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Talks List
The Story of Ensoniq – Al Charpentier, Bill Mauchly, Joe Friel (Interviewed by Dave McMurtrie)
When Bruce Crockett, Bob Yannes, Charles Winterble and Albert Charpentier left Commodore in late 1982, they named the company Peripheral Visions. Listen as Albert & Bill will tell their tangled story of how they become Ensoniq.
History of UNIX – Brian Kernighan (Interviewed by Stephen Edwards)
Stephen will interview Brian about his 2019 book UNIX: A History and Memoir
Restoring the unknown CAD-machine and uncovering history; Aesthedes – Bart van den Akker
In 2018, the HomeComputerMuseum received an Aesthedes computer. The only information we had was it was big, the Heineken logo was made with it, and it was Dutch. No photos, pictures or manuals. In 2020, we received 2 stories about how this computer influenced lives and since we had some time on our hands, we started to repair it with no knowledge. In 2024, we managed to get it working and found out much history. We even found a second one which we started repairing in 2024. The talk is about the story of how it came to us, why we started rebuilding it, and what we discovered.
The Musical Foenix – Stefany Allaire
The first portion of the presentation I will tell the story of the Foenix since its inception and how it was always meant to be a music machine, even today. The Second portion will be animated by our friend Michael Weitman who will go deeper and do some demonstrations.
Introduction to Chiptunes – Brendan Becker
Want to know what a chiptune is? How about what a chiptune is not? You can learn a little bit about the technology, its history, how it makes sounds, how it is implemented, and the culture surrounding it at this panel. All ages and experience levels welcome!
Sound Chips & Chill – Brendan Becker
Thinking about writing music for an old game console or computer, and trying to figure out where to start? Enjoy listening, and/or just trying to figure out how to tell them apart? Come hang out and listen to some great tunes on chips… with minor commentary.
Audio through the years… – Burger Becky
From the Atari 2600, C64, to the Apple ][, music, sound and effects have evolved. Or have they? From toggling a speaker switch, to full polyphonic music straight from a synthesizer, audio on vintage computers still keep up, even against modern machines.
Booting from the Metal Up – Alastair Hewitt
This technical talk covers the boot process of a computer built from basic TTL logic. Learn how the machine goes from power up to a stable electrical state, and then on to loading bootstrap code, virtual machine, kernel, and finally CP/M. The machine discussed is the Novasaur Retro computer built from 74F-series TTL logic chips and capable of running CP/M with an on-board RAM disk and video output.
The Lifecycle of a Collection – Justin Hopkins
Collecting
C64 Synthesizers, Sequencers and Beyond – Dan Laskowski
YM2149 was in Atari 520ST and some old Sega Genesis machines These sound chips along with the C64 SID chip create some FANTASTIC SOUNDS and YOU WILL BE AMAZED.
8-bit Game Development in New Jersey: An Insider’s Experience – Scott Marshall
Silicon Valley and Japan dominated early video game development,
but there were more modest and lesser known operations in other parts of the
country, including right here in New Jersey. The presenter Scott Marshall
worked on dozens of games, on many platforms for several New Jersey
companies as an independent contractor, and will share his experiences from the
inside as well as a bird’s eye view of how the seeds of 8-bit game development
began, spread, and flowered in the Garden State from 1980 to 2001.
Constructing Music – Teresa Nakra
Humans have been making music for millennia. As technologies have developed over time, the tools for creating music have evolved alongside them – from natural materials such as wood, bone, and gut, to our current digital devices. Constructionist learning theory provides us a useful framework for thinking about how our approaches to creating music are influenced by the means that we have available to make it. This talk will describe some of the important milestones in electronic music over the past 150 years and discuss how musical styles and genres have adapted to the technologies of production. We will then investigate the influence of interactive coding techniques on modern musical possibilities, using examples from Teresa Nakra’s recent book, “Constructing Music: Musical Explorations in Creative Coding.”
The Computer Collection Lifecycle – Dean Notarnicola
Things to keep in mind when starting, maintaining and ending a collection.
The Most Important Computer you never heard of – Frank O’Brien
In the 1950’s, a radical system called SAGE was created centralize and automate the problem of intercepting Soviet bombers during the Cold War. Building the world’s largest computers resulted in an effort larger than the Manhattan Project. SAGE introduced concepts that revolutionized technology, made IBM into a powerhouse, and became a pop culture icon.
Using a Zynq to Emulate I/O devices – Mike Rieker
FPGA basics. What is a Zynq chip? Breakdown of design and how the Zynq chip is used to emulate the I/O devices for a PDP-8/L.
Making a Hardware Emulator For a Legendary PC Sound Card – Ian Scott
Ian Scott tells the story of how he developed PicoGUS, a microcontroller-based ISA sound card emulator for PC clones from the 80s and 90s. The project started with a realization that people wanted to experience the Gravis Ultrasound but were locked out due to high prices, but it has grown to an open source general purpose sound card emulator that can act as many different sound cards from the era.
Sound & Music on the Commodore 64 with CBM PRG Studio – Byron Stout
The Commodore 64 had an amazing capacity for creating music and sound effects but programming these was hard because it required near mystical knowledge of secret POKEs and PEEKs. Let’s use CBM PRG Studio to learn about the theory of sound and how we can use this modern tool to make this old machine sing again.
Pieces for a Plotter – Replicating Parts for the Apple 410 Color Plotter – Kate Szkotnicki
The Apple 410 Color Plotter is a rare piece, which makes finding parts for it even rarer, in particular the pen holder and the pens. Since Apple used ABS for these parts, many of them have broken or dried out in the ensuing years. Come hear how Kate is using modern tech to bring these machines back to life!
1st & 2nd Generation Audio Drivers – Deep Dive – David Warhol
Before MP3s, samples, and MIDI, and in an environment where game cartridge memory was scarce and therefore precious, video game systems offered bare bones tone generation hardware for generating sound effects and music. But consumers didn’t care about that – they wanted compelling music and sounds. Learn how audio developers structured their code and data to maximize their creative output while minimizing memory consumption.
What a Long, Strange Trip (So Far) – Leor Zolman
At 19, Leor Zolman created BDS C. Now, at 66, he finally has a reason to talk about it (show up, and you’ll get to hear the reason). You’ll also hear some stories from the early days of micros, mixed in with some personal reflections from the 66yo version of the kid who thought it might be fun to write a C compiler that fully embraced the freedom you got under an operating system that could not restrict your actions.
A vintage extension to C64 Code Editing – Doug Crawford
Though the C64 had the best interactive BASIC editor of the day- pointing towards IDEs to come- I was frustrated how difficult it was to manage a large body of code. I created something to solve that problem back then. I thought it was going to be a big thing. but alas it went no where. Recently I realized something like it never emerged, and re-implemented recently for developing a demo in the VCF March Museum. Come hear about it and see it in action.
The Magic of Composing & Playing Music on the COSMAC VIP: No Math, No Coding, No MIDI, Just Fun – Joyce Weisbecker
PIN-8 is a table-based music program for the VIP with VP-550 SuperSound card and PAIA EK-2 Drums card. You change the arrangement that PIN-8 plays by editing the contents of the various tables (notes, measures, instruments, how the arrangement changes after each break). This “bit-twiddling” approach allows anyone to experiment with composition, arrangement and orchestration by changing one or a few bytes in a table then hearing the effect on the song. It is not necessary to be able to read sheet music because the byte that corresponds to a given pitch is identified in several ways (frequency; position on the staff; “middle C”). Changing just the instrument, vamp or groove by loading, editing and running a PIN-8 program will be demonstrated.
The Commodore 64 is famous for the sound of the SID chip, but the PET can manage music and sound effects through the User Port in multiple ways: CB2 sound (probably the most famous) but also Digital-to-Analog Synthesis (HUH’s Petunia and MTU’s K-1002) and even program controlled hardware oscillators (“The Toy Story Begins at Home”, Ciarcia, Byte, Apr 1979). We’ll dive into all these ways to make sound on Commodore machines.