Message text written by INTERNET:classiccmp@u.washington.edu
>Any of you hard core commodore folks know who might have ended up
owning the rights to this stuff?<
No clue. Commodore, of course, went bankrupt. Originally, it looked like
ESCOM ended up with everything. I made several efforts to contact ESCOM
through e-mail to determine what their plans were for the old 8-bits items,
and never could get a reply. Then, ESCOM went bankrupt. I'm not clear if
the Commodore bankruptcy court sort of cancelled the deal retroactively, or
if the assets were moved again in the ESCOM bankruptcy. Anyway, another
party (Gateway?) ended up with the Amiga assets, but they don't have-- or
aren't acknowledging that they have-- the old 8-bit assets. Frankly, I
doubt this point will ever be clarified.
If the old entities have been disolved, and no new entities obtained the
rights before the dissolution, it would seem to me this stuff is now public
domain. Of course, the simplest way to find out would be to start treating
this stuff as public domain. If any entity out there believes it has the
copyrights, it will then make itself known.
Gil Parrish
107765.1161(a)compuserve.com
>>> What should be on display considering:
>>> 1) space limitation
>>> 2) Mainframes, minis, micros
>>> 3) What would most attract visitors
>>> 4) What would most attract funding :)
>5- Location, Location, Location!!!
>
Well, I had an idea, and it's just so crazy, it just might work. How about
contacting an art gallery, and see if they will lend you a couple of rooms,
or however they do their shows. You could get together with a couple of
other collectors and have a "display". We consider these a form of art, and
I'm sure you could pull in a very diverse crowd. Who knows, you might turn
into a travelling museum/art show.
Isaac Davis | Don't throw out that old computer,
idavis(a)comland.com | check out the Classic Computer Rescue List -
indavis(a)juno.com | http://www.comland.com/~idavis/classic/classic.html
At 01:07 PM 7/16/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Charles E. Fox wrote:
>>
>> At 03:09 PM 7/15/97 -0700, you wrote:
>> >I have been thinking, probably along with most everyone here, for the
>> >past couple of years about how to open a computer museum. The major
>
>> We have a fellow in my area, Windsor Ontario, who has been trying to
>> start a science museum for years. You might consider broadening your area of
>> interest to get more public support.
>
>Has he been actively trying to get one started, and if so, what has been
>the major problem? One thing that has been suggested by a couple people
>I have talked to is to have displays that include technology developed
>by local companies. My feeling so far is that the funding sources will
>have a large impact on what is covered. I saw an interesting web site a
>couple of days ago, http://www.mysticseaport.org, that has what appears
>to be a somewhat self supporting museum going, i.e. no state or federal
>monies involved. I find THAT to be most admirable!!!
>
>
The fellow working on the Windsor Ontario science museum is Tom
Toth, a retired teacher with political experience.
There is also a group trying to promote an aviation museum, (I am a
member of that one) and another fellow trying to bring a Canadian navy
destroyer to town for a navy museum. The reason for all this interest is
that a Windsor resident died and left one million dollars to the city for
the establishment of a museum, the only requirement is that it should be
named after him. The city finds reasons why all the proposals are
unsatisfactory, and collects the interest on the million dollars.
I hope someone gets something going soon, because I am not getting
any younger and if I fizzle out all my stuff will be going to the dump!
Cheers
Charlie Fox
Message text written by INTERNET:classiccmp@u.washington.edu
>And I found a Commie B-128. I've heard of the C-128... are these similar,
or is this actually the same thing, or what? I'm not big on Commie stuff
(goofiest basic I've ever played with... and slooooo disk drives) but I
collect for uniqueness, and this seemed rather unique.
It has a card-edge IEEE-488 port, card-edge cassette, cartridge, "normal"
RS-232 and other ports (that I don't remember... I just got a quick look at
it), the Serial number is 0025xx (don't remember last two digits, but it
seems early) and IIRC (but I haven't seen a C-128 in nearly a decade -- and
that was only at K-mart) it looks different from a C-128.
Did I do good?
Also, they had a PET-style CBM-8050 (or was that 5080...) dual garage-door
style disk drives, and a printer that hooked up thru a funky
Centronics-like cable. Interested in those? I could go back tomorrow.<
The C-128 and B-128 are completely different. The B-128 was one of the
last/best members of the Commodore PET/CBM line; the C-128 was one of the
last/best members of the VIC/64 line. Both had 128K. The PET/CBM units
use an IEEE-488 interface for adding drives, printers, etc., and this
parallel approach is fairly fast; the VIC/64 line use a proprietary serial
connection that is fairly slow.
In other words, you'd better get back and pick up that 8050 if you want a
disk drive that attaches to the B-128; there are other PET/CBM drives that
would also work (e.g., 4040, 8250), but the 8050 would probably provide the
greatest compatibility if you ever want to pick up software. Drives from
the 15xx series (1541, 1571, 1581) won't help you here.
Did you do good? Only you can answer that. The unit isn't extremely
common, but isn't extremely rare either. If you're not into Commodore, you
might want to find someone who is and see if you can work a swap of some
kind. (I already have a B-128, thanks.)
Gil Parrish
107765.1161(a)compuserve.com
"Jeff Kaneko" <jeff.kaneko(a)ifrsys.com> wrote:
> > Halted in Santa Clara
> Funny you should mention these guys. I don't uderstand how they've
> managed to stay in business! I *really* needed a couple of 8" floppy
> drives a couple of years ago when I lived in San Jose. They had a
> pile of them -- for $75.00 a whack! I didn't bite.
I think Weird Stuff pulled something like this around December 1995,
not too long before they vacated their Kern Avenue storefront. Yeah,
right, like I am going to pay $75 for used-and-abused 8" drives when
the dealer hasn't even taken the time to sort out single/double sided
let alone single/double density.
Halted has a decent store of small parts. They are good for that, if
like me you are not real good at organization and planning your
component needs with enough lead time to deal with mail-order. And
they keep their selection of connectors better organized than some
other nearby outfits (Haltek in Mountain View just has no concept of
how to do this -- well, actually I haven't been there in a while, and
have been avoiding the connector aisles there for quite a while
longer).
Sometimes they have hard-to-find small parts. E.g. three or four
years ago they had sourced some of those funky SCSI connectors like
Sun used to use: the female D connectors with 50 pins arranged as
three rows. Specifically these were the IDC flavor designed to crimp
onto flat cable -- just the ticket if you were setting up a disk box
for a Sun! Pricey at $11, but the thought of the amount of time I
would spend soldering 50 little wires from a flat cable into 50 little
cups was a good motivating factor. So I bought a few, and I gather
other folks did too because one time I found myself waiting for them
to get new stock in.
> They were gone a couple of weeks later, I asked what became of them,
> and they said that nobody wanted them, so they were scrapped!
>
> Have you ever seen a grown man cry?
Yeah, I have seen them perpetrate other crocks, like the HP 2100 mini
that they were selling for $100? $200? I can't remember. What I do
remember is that someone had thoughtfully removed all the cards from
the CPU, and with my naturally cynical outlook I expect that means
they were easy pickings for gold recovery. To be fair there were some
other peripherals there, but the hassle involved in moving the lot
(all set in a 19" rack) and finding some place to put it was
additional discouragement -- besides which I did not have as much
experience with the other bits and so was not able to determine on the
spot whether they had already been gutted (though it looked like some
cabling had been removed as well).
It's not entirely clear to me how the surplus-electronics business
works here in Sillycon Valley, but one thing is obvious: the primary
moneymaker is in the movement of large lots, probably from auctions
and companies seeking to be rid of obsolete hardware, through the
surplus business and I am guessing on the way to precious-metals
recovery operations. If the surplus businesses see little bits that
they think will work better being sold as onesies-and-twosies to
people looking for upgrades/spares for their trailing-edge PCs (or to
people looking for deals on test equipment), then those will come out
to the showroom floor. And that can be a profitable niche too, so
they try to price accordingly (i.e. cheap enough to make it look like
a better deal than upgrading, but not so cheap as to lose much of the
profit they could make -- gotta pay for that showroom floor somehow).
This has a side effect, too: some of the surplus dealers have a bad
attitude toward walk-ins. They know you're not likely a moneymaker,
so they are apt to blow off simple questions like "got any more of
these?" I got this from the guys at Sharon Industries in San Jose one
day a few months ago -- I had wandered in to pick up one or two dinky
Unisys PCs that I had seen there and thought would make nice little
routers if configured with a small hard disk. The place was messier
than usual -- maybe they were reorganizing or maybe they were trying
to look like Mike Quinn's, I dunno; they certainly hadn't bothered to
close the door or hang a sign up ("closed for remodeling"?). The
display was still out, though, so I inquired. First he was asking me
if I wanted them today, and when I said "yeah, I could take one or two
today" (thinking I should leave the door open for him to say "I can't
get to them right now, how about tomorrow?") he changed his tune to
"oh, I sold 'em all to Halted." The thought that crossed my mind was:
except the one you keep on the shelf for people to look at, right? I
haven't been back -- maybe I am a pain in the hindquarters but I
really prefer dealing with folks I think are capable of being honest.
Speaking of pains in the hindquarters, there is another surplus dealer
(RA Electronics) who just plain got out of the computer business, and
the rumor is that this is because they got fed up with people coming
back asking for support for whatever PC junk they had purchased there.
So I'm sure that there are some pains worse than I out there -- I at
least am working from the assumption that I am buying someone else's
junk as-is.
-Frank McConnell
At 08:45 AM 7/16/97 -0700, you wrote:
>> for a ST Book???
>
>Are you referring to an Atari? As in an Atari ST Laptop, or rather a STacy?
The ST Book was an actual laptop with an ST inside. As far as I know few if
any were ever produced. (Perhaps they made it to Europe, which is where
Tramiel always concentrated.)
Different from the STacy which was also portable, but required a much bigger
lap.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
At 05:22 PM 7/17/97 +0200, you wrote:
>does anyone know where to get a power supply and/or a battery pack
>for a ST Book???
No, but if you give up searching, I'd love to take it off your hands!
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
<>Well, I had an idea, and it's just so crazy, it just might work. How
<>about <>contacting an art gallery, and see if they will lend you a
<>couple of ...
This is one I'd be interested in. Computers/terminals/printers etal
represent the art of engineering in many forms.
Mechanical, there were some inovative packages.
Conceptual, the packaged home computer like the PT SOL-20.
Electronics... afew were designwise ahead of the pack.
application... it wasn't the machine, it was it's useability.
Art both musical and visual. Some were interally well done and had order
and form like archectecture. Some like the cromemco dazzler were color
graphics back in 76! Or like the PIAA-8700 for music.
Ergonomics... the vt100 terminal was a standard for more than the terminal
operation it was an erogonomic advance over many with the seperate keyboard,
setup on screen and down to small things like the dull black bezel around
the crt!
Allison
At 03:09 PM 7/15/97 -0700, you wrote:
>I have been thinking, probably along with most everyone here, for the
>past couple of years about how to open a computer museum. The major
>stumbling block is, of course, funding. But that aside, what type of
>things does this group think a computer museum should consist of and
>what should it offer? I am talking here about a physical location as
>opposed to an online web site.
>
>The type of things I am currently considering are:
>
>What should be on display considering:
>1) space limitation
>2) Mainframes, minis, micros
>3) What would most attract visitors
>4) What would most attract funding :)
>
>Other activities to make the museum more than just a display of
>computers:
>1) Computer certification classes
>2) Availability of documentation for those doing historical computer
>research
>3) Newsletter
>4) Information on promoting computer collecting
>5) Being able to provide docs and software (subject to copyright
>restrictions of course)
>
>I am thinking of quite a few other things but this will do for a start.
>
>
We have a fellow in my area, Windsor Ontario, who has been trying to
start a science museum for years. You might consider broadening your area of
interest to get more public support.
Good luck
Charlie Fox
Rich Cini wrote:
> Thanks for the error codes. I have no manuals for the Datamaster, so I'm
> flying blind. The code "09" is inverse-blinking, so there is a real problem.
>
> I'll try to pull the chips and re-seat them. The machine worked last summer
> and wasn't used since then, so I can't imagine the chip going like that.
Yes. Definitely!
The diagram in my last post should tell you which chip it is.
Now I think of it, I had a problem with my Commodore PET in which chips
would ease their way out of the sockets on the motherboard. In the end
I bought some decent turned-pin sockets and soldered these in place of
the originals. Problem cured.
One of the PET ROM chips lost a pin in the course of all this.
(AAARGH!). Solution here was to take a staple from my stapler, open it
flat, insert into socket in place of missing pin, and solder to the stub
on the side of the chip. Wire cutters then trimmed both ends, and chip
was as good as new!
> Thanks again for the help. I'll let you know what I find. My company has a UK
> office (Burdale-Holdings, a trade finance company). If I do need a new chip,
> maybe we could arrange it so that you could drop it off at our London office
> (if you're near it) and they could send it to me.
Why did I open my big keyboard?
Yes, should it come to that I shall be happy to do something of the
sort, but I don't (a) know what kind of chips they are or (b) possess an
EPROM programmer (shock horror!). There is at least one other
Datamaster owner on this list, so if someone out there is better
equipped than I am to help Rich, please speak up now!
Philip.
