Episode: 2821
Title: HPR2821: Interviewing some exhibitors at the 2019 vcfe.org event
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2821/hpr2821.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 17:19:31

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This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
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And hello everybody and welcome with another podcast by me, Gidrone Beton.
This time I'm trying something new.
I bought myself a toy to be precisely a bought myself a Zoom H4 and Pro and I just had an
old mic laying around as sure as M58 I believe and I thought well can't I just do some interviews?
I don't know I've never really done any interviews so I thought let's give it a try and since I was
anyway at the VCFE in Munich this weekend and for those unfamiliar with the event VCFV stands
for vintage computer festival Europe. I thought well I'm being one of the people exhibiting there.
I brought my own AS400 and three twin externals, set it up and had myself a blast telling people
about this completely antiquated and well my system is and completely different computer system
from well what you're familiar with probably like Linux and Windows and Apple.
Anyway so I brought my Zoom equipment my mic and I thought well at some point later on a day
let's just interview a couple of guys and what you're about to hear is the result. Now I'm not
going to say that's any good because I don't think it is and it's I'm just rambling and they're just
rambling and well maybe just maybe it's you find it endotainment or interesting or fun or whatever
sorry just do me this one favor if you think this is by any means interesting or you have a positive
experience just let me know in the in the comments because I'm pretty curious what you think of
this well let's say first experiment. So without further ado I'm going to merge in the files that
I recorded maybe here and there I'll interrupt to clarify stuff but all in all well let's see
what happens so here goes. Okay so I'm now standing at the VCFE the vintage computer festival
Europe in Munich Munich and I'm standing next to somebody who calls himself Stechschwein.
Can you tell me your Stechschwein? Not actually the Stechschwein is something I built or we built
my buddy and me. My name is Thomas Woynke and that guy kneeling over there in front of his computer
is Marco Lauker and the Stechschwein is some pretty much a team effort to build a homebrew
computer that might have existed in the 80s so in the in the heyday of the 8-bit computer era and
so that was the actual goal back then and since then a bit of feature creep happened and I don't
think this would be possible back in the 80s we have a couple of newer components but yeah okay so
and what processor did you choose? It's a 6.5 CO2 so we are both Commodore buffs so we are pretty much
into 6.5 or 2 assembler so the 6.5 or 2 was the logical choice for us also it was the only
processor we are really fluent in in assembler fluent ish I might say so yeah why not
and when you say feature creep what kind of features so you I guess you start with a processor board
but what happens next? We started off with a with a with a breadboard put the 6.5 CO2 on there and
a bit of wiring we we wired the the database to a knob instruction and just watch what happens
and we went from there so we added ROM and added some let it execute some some simple code and
they added RAM and it executed and not that much simple code and so on we added a serial interface
so we could upload code from our from from our laptops and be able to run actual programs then
and yeah and then stuff just started to to happen ideas we just started to exist we added an SD card
as as as mass storage and other things we added a video chip that was something where Marco
came in basically we started off with a TMS 9929 and we upgraded since then to the V9958
which is the successor of the successor and is much more capable than we have a sound chip
and these are chips which are already from mid to late 80s so this is slightly slightly after
the 8-bit heyday so I think we have a some some overshoot here on our goal but yeah it's
happens to be a pretty awesome 8-bit computer if I may say so and it's a lot of fun
since then fun is important of course do you know maybe of this this initiative that I saw
on Facebook with a guy that wants to rebuild the Commodore in a way and tries to design
new hardware have you heard about it I'm not sure since I don't have Facebook so
yeah it's a hidden group on Facebook and you need to know about it no no idea so okay
a lot of people doing stuff is come with Commodore hardware so I don't know about this
particular one oh okay well thanks a lot for answering this questions you for asking me stuff
you like to talk about or stuff it's your normal days at home don't are not full of opportunity
of this so thanks yeah time is always a short factor and people who listen to you
actually well try it on a heck of public radio people tend to listen yeah okay maybe I will yeah
okay so the next stop that I'm making is with this other kind of equipment and it's called an
NSC MCS CPM system I have no idea what I'm looking at who are you yes my name is Fritz Dodger
and this let us NSC means national semi-conductors so this is the system a CBM system from the year
80 80 bond 80 81 now 81 81 81 81 yes not not 89 81 90 81 80 81 yes a machine with
a Z80 a CPU processor system and a floppy disk drive to floppy disk drive eight inch no eight
sold well yeah yeah you understand okay it's an eight inch floppy drive yes yes you yes here you
can see but you cannot hear inside this computer unit our three printed circuit boards are working
on a multi-pass system so the multi-pass maybe you know multi-pass comes from Intel Intel has developed
multi-pass on on this multi-pass three hardware are installed so the first is the processor part
on this processor part you have a CPU you have to count you have to timer you have to
pure parallel boards and two serial controllers and there is no no RAM on this board on this processor
board only two kilobyte e-prom memory which contains them a minimal bios system for the system
and and what kind of processor is on that board is a Z80 Z80 Z80 yes oh yeah Z80
yes the second the second board inside multi-pass board is a 64k byte uh
RAM memory board yeah it's not a normal RAM is a dynamic RAM must be always refreshed you know
it's also from this time 81 and the chips you see many many chips in chips in 16k by one bit so you
need 16 factor four and then by eight four eight 32 32 chips you need for this 64 kilobyte yes
and looking at a photo it's a lot of chips yes a lot of chips really yes okay and last but not
least a board a floppy controller board yes on this floppy controller board you can connect
to two two floppies to a eight sole floppy or to a 3.5 sole floppy disk so three and a half inch floppy
drives an adding floppy drives you can connect to the floppy controller board okay and and what
was this system used for was it a hobbyist computer or this I do not know what what I know is this
system was in use until to the year 88 and in 88 I buy the system on a on a computer market yes
for hobbyists and my thing with this computer was okay I know on this computer I have a serial
interface which where I can read in synchron signals not asynchronous you know you have always
in PC systems but this system supports the synchron signal and I use this for satellites for
receiving the satellites telemetry data which coming out on therefore amateur function satellites
amateur radio satellites on the frequency 2 meter in on 145 megahertz there is a bacon on the
satellite and they're sent down in a 400 port stream by a face modulation and this modulation
goes through a special hardware and after this special hardware the sound is split it in data
in the clock signal and these two signals I can bring in in my computer and then I can read
the information the telemetry data from the from the satellite so this is this was my first
application for this computer okay so you're except besides being a computer hobbyist you're
also a radio a hobby a radio amateur yes my my call is Delacol for November Bravo Echo
okay repeat that please yeah Delacol for November Bravo Echo okay so any radio hobbyist now
knows your call sign I can look you up yeah yeah you can look but I'm not so active maybe I was
active 20 years ago now no more yes this was my first application on this machine and second
application maybe if you if I start the operating system on this machine I can also start a
duo bus call duo bus call in one of the first versions so the duo bus call version is version
2.00b this is the one of this version turbo bus call 2.00b that's really really really old yes and I
can also start M basic M basic from the year from the year 1977 yes really old also yes
yes and on the disks I buy this system on the disk there is also a gain for for basic
is called Star Trek oh yes Star Trek yeah yeah I know yeah there's a long time ago only with
only with letters only and scroll ups always yes simple game simple game yes yeah well thank you
a lot for thank you very much for this small interview and well good luck with your system
for the next years I hope maybe I take it in the can I know more excellent we will see yeah we will see
okay very good okay so now I'm at my third booth and now I'm standing next to what's
this is a S5 program Milgerete PG 675 and the PG 685 under CPM 86 I have no clue what this is
so who are you and what am I looking at my name is Klaus Lloyd from Nürnberg Germany and you look
at Siemens program programming units for old S5 PLCs or SPS is in German and what is a PLC
PLC is a programmable logic controller for industrial equipment you can put it in an electrical
cabinet put some wires on it make a program load it into it and then you have a controller for
your machine okay so and you use a Siemens sort of PC to develop programs to upload to PLC
device no I do not this I okay I did this before 20 or 25 years now this operating machines are
historical and they are here on the show so the the people can see it and I can demonstrate how it
works yes but otherwise this old stuff is useless today it's useless yes it's nearly useless maybe
somebody has an old machine and then for him maybe it's it can be useful but you can do the same
also with a with a PC with a modern PC and with an old software this software on this machine
you can run also on a PC and for the PC you have a converter from the serial a port to the PLC
and then you can do it on the PC this technique is from the late 80s and in the beginning of the
90s you can you could use it still but then you move to PCs yeah that's the late 80s sorry
but this you say early 80s or late 80s late 80s okay late 80s yeah maybe this was 86 this old one
this peachy 7675 peachy programming unit 675 this is the model number and this one maybe was
very end of the 90s with hard disk and the other one the old one was put it only from the
disk head it looks to me like a sort of a transportable computer with an old CRT monitor tube
and the the the the the lid of the case is also the keyboard with five and a quarter inch floppy
drives that that's what I see and and very Siemens like keys round keys absolutely absolutely correct
very beautiful Siemens keyboards okay you think they're beautiful and then maybe other people
have another opinion on that I won't go into that but yeah and it's colorful
um clearly so are you develop on these portable PCs and then you upload it to an S5 PLC
yes this is right this is right for example I have here a very small program only with four lines
the first line load loads a bite one moment please repeat that question okay okay you can see
here a very small demonstration program on this S5 95 PLC there is an output bite it's counting
and in the program you see I load I load the output bite I load a constant number one the constant
with the value one I make an plus F this means add it and to edit and then transfer it out
to the output bite and so it counts and cyclically this program runs cyclically simple binary counter
yes it's a very silly program but for demonstration it's okay on the other programming unit moment
this was wrong there we should see a program in letter programming language with two conducts
in Sirius input 0.0 and input 0.1 and then if this boss is on then the output comes also the one I
can show you here one switch the second switch and the output is one you can make here graphical
programming you can do this also on the SM machine but I show it here this is letter programming
then I can switch this language to logic programming block then you can see
end gate or gate and output substitution or whatever and the third one is this STL structure text
no no it's just takes language like and you said you have been programming these systems for
25 years what kind of applications did you build I was in a comedy for aluminum fabrication
we had it made a modification on the machines we was in the in standard in German repair looking
for the problems and we used this program in units and then we have made very small automatic
machines for making aluminum parts okay yeah clear well thank you very much for your time no problem
I'm here today and tomorrow yeah today and tomorrow so here I am again while I was standing on
the VCF with my my A's for hundreds and terminals next to me was a stand called Nemesis and I have
no clue what it is but I'm now standing next to two of the people of the Nemesis project so can
you introduce yourself and then let's start with what Nemesis is who are you hi my name is Astrid Jacob
I'm an American living in Munich and I'm actually a fairly late Nemesis wizard but I'm a very
good friend with the mud gods Nate who's next to me and basically many years ago when it was very
sick and had a cold I asked him to restart this online multi-user dungeon so snake how about you
well I'm I'm a native Munich not American this game was actually running three times already
as in three phases and she yeah she made me started up for the second and for the third time
so usually it was the first one was at the university and it was running there for three years three
years four years from 90 to 94 and after that I had it running on the actual in the real hardware
we have here and this was basically the original hardware where it was also running on the at the
university which is a deck station okay the company deck is long gone now in the meantime even the
company bought them is gone and so this is pretty pretty old hardware like 30 years now and the fun
to run is on the the the the sense of running this on the old hardware is because of the vintage
computer festival yeah that's but we didn't just want to show the old hardware so we want to run
it and so this was the idea behind bringing the game here normally the game is running on more
than computer a really a reachable on the internet what's the URL an MSS.DE very simple
actually we have our own webpage we have a little web client there but you can still connect
there over various classic ways like using telnet or tiny fugue other classic mode clients
almost anything even on your mobile yeah and even on the AS400 but like we have seen
yes because because what we did is we took we basically hijacked one of your AS400s made you
configure the twisted pair interface and you connect it to the MSS. Let's talk about a little bit
about what we have here so so so basically snake who is the actual mud god and one of the original
admins and programmers of this game he so he set up the server running on a dextation what model
the first time the first one was a 3000 it's even slower than this one next station 3000 and
what is it running on now next station 5000 so that's like very very old hardware and what we did
is that running this local instance here at the vissefe in Munich we set up an ethernet a little
on the ethernet network and we connected a bunch of vintage computers like an SGI in the like
a little libretto like like like a like a telecom test computer stuff like that and then then the
guy set up a serial terminal server and we connected over a serial network a bunch of vintage serial
consoles which yeah and terminals that which is great fun and all of them are running connections
to the server and just showing what it was like back in the day in the in the early 90s with people
sitting at the university maybe in the computer room on some fancy external or on some fancy computer
or dialing in. We have done it we have done it last year right we connected one of the terminals
over a modem line like the very old one this is over there on the table with what's it called
in english the not the modem the the the acoustic coupler thing oh you mean this 300 boss thing
you put the you put the phone on yeah yeah not not as modern as a mod a modem but even older like
you put the an old acoustic coupler coupler to to to put a phone line connected to the computer yeah
and we actually even set up an old cell phone so that still had like like the hands set and
everything and put the hands set on this acoustic coupler and that was pretty cool and ran a line
across the vis-a-vis to show how people would dial in and and play over 300 bought it couldn't
really dial with them but it was a fixed line but it was the original equipment which you
used for it and so so what we do here is we've we've done we've done tournaments and competitions
so people could win a nemesis t-shirt from us just to bring a man show them the joy of playing
the game which we haven't actually described yet so we do we want to describe it well put
this put it in a nutshell nemesis is a text-based multi-user dungeon no graphics no pictures
no animations only asked the art in it which is actually very pretty and what you do is you log
on you create a character a simple character you start walking around the village you might
pick up some objects maybe you'll kill a monster maybe you'll get into trouble maybe you'll get
killed yourself so basically what somebody said the other day is that this is the predecessor
of all these games like World of Warcraft and God knows what just minus the graphics basically
World of Warcraft without pictures yeah without graphics and also to quote another guy in a
magazine who once said this is also a kind of the Minecraft of the early 90s because you
not only get to play this game but if you finish a certain number of quests you can you can
ask to become a wizard you have to take a test becoming a wizard means to become a programmer
in this game and then you are permitted to extend the games you write additional areas or rooms
you write objects pretty little things little quests and so you keep building on it
it's how it grows so big because it's thousands and thousands of rooms what is currently so big
that you have is big I don't even know all corners of the game it's ten thousands of rooms
it's a complete world it's a complete planet with continents and islands which are connected with
ships and some most of the ships have a timetable where we can look on but there are also ships you
can steal yourself so it's a really complete planet and then you can imagine how big it is
and do you have any statistics or numbers on the amount of the users that are playing this?
well this depends on which time period you're asking because it used to be the biggest one in
Germany when it was running into university when I had to close it newspapers reported about it
this was closed down in 1994 by the administration at university with all sorts of excuses like
using up to a spand with etc distracting the students these days this was snake actually told me
that the students learned to do object oriented programming on it because the programming language of
this mode is lpc which is an early version of an object object oriented c dialect named after
the inventor laris pen sir so that's why it's called lpc and basically we had the support of the
university of the professor where in which computer it was running and also other responsible
persons but there was one one institution or what administrator or something which thought it
using too much bandwidth or something like which is not correct yeah it's a game show it can't be
serious that's that's what's basically probably his idea but it's not really true many people
including myself learned how to program object oriented and and these days how many users do you
see these days is now much fewer so most people prefer the graphics with even if
well who knows i mean hecka public radio they are and i believe this recording will be heard by
about five thousand people in a year so nemesis dot de to run a really old original multi-user dungeon
game yeah exactly okay thank you very much for this interview and good luck to with the exhibition
yes thank you okay i'm with another booth and this time i'm with punte linien kreisen
does grafische terminal robo tronka eight nine one seven i have no clue there's a system here
with robo tron on it so who are you and what is the robo tron my name is terkanat
i in my in my hobby time i work with robo tron computers and i do some research on this devices
and i try to to get them to work to restore them and every year i do research on another device
and this year there is the robo tron k eight nine seventeen and it's a terminal device the
device boots as a text terminal so that you can type type something on the keyboard and what
your type on the keyboard is sent to the over the serial line and what is sent over the serial line
to the terminal it's written on on the screen such as a normal terminal the special on this
terminal is that you can use a graphics mode there is a special escape sequence on this on this
terminal that switches to graphics mode graphics mode is when you are in graphics mode the first time
you have the the first thing you have to you you have to do is that you have to change the
configuration of the serial line because the text mode of the terminal the alpha numerical mode
works with seven bits parity and the graphics mode works with eight bits and no parity
when you are in graphics mode you have to search on the on the on the documentation of this device
what protocol you have to run in the documentation is written what what commands are possible
graphical commands and what bytes you have to the bytes you the byte sequence you have to send
just to get the terminal to work in graphics mode the first in graphics mode that you have to do
is to initialize this this this this mode of the terminal and all commands are
the commands that you that you use there are described in a standard that is named
graphical kernel system it's a it's a standard from the western world it was adapted to Eastern
Germany and just just out of curiosity that so okay so you're researching how how to
draw graphics on on this device but what is a robot from sorry perhaps I have to I have to
do another way to describe it robotron is a computer is the major computer manufacturer from
the from the GD from the former GDR from the German Democratic Republic and robotron supplied
every GDR that's that's what other people would call Eastern Germany and Germany yes yes yes
it's it's Eastern Germany and robotron is was the major supplier for devices and in
information technology computers controllers nearly everything that where you have to handle data
is from from from robotron there are some some manufacturers that were united in something
that was called combinator so you have to you have to have had something like a headquarter that
is the combinator robotron and this device was produced in Salameles in Turingia that is one
and when was it produced it was produced in the second half of the 80s I think I think it's
1988 I have to look at the bottom of the device I okay so if I if I understand correctly in eastern
Germany you had multiple manufacturers of robotron equipment but they were combined in what was
called a combinator yes yes yes that's right and and how many of those manufacturers were there
approximately and I don't I don't know exactly but I think 10 or 20 something like that something
like that you have some manufacturers that have that produce computers and Salameles is the
produces produces devices for entering data data of hasung technique so Salameles produced
screen terminals they produced something that was called Betriebsdaten terminal so you have
and that are some that are such devices that you use when you start your work you have to device mounted
on a wall and if employers start to work they register the start of work and register the end of
work or you can sort of a time registration system yes something like that that are other kind of
terminals that were that were produced in Salameles Salameles was also the supplier for hardest
devices in the GDR and a cassette tape devices and and was there a standard on the processor that
was in use or something or was it all different things and the most used the mostly used process
was clone of Z80 the silox Z80 processor was clone in GDR and was called U880 and that is that is
the processor that you have that is that was used in a wide range of devices this device has
exactly set three Z80 processors one that drives the terminal itself one that drives the
graphics processor and the third one is in the keyboard or the keyboard has its own processor
has its own has its own processor yes and that is that is the most mostly used processor when
the GDR did a step to 16-bit world first they used first day
stayed on the on the silox way they clone the Z8000 processor and and I know three different
computer systems in the GDR that uses the set a thousand processor and the later step is
to switch to AT86 processor from Intel
okay so and what were these systems used for from Robotron everything or in the office or in
machines the simple answers everything and this special device was used for construction
it was a part of a catcam system you have a central computer you connect the terminal to it to
view graphics to do graphics input something like that but the systems in general were used for
office processing for data for data management for to control something and nearly everything where
AT systems were used for okay and the the operating system was there a standard or chosen or
there is a wide range of operating systems the mostly used operating system is a CPM clone
called SCP it's a CPM 2.2 that was adapted to the special hardware the 16-bit systems used
used DCP that was a clone of the MS-DOS operating system but you have a wide range of special
operating systems for for special tasks and there is for instance UDOS that was a clone of
silo grio the silo operating system and you have Unix versions and the Unix system was called
MUTOS multi multi user time sharing operating system they used the Unix V7
sources and adapted their their special hardware to the 16-bit processors to the silo 8000
processor and to the 8086 to and so you can say it's nearly the same range of operating systems
that is used in in in international and and could everybody buy such a computer in those days
and if yes or no what do they cost and this this computer it was nearly impossible to buy it as
a private person as a private person it was as well it was possible to buy a home computer
like this like like the kc 85 systems and this kc systems are no are not robotron devices
you have a robotron robotron kc exactly but there were home computers from the combinat rft
that was the combinat that produces tv sets radio something like this
okay so you had you had your combination of manufacturers combinat for the robotron computer
and you had also a combinat with manufacturers for the kc computers for personal use
yes yes and this and the robotron computers there was a special process for companies
and that make it possible for companies to buy computers the official way
it was called bilansierung so as a company with some
as a special company the government says that you you are able to buy this computer
it was planned the shift and so that someone from the government it's it's simply said it's
more complex but it's simply said someone from the government says you can buy this computer
so the company can the company bought this computer and so maybe we use it perhaps yes perhaps
no but we can buy it okay so it started with somebody from the government going to a company
and said they were allowed to buy a computer um you you simply yet you you can you you can say it so
and and was it the same for the the the kc personal computers was that also you had to be allowed
to buy some and the first time um was the it was restricted later time you can you can
you were able to buy it in the shop because first time at the first priority to supply this
computers were where schools so the the government says computers you you need to have computers in
schools just for education and if there were much computers in education some computers were
when to the shops so that a private person can buy this computer and any idea what the pricing was
in those days and the pricing of a of a kc home computer I personally bought this computer for
2150 mark of the GDR and and what would be be compared in today's dollars or euros
oh that that's difficult because the mark of the GDR was not convertible the the official
and official it's it was one to one to the western
mark but that that was not real perhaps one to five one west western german mark two five
eastern german mark perhaps one to ten okay but let's let's do this another way um if you were
living in eastern germany and you wanted to buy this home computer and you had a salary of course
would it be half a monthly salary on average or a full month or three months or you know how much
pain would it be financially and the price of the computer I think it was um twice or third
twice or third of of the salary of a person we're going to do this again
let's risk it so what would the price be for a home computer okay let's do this quickly so how
how much would it cost in in east germany for somebody to buy this home computer um I think
twice or three times of a salary of a monthly salary of a monthly salary of a person
that's a lot that that's a lot yes um we used um we call it Jugendweier I don't know the English word
the Jugendweier money of my brother read and was enough to buy this computer
and another way it would you have to to reserve money for for a long time to get this amount to buy
us okay wow um well thank you for this interview and many happy hours with your Robo Tron
things that that I was able to did you give me the chance to talk yeah you're very welcome okay
so that's a wrap for this um edition and interviews for the vcfe.org the vintage computer festival
Europe um I did a couple of interviews I hope you like them um just let me know in the comments
I'll put some links to some of those projects in the show notes if you're interested in investigating
more uh into these subjects and um well talk to you next time bye bye
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