In a message dated 97-11-17 12:20:14 EST, HOTZE put forth:
> You see... that's the thing... I don't have anywhere to start but HERE.
I've
> really only been REALLY interested in the PC business since '93, and
> collecting classics since May... I don't have ANYTHING.... I don't know
> anybody (except all of you lovely people out there....), and so I need
> somewhere to start... IBMs seem to be what I'm good at (I program them now
> as
> a hobby, so I know x86) I would take an IBM/PC, or, if they're easy to
find,
>
> a PC jr.
well, gee, i have an extra pcjr and power supply laying around here... dont
know what shipping would be, however.
RE: the unix box, and the issue whether to power it up:
back in the 1980s i collected beer cans and it was clearly established that
cans were worth more if full, or emptied from the bottom so the drink tab was
left undisturbed and full 6packs were the most valuable, so i say if it's
left alone, it would be "worth" more. i have an unused ibm 5150 in the
original box with the original cardboard shipping disks along with the
original keyboard in its' box. they may not be worth a lot now, but will be
eventually, especially with their boxes and documentation.
david
Sirs,
I received your name from Bill Yakowenko.
I have a TRS-8080 Color Computer 2 with mod kit to solve the overheating
problem and memory upgrade. My system also includes a disk drive,
multi-pak interface, cassette recorder, x-pad graphics tablet, deluxe
joysticks, external serial/parallel port interface, X-10 light/appliance
controller, light pen, editor/assembler module and parts for an
experimenter's I/O port. I also have OS-9 and numerous other programs and
very much documentation including all original manuals. Finally, I have
many Color Computer magazines, including almost every issue of Color
Computer News.
I'm interested in finding this equipment a good home at extremely low or no
price other than postage.
I'm not sure what services you provide but if you post messages such as the
above would you please post this? Too, what is your website address?
Thanks,
David Fitts
<Could cut some canned trannys open that is touchy to light and fill
They all are!
2n5777 is a good photodarlington I've used a few.
<those sensors from dead mouses, you can use either IR LED or strong
<light. (YES! those light bulbs generate lot of IR).
At lower than optimum voltage the IR is very there! IR however penetrates
some paper tapes real well (if oil soaked better than white light!).
It's been years since I've built one but I could reproduce it in an
afternoon or two if need be.
Allison
At 13:29 11/15/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I don't think that indestructibility of the tape is the issue...the coating
>is the problem -- sliding across the head. What are you gonna bond to Tyvek?
No, no, no! Tyvek PUNCHED tape! Coat nothing! Build a carbide
punch-head.... Pull it through whippin' fast, like Colossus.
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org
http://www.chac.org/index.html
Computer History Association of California
It sounds like your machine needs a good cleaning, the disk drive is not
reading the disk"maybe". I have four working commodore c64 computers,
and the drives need to be cleaned. Even more after laying around for a
long period of time. If your drive turns when you try to load something
it sounds like it could be a dirty drive.
It's not much to go on, but I have seen these small things stop folks in
their tracks. good luck, bad eye bill.
<Um, Linux 2.0.30 now have Alpha support, PPC, 68k (amiga), 386, Mips,
<Sparc, Ataris. Linux is Unix kind which you can source unix source
<code to it by freely available complier and make 'em.
I rememberd that after I sent the message. Old brain cells.
Allison
I would vote to leave it alone, as this is a real classic untouched. John
At 08:40 AM 11/16/97 -0800, you wrote:
>You know, I always hate these moral dilemmas...
>
>In the last few days the collection received an AT&T UNIX PC (aka 7300,
>3b1) in extremely good condition. It arrived with all of the original
>docs, software, and mouse. The docs were unwrapped , and the mouse was in
>its original foam packing. "Kind of nice when someone packs things away
>properly" I thought.
>
>Well, its been a bit busy around the garage the last couple of weeks, so I
>put the unit and its associated stuff on the shelf and covered it up for a
>time.
>
>Last night, while I was working on a notebook (yes, one of those 'modern'
>things) for one of my wife's friends, I decided to have another look at the
>UNIX PC while I was waiting for a disk scan to finish...
>
>Found a spot for it on the bench, made a cursory check of the unit (nothing
>loose, nothing rattling...) and powered it up. It hummed and beeped
>happily and started drawing little boxes on the screen as I recalled it
>doing when it was starting up...
>
>However, about 3-4 minutes and 4-5 lines of little boxes later, it starts
>to dawn on me that it should not be taking quite this long to get a prompt
>of some kind. So, I move the keyboard to have a look at the floppy drive
>(it hides behind the keyboard you see) and sure enough the machine is
>looking for a floppy.
>
>Fine... so, I grab the binder containing the software distribution, open it
>up...
>
>All of the disks are still sealed! At this point it starts to dawn on me,
>that this machine has never been run! A comment flashes back to mind; made
>by the person who gave me the machine... "My father bought it for his
>company, read the manuals and realized that he had no idea what he was
>doing..."
>
>I find myself wondering... Back around 1985 when this thing was released
>(and about $10k+), who could have afforded to buy one of these things, open
>the manuals, decide that they were in over their heads, and just put it on
>the shelf without even loading the software??? EEK!
>
>And so, the dilemma... do I open the disks and crank this critter up? Or
>just pack it all away as another classic 'artifact'? (or leave it until I
>have a fair amount of time to spend with it)
>
>No flame wars please, just the random philosophical question...
>
>-jim
>
>---
>jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
>The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
>Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
>
>
>
>
Along the same lines....
While digging through one of my boxes of stuff for a part I found a
partial S100 Jade Double density disk controller kit unassembled. Of
course I remember why I had it, the person that gave it to me back in
'82 wasn't up for the assembly task, raided it for parts and gave
me the remains. At the time I wasn't interested in getting a 1793 based
controller going as I was getting 765As for free and all the assistance
>from it's designers I could use. Well guess what. I'm 98% of the way
through assembling it. Then I have to assemble the source code as there
are no disks but lots of listings in the manuals. It's z80 based in that
it has its own CPU as a bus slave. Should be interesting to get going.
Oh, all the missing parts are from my collection and a few are date coded
before the board! It was all I had of some parts.
Allison
HOTZE <photze(a)batelco.com.bh> wrote:
> [...] if you remember, in the "welcome" message, it
> said that it was hard to state the definiton of a classic... but 10
> years or older would do. I do not wish to offend the owner, but they
> are one person, and they can make mistakes... and together, as a group,
> the chances of making an accurate definiton are smaller with us.
Right. Not too many people are going to agree on this. There's
probably a few people out there who think the Atari Portfolio is a
classic and I think it's under 10 years old. The IBM PC/AT is 13
years old now but I have difficulty thinking of it as a classic and I
really couldn't care less.
But the 10 year rule is simple and not without precedent (it's roughly
the way other things are judged "antique" -- if I remember correctly
the "magic number" is 100 years for furniture and housewares and 20
years for automobiles). That's why we have it, we know it's not
perfect but it does provide a clear cutoff.
(Aside to You Know Who You Are: knock it off, OK?)
> Possibly (out for MUCH revision...) is the definition "Any computer
> which has aged sufficently to be considered "outdated" by the computer
> market and has historic signifiance, OR is 10 years old or older." The
> one evedeint place that requires revsion is the "historical signifiacne"
Does it? The problem is that inside 10 years it's very difficult to
judge historical significance.
And just because it's older than 10 years doesn't make finding the
historical significance any easier. I'm hard pressed to think of what
was significant about the PC/AT, as near as I could tell at the time
it was put to work as a bigger faster IBM PC, still running all the
same old MS-DOS applications, still one at a time. And from
conversations I've had with folks who were doing Unix stuff on the
80286 then, they didn't think 80286 protected mode was progress w/r/t
the PDP-11.
Well, what did the PC/AT have that the PC/XT didn't? 1.2MB
minifloppies (although I saw those retrofit onto XT-class PCs), 16-bit
slots, a cascaded interrupt controller to handle the additional
interrupt request lines...and the A20 gate that let you get at another
little chunk of RAM up above the 1MB boundary while still in real
mode. Hmm. How many of these things do we consider historically
significant now, and how many will we still consider significant in 5,
10, 25, 50, 100 years?
-Frank McConnell
On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, Allison remarked to us:
> You have three choices [for an Alpha OS] that I know of, OpenVMS
> (my favorite), Digital Unix, or NT. I don't know that anyone has
> done a UNIX port outside of digital.
Linux has been successfully ported to the Alpha architecture.
______________________________________________________________________
| | |
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com | |
| http://www.ultranet.com/~engelbrt/carl/museum/ | ICBM: N42:21 W71:46 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|
