Author Archives: Eric Lyons

Membership Tuesday – David Kuder

Tuesday, 20 June 2023 20:49
Eric Lyons
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It’s Membership Tuesday! Vintage computing acquisitions, repairs, and presentations from Atlanta Historical Computing Society members are shared on Tuesdays.

Member David Kuder has introduced a line of VGA display peripherals for Apple II computers. ∀2 Analog, an Apple II VGA peripheral card, is available now at https://v2retrocomputing.com for purchase. Future announced products include an Apple IIgs VGA peripheral card and an Apple IIc Raspberry Pi Pico VGA external adapter.

See product demos from David Kuder at our Vintage Computer Festival Southeast, July 28-30 at the Marriott Renaissance Waverly in Atlanta, Georgia. VCFSE 10.0 is part of the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo.

Highlights from our June 10, 2023 monthly meeting

Monday, 19 June 2023 20:51
Eric Lyons
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President Earl Baugh updated our VCF SE 10.0 speaker list. Scheduled to appear: Adrian Black from Adrian’s Digital Basement on YouTube, Tim Jensen and Adam Spring about the video toaster, Tandy engineer Paul Schreiber, and Mark Tessier presenting a new replica machine.

Welcomed two new members and the return of two old members. New and old members are welcome at our monthly meetings, our Discord channel, and our email list.

Highlighted active member projects. Repairs were made to a Compaq Plus Portable motherboard, a VGA monitor, a Macintosh SE, and an arcade game recused from a barnyard!

Counted 48 days until VCF SE 10.0. See us at the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo, July 28-30 at the Marriott Renaissance Waverly. More about VCF SE 10.0 at https://vcfed.org/events/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast. More about the expo at https://gameatl.com.

Join us at our next in-person monthly meeting Saturday, July 8. We meet from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM at Christ the Lord Lutheran Church.

Highlights from our May 13, 2023 monthly meeting

Wednesday, 14 June 2023 20:32
Eric Lyons
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Patrick Wall of the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo provided an in-person VCF SE 10.0 update. Moving to the banquet room immediately to the right of the ticket booths. Filling 50 tables with vintage tech exhibits. Sharing space with indie game developers. More about the expo at https://gameatl.com/.

Earl Baugh updated the VCF SE 10.0 speaker list. Scheduled to appear: A prominent vintage tech YouTube celebrity, Mark Tessier announcing a new replica machine, Tandy engineer Paul Schreiber, and Tim Jensen and Adam Spring about the video toaster.

David Kuder updated progress on his VGA product line for Apple II computers. Announced: An Apple IIgs VGA peripheral card and an Apple IIc Raspberry Pi Pico VGA external adapter. Available Now: ∀2 Analog, an Apple II VGA peripheral card. Selling at VCF SE 10.0. More at https://v2retrocomputing.com/.

Counted 76 days until VCF SE 10.0. See us at the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo, July 28-30 at the Marriott Renaissance Waverly. More about VCF SE 10.0 at https://vcfed.org/events/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast. More about the expo at https://gameatl.com/.

Join us at our next in-person monthly meeting Saturday, June 10. We meet from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM at Christ the Lord Lutheran Church

Mark Little’s TI 99/4A exhibit from VCF 5.0

Thursday, 05 May 2022 22:27
Eric Lyons
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It’s Throwback Thursday! Memories from previous Vintage Computer Festival Southeast events are shared every Thursday.

Today’s photo is from Mark Little’s TI-99/4A exhibit at VCF 5.0.

A TI-99/4A, Peripheral Expansion Box, software, and documentation are on display.

See Mark at VCF 9.0 in July and learn more about the TI-99/4A computers and computing in the early 1980s.

Reminder: VCF SE 9.0 will be July 15-17, 2022. We are thankful to partner again with the Southern-Fried Gaming Expo.

A TI 99/4A computer, peripherals, and software

Five things you can do with old computer equipment

Wednesday, 31 October 2018 06:00
Eric Lyons
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skeleton-beige-computer

Happy Halloween all! So – you have the vintage computer equipment, which seems to stretch as far forward as a circa 2003 PC. What can you do with that equipment? Several things, a few of which are listed below:

  1. Run older software on the machine it was designed for
    1. WordStar – several authors including George R. R. Martin and Andy Breckman still use it today
    2. Borland TurboPascal, Microsoft Visual Basic 6, FoxPro/Visual FoxPro are all still in use today, and that is not even mentioning the mainframe computers still almost literally powering our civilization
  2. Repurpose it to run some self-hosted tooling
    1. This one only applies to machines that are only ‘vintage enough’, like workstations produced after ~1995
    2. A good list for ideas would be this link
  3. Teach your juniors about the wonders of (retro) technology
    1. This one is a bit of a ‘preach to the choir’ moment, but it bears repeating. Many young people today only know smartphone apps, nothing of the electronic circuits, motherboards, cartridges and DIP switches of computing past that we used to create those smartphones
    2. Before all of our computers got super slow from all of our software bloat, they were quite snappy at times. Text-based interfaces can be faster to operate for expert users as well
    3. How many of the vintage equipment can access non World-Wide Web internet resources? Gopher, Usenet, & BBSes may not be mainstream any more, but they sure do impress!
  4. Play some games
    1. If the success of http://GOG.com is anything to go by, those retro video games are still quite fun even in their golden years, though most likely, you have the original discs/cartridges/tapes rather than requiring a download from the internet
  5. “Max out” the equipment
    1. Take whatever RAM and upgrades that the machine could handle in its prime and apply them. Sure, your Apple ][ may not be in its prime any more, but feed it an accelerator card like a Zip Chip II and you might see up to 8 MHz out of that puppy!