display rather than a printer. "So, my guess (and it's just that at this point) is that the machine you have is an adaptation of the original 141PF design, done either by Busicom either on their own, or under contract to Unicom, which was sold under the Unicom brand name in North America. Later, AMI sold off the Unicom division to Rockwell, and for a while, Rockwell sold handheld calculators under this brand, then abandoned the Unicom brand and sold their machines (using their own chips) under the Rockwell brand, as well as through other OEMs." So the moral of the story is, don't judge a gift horse by its mouth :) Many 1970s era calculators have early microprocessors, so even if you don't find one with a 4004, it may end up containing an interesting microprocessor contemporaneous with the 4004, or even an interesting discrete design. But please don't go trashing old calculators just to rip the microprocessors out of them. For more great information on old calculators, visit what I consider to be the best calculator information site on the web, Rick Bensene's Old Calculator Web Museum: http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/ [1] Check out Andre' LaMothe's upcoming XGameStation: http://www.xgamestation.com That wraps it up for this issue of the VCF Gazette! Until next time... Best regards, Sellam Ismail Producer Vintage Computer Festival http://www.vintage.org/ The Vintage Computer Festival is a celebration of computers and their history. The VCF Gazette goes out to anyone who subscribed to the VCF mailing list, and is intended to keep those interested in the VCF informed of the latest VCF events and happenings. The VCF Gazette is guaranteed to be published in a somewhat irregular manner, though we will try to maintain a quarterly schedule. If you would like to be removed from the VCF mailing list, and therefore not receive any more issues of the VCF Gazette, visit the following web page: http://www.vintage.org/remove.php HAHA ;) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]