Just an FYI...
An Osborne 1 is on the block at ebay -- current bid is $42. I've got my
fair share or I would be bidding on it...
http://206.79.255.82/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1144704
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
For those of you in Washington state (Puget Sound area), RE-PC currently
has a good assortment of classic stuff in their 'as-is, where-is'
department, including at least a pair of Commodore 64's. They're located
south and slightly east of the Kingdome, 1565 6th Ave. south, about two
blocks north of Holgate on 6th. They may be reached locally at (206) 623-9151.
I'd suggest a visit before the end of the year. They tend to do these big
purges every so often.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272)
(Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin2(a)wizards.net)
http://www.wizards.net/technoid
"Our science can only describe an object, event, or living thing in our own
human terms. It cannot, in any way, define any of them..."
At 10:52 PM 10/21/97 -0400, you wrote:
>1985 Apples, macs, Rainbows, PRO350s maybe some PCs
>
>1980 s100, apple][, swtp, LSI11, micronova Microprocessor chips
Actually, ca. 1980-83, I had access to a DEC PDP-11/70 (RSTS/E), PC's, Atari
800's, TRS-80 ModIII, and maybe a couple others. But I think computers may
have been a little more prevalent here in San Francisco.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
allisonp(a)world.std.com (Allison J Parent) wrote:
> if highschool was x years ago:
> 1980 s100, apple][, swtp, LSI11, micronova Microprocessor chips
> 1977 PDP-11, vax, nova Some LSI and bit slice
... HP 3000 Series II. Well, that's what we had at my high school
in 1977. Sometime along about 1980 it got upgraded to a Series III.
Micros weren't in the schools in 1977 but some of us were aware of
them (I used to hang around the Radio Shack and poke at the TRS-80).
HP brought the 2000A timeshared BASIC system out in...1967? I know
there were some (later models, 2000F and 2000 Access) still in service
at various Washington DC suburban area high schools into the early
1980s at least, maybe into the mid-1980s. Prince Georges County
(Maryland) and Fairfax County (Virginia) both had them, maybe others
too.
...
We had a mark-sense reader way back then in 1977. An HP 7260A, hooked
up as a pass-through device between the terminal and the 3000, but the
3000 had some special "driver" software (in the form of the FCARD
intrinsic, which sent the right escape sequences down the wire to get
the card reader to Do Stuff).
We used it daily to "run attendance": each student had an associated
IBM card, and the homeroom teacher would send the cards for absent
students to the office. Read cards into disc file, run programs to
generate report (print report on continuous-form ditto paper with
tractor holes) and update database with attendance information.
We also used it twice quarterly to do progress reports (mid-quarter)
and report cards (end of quarter). These used mark-sense forms that
were pre-printed, then printed in the line printer, then sent out to
the schools and teachers where they were torn apart along their perfs,
marked, folded, spindled, mutilated, and sent back for reading.
Note that bit about being torn apart along perfs. Feed a few thousand
of these through (the 3000 at our site did processing for about a
dozen schools) and the torn perfs leave lots of paper dust all over in
the reader. Twice a quarter, we used to have to call the CE to come
out, take ours half apart, and vacuum all the paper dust out so we
could read the attendance cards.
After I graduated I found that they'd replaced the 7260As with
Scan-Tron readers. I saw one once but, well, it's been 14 years or so
and I didn't really look at how it plugged in -- given that they had
it talking to the 3000 somehow I would bet that it did RS-232. I
think I remember being told that they had had to write some software
to deal with it, but I guess that wasn't too big a deal as they had
also changed the mark sense forms, from two that would fit down a slot
designed for IBM cards to one that was wider and didn't need to be
kept synchronized with a partner.
-Frank McConnell
----------
> From: thedm <thedm(a)sunflower.com>
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: finally found: Your Computer
> Date: Saturday, October 04, 1997 12:00 AM
>
> I'll take it
Oh, sorry it took so long to reply. I had 5 people reply within minutes, so I
gave it to the first person. His email was only 2 minutes earlier than the
next. :)
sorry.
mhop(a)snip.net
>Wow! A high schooler who's into old computers? Unless there is a
>pre-pubescent teenager on this list, I think Daniel has the record as the
>youngest collector of old computers.
Well, he beats me by two years for age (I'd guess), but when did he
*start*?
--
Andy Brobston brobstona(a)wartburg.edu ***NEW URL BELOW***
http://www.wartburg.edu/people/docs/personalPages/BrobstonA/home.html
My opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Wartburg College
as a whole.
At 05:07 PM 10/20/97 +0000, you wrote:
>> 2) I saw several emulators, but the only one I found that actually worked
>> well, the file was called "FRANKE87" and was German in origin. It actually
>> fooled AutoCad 10 into believing there was a co-processor chip on my 386SX
>> and actually did speed up FP instructions (measured with CheckIt).
>Not. Autocad is processor heavy program and better unload that FP to
>that coprocessor result in even powerful system when using the
>suitable s/w like autocad.
IIRC, Autocad *requires* a mathco, so one has a choice of a) buying a mathco
(used to be $$$), b) running with an emulator, or c) not running autocad.
As to whether the system will run faster with or without a software mathco
emulator, I must admit, it would seem obvious that an emulator would only
slow the system down (by using more Cpu time to handle the emulator than
going straight to the CPU -- kinda like buying direct from the mfr and
eliminating the middleman) but I cannot say that that's true without testing it.
The FRANKE87 program may be really good at what it does, enough to make a
difference when compared to Intel's idea of FP math. I have to say that if
Merch says he measured the difference and the emulator is faster, I'll take
his word for it until proven wrong.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
> Program the world's first computer!
"First" is always difficult, especially in computers.
Here are some examples of early machines, draw your own conclusions.
The Harvard Mark I was electromechanical. It was fully capable of
running a complex calculation, with the program on punched card stock
separate from the data. This is where the term "Harvard machine" comes
from, referring to a machine where the program and data are in separate
memory.
The ABC (1939) was mostly electronic, including electronic storage with
mechanical access. But its program was, I believe, on a plugboard. It
was not as general purpose as, for instance, the Mark I.
The Colossus (1944?) was all electronic. It was very special purpose and
barely if at all programmable.
The Eniac (1946) was all electronic and general purpose. It was
programmed by plugging. It and the Harvard Mark I were decimal and a lot
like a bunch of adding machines cobbled together.
The SSEM (1948) was all electronic and general purpose (but extremely
small.) It was a true stored program machine. It was also binary.
The Univac I (1950) was all electronic, general purpose and generally
useful (and also decimal.) It was a commercially available computer,
unlike all the previous ones.
Paul Pierce
i'm organizing command central here some ,and have a few things that *might*
be useful to someone else.
epson equity I user's guide.
i'm a big fan of original documentation and shipping materials that things
came in so i have two empty boxes available. the first is for a tandy cm11
monitor and the second is for an apple imagewriter I which i'm using to store
10 meg bernoulli carts at the moment, lol. i dont have the foam packing
material though. message me before it all gets round filed one day.
david
> Right now I'm using this checkit 3.0 to debug a motherboard because I
> am trying to get it into turbo mode by keyboard, It's Nec Powermate
> 386 33i (386dx 33 cached all in one board). What is the key combo
> to enable turbo? It's Phoenix bios.
I think Phoenix bioses use Ctrl-Alt-KeypadMinus. Perhaps that's
Ctrl-Shift, and perhaps it's KeypadPlus. This is what I seem to
remember, though.
--
Ben Coakley coakley(a)ac.grin.edu
Station Manager, KDIC 88.5 FM CBEL: Xavier OH
http://www.math.grin.edu/~coakley
