VCF Gazette Volume 1, Issue 4

VCF Gazette Volume 1, Issue 4 A Newsletter for the Vintage Computer Festival February 12, 2003 Hello Vintage Computer Fans! There is exciting news in this issue, with yet another Apple-1 auction brought to you by the Vintage Computer Festival. In this issue: Apple-1 Auction VCF Europa 4.0 VCF East Update VCF Archives: On The Move VintageTech Punch Card Conversion Services Latest Additions to the VCF Archives Apple-1 Auction --------------- The Vintage Computer Festival, which has accidentally gained a reputation as the premier auctioneer of Apple-1 computers, is at it again. We are proud to announce our third Apple-1 auction! The Apple-1 we are currently auctioning is the finest example yet. It includes a wooden enclosure that neatly bundles the keyboard, power supply and Apple-1 board together into a nice, tidy unit. Information about the Apple-1, including information on how to register as a bidder, can be found here: http://www.vintage.org/special/2003/apple-1/ If you've been looking for an Apple-1 to add to your collection, this is your chance! VCF Europa 4.0 -------------- The fourth annual Vintage Computer Festival Europa is being held on May 3rd and 4th at the Mehrzweckhalle des ESV M?nchen Ost in Munich, Germany. VCF co-producer Hans Franke hosts another fine event that brings together Europe's most celebrated old machines. Lectures, exhibits, and some damn good German beer (served onsite!) await you. More information on VCF Europa 4.0 can be found here: http://www.vcfe.org/ Join us for some geeky fun, European style! VCF Archives: On The Move ------------------------- As of the last issue of the VCF Gazette, we announced our plans to open our VCF Archives to the public by the end of 2002. Well, fate, as always, has dealt an unexpected hand. The Alameda County Computer Resource Center, which graciously hosts the VCF Archives, abruptly announced in late November their intention to move into a new facility in Berkeley, California. As of this writing, the ACCRC is now in the midst of transitioning its operations into the new facility. The new facility in Berkeley is not as large as the Oakland facility, and so there is no room to set up the complete VCF Archives there. The VCF will have a small computer history exhibit in the corner of the new community center that the ACCRC is building to allow the local public access to computers and the internet. In the meantime, the ACCRC has concluded negotiations on a 42,000 square foot facility at the old Oakland Army Base in Oakland, California (only a few miles away from the existing location). This facility will be used primarily by the ACCRC for processing computer and electronics scrap that is received for recycling. The plan is for the VCF to move its archives to this facility and operate its publicly accessible archive from this location. The net effect for the VCF is that we are probably still about six months away from being able to offer our entire archives for public consumption. The move, while mildly inconvenient, is a strategic and necessary step by the ACCRC to grow its operations, and the VCF sees this as an opportunity to grow our own operations as well. The ACCRC is fully committed to hosting the VCF Archives, and the VCF is fully committed to supporting and promoting the ACCRC, which is probably the most successful and prolific non-profit organization in the world that distributes computer technology free of charge to deserving entities and individuals around the globe. Your support of the Alameda County Computer Resource Center is greatly welcomed and appreciated. You can read all about this fine organization at their website: http://www.accrc.org If you have the means, please consider sending them a donation. You might even consider volunteering your time. Their website contains complete donation and volunteer information. VCF East 2.0 Update ------------------- VCF East 2.0 is still in the planning stages. Our primary focus right now is locating a proper venue. Our focus continues to be on the Boston metropolitan area, which presents the most convenient prospects for staging VCF East. We will hopefully have a venue selected within 2 weeks, and will announce a date for VCF East 2.0 sometime in June. VCF East 2.0 is being planned according to a very tight budget. This is the first VCF that is being completely planned and budgeted in advance. This is out of necessity, due to the continuing prevailing economic conditions that make it difficult to run any business, let alone a short term function such as the Vintage Computer Festival. We must strictly adhere to this budget in order to make VCF Eeast 2.0 happen. We realize that many people are looking forward to VCF East 2.0 and we apologize for the continuing delays. However, we feel we are close to announcing a date and location. As soon as we have the information we'll be sure to make an immediate announcement so that attendees and exhibitors can make plans. So please, stay tuned! VintageTech Punch Card Conversion Services ------------------------------------------ VintageTech, the VCF off-shoot that provides old computer technology and services to business and academia, has recently gotten one of the VCF's old punch card readers working. The reader is a Documation M200, and even at nearly 30 years old it's still capable of reading 200 cards per minute, its top speed. The reader's interface, being meant to connect directly to a specific punch card reader controller in a DEC or other mini-computer, has no "modern" equivalent. In order to get the data from the reader to a PC, an converter needed to be built. We used what we knew: an Apple //e. The output of the reader can be considered to be 12-bit, since there are 12 data holes on a punch card. There are also several signal outputs that tell the host machine if there was a problem (such as a card getting stuck in the reader). Our Apple //e is fitted with a custom-built parallel interface card with 20 inputs. The data and signal inputs from the reader were wired into a special harness to fit the parallel card. Software to control the reader and decode the punch card data was developed on the Apple //e. As the data is read on the //e, it is sent over a serial port to a PC, where the data can then be saved to modern media for preservation. Reading punch card data into a PC involves two steps: first, the data on the card, as represented by the holes punched into it, must be decoded; second, that data, which can be stored in any one of over a dozen encodings, must be converted to ASCII. Punch cards evolved from the first machines that Herman Hollerith invented to conduct the 1890 census count for the United States. As punch card technology evolved, so did punch card character sets. Special symbols such as punctuation were added to the basic character set consisting of letters and numbers. Eventually, character set standards evolved. IBM, which for the most part pioneered punch card technology, had two common sets: "FORTRAN", used for FORTRAN program coding, and "Commercial", used for encoding general data. In each of these character sets, only a few minor punctuation characters have different encodings. The letters and numbers are encoded the same. Decoding punch card data is a matter of interpreting the holes. First of all, data is encoded on punch cards in columns. There are 80 columns on a typical punch card, and each column contains one encoded character. In fact, this 80 column width is the reason why computer terminals, and subsequently personal computers, usually had a screen width of 80 characters: it was a throw back to the punch card! Across the punch card there are 12 rows. The rows are numbered 1 through 9, and then 0, 11, 12. Encoding a number is simple. To encode a '5' for example, the 5 row is punched in a column. To encode a '0', the 0 row is punched. It's as simple as that. The rows 0, 11, and 12 are called "zones", and are used to encode letters and puncutation symbols. So for instance, to punch an 'A' character, the 12 hole and the 1 hole are punched. A 'B' is the 12 hole and the 2 hole, a 'C' is the 12 hole and the 3 hole, and so on, all the way up to 12 and 9, which is an 'I'. At that point, the alphabet continues in the next zone, which is 11. So 11 and 1 is 'J', 11 and 2 is 'K', etc. Finally, the alphabet ends at 0 and 9, which is 'Z'. Some characters are encoded by punching more than one hole. The most common special characters are encoded by punching the 3 and 8 or 4 and 8 holes and then one of the zones (0, 11 or 12). Some crazy character sets, like IBM's EBCDIC, can have up to 5 holes being punched to represent one character (usually a special control character). As the punch cards are whisked through the reader, the hole punches are sent over the interface to the Apple //e, which then interprets the data according to a character set table in memory that is used to decode the data from punch card codes into ASCII. That character is then flung over the serial port to a waiting PC that then captures and stores the data to a file. A typical 2000 card deck, representing 2000 lines of code or data (or 160,000 bytes maximum), can be read in about 10 minutes. By comparison, the Apple //e could read an entire 143K disk in under 6 seconds. And a typical PC today can devour that amount of data in less than a millisecond. How times have changed... A lot of useful programs and data are locked away on old punch cards. If you or someone you know has such data and would like to have it recovered, please visit VintageTech to inquire about our punch card data conversion services. VintageTech can also read and convert just about any old media format into a modern format. http://www.vintagetech.com Latest Additions to the VCF Archives ------------------------------------ Some cool new stuff has made its way into the VCF Archives. Here are the highlights: o Unassembled Ohio Scientific Superboard II kit (circa 1982) o LNW Research Corporation LNW80 (TRS-80 Model 1 clone) A long time ago, the VCF used to maintain what we called the "Recent Acquisitions Report" (RAR). This was a list of all the latest goodies that were found while out and about hunting for old computers. The RAR is defunct now, but the old entries are still up. In case anyone is interested in reviewing the old reports, you can find them here: http://www.vintage.org/vcf98/rar.htm The RAR as it stands represents one and a half years of VCF collecting efforts. The collection has of course continued to grow since then. You can check out the specs of the VCF Archives here: http://www.vintage.org/archive.php 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 PEACE ;) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *