Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 +0000
^^^^
From: Marvin <marvin(a)rain.org>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: Minicomputer Storage Myths
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01 [en] (Win95; I)
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Is that win 1895?
:-)
m@
[...]
> My experience is that most computer hobbiests/hackers/engineers/etc.
> tend to keep everything, especially when they have used to the stuff
> before. As such, most people I know would much rather give it away than
> throw it away ... and unless they have already given it away, they
> probably still have it :)!
--
/* Matt Sayler -- mpsayler(a)cs.utexas.edu -- Austin, Texas
(512)457-0086 -- http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mpsayler
Have you ever imagined a world with no hypothetical situations? */
In a few assorted threads I've seen under various names like "RSTS/E
Manuals" and "Minis not 'Trendy'", several folks have put forward the
argument that minicomputers are too large to collect easily. I have one
word: "hogwash".
For the most part, your typical minicomputer fits securely in a 19"
wide rack. They're typically either around 5.5" or 11" high, or there-
abouts, and they're usually 22-30" deep with some going a little
deeper. They stack nicely for the most part as all the surfaces are
at right angles to one another. They do weigh a certain amount, but
usually do not top 100 pounds or so.
Yes, collecting them does take creative space management.
I noticed that one chap has installed his pdp11 under his bed; good
call! I hadn't thought of that one...
Another guy gripes about putting a mini in his Honda Civic for
transport. My wife did just that when she came home with a DG Nova 1200
for me a few years back; it fit very comfortably in the trunk. I just
got back from a trip to the US Midwest with two minis in two 6' bays
in the back of my minivan (story coming on my website).
Kevan has room in his loft for a half-dozen minis or so (looked
at the pictures) once he gets things organised (sorry, Kevan) with
space left over.
I keep three minicomputers (half-height Novas) on a kitchen counter
underneath our coffee-pot (I really should get a picture of that). I
also have a small rack with three of my pdp11s in it living in the
dining-room of our house - it makes a wonderful stand-up terminal
stand. Smaller racks can be utilised as end-tables.
The ultimate space-management tool in dealing with minis is the
six-foot rack. In one of them you can mount an easy half-dozen
machines; if you share peripherals, they can all be used too. Un-
fortunately, my wife drew the line at that one, so I use the "scatter
method" of space management.
The bottom line is that _it's not as big a deal as it's made out
to be_! It can be done, it should be done, and not enough people are
doing it. The machines are disappearing - and that's a shame.
______________________________________________________________________
| | |
| 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 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|
Well, have you heard? Gilbert Amelio has stepped down and Steven Jobs
has taken on an "expanded role". Interesting. Perhaps they'll
re-introduce the Apple ][ line...perhaps the Apple IV???
(sorry, mostly off-topic but, hey, it's STEVE JOBS!!!)
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
I have some unfortunate news to pass along to everyone interested in the
Panasonic HHCs. The deal is now off.
Due to a lack of communication within the company that had the units,
they were all, in the words of Mike Westin who was the go-between in the
deal, "shit-canned". The company simply threw them out because they did
not know there was an offer tendered.
On the positive side, there are still roughly 50-75 units still left
within the company that are still being used by employees, and will be so
for about the next two months. Mike is currently developing a new product
for the company, at which time they will no longer use the remaining
units, and they will then, hopefully, be sold to us.
So for now, no HHCs. Its disappointing, mostly because the thought of
all these nice systems being simply thrown out is a damn shame. However,
we may yet be able to acquire the remaining units in a couple month's time.
Stay tuned.
Sorry all.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
> Offhand, and I may offend a few sensibilities here, that folks who
>care for computing's history should be willing to bear such short-
>term inconveniences as medium-sized monetary expenditures. If you
>don't save a machine, it might be the _last_one_! (The odds of this
>happening in the near term with micros is vanishingly small.)
Depends on the micro.
While IMHO it's true that Apple ]['s, PET's, TRS-80, etc are not exactly
hard to find, there are some rather rare machines, like the Tandy Deluxe CoCo
(something like 2 exist), a prototype Acorn that I can't remember the name of
(M4???), the HH tiger (Prototype only), etc that are somewhat hard to find.
It's quite possible that the next one of those that you see is the last!
>| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston |
-tony
>For those still confused, the 1/2 RK07 was just the actual drive
>mechanism. An entire RK07 is about 4 feet tall, the bottom is which is
>basically empty.
One design of RK07 stand can be modified to mount the drive about 12" hight
than it should be. In my case this gave me a mounting for an EMI magtape and 4
flip-chip backplanes with no extra floor area.
Not quite original DEC, of course....
>
>William Donzelli
-tony
[...]
>And there are some minis in there amongst the micros:
>
>An HP 2100A CPU. Unfortunately it is the CPU only. No I/O, no
>memory, no peripherals to speak of. Did get the CPU manuals with it,
>though, and they have made interesting reading and probably will one
>day again. I am not actively seeking the other bits right at the
>moment but am keeping my eyes open.
I found one of those in a skip (literally!) a few years back, and was allowed
to rescue it. Mine came as the CPU box with 32K (I think) core, a lot of I/O
cards (or at least I assume that's what they are), a paper tape reader and a
somewhat mangled cartridge disk drive (1 fixed platter, one RK05-like
cartridge). Alas no manuals.
It looks like it could be got to run again, but as I know nothing about it,
I've not put any time in on it yet....
>
>Now *that* is sad: I am ignoring good stuff that I could probably
>learn something about, maybe even learn something useful from. But I
>am already having to come to terms with the fact that there is a lot
>of stuff to learn, probably more than I can fit into one lifetime. Or
>maybe I've just got a bad case of hardening of the brain? I don't
>know.
>
>But I wonder how many other folks out there think to collect things
>that they know stuff about, as opposed to stuff they don't know
>anything about? I have to admit, the former makes a narrower
>selection filter and the latter has gotten me into, um, unexpected
>learning experiences (yeah, that's it) more often than not. And
>for most people the "things they know stuff about" is more likely to be
>micros than minis.
I swap between the 2 'modes'. Sometimes I'll get a machine because I know what
it is, and because I remember it. The Tandy M4 I bought a couple of weeks ago
fits in here - I grew up on a Tandy Model 1, and remember the M4 coming out. I
wanted one then, but could never afford it. Now I can, and can run those
programs from 80-micro....
But more often I get a machine because I have no idea what it is, but it looks
interesting. The P850 (the machine that seriously started me collecting) fits
in here. As do the PERQs - I thought it was a 68000 box when I got the first
one, and was amazed to see a soft-microcoded CPU. Learning from such a machine
is great fun...
[...]
>(Yes, I am apt to collect this sort of documentation in the absence of
>hardware too -- I am more a programmer than a hardware guy and I
I certainly grab schematics and printsets without the hardware that goes with
them - you never know what will turn up later....
>mostly understand computers in terms of how to wrangle code for them.
>And I really stand in awe of folks like you who can understand them in
>terms of hardware too -- another thing that is on my to-learn list.)
It's not that hard. What started me off was getting a relatively simple
minicomputer - I'd recomend either the PDP8/e or the PDP11/05 as a starter, and
sitting down with the machine, the technical manual, and the printsets. I
single-stepped the machine, and watched how it executed an instruction with a
logic probe. I where the microcode went, what gates were enabled, etc, and
related it to the diagrams in the manual. After a couple of days I could
understand most of the instructions....
>Got any pointers to where we could learn more?
Yep...
CPU Technical manuals from the late 1960's - early 1970's. Most of those
include a gate-level description of the CPU operation. It helps a lot to have
the machine in front of you, though.
>
>-Frank McConnell
-tony
On Tue, 22 Jul 1997 22:47:54 -0700 (PDT), Mr. Ismail remarked:
> Sure, I'll just needlessly add to my current mountain of debt.
> There is a practical limit to what any individual can do or be
> expected to do. I'm not going to over-burden myself over a hobby.
Sorry about that, Sam. I didn't think the cattle-prod was turned
on. :-)
______________________________________________________________________
| | |
| 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 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|
William Donzelli <william(a)ans.net> writes:
> > An HP 2100A CPU. Unfortunately it is the CPU only. No I/O, no
> If you ever want cards in the future, I would start looking now. HP
> circuit boards are COMPLETELY gold plated (even under the green coating),
> and are loved by scrappers everywhere.
Good point. If you want to see something really scary in that regard,
open up an HP 9000 series 5xx and look at the CPU boards. Those
*really* look like gold, closer to solid than plated.
I was looking (mostly for the memory) a bit more intensely a couple of
years ago, and found that 2100 parts were also in demand to keep
running systems running.
> I must agree with you here. DEC makes great stuff (mostly), but so do
> some of the other guys. Personally, I am starting to shift into the IBM
> world, as it really has been ignored by historians (other than Paul
> Pierce (who must be laughing at us weenies and our problems storing minis
> and micros) and IBM itself).
Yep. The mini world was kind of wide there for a while. I expect
some of those machines really are gone forever.
Has anyone here ever heard of a company called Digital Systems
Corporation, based somewhere in (I think) the Maryland suburbs of
Washington DC in the late 1970s, maybe into the 1980s? I worked on
something of theirs once, called a Galaxy/5. Never heard of it or
them since.
Come to think of it, there could be good reasons for that, and it
could be a good thing. Nah...we've got to keep the failures around
too -- learning from mistakes is so much better when they're someone
else's mistakes.
-Frank McConnell
On Tue, 22 Jul 1997 19:03:32 -0700 (PDT), Mr. Ismail was rumoured
to have remarked:
> [...] Tim was complaining that nobody wanted the stuff, but the fact
> is, who wants to spend hundreds of dollars in shipping or
> transportation charges?
Offhand, and I may offend a few sensibilities here, that folks who
care for computing's history should be willing to bear such short-
term inconveniences as medium-sized monetary expenditures. If you
don't save a machine, it might be the _last_one_! (The odds of this
happening in the near term with micros is vanishingly small.)
> [...] that's all fine and dandy if you're a bachelor or your wife
> could care less what kind of crap you drag into the house. [...]
> She has problem enough with the garage full of crap.
Oddly enough, Diana and I have been together now for the better
part of a decade, and while she occasionally grumbles about my hobby,
she supports it because she knows that it's important (not just to
me, but for a larger cause as well).
I believe the use of the term "crap" comes from fundamental
misunderstandings of our common computing history. Sad.
> Right now I'm not fully prepared to start taking in large systems
> (larger than S-100 rackmounts). I'm not going to give up my living
> space for the hobby.
It all depends upon how seriously we take our hobby, doesn't it.
(That was merely an observation, _not_ an editorial comment!) For
what it's worth, an IMSAI is just about twice the size of a pdp11/23.
And less than a quarter of the CPU power.
______________________________________________________________________
| | |
| 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 |
|________________________________________________|_____________________|
