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50 years of Z80 – Jeff Jonas
Oh Z80, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways! The software compatibility, the operating system, the Lego-like peripheral chips led to thousands of designs. Still operating undercover as an embedded processor in TI calculators, the Z80 never really went away.
Artifacts: an Archaeologist’s Year in Silicon Valley – Christine Finn
Ask Questions! Virtual session with Ken and Roberta Williams
Ask your questions to the founders of Sierra Online!
COSMAC 1802 Control Logic Unit: How to Program with a Soldering Iron – Joyce Weisbecker
See how the flow chart for a machine language instruction can be used to create a logic diagram & a TTL circuit that executes that instruction. A hand-drawn wiring diagram of Joe Weisbecker’s FRED CPU (prototype for 1802) is used as an example of this “programming with a soldering iron” approach to control logic design for an 8-bit CPU.
Running a Minecraft server and more on a 1960s UNIVAC 1219B – Nathan Farlow
How far can we push the 1960s UNIVAC 1219B? It’s a weird machine with only 90kb RAM, 18 bit registers, and ones’ complement arithmetic. By developing a new C toolchain, we managed to run Oregon trail, a basic interpreter, modern encryption algorithms, a NES emulator(!), and much, much more. This talk highlights the journey and the crazy tech that made it possible.
FPGA-based PDP-11 I/O board – Mike Reiker
Design and implementation of an FPGA-based PDP-11/34 Unibus board for I/O and memory.
HEART OF NEON: They Don’t Make Games Like They Used To – Paul Docherty
The film HEART OF NEON charts the unique career of game developer Jeff Minter from the earliest days of home computer programming. Director Paul Docherty, a former game developer himself, shares a clip from the film about those early days and discusses Jeff Minter’s career and why documenting the origins of game development is so important now.
Resurrection of the Datapoint 2200 – Bob Roswell
PDP-8 meets Python and POSIX — Curating old Software with modern tools. – William Catey
So much of vintage computing rests on “found objects” — whatever software happened to survive on museum-piece hardware. SIMH and other emulators expanded our ability to experience these platforms, and notable efforts like the PiDP-10 have shown what active curation can achieve. This talk describes similar work for the PDP-8 and OS/8 ecosystem: a Python-based toolchain that brings source control, automated builds, dependency management, regression testing, and collaborative workflows to software that has been frozen in time for decades.
The talk covers three scripting languages for automation — os8-run for complex OS/8 operations, os8pkg for source-level dependency management and bootable media creation, and os8-progtest for regression testing under SIMH — and demonstrates how they enable reproducible builds of the OS/8 Combined Kit and other software onto tu56 and rk05 images for both simulators and original hardware. A self-contained collaboration platform, fossil, ties it all together, making it as easy as possible for new contributors to participate.
The proof of concept is pdp8-alive, a demonstration curation environment built around PDP-8 Adventure — tracking down every published version, establishing a historical timeline, and in the process finding and fixing a bug present since the first release in 1979. The goal is not only to show what has been done, but to inspire similar approaches and bring more collaborators on board.
Retrocomputing in the Age of AI – Salvatore Paxia
The first personal computer you worked on was an Olivetti M20, a Z8001-based 16 bit machine that had the misfortune to appear just before the IBM PC swept everything else aside. You always have a special fondness for the first love, the first car…the first computer.
Decades later you find a box of floppies from that era, and before you know it you’ve cloned and improved the old hardware.
Then AI tools enter the picture, and the project explodes: emulators, a soft Z8000 CPU in Verilog validated against real silicon, an FPGA recreation for the MiSTer platform, reverse engineering the M20’s operating system from binary disassembly, compilers re-targeted to the Z8000, OS simulators, a port of Unix V7, and the preservation of the broader Zilog development ecosystem for the Z8000.
Still Alive: Commodore, Then and Now: Stories – Bill Herd, Al Charpentier, Joyce Weisbecker
Hear unfiltered Commodore stories from Albert Charpentier, Bil Herd, Joyce Weisbecker and other guests.
Unique Uses for Univac – Nathan Farlow
How far can we push the 1960s UNIVAC 1219B? It’s a weird machine with only 90kb RAM, 18 bit registers, and ones’ complement arithmetic.
By developing a new C toolchain, we managed to run Oregon trail, a basic interpreter, modern encryption algorithms, a NES emulator(!), and much, much more. This talk highlights the journey and the crazy tech that made it possible.
Why Ohio Scientific was Great (and why have you never heard of it?) – Crawford Griffith
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Ohio Scientific Inc, we review the history of this engineering-focused company. While not as well known or successful as IMSAI, Commodore or Apple, OSI made some groundbreaking and innovative products. Various OSI exhibits will show these products at VCF East this year.
Writing for Ahoy! Magazine – David Allikas