In a message dated 97-11-14 23:20:56 EST, you write:
> > I was using a WD Caviar 2.0 GB, and it was
> > LOUD!!!
>
> If you think that was loud, you've never heard a RP05 spinning up :-).
>
> The most amazing thing is being in a real computer room (i.e. dozens
> of 14" drives) when the power suddenly goes *off*. The silence is
> astonishing.
>
> Tim. (shoppa(a)triumf.ca)
>
off-topic again:
speaking of loud, i worked in a small computer room back in 1992 and when i
came in one afternoon, it was quieter than normal. turns out the ac units
werent running so those units themselves make plenty of noise. even louder
was the IBM 3380/3880 (cant remember which) DASD units of which there were 4
rows of them. quite impressive for their size and noisy, probably due to the
belt drive mechanism. later they were replaced with one small row of hitachi
drives which were mcuh quieter and had almost 2x the capacity, I was told.
david
At 10:29 AM 11/15/97 -0800, you wrote:
>I mean, we have a house rule of "No computers in the living room or
>dining room, unless they're laptops or they're leaving,"
Hmmm... What a silly rule! 8^) (As for me, there is currently (at least
before I left for a weekend holiday) a Data General One & a Mac Plus in the
dining room, At least an Apple IIe, M100, Dash 030, and probably a couple of
others in the living room, Atari Falcon in the laundry room... Nothing
(yet) in the kitchen or bathroom...
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)ricochet.net that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
<years old machines now. Rainbow machine is very quirky demanding
<weird hardware and quirky disks in both format and hardsectored. :(
Huh? Rainbot uses the somewhat unique format for the hard disk but sos did
many other of the time. The floppy is a soft sector single sided 96tpi
at 10 sectors per track that can be formatted on a PC with a good 1.2m
drive in 360k speed and with the correct formatter. OR a system with an
RX50 drive and a 1793 floppy controller (CP/M-80 boxen).
<> acceptable OS. Although CP/M running native on a Pentium 133 is pretty
<> cool, and fast! By collecting Non-PC's there a tons of OS's to play with
CP/M-80 running on a 16mhz z180 is far more interesting. ;-)
Allison
<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)
Open it and crak it up. make full copies and backups. Save all packaging
by sliting the edges or whatever so that any making is preserved. Exploit
and document the machine to the world as I have no clue what a 3b1 is or
the cpu it used. Though I do remember the ads.
Allison
>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.
>
Actually after 20 years an automobile is considered a Classic, I think it's
40 - 50 years to be considered an Antique. With the frequency that new
computers are introduced 10 - 15 years is probably a good definition for
classic and 20 - 25 for antique.
-- Kirk
Hello. Does anyone have any systems that are not "high" on the price
list of classics that they could give me? (I could have my relatives in
the states get them via UPS, then they could mail 'em to me as a
Christmas present..... it would make me very happy!)
Thanks,
Tim D. Hotze
<there is no doubt that the early mass-produced CD-ROM drives (not the
<origionals of 1984, but the ones that were made to be put into PCs, not
<servers) are classic componets, even though many are of this decade.
<In my opinion, the first 486 PCs (not servers) are classics... ones that
<are still used, but classics... even though most of 'em were made in
Classic, like the 14 year old washing machine I have. Most post 286 PCs
are appliances just like a washer dryer only built worse.
<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.
<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"
To me most VAXen are still used and sold for commercial use, though many
are still over 10. Try and buy some of the PDP-8s that are in commercial
service. Age does not make a computer significant alone though, it's a
distinct factor. Another factor is unique design in a technical sense or
esthetic (or the lack of) style. Rarity is an impact too. I can name
several machines of the altair imsai time frame that are far more scarce.
For example, I still have not found or seen an IMSAI IMP48 other than my
own.
<but I'm not sure how to include that while still acknowledging the
<presence of many of the best machines and componets that did indeed fail
<in the process... but at least Wang's did eventually fall.... I can't
<even rememeber all of the problems that they had...
Wang played to to narrow a market (word processing and document management)
that was invaded by all the micros at far lower price and in some cases
a product that was more stylish or appealed to the user more. With
shrinking market space and a but if empire building by Ahn Wang the
business costs exceeded revenue... then rest is not news or unexpected.
The layoffs were amoung the most brutal in the industry.
Allison
On Sat, 15 Nov 1997, Mr. Seagraves inquired of the assembled masses
thusly:
> I've noticed all this time that DECwindows is on this MV3100.
> What is it? It it like Macro$oft's windows, or Xwindows?
> And when it says "display device", what is it expecting, a Tek
> terminal, or VT of some sort, or some special adapter?
DECwindows is an X-window system workalike that runs on both VAXen
and DEC's RISC platforms. It's merely a way for a client program
running on one machine to display its graphics on a server running
on another machine (Warning: in X terminology, "server" and "client"
seem reversed - you sit in front of the server while the client shoves
graphics data at you; the "client" does the applications processing).
The two are somewhat compatible. I have a pal in Providence who
has a VAX-11/750 and DECwindows, I have a Linux box at home running
an X server. We were able to get an X session set up with a client
running on his VAX to display on my machine; the network transport
was CMU/IP for the VAX, standard TCP/IP at the Linux end. Yes, it
was slow as a dog, especially as I have a 14.4 kbps modem, but it
_did_ work. Fun stuff.
Cheers.
______________________________________________________________________
| | |
| 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: N42:22 W71:47 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|
Ive found a guy locally who has a GS for sale, but hasnt set a price. ( i
hate that) what does everything think it's worth?
details are sketchy, but here's what he said
its a woz version
coupla megs of memory. (exp card?)
external cms hard drive (scsi?)
has a sound card. he says it's not the ensoniq sound chip, but an adaptor
card.
3.5 drive.
also has some books and sw.
what would be a decent price for this? he may be interested in a basic 486 i
have to barter with.
david
James Willing <jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> While wandering around one of my favourite surplus gear haunts today, I cam
> across a couple of HP 1000 F series minicomputers. While they look neat, I
> know just about nothing about them. Anyone out there familiar enough with
> them to give me the 'infamous 25 words or less' speech on their significance?
They're real-time control systems, based around the 21MX processor
family (which succeeded the 2100 (ca. 1972) and 211[456] (ca. 1967))
and running one of several flavors of HP's RTE operating system.
I've never actually used them.
> It might take a few $$ to break one or more of them loose, so I'd like to
> have a bit of info before I make a concerted effort to procure them...
If you have HP Measurement/Computation catalogs from 1980 or 1981 or
so, you could look in there. Else pester me and I'll try to FAX a
few relevant pages to you.
-Frank McConnell
