North Dallas Area Retrocomputing Meetup at DMS

mrcity · March 31, 2016, 6:01am

In case you missed it on Meetup or Google Calendar, there’s the NDARC meeting coming up this Saturday, 4/2, at 3 PM in the Interactive Classroom. We’ll have a wide variety of stuff for you to play with first-hand, including probably some of our finds from Fred’s Warehouse of Wonder (of which I’ve been working hard this week to get my own finds ready now that TPF is over).

Speaking of which, does anyone have a proper Amiga 500 video cable they could give or sell me? The composite out only apparently supports B&W; you need a special 23-pin DIN to SCART or something similar to actually take advantage of the 4096-color video capability.

publius · March 31, 2016, 6:11am

This is horrible, I know, but I have an RGB-to-NTSC encoder. What I don’t know is whether it works. If it does, it should be possible to bash together a suitable adaptor cable, unless that weired D-sub-to-5-BNC cable I have is actually 23- and not 25-pin.

themitch22 · March 31, 2016, 1:26pm

I found a ti99/4a and carts in my garage I’d like to see if it still works, would anyone have the stuff to hook it up?

mrcity · March 31, 2016, 1:36pm

Yes Mitch, we have a working TI99/4A and could bring power & video cables if you want.

Chris, why would 23-pin be a bad thing? I’m pretty sure the proper Amiga RGB out is 23 pins. See http://666kb.com/i/bdtrlcobbfjqkke5w.jpg for the pinout.

publius · April 1, 2016, 1:24am

So, it turns out the cable I have is HD-28 to 3 BNC (RGB). I don’t know WHAT that was intended for.

But in any case the NTSC encoder may work, assuming that the “video” output from the Amiga can be used as a reference input.

Terrence · April 1, 2016, 1:32am

Connection to a monitor (IIRC) was just a direct video that would go straight to any monitor. The box that went with it was only to connect it to an old TV tuner. What else is there that you need to connect it?

mrcity · April 1, 2016, 4:49am

It’s direct video… but the end that goes into the TI-99 is a 5-pin DIN connector. You could make one (if you trust the pin-out diagrams on Google), or buy one for about $10 on eBay. I’ll just bring my stuff for @themitch22 in the meantime.

Raymond · April 1, 2016, 4:55am

I have an RF modulator you can have.

It’s easy to wire up an AV cable for composite video and audio. Go buy a long RCA to RCA cable and a 5 pin DIN connector at Tanner’s. Cut it in the middle and wire it to the DIN connector.

https://www.99er.net/TIvideoadapter.htm

childofthehorn · April 1, 2016, 3:39pm

We have a TI-99 you can test with!

Wendy · April 2, 2016, 5:31am

anyone want old commodore stuff? I have a lot to get rid of.

Raymond · April 2, 2016, 6:52am

Ill take any old broken retro computers. I’ll let someone else get the working ones. Except for a coleco Adam.

mrcity · April 2, 2016, 3:19pm

Certainly, especially if @Metaldust comes; he happily took all my extra Commodore stuff last time, and I’m sure he’d be down for more.

zmetzing · April 2, 2016, 5:34pm

I’d love to find an old C=64, even it if needs a little TLC to get working again.

Wendy · April 2, 2016, 8:53pm

Call me. 972-339-8047. It is not a matter of whether you get one, but how many do you want…

publius · April 2, 2016, 9:57pm

My grandparents are looking to sell off a bunch of their clutter. Included in that category : a Macintosh 512K (with mouse & keyboard), Macintosh Hard Disk 20, and Apple Personal Modem. Where would I even start? Obviously, I want to get what I can for them…

zmetzing · April 3, 2016, 5:31am

Excellent! I’ll call tomorrow late morning.

mrcity · April 4, 2016, 12:16am

Obviously there’s eBay & Craigslist; using eBay search tools on a desktop browser, you can search for recently concluded auctions to find out exactly how much the goods sold for rather than whatever ridiculous prices people have them listed for now.

Besides that, try the Vintage Computer Federation forums. They also have a specific online marketplace for you to show off your items, with no fees to list. However, I don’t know if it’ll be any more or less reputable than eBay or CL…

The best bet is to allow your items to be shipped. While Dallas does have a market for vintage computers, you might get a better offer from someone outside this area. Just make sure you price in the cost of shipping & materials too, as you’ll want to pack them very carefully.

If it’s all Apple stuff, perhaps they could hold out for KansasFest coming up 7/19 - 7/24. While I get the impression folks there tend to ask low prices (or even give stuff away), this retro Apple & Mac convention does facilitate a lot of buying, selling, and trading (not to mention a hackathon involving retro programming). The market for vintage Apple products seems to be heating up recently, so I’m not sure for low long KansasFest will remain a buyer’s market.

denzuko · May 8, 2016, 12:31am

Don’t know how retro this is for you guys but I have launched up a telnet BBS at bbs.dapla.net. It runs mystic bbs and is in aws but I am also building a solar powered raspberry pi that runs the same and syncs to the aws hub for echomail and file drops.

Sign ups are open at this time and a web based client at http://bbs.dapla.net/

Plus we do have an upcoming multiline conference event scheduled https://goo.gl/5o5OOd, with a zine in the works as well.

mrcity · May 9, 2016, 2:33am

Ah yes, the group was definitely intrigued by a BBS running on an Apple 3 back in December. I think folks would be interested, so will share on their specific Meetup group too. I’m gonna be at Google I/O during the multiline conference time, so probably won’t be able to attend. :-/

BTW, the next NDARC (retrocomputing) meeting at DMS has been scheduled for July 9 @ 4-7 PM directly following the DPRG meeting.

denzuko · May 14, 2016, 2:57pm

Cool, I’ll see you guys there at the next meeting then.

Oh by the way I brought in my old iMac and set it up for public usage at the space next to the DMS kiosks as a living interactive museum piece.

The BBS9000 terminal does have mozilla, zterm, and NSCA telnet configured for connecting to XM Core or any other vintage site or builtin board.

So feel free to use it as long as its at the space, just remember to be excellent with it.

Guest login is enabled and DMS Members have a little more free room on the terminal if they know how to login.

Later this weekend I’ll be working on getting Minecraft’s OpenComputers to actually connect to the board and setting up an asterisk server so I can do an 800 number dialup.There’s already a RAS login option where one can get ppp if their in the user database.