3 Mar
2005
3 Mar
'05
10:16 p.m.
All:
I had an idea for an Easter Egg within the Altair32 Emulator. I
remember a story that you could run a certain program on the Altair and hold
an AM radio next to the Altair and you would hear music. IIRC, the song was
"Daisy" as was played in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Does anyone (1) have this program in source and/or binary and (2)
can someone make a high-quality WAV file of it for me (since I don't have an
Altair)?
I figure I could take some liberties within the emulator code to
checksum/MD5 hash code loaded into the emulation space and if the music
binary is loaded, it'll set a flag which when RUN is toggled, the WAV would
play.
Wadda 'ya think?
Rich
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
/************************************************************/
3 Mar
3 Mar
11:06 p.m.
Richard A. Cini wrote:
All:
I had an idea for an Easter Egg within the Altair32 Emulator. I
remember a story that you could run a certain program on the Altair and hold
an AM radio next to the Altair and you would hear music. IIRC, the song was
"Daisy" as was played in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Does anyone (1) have this program in source and/or binary and (2)
can someone make a high-quality WAV file of it for me (since I don't have an
Altair)?
This isn't a direct answer, but just the same ...
I recorded the sounds coming from an AM radio near my Sol while the game
TARG was playing. TARG's instructions also suggest doing this trick.
It is no coincidence since the author of TARG is the same guy who did
the trick at the now legendary meeting of the homebrew meeting -- steve
dompier (I know, others did it decades before him on even older machines).
You can listen to it yourself:
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/targ_am.mp3
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/targ_am.wav
(the two are the same sounds, just in different formats)
11:23 p.m.
Jim Battle wrote:
You can listen to it yourself:
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/targ_am.mp3
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/targ_am.wav
That sounds like crap :-) What I want to hear is Dompier's "The Fool on the
Hill" code.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
11:23 p.m.
At 09:16 PM 3/3/2005, Richard A. Cini wrote:
I had an idea for an Easter Egg within the Altair32
Emulator. I
remember a story that you could run a certain program on the Altair and hold
an AM radio next to the Altair and you would hear music. IIRC, the song was
"Daisy" as was played in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I remember listening to sounds via AM radio in Target or Trek on
an IMSAI circa 1979 or so. For that matter, it was fun just
to listen to the sound coming from the radio when you did different
things on the computer.
Might we be able to begin to speculate exactly which parts of the
Altair or IMSAI were the source of AM frequency emanations?
Might there be a clever way to emulate the AM sound of the emulated code,
generating the radio sound directly through the PC's audio system?
- John
4 Mar
4 Mar
1:44 a.m.
At 08:23 PM 3/3/2005, you wrote:
-snip-
I remember listening to sounds via AM radio in Target or Trek on
an IMSAI circa 1979 or so. For that matter, it was fun just
to listen to the sound coming from the radio when you did different
things on the computer.
I remember that the program Dancing Demon on the TRS-80 model I did music
and tap effects if you put an AM radio near the machine :)
11:18 a.m.
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, John Foust wrote:
Might we be able to begin to speculate exactly which
parts of the
Altair or IMSAI were the source of AM frequency emanations?
Might there be a clever way to emulate the AM sound of the emulated code,
generating the radio sound directly through the PC's audio system?
Very cool idea. This should be possible. I have no suggestions,
unfortunately.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
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11:34 a.m.
At 10:18 AM 3/4/2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, John Foust wrote:
I would guess that the answer to "What generates the AM tone?"
might differ between systems. One answer lies in disassembling the
code that makes the sound. Each program might have its own unique
method. Is it mem-copy loops, on-chip or off-chip execution loops,
I/O pokes, patterns in bus access? Another answer might come from
measuring the intensity of the radiated interference at various
parts of the machine. So far, it all sounds like something that
could be emulated.
I've always thought that emulators should come with much more familiar
sound effects, like the sounds of keyboards, disk drive doors
opening and closing, floppy steppers engaging, fans, tapes turning, etc.
That's all part of the memory we're savoring and preserving, no?
I'll stop at smell-o-vision - although I have nasal memories of
particular computer parts, too, like blowtorching 74xx chips off
scrap boards as a teen, or the particular melange of out-gassing
or baking of plastics.
- John
Might there be a clever way to emulate the AM
sound of the emulated code,
generating the radio sound directly through the PC's audio system?
Very cool idea. This should be possible. I have no suggestions,
unfortunately.
12:47 p.m.
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, John Foust wrote:
I've always thought that emulators should come
with much more familiar
sound effects, like the sounds of keyboards, disk drive doors
opening and closing, floppy steppers engaging, fans, tapes turning, etc.
That's all part of the memory we're savoring and preserving, no?
It's one final touch that can be added to a simulator that makes it stand
out, that's for certain.
The EDSAC simulator also emulates the printer output (whack whack whack
for each character), the bell, and the telephone dial input. Very neat.
I'll stop at smell-o-vision - although I have
nasal memories of
particular computer parts, too, like blowtorching 74xx chips off
scrap boards as a teen, or the particular melange of out-gassing
or baking of plastics.
If someone does want to do this, I have an aroma synthesizer somewhere in
my collection that was made in the late 1980s. I don't have any
information on it or how it works (I'd have to find it first) but at least
we know they do exist ;)
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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1:38 p.m.
John Foust wrote:
...
I've always thought that emulators should come
with much more familiar
sound effects, like the sounds of keyboards, disk drive doors
opening and closing, floppy steppers engaging, fans, tapes turning, etc.
That's all part of the memory we're savoring and preserving, no?
My Sol-20 emulator has sound effects. There fan startup and running
noise, the floppy disk door opening and closing, floppy disk head
stepping, floppy motor start and stop, and disk friction noise. Since
the real keyboard makes enough noise on its own I don't see what would
be added by having fake keyboard noise too.
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/solace/solace.html
When I recorded the sounds I first used a dynamic microphone but the
coil picked up more RF hum than anything else. An electret mic fixed
that problem. It took a while to splice the fan sounds so they would
loop nicely. The head stepping sound is of it stepping one track, but
it does a fairly good job even when there is fast head stepping.
One other thing I have done is to emulate the music card -- just a
single pole RC lowpass filter hooked up to the S-100 INT* line. The
"MUSIC" program would take a score and compile it into a program to
toggle the INT line to produce polyphonic music -- although the notes
aren't very well tempered as they get higher in frequency. It is pretty
impressive that it works as well as it does:
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/d-minor.mp3
I recently upgraded PC's and now my own emulator doesn't run right and
the sound comes out only when I'm using the debugger. I guess it is
about to time spin a revision on the emulator.
4:01 p.m.
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Jim Battle wrote:
One other thing I have done is to emulate the music
card -- just a
single pole RC lowpass filter hooked up to the S-100 INT* line. The
"MUSIC" program would take a score and compile it into a program to
toggle the INT line to produce polyphonic music -- although the notes
aren't very well tempered as they get higher in frequency. It is pretty
impressive that it works as well as it does:
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/d-minor.mp3
I recently upgraded PC's and now my own emulator doesn't run right and
the sound comes out only when I'm using the debugger. I guess it is
about to time spin a revision on the emulator.
Very cool! Did you record this from the emulator or from an actual
Sol-20? It sounds as good as what the Apple ][ could produce, which I
suppose makes sense since it's generating sound using the same principal.
How do I load and play the sound files?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
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5:10 p.m.
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Jim Battle wrote:
The whole thing, along with a PDF of the manual is on his Sol software
page:
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/solpgms.html
The manual includes the (very simple) schematic for the "interface".
Now that I know that a VCF judge has pronounced it "Very cool!" I think
I'll have my Sol running this at the next VCF East. ;-)
Bill S.
One other thing I have done is to emulate the
music card -- just a
single pole RC lowpass filter hooked up to the S-100 INT* line. The
"MUSIC" program would take a score and compile it into a program to
toggle the INT line to produce polyphonic music -- although the notes
aren't very well tempered as they get higher in frequency. It is pretty
impressive that it works as well as it does:
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/d-minor.mp3
I recently upgraded PC's and now my own emulator doesn't run right and
the sound comes out only when I'm using the debugger. I guess it is
about to time spin a revision on the emulator.
Very cool! Did you record this from the emulator or from an actual
Sol-20? It sounds as good as what the Apple ][ could produce, which I
suppose makes sense since it's generating sound using the same principal.
How do I load and play the sound files?
6:57 p.m.
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Jim Battle wrote:
>One other thing I have done is to emulate the music card -- just a
>single pole RC lowpass filter hooked up to the S-100 INT* line. The
>"MUSIC" program would take a score and compile it into a program to
>toggle the INT line to produce polyphonic music -- although the notes
>aren't very well tempered as they get higher in frequency. It is pretty
>impressive that it works as well as it does:
>
>http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/d-minor.mp3
...
Very cool! Did you record this from the emulator or
from an actual
Sol-20? It sounds as good as what the Apple ][ could produce, which I
suppose makes sense since it's generating sound using the same principal.
How do I load and play the sound files?
The web site has the MUSIC program that you can load into memory, and a
number of scores that can either be loaded directly into memory or which
can be "sourced" into the keyboard as if you had typed them (the
cassette emulation would work too, but I didn't bother putting all of
this on virtual cassettes because it is as painful to use as a real
cassette).
Once you load a score, you have to compile it (IIRC just type
"S<return>"), then you can play it ("P<return>"). In the
emulator
control panel turn on sound; there are also three sliders for setting
the volume of for the INT RC filter, for the fan noise, and disk noise.
There is also a button for dumping the output to a .WAV file. One
more thing to watch out for is that the program uses the 8b DIP switch
settings to control the tempo; flip them all from what the emulator
defaults them to (all on instead of all off, I think).
I don't have a "sound card", although it would be trivial to make one.
The sample is just captured from the emulator.
8:08 p.m.
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Jim Battle wrote:
The web site has the MUSIC program that you can load
into memory, and a
number of scores that can either be loaded directly into memory or which
can be "sourced" into the keyboard as if you had typed them (the
cassette emulation would work too, but I didn't bother putting all of
this on virtual cassettes because it is as painful to use as a real
cassette).
It's also included in the ZIP file with the full simulator :)
Once you load a score, you have to compile it (IIRC
just type
"S<return>"), then you can play it ("P<return>"). In the
emulator
control panel turn on sound; there are also three sliders for setting
the volume of for the INT RC filter, for the fan noise, and disk noise.
Ok, got it working. It helps to RTFM. This is so wonderful! I'd have to
say the sound is even better than what you could get out of the Apple ][.
At best the Apple ][ could be made to do 2 voices nicely.
Thanks for scanning the MUSIC manual. Jim, you have one of the *best*
vintage computing preservation websites on the web. Your page is simply
phenomenal, along with all the effort you put in to develop the simulator,
scan all the hardware/software manuals, digitize all the software tapes,
assemble all the software for download, etc.
I've had the simulated fans running in the background all day. It adds a
nice atmosphere to my office :)
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5 Mar
5 Mar
10:12 a.m.
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 22:23:59 -0600
John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote:
At 09:16 PM 3/3/2005, Richard A. Cini wrote:
A few times in the distant past, I've debugged embedded controller
hardware using an AM radio. The noise you hear varies directly with
whatever failure the hardware has made, i.e. where it's looping. It's
very similar to the quick-and-dirty 'signature analyzer' one can make
using two DACs hooked to the address bus and to X and Y inputs on an
oscilloscope, to 'look' at where a processor is looping in the address
space. In a production setting, where you're troubleshooting a lot of
the same device, it becomes easy to recognize the 'proper operating
sound' that the AM radio emits. With further work, you can figure out
what 'tune' signifies which failure of the hardware.
I had an idea for an Easter Egg within the
Altair32 Emulator. I
remember a story that you could run a certain program on the Altair
and hold an AM radio next to the Altair and you would hear music.
IIRC, the song was"Daisy" as was played in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I remember listening to sounds via AM radio in Target or Trek on
an IMSAI circa 1979 or so. For that matter, it was fun just
to listen to the sound coming from the radio when you did different
things on the computer.
Might we be able to begin to speculate exactly which parts of the
Altair or IMSAI were the source of AM frequency emanations?
Might there be a clever way to emulate the AM sound of the emulated
code, generating the radio sound directly through the PC's audio
system?
- John
10:24 a.m.
Steve:
I like the DAC to oscilloscope trick. What I'm now looking for is the code
Dompier used to produce those bus emissions so I can trigger playing a WAV
file. Since the emulator doesn't have a bus to use as an AM transmitter, I
need to fake it.
Good thing the Altair was made before FCC Title 15 compliance :-)
Rich
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
/************************************************************/
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Scott Stevens
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 10:12 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Altair32 Emulator "Easter Egg" idea
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 22:23:59 -0600
John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote:
At 09:16 PM 3/3/2005, Richard A. Cini wrote:
A few times in the distant past, I've debugged embedded controller
hardware using an AM radio. The noise you hear varies directly with
whatever failure the hardware has made, i.e. where it's looping. It's
very similar to the quick-and-dirty 'signature analyzer' one can make
using two DACs hooked to the address bus and to X and Y inputs on an
oscilloscope, to 'look' at where a processor is looping in the address
space. In a production setting, where you're troubleshooting a lot of
the same device, it becomes easy to recognize the 'proper operating
sound' that the AM radio emits. With further work, you can figure out
what 'tune' signifies which failure of the hardware.
I had an idea for an Easter Egg within the
Altair32 Emulator. I
remember a story that you could run a certain program on the Altair
and hold an AM radio next to the Altair and you would hear music.
IIRC, the song was"Daisy" as was played in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I remember listening to sounds via AM radio in Target or Trek on
an IMSAI circa 1979 or so. For that matter, it was fun just
to listen to the sound coming from the radio when you did different
things on the computer.
Might we be able to begin to speculate exactly which parts of the
Altair or IMSAI were the source of AM frequency emanations?
Might there be a clever way to emulate the AM sound of the emulated
code, generating the radio sound directly through the PC's audio
system?
- John
4 Mar
4 Mar
8:15 a.m.
remember a story that you could run a certain program
on the Altair and hold
an AM radio next to the Altair and you would hear music.
A few years earlier than the Altair, a DECUS package let you do this
on a PDP-10. See
http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib10-01/01/43,50011/mblurb.txt.html
(NOTE: For simple, quick-and dirty listening, placing a
transistor radio near the MI, or near Bay 2 of the KA10
will produce the music, but hardly in Hi Fi.)
Tim.
8:50 a.m.
shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com wrote:
I remember seeing this on a IBM 1620. I have no idea what the program
was called but as I recall (dimly) it used a 'field copy' command which,
I think, would copy digits backward until it hit a field marker. If I
remember correctly the length of the field affected the frequency heard
(but who knows, maybe it was affecting the duty cycle). I think it only
had one voice. It was a nice piece.
Anyway, the repertoire (on punch cards) was large and varied. I
rememeber the Christmas carols fondly :-)
It all started (much like the 8" floppy story :-) when I asked, "what's
the radio for?". Next thing I know - music!
That machine also had a very nice Calcomp plotter. I miss plotters.
-brad
remember a
story that you could run a certain program on the Altair and hold
an AM radio next to the Altair and you would hear music.
A few years earlier than the Altair, a DECUS package let you do this
on a PDP-10. See
http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib10-01/01/43,50011/mblurb.txt.html
(NOTE: For simple, quick-and dirty listening, placing a
transistor radio near the MI, or near Bay 2 of the KA10
will produce the music, but hardly in Hi Fi.) 
10:19 a.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
There is someone (CRAZY) who is doing the same thing with dot-matrix printer
head movement and printing, and the best thing is, it really sounds quite good.
Here's an example: http://www.qotile.net/audio/printer2.mp3
(that example is featured in Jason Scott's upcoming BBS documentary, btw)
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
That machine
also had a very nice Calcomp plotter. I miss plotters.
I thik one of the old HP plotters would "sing" a song using the motors,
given the proper power up sequence.
10:25 a.m.
I thik one of the old HP plotters would
"sing" a song using the motors,
given the proper power up sequence.
An a.f.c story from the 90's that I remember is a printer company
putting diagnostics in a dot matrix printer's firmware, so that on
checksum/other internal failures a song was played out through the
stepper motors. These diagnostics were intended largely for development/
factory use. One day the support group got a call from a user who
was having a problem with a printer, but seemed strangely reluctant
to actually describe the symptoms. After much cajoling, they finally
got the customer to admit that indeed, every time the printer was
turned on all it did was play "Camptown ladies" over and over again...
this immediately told the engineers which ROM had failed!
Tim.
11:58 a.m.
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, William Donzelli wrote:
I have a program that plays "Daisy" on the Commodore 1541 disk drive(!)
Miraculous.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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That machine
also had a very nice Calcomp plotter. I miss plotters.
I thik one of the old HP plotters would "sing" a song using the motors,
given the proper power up sequence. 
2:46 p.m.
That machine also had a very nice Calcomp plotter. I
miss plotters.
I thik one of the old HP plotters would "sing" a song using the motors,
given the proper power up sequence.
4:15 p.m.
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
ooh, ooh! Copy, please ;)
Never checked to see what it does to alignment but maybe I'll run some
tests and fine out.
A chorus sounds like a nice idea :)
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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I have a
program that plays "Daisy" on the Commodore 1541 disk drive(!)
Miraculous.
It does it by knocking the drive heads around. I have a DriveComposer archive
that will let you compose arbitrary music for the 1541 (imagine a whole
chorus of them ... ) ... couldn't be good for alignment, though.
8:03 p.m.
> > I have a program that plays
"Daisy" on the Commodore 1541 disk drive(!)
> > Miraculous.
> It does it by knocking the drive heads around. I
have a DriveComposer
> archive that will let you compose arbitrary music for the 1541 (imagine a
> whole chorus of them ... ) ... couldn't be good for alignment, though.
ooh, ooh! Copy, please ;)
Never checked to see what it does to alignment but maybe I'll run some
tests and fine out.
A chorus sounds like a nice idea :)
It's a Lynx archive. If others want it, please ask (or I might just post it
to comp.binaries.cbm for those with Usenet access).
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- IBM is not a necessary evil. IBM is not necessary. -- Ted Nelson -----------
5 Mar
5 Mar
3:45 a.m.
Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I have a program that plays "Daisy" on the Commodore 1541 disk drive(!)
Miraculous.
It does it by knocking the drive heads around. I have a DriveComposer archive
that will let you compose arbitrary music for the 1541 (imagine a whole
chorus of them ... ) ... couldn't be good for alignment, though.
I used to have an alignment disk that worked by reading a
(specially-written) disk where each track was progressively more
out-of-line (or rather, started too far out, went into line, and then
became too far in). The software would determine which track gave the
least read errors, calculate the amount the head was out, then
repeatedly whack the head off the appropriate end stop...
Terrifying to hear it in action, but it worked, and well.
Gordon.
That machine
also had a very nice Calcomp plotter. I miss plotters.
I thik one of the old HP plotters would "sing" a song using the motors,
given the proper power up sequence. 
4:10 a.m.
On Sat, 5 Mar 2005, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
>>>> That machine also had a very nice
Calcomp plotter. I miss plotters.
Me too. I admit though, I really like the thing that made them
obsolete: cheap memory.
But nothing beats a pen flinging around a blank sheet of paper
making a drawing. Especially analog plotters driven from DACs!
At American Used Computer in the late 1970's they had a truly huge
vertical plotter, everyone ogled it, but no one bought it...
10:55 a.m.
I used to have an alignment disk that worked by
reading a
(specially-written) disk where each track was progressively more
out-of-line (or rather, started too far out, went into line, and then
became too far in). The software would determine which track gave the
least read errors, calculate the amount the head was out, then
repeatedly whack the head off the appropriate end stop...
Vorpal Toolkit did something of this sort, using its own disk as an alignment
master (not sure if it was a modified Dysan or whatever). Once it found a
problem, it would then smack the drive head several times and start again.
Terrifying to hear it in action, but it worked, and
well.
Yes, it sounds like it was going to break the 1541 when it was whirling at
full bore. I was amazed that it worked, however.
I took the theory and wrote my own drive head killer called Torquemada 1541.
I've saved numerous 1541s that way, although there was one that Torquemada
could not revive and I tore my hair out until I opened it up and found out
how dirty it was. A cleaning diskette fixed that problem. As they say in the
medical field, when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- BOND THEME NOW PLAYING: "Never Say Never Again" ----------------------------
10:16 a.m.
On Fri, 4 Mar 2005 08:59:55 -0500 (EST)
William Donzelli <aw288 at osfn.org> wrote:
When my father (an IBM employee) brought home an IBM 5100 on the
weekends back in about 1975, there was a program that drove the line
printer to play an extended version of the William Tell Overture. This
was an IBM program, though probably not 'official', that almost
certainly was written by someone at IBM.
I think it was written in BASIC since all it was was a series of PRINT
commands.
That machine
also had a very nice Calcomp plotter. I miss plotters.
I thik one of the old HP plotters would "sing" a song using the
motors, given the proper power up sequence.
7105
days inactive
7106
days old
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chenmel＠earthlink.net -
frustum＠pacbell.net -
geoffr＠zipcon.net -
gordon＠gjcp.net -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
rcini＠optonline.net -
shoppa_classiccmp＠trailing-edge.com -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
tomj＠wps.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org -
vcf＠siconic.com -
wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net