Heh... I should probably have done this just after I subscribed. Oh well...
Yes, it's me. Some of you may already have at least gotten an E-mail from
me, or spoken to me on the phone. I have a whole garage full of DEC stuff,
including several MicroVAX II's, MicroPDP-11/23 and 11/73, appropriate
monster hard drives, a couple of Cipher front-loading tape units, various
parts and racks, etc.
DEC stuff is my current Big Thing, though I regret that I don't have the
space nor the power facilities to handle the full-size machines (like the
11/70 or the VAX-11 series). Still, MicroVAXen and the PDP's make for
interesting diversions.
I've been working with electronics since I was old enough to start tearing
things apart (not that I got them back together that often!), have been a
ham radio op since 1977, and working with computers on and off since 1978.
I currently work at Boeing Defense & Space group, operations, computing
support (been there since November).
I am happily married, and my mate knew darn well what she was getting into
when she married a techie. I'm not a Washington native, though I do live in
Kent at the moment (I think of myself as an 'unrepentant Californian'). For
those that are curious beyond this post, I invite you to have a look at
http://www.wizards.net/technoid.
Among other things, I have a listing of both Washington and California
electronics-oriented swap meets and surplus stores on the link 'The
Wonderful World of Scrounging.' I gladly invite corrections and updates to
said list!
Let's see, what else...? I try to make at least two trips a year to the
Bay Area for scrounging purposes (Sam? Want to get together sometime and
introduce me to some of the other local collectors?<g>), and to meet up
with a friend of mine in San Jose who shares my interests. We've often done
selling or buying trips to the Bay Area swap meets together, having known
each other since about 1980.
That's about all I can think of at the moment. Caveat emptor!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272)
(Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin(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..."
Hi guys, my collection is still on the small side (25 or so) and lately
I've just been trying to cover "all the bases." I'm mainly interested in
80's micros (since that's what I grew up with) and have a few holes to
fill. OK, enough filler, here's what I need:
- I *still* don't have an Atari!
- I'd like a MSX machine as well (never even seen one in anything other
than magazine articles)
- and maybe a Timex just for the hell of it.
If anyone has any duplicates that they'd like to sell/trade etc. than
PLEASE let me know! I live in the (relatively) Philadelphia area.
BTW, someone on this mailing list mentioned that they needed the TI Speech
box. If by this you mean the Speech Synthesizer that plugged into the
side than I have 2 (and only 1 TI) so....
However, if you mean the Terminal Emulator II cartridge than, sorry, I
only have 1 of those! :(
Les
more(a)crazy.rutgers.edu
With the current thread on Osborne's machines (he was a great writer
about computer concepts, a fair engineer, and a _lousy_ businessman --
level of incompetence at work ala the Peter Principle), I realise that
besides Kaypro, there is another line of pre-laptops I'm interested in.
If anybody gets a line on an available Otrona CP/M system, I am very
interested. I thought it was the prettiest luggable around, even though I
continue very loyal to my TRS-80 4P. What ever happened to Otrona,
anyway? Did they get absorbed by Olivetti and forced to make pathetic PC
semi-compatibles for AT&T? (The Olivetti/AT&T PC 6300 had a video
connector that carried 70vdc to the monitor from a connector that looked
like a PC parallel port [female DB-25] until a customer mistook which
connector was which, I thought that _nothing_ could kill a TRS-80 Daisy
Wheel Printer II -- the aroma of semiconductors reverting to rocks in both
printer and CPU demonstrated that something indeed could).
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
Here's a message I recieved last year after the aquisition of my Osborne
Executive that I thought some of you might find interesting:
*** Forwarded message, originally written by Arthur N. Borg on 14-Aug-96 ***
Dear Jeff,
At the time that the Osbourne was being designed, I worked for the company
that made the display. I remember clearly asking one of the Osbourne engineers
what
he thought about the IBM PC that had recently been introduced. He said, that
computer has a color display, It is just a toy or video game. Ours is a
business
computer.
The Osbourne executive ran CP/M 3.0 as the operating system. If you have an
operating system disk and a format and modem disk. You should have access to
everything that you need. Walnut Creek has a CD-ROM with more CP/M material
than
you could imagine.
I (think) that I have a set of manuals but I also (think) that they are in
storage in the United States. One caveat. In the manual there is a drawing
showing
how to connect the parallel port to a Centronics printer. The drawing is
totally
incorrect. I spent a week re-wiring the dongle so that the printer would work.
The
Osbourne Executive has two unusual features. First, the printer port is alsso
a
bi-directional IEE-488 interface and so the machine could control and monitor
lab
equipment and so on. Also, the type face is loaded into ram at start up and
so, you
can devise your own type face or use Greek or whatever.
We also made some of the displays for the Osbourne 1 and having a 63
character display was very limiting. Fitting 80 characters on a 7 inch display
was
not easy. You will note if you have a full screen of characters, as you turn
the
machine around, the earth's magnetic field tends to make the outer characters
slip
out of view. Osbourne was roundly condemned for announcing this machine too
early
and killing sales for the Osbourne 1 and thus killing the company. I think
that
this is a harsh judgement. This was the time that FCC radiation rules were
just
getting started and everyone was having a hard time meeting them. In plain
fact, I
think that they didn't realize how big a task they had to pass this test. I
saw
some figures after the company died. There was no week that they were in
business
that the company had a positive cash flow. You could see from the curves that
somewhere out in the future, they would have a positive cash flow. I think
that the
investors just felt that there was too much going for IBM and pulled the plug
on
Osbourne.
Best regards,
Art Borg
***End of forwarded message
Jeff jeffh(a)unix.aardvarkol.com
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amiga enthusiast and collector of early, classic microcomputers
> On Wed, 11 Jun 1997, Marvin wrote:
>
> > Along the lines of saving stuff, does anyone collect the old printers?
A topic I've given a lot of thought. The original MX-80 and the Paper Tiger
immediately spring to mind as classic printers worthy of incorporating into a
museum but I can't think of much else I'd have to own (aside from maybe an
original laserjet). Given the space limitations that most of us have
collecting printers in the manner that we collect computers is impractical.
But if you are inclined to collect them they are certainly plentiful and
cheap.
Lou
> I bought a TI-99/4A for $2, in its original box. As far as I can tell,
> it's a complete system, but there's no software. All of you have one
> of these machines, right? :)
If I remember it didn't come with software other than the embedded basic.
Allison
Tomorrow I will be at the MIT flea market. I have to thin my excesses.
Of interest will be:
memory and some other parts in tubes with old (pre81) date codes. Stuff
like TMS4060, upd411, upd410, 2012...
Motorola 6800D1 board, with docs and extras.
Some s100 boards SEALS, IMS and PT 8k 2102 memory and others. Some Altair
memory S4k and 88-4MCD, altair front pannel logic and 8080 cpu. Many with
docs available. DUAL inc, 68k s100 cpu. compupro s100 motherboard.
S100 box, industrial strength.
Some extra CPM docs and misc books.
Intel MDS800 nearly complete, no disks. I have a non intel multibus disk
controller for it.
Silver reed LQP, complete with docs, daisy wheels, ribbons. Working.
Anadex printer working, with docs. Both serial and parallel.
2 cocos condition unknown.
MISC qbus PDP11 modules including some core planes(operational!). A couple
of BDV11va. Wire wrap modules. H962 diode rom boot board with docs.
Assortment of power supplies. Very complete TRS80 DOCS, CPU, EI, tapes
extras. Including some z80 and trs-80 books.
Floppy drives, St506 drives, external single floppy boxes (al la TRS80).
Fans for use in s100 or other boxes.
Allison
I decided to go to garage sales this morning.
I passed up an IBM 5150 with some sort of monitor for $15 or offer. It
had a single 5.25" drive. I suspect it had been picked over for parts,
since there was another PC there for sale, and the seller said that he
"wanted to upgrade the other PC's memory with chips from this one." I
didn't really want the machine, and I didn't figure it would be worth
shipping.
I bought a TI-99/4A for $2, in its original box. As far as I can tell,
it's a complete system, but there's no software. All of you have one
of these machines, right? :)
--
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.
>I had a good weekend. This is what I got:
[snip]
>All for $50. It was at our local Science center, so I decided to be
>generous with my offers. They keep all procedes. Any offers for
>trades/for sale welcome. Any pointers to info on the softcard?
Ain't kidding you had a good weekend!
--
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 10:29 AM 6/13/97 -0700, you wrote:
>On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers wrote:
>
>> Wish I had my old MX-80 with the bootleg Graftrax ROM.
>
>I'm just curious, but what's special about the MX-80?
Well... to my mind the thing that made the MX-80 somewhat revolutionary for
its time was the user replacable print head that initially retailed for
about $35.00. Compared against other printers of the time which required a
trip to the shop and an average of $200.00 in repairs for a filed head, I
think it deserves its place of recognition.
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
I frequent two thrift stores in the same town on a regular basis and the
prices, while higher than what you folks on the west cost are used to, were
reasonable. However three weeks ago they started getting in a lot of PC
equipment and the prices on it were ridiculous i.e $70 for a Packard Bell XT
clone with a monochrome monitor and $50 for an IBM 5150 PC with monitor.
While I was amused I wasn't really concerned since I have little interest in
this type of gear.
Now however the madness has infected the old 8 bit equipment. Some examples.
Apple IIc with monitor, 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" external drives $75. Not too bad
you say. Well then how about a C-64 with a 1571 disk drive and power supplies
for $80? The killer was a Coco 1 with manuals for $99 dollars.
Three weeks ago the C-64 and the Coco would have been $12 each and the 1571
about $15. I assume that they have someone new pricing this equipment but I
can't for the life of me figure out the rationale behind these prices.
Needless to say they're not moving much equipment.
Sorry for the rant but I just had to let it out. I did complain to the
cashier who said (sincerely I believe) that she would inform the manager .
Lou
I had a good weekend. This is what I got:
2 UNOPENED boxes of QuickFile II for Apple II
1 Pinpoint Software for Apple II
1 Set of manuals for IBM PC AT
2 Sets of manuals for WordPerfect (In box like PC AT manuals)
1 TI 59 Calculator with printer
1 Apple IIE computer
1 Microsoft Softcard
1 Super Serial II card
4 Disk II drives
2 Diks II interfaces
1 Numeric pad for IIe
1 Apple II Parallel card (By apple)
1 Amiga Monitor, the nice RGB/Composite monitor, Mono
1 Kodac Diconix 150+ printer for Mac
All for $50. It was at our local Science center, so I decided to be
generous with my offers. They keep all procedes. Any offers for
trades/for sale welcome. Any pointers to info on the softcard?
Josh M. Nutzman
+----------------------------------------------+
|"Life is like a river, you go with the flow...|
| but in the end you usually end up dammed." |
| -The Red Green Show |
+----------------------------------------------+
> I frequent two thrift stores in the same town on a regular basis and the
> prices, while higher than what you folks on the west cost are used to, were
> reasonable. However three weeks ago they started getting in a lot of PC
> equipment and the prices on it were ridiculous i.e $70 for a Packard Bell XT
> clone with a monochrome monitor and $50 for an IBM 5150 PC with monitor.
> While I was amused I wasn't really concerned since I have little interest in
> this type of gear.
Could be worse. The University of Utah Property Redistribution Center
seems to have a very odd idea of pricing. One day I went in and saw a
teletype marked $300. Walked out with an HP 9100B calculator for $10.
Somebody there seems to know _some_ things are collectable but has no
idea exactly _what_.
Last time I visited, though, it was all boring PC stuff...
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu
> repairs. I like mine because it has serial inputs - something that's
> getting increasingly hard to find on 99% of the printers in production.
the venerable LA120! It was the last of the printers that could punch 8part
carbon forms. The more common la100RO or LA210 serial and quite solid. I'm
still running a LA100RO I bought new in 84 wide platten and rugged with fair
near letter quality.
other serial printers from DEC:
LA34, LA36, LA38, LA12 corrospondent, LA50, LA75, LN01 with serial option
(that was a 12ppm xerox laser). To mention a few.
Allison
>
> Well... to my mind the thing that made the MX-80 somewhat revolutionary fo
> its time was the user replacable print head that initially retailed for
> about $35.00. Compared against other printers of the time which required
while significant there were other things of note.
It was low cost but not cheap.
It was widely sold.
Many other vendors copied it, it was a defacto standard in itself.
I represented a step up over many printers at twice the cost.
Later version were based on it.
Allison
> (If you aren't aware - it is a dual processor 8080 (CP/M) and 8086 (CP/M
> 86 or MS-DOS) computer with 2 5.25" floppies). I used to have one that
> belonged to work... it is kinda cool.
No that's z80 and 8088 cpus running cpm80/86. Amoung other things it would
take up to 896k of ram, color adaptor and a hard disk.
Allison
Earl's down here (a liquidation place) has a DEC Rainbow for sale. I
don't exactly remember what they want for it, but i remember thinking it
was ridiculous (probably the better half of 100 bills, maybe more).
However, if anybody wants this particular curio, I will be glad to trot
down there and grab it for you.
(If you aren't aware - it is a dual processor 8080 (CP/M) and 8086 (CP/M
86 or MS-DOS) computer with 2 5.25" floppies). I used to have one that
belonged to work... it is kinda cool.
-mark
Im still looking for a plain Apple][, and an Apple//e platinum, the one
with the numeric keypad on the side, please check if they have any of
either of these, as I need them for my collection.
----------
> From: Marvin <marvin(a)rain.org>
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Classic Computers to Save?
> Date: Friday, June 13, 1997 1:33 PM
>
> I just got back from checking out several places here in Sanata Barbara
> where machines are being sold.
>
> First, there are a number of SpectraGraphics DS1080 machines along with
> some good size terminals, keyboards, etc. I am not familiar with the
> units but the guy indicated this was a workstation assembly. If anyone
> is interested, let me know and I'll get back to him. I *think* there
> were about four of the DS1080 machines, at least a couple large monitors
> (19" or so RGB I think), some keyboards, perhaps some type of digitizing
> pad (not sure about this), and I didn't see any docs or software with
> it. He indicated he would be quite happy with $100 for the lot. My
> guess is that the lot weighs probably about 300 pounds or so. He
> indicated this was used as a CAD system.
>
> Second, there is an NCR PC-8 Xenix machine with some software, monitor,
> and several keyboards. I might end up trying to get it since I don't
> have one in the collection but if someone else is interested, let me
> know. My guess is that the lot weighs in at about 100 pounds or so.
> While I forgot to ask the price on this, he would most likely be more
> than happy with $30 - $50 for the lot.
>
> Thirdly, he had three or four Apple IIC's along with a bit of
> documentation, one of the Imagewriters, and perhaps some a little bit of
> other stuff I missed. Total weight is probably about 50 - 75 pounds,
> and he would take $20 each or probably $40 - $50 for the lot. Each of
> the first three Apples had either one or two external floppy disk drives
> with them.
>
> Finally, I went over to a local rummage sale and there was a bunch of
> Commodore stuff primarily C64s, documentation, some Apple docs, and some
> printers. This will be over this afternoon about 3PM PST so I will show
> up about 2:30 to see what I can haul away :). I will most likely just
> pick it up what is left just to save it from the dumpster but most of
> what I saw, I already have. Total weight was probably about 100 pounds
> including documentation. I did pick up the some of the docs and there
> are duplicate Apple II and IIe manuals.
>
> The first three items may or may not be sold this weekend to someone
> from Los Angeles. However, being here does give me an advantage :), so
> if anyone is interested in anything here, let me know!
In a message dated 97-06-13 16:35:47 EDT, Ray Stricklin wrote:
> I'm just curious, but what's special about the MX-80?
The MX-80 was the first low cost RELIABLE dot matrix printer and made
printing an affordable reality for we poor early micro users. The Paper Tiger
was (to the best of my memory) the first low cost ($995, again to the best of
my memory) micro dot matrix printer. Unfortunately it was NOT very reliable.
BTW after my post on collecting printers I suddenly realized I have about 12
lying around so I guess I am sort of collecting them - but it's against my
will. :-)
Lou
Opens tomorrow. Should be fun!:
"Boston, MA (May 23) - On June 14, 1997, The Computer Museum re-creates the
dawn of the PC age through a lifesize reconstruction of a 1970s' hacker's
garage and vintage personal computing artifacts. ... The Museum draws on
artifacts from its rich collection, including an Apple I and Altair 8800,
to recall the garages of 1970s' hobbyists who assembled "homebrew"
computers ... Rich in period detail, the "garage" is cluttered with an
oscilloscope, a ham radio, an old TV tube, 1970s' issues of Byte magazine,
a drum set, a guitar and photos of Mick Jagger and the Beatles. The relics
- including two early personal computers and two video games - recall a
pivotal time when computers began to serve as consumer items ..."
for the full article see:
http://www.tcm.org/info/press/wpr-hgarage.html
- glenn
+=========================================================+
| Glenn F. Roberts, Falls Church, VA
| Comments are my own and not the opinion of my employer
| groberts(a)mitre.org
Well, darn it, I tried, but I just can't get the silly thing to work!
Ok... first volunteer who feels like visiting Kent, WA (yes, Bill, that's
a big hint, especially since I CC'd you on this... <g>) can have this
beast. It's an STC/StorageTek 9-track tape drive, model 2921. When working,
it can do 1600 and 6250 (GCR), sits in a standard 19" rack, has a Pertec
interface, and weighs about 100 lbs. or so.
Notice I say 'when working.' I tried to get it to going, but it seems to
have a sick CPU card. I kind of hate to get rid of it, but I need the space
more than I do the drive and a new CPU card was quoted as being around $800
(yikes! My skylight blinds are going to cost that much!)
Come to think of it, if anyone's got a working dual-density drive that
they feel like getting rid of, I would love to know about it. ;-)
Thanks in advance. E-mail or call me at (253) 639-9555 for details.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272)
(Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin(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 01:56 PM 6/13/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Say someone had a nice, working IMSAI 8080 in decent condition. How
>much, realistically, could one expect to sell this for?
Haddock lists it at 150-225... (Values are for complete systems, with
everything that came with it, but not boxes, and not nec. working.)
>Victor 9000, working...how much?
I paid $100 + tax for mine. Took me a while to find it, too.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
While Isaac Davis wrote:
Wait a minute, it was an Olivetti, but I can't remember the
>> model. The coolest part was turning the lights off when it was printing and
>> watching the sparks fly across the paper as it printed. That's a printer I
>> would like to have again.
At 21:28 12/06/97 -0600, Jeff wrote:
>Y' know, I seems to me that some of these 'sparky' dot matrix
>printers used aluminized "thermal" paper.
No Jeff, this Olivetti "sparkling" system was different and was not using
thermal-conductive (=aluminium) paper (at least the one I know); was a real
DRY INK JET.
The "bullet-shaped" cartridge was containing the DRY INK (a sort of TONER)
and a high-voltage electric field was made between the rubber(but conductive)
roll, and the head. In this way the particles of positive electrically
charged toner is "aimed" to go against the negative charged roll, but in
between there is the paper (common paper), so the electricity pass, but ink
stay.
>I used to have a stack of
>old machine runs on such paper, and I remember certain cheesy
>cash-registers using the same kind of paper tape (about 1981 or so .
also this DRY system was widely used by Olivetti on desktop financial
calculator (I have one working) and cash-registers
I think that the system was good for those applications (fast,quite
silent,working on common paper instead thermal and..yes,cool in the dark)
but the problem was the powder spread all around the printing bay of the
machine, so when bubble jet came out...
Sorry for my instinctive and not-checked english.
Ciao
Riccardo
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Riccardo Romagnoli,collector of:CLASSIC COMPUTERS,TELETYPE UNITS,PHONE AND
PHONECARDS I-47100 Forli'/Emilia-Romagna/Food Valley/ITALY
Pager:DTMF PHONES=+39/16888(hear msg.and BEEP then 5130274*YOUR TEL. NUMBER*
where*=asterisk key | for help visit http://www.tim.it/tldrin_eg/tlde03.html
TELEX:551132 CHEMIF I
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
> Aha! YUV is something I recognize now. I believe this is what broadcast
> professionals call component video. (Let's see if I'll be right one out of
> two.)
>
> > The signals are transmitted this way in broadcast TV to ensure
> > compatibility between colour and BW tellies. They are also the signals
> > that would normally be sent to a TV (UHF or VHF) modulator from the
> > computer, hence their presence on the video connector.
>
> Hmmm... any modulator I've ever worked on had a composite input. Is this
> maybe more common in European systems?
Hmm. I'm getting out of my depth at this point. I've not dealt in
detail with many colour modulators but I recall the Sinclair Spectrum
had YUV as opposed to RGB on its expansion port.
The computer obviously uses RGB internally (although I don't see why one
couldn't design a machine to do YUV instead!) and it has to be converted
to YUV at some stage in the modulation process. My guess (no evidence
to back this up) is that the more expensive modulators - the ones one is
likely to be able to buy for one's own projects - accept composite, but
many mass-producing manufacturers got away with a cheaper modulator by
putting the conversion in the (custom) chip in the video circuitry.
Philip.
