31 Jul
2025
31 Jul
'25
6:03 p.m.
I am Michael St. Clair, Chuck's nephew by marriage. I'm writing from his
account to establish bona fides; apologies for any surprise it might cause.
You appear to be the people he considered his professional peers, so I'm
reaching out to you for some help. Chuck had little warning before he
passed. He left his equipment and development environments in working
order, but without a legacy plan. I'm a software engineer and data
archivist, and my aunt has asked me to find good homes for his equipment
and IP. I'm going to organize and open-source the software and other IP
that he hadn't already released. However, I don't know how to safely
use, maintain, or even store his physical gear.
I'm only in Eugene for a couple more days on this particular trip. is
there any specific physical information (that doesn't require
disassembly) that might be useful to potential adopters? I don't have
time to make a complete inventory, but here's a list of highlights and a
Drive folder containing some photographs. This is not (yet) a formal
"come and get it" offer, but it's likely a prelude to one (excluding
business documents and computers).
Highlights:
- Multiple 8-inch floppy drives in built-like-a-truck housings
- Dozens of assorted 80s and 90s-era I/O devices -- ZIP drives, 5 1/4"
readers, etc.
- rack-mounted HP 7970B tape drive
- another full-height rack-mounted 9-track tape drive with external
control panel; no manufacturer or model number on anything I can get to
- custom-built 'tape dehydrator'
- around a thousand pieces of assorted removable media, primarily 3.5",
5 1/4", 8", CD, DVD, and a variety of late-90s and 00s digital tape
formats. Per labels and spot-checks, their contents range from
widely-distributed commercial software to Sydex master floppies to lost
BASIC dialects to industrial control software in CP/M formats. Basically
25 years of Chuck's professional life and the industry around it.
- full electronics workbench with partially-finished projects, including
something involving Pertec controllers
- a variety of functioning vintage keyboards, from IBM Model Ms to
something apparently taken from an industrial control station.
Drive folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1KUs-x6t4OtzS_b7lxYMM7i-GxNi-QRv3
I'd very much appreciate any input.
-- Michael St. Clair
31 Jul
31 Jul
7:30 p.m.
Hi Michael,
Take your time, and don't let it stress you.
Chuck was the foremost expert on many aspects of the sub-fields.
Among the diskettes, particularly 8" and 5.25", he had a lot (many
hundreds) of diskettes from other types of computers, probably at least
half from CP/M on those other computers. [hopefully labelled?] Those will
not be readable on PC, but are valuable to any other people doing disk
format conversion, (although I have retired.)
In order to switch drives around as needed, he fitted many of his external
drive cases and power supplies with DC37 and/or "centronics" syle 37
and/or 50 pin connectors. SOME of the drives in some of those cases are
non-standard/unusual drives, such as 100tpi 5.25" (micropolis, Tandon
TM100-4M) Those will be useless for normal PC work, but rare/invaluable
for those dealing with non-standard formats.
[On behalf of my sister]: Are you also dealing with his tubas?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2245 Carquinez Avenue (510) 234-3397
ElCerrito, CA 94530
On Thu, 31 Jul 2025, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
I am Michael St. Clair, Chuck's nephew by
marriage. I'm writing from his
account to establish bona fides; apologies for any surprise it might cause.
You appear to be the people he considered his professional peers, so I'm
reaching out to you for some help. Chuck had little warning before he
passed. He left his equipment and development environments in working
order, but without a legacy plan. I'm a software engineer and data
archivist, and my aunt has asked me to find good homes for his equipment
and IP. I'm going to organize and open-source the software and other IP
that he hadn't already released. However, I don't know how to safely
use, maintain, or even store his physical gear.
I'm only in Eugene for a couple more days on this particular trip. is
there any specific physical information (that doesn't require
disassembly) that might be useful to potential adopters? I don't have
time to make a complete inventory, but here's a list of highlights and a
Drive folder containing some photographs. This is not (yet) a formal
"come and get it" offer, but it's likely a prelude to one (excluding
business documents and computers).
Highlights:
- Multiple 8-inch floppy drives in built-like-a-truck housings
- Dozens of assorted 80s and 90s-era I/O devices -- ZIP drives, 5 1/4"
readers, etc.
- rack-mounted HP 7970B tape drive
- another full-height rack-mounted 9-track tape drive with external
control panel; no manufacturer or model number on anything I can get to
- custom-built 'tape dehydrator'
- around a thousand pieces of assorted removable media, primarily 3.5",
5 1/4", 8", CD, DVD, and a variety of late-90s and 00s digital tape
formats. Per labels and spot-checks, their contents range from
widely-distributed commercial software to Sydex master floppies to lost
BASIC dialects to industrial control software in CP/M formats. Basically
25 years of Chuck's professional life and the industry around it.
- full electronics workbench with partially-finished projects, including
something involving Pertec controllers
- a variety of functioning vintage keyboards, from IBM Model Ms to
something apparently taken from an industrial control station.
Drive folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1KUs-x6t4OtzS_b7lxYMM7i-GxNi-QRv3
I'd very much appreciate any input.
-- Michael St. Clair
1 Aug
1 Aug
11:26 a.m.
Fred's advice is good here - many of these drives are likely to be very important to
archivists and preservationists (there are several of us on this list) and not
general-purpose "PC" devices. Chuck was an expert in many things relating to
magnetic storage, and a rare expert indeed in tape recovery. (I'm not one of those.
I sent all my tape inquiries Chuck's way.) I can't imagine how I'd go about
this, but we all should probably start thinking about succession planning if we
haven't yet. :-) Perhaps recruit people in his contacts list to see if anyone is
able to swing by and help sort into categories and subcategories of interest? The
entirety of this collection would be "a lot" for any one person (or institution)
to deal with, but being able to mete out portions to various experts might help make it
more manageable.
Chuck meant a lot to us here. We miss him deeply. My condolences to you and your
family.
10:27 p.m.
On 8/1/25 08:26, David Schmidt via cctalk wrote:
Fred's advice is good here - many of these drives
are likely to be very important to archivists and preservationists (there are several of
us on this list) and not general-purpose "PC" devices. Chuck was an expert in
many things relating to magnetic storage, and a rare expert indeed in tape recovery.
(I'm not one of those. I sent all my tape inquiries Chuck's way.) I can't
imagine how I'd go about this, but we all should probably start thinking about
succession planning if we haven't yet. :-) Perhaps recruit people in his contacts
list to see if anyone is able to swing by and help sort into categories and subcategories
of interest? The entirety of this collection would be "a lot" for any one
person (or institution) to deal with, but being able to mete out portions to various
experts might help make it more manageable.
Chuck meant a lot to us here. We miss him deeply. My condolences to you and your
family.
Yes, they're very clearly not general-purpose PC devices, and I had a
pretty strong suspicion most of them were modified and/or valuable,
given some of the fragmentary notes I found...
On recruitment: that's a good suggestion, although I'm certainly not up
on who's an expert on what in this field!
We appreciate the condolences, and it's somewhat comforting to see just
how much he meant in this community.
10:22 p.m.
Thanks, Fred.
Yes, several hundred diskettes are labeled as being in CP/M or
proprietary formats. Many also have interesting annotations regarding
particular pathologies they exhibit.
Noted on the drives. I can verify that there are a lot of 37- and 50-pin
connectors, but don't really want to disassemble the cases. It sounds
like a lot of things about his gear are public knowledge, though, which
is nice...
Re: tubas -- unfortunately, my aunt has a wide musical circle and has
already dispositioned the tubas.
On 7/31/25 16:30, Fred Cisin wrote:
Hi Michael,
Take your time, and don't let it stress you.
Chuck was the foremost expert on many aspects of the sub-fields.
Among the diskettes, particularly 8" and 5.25", he had a lot (many
hundreds) of diskettes from other types of computers, probably at least
half from CP/M on those other computers. [hopefully labelled?] Those
will not be readable on PC, but are valuable to any other people doing
disk format conversion, (although I have retired.)
In order to switch drives around as needed, he fitted many of his
external drive cases and power supplies with DC37 and/or "centronics"
syle 37 and/or 50 pin connectors. SOME of the drives in some of those
cases are non-standard/unusual drives, such as 100tpi 5.25" (micropolis,
Tandon TM100-4M) Those will be useless for normal PC work, but rare/
invaluable for those dealing with non-standard formats.
[On behalf of my sister]: Are you also dealing with his tubas?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
2245 Carquinez Avenue (510) 234-3397
ElCerrito, CA 94530
31 Jul
31 Jul
7:45 p.m.
The second tape drive looks like a Qualstar 1260 and the third a Fujitsu
M2444 series.
Bob
On 7/31/2025 3:03 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
I am Michael St. Clair, Chuck's nephew by
marriage. I'm writing from his
account to establish bona fides; apologies for any surprise it might cause.
You appear to be the people he considered his professional peers, so I'm
reaching out to you for some help. Chuck had little warning before he
passed. He left his equipment and development environments in working
order, but without a legacy plan. I'm a software engineer and data
archivist, and my aunt has asked me to find good homes for his equipment
and IP. I'm going to organize and open-source the software and other IP
that he hadn't already released. However, I don't know how to safely
use, maintain, or even store his physical gear.
I'm only in Eugene for a couple more days on this particular trip. is
there any specific physical information (that doesn't require
disassembly) that might be useful to potential adopters? I don't have
time to make a complete inventory, but here's a list of highlights and a
Drive folder containing some photographs. This is not (yet) a formal
"come and get it" offer, but it's likely a prelude to one (excluding
business documents and computers).
Highlights:
- Multiple 8-inch floppy drives in built-like-a-truck housings
- Dozens of assorted 80s and 90s-era I/O devices -- ZIP drives, 5 1/4"
readers, etc.
- rack-mounted HP 7970B tape drive
- another full-height rack-mounted 9-track tape drive with external
control panel; no manufacturer or model number on anything I can get to
- custom-built 'tape dehydrator'
- around a thousand pieces of assorted removable media, primarily 3.5",
5 1/4", 8", CD, DVD, and a variety of late-90s and 00s digital tape
formats. Per labels and spot-checks, their contents range from
widely-distributed commercial software to Sydex master floppies to lost
BASIC dialects to industrial control software in CP/M formats. Basically
25 years of Chuck's professional life and the industry around it.
- full electronics workbench with partially-finished projects, including
something involving Pertec controllers
- a variety of functioning vintage keyboards, from IBM Model Ms to
something apparently taken from an industrial control station.
Drive folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1KUs-x6t4OtzS_b7lxYMM7i-GxNi-QRv3
I'd very much appreciate any input.
-- Michael St. Clair
--
Vintage computers and electronics
www.dvq.com
www.tekmuseum.com
www.decmuseum.org
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days inactive
2
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5 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Bob Rosenbloom -
Chuck Guzis -
David Schmidt -
Fred Cisin