test-drb October 1998

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

175 participants
1141 discussions

by cmcmanis＠freegate.com

At 08:10 AM 10/7/98 -0700, you wrote: >Phase three: Finding the collection a new home (After I'm gone) > This is the tough one. In the wrong hands the collection might >just go to a landfill and that would be a real shame. I have no kids so >there is no one to carry on the tradition. This is what wills are for, insuring that your stuff is taken care of the way you want it to be taken care of. One way to do this in the US is with a 'living trust.' You create a trust and transfer title of your collection to it, in the trust you and your wife are trustees. Then you specify a successor trustee (say some local technology museum) and then when you are gone the control of the assets moves (without probate!) to the sucessor trustee. In the trust you can limit what the trustee can do with the trust assets, including disposing in landfills. --Chuck

25 years, 9 months

Corrections to trivia

by ddameron＠earthlink.net

Hi All, At 07:52 AM 10/6/98 -0400, Allison wrote: >No Intel never made a cheap computer. They made CPUs, Memory and support >chips. The MCS. MDS, intellect even the SDKs were anything but cheap. > >< enabled them to make it cheap, and they commercialized it. The level o >< integration is the salient feature of the chip, but not the main featur >< of the important event. > >It's everything as the 8008 hit the level of integration needed to produce >a viable general purpose commercial cpu. > >For example why is it that prople are hunting for MARK-8 and Kenbec's >when the most likely find (greatest quantity) for 8008 machines is a >MCS-8 from intel?!?! > Yes, I would like to find a "Intellec 8", I think the same as a MCS-8, too. (Intel seems to use the term "MCS-8" very loosely in the literature I have.) There was also a single board computer, Sim8-01 with 2k bytes EPROM and 1k byte ram. It could be used with a MP7 EPROM (1702A) programmer. Another company was Martin research which made "Mike" series computers. Haven't found any of these either, but did find by inter-library loan their "Microcomputer Design" book, which has lots of 8008 info! It has a schematic of their "Mike 4" system, an 8008 based unit with about 20 ic's. It also included other minimal 8008 systems such as a 9 chip version. I have found a source for 8008 chips, so maybe a homebrew 8008 system is more likely as a future project. -Dave

25 years, 9 months

Top 10 Holy Grails of Classic Microcomputer Collecting

by kaikal＠MICROSOFT.com

That's good, the Sphere works better unassembled :) Kai -----Original Message----- From: William Donzelli [mailto:william@ans.net] My unbuilt Sphere-1 is getting donated to RCS/RI, with the understanding that the boards will never see an iron.

25 years, 9 months

Eventual fate of our machines

by Marty＠itgonline.com

I belong to the Mid-Atlantic Antique Radio Club which has established the Radio History Society, a non-profit musuem, which is located at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Radio History Society http://www.radiohistory.org/ is an IRS 501(c)(3) organization which can provide donors with a tax deduction. A single friend of mine has decided that he will donate much of his collection to RHS when he passes on as nobody in his family is interested in old radio. Anyway, I'd imagine CHAC and other organizations can offer help in directing people to good homes for their gear. Marty ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Eventual fate of our machines Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet Date: 10/7/98 11:09 AM Has there been any discussion about the eventual fate of our collections after we are gone? My wife and I have discussed this at some length. I see three phases to my collection. Phase one: Active procurement (Present state) My collection currently exists in a very unorganized state in my basement. I have no real inventory list. Phase two: Active display Fully inventoried with a list of what works and what doesn't. We've discussed the possiblity of setting up some sort of cybercafe to help pay for maintaining the collection. Phase three: Finding the collection a new home (After I'm gone) This is the tough one. In the wrong hands the collection might just go to a landfill and that would be a real shame. I have no kids so there is no one to carry on the tradition. I shudder to think about the eventual fate of all of our collections. Do we need a national repository for all of this stuff? Thoughts to ponder, George ========================================================= George L. Rachor george(a)racsys.rt.rain.com Beaverton, Oregon http://racsys.rt.rain.com ------ Message Header Follows ------ Received: from lists4.u.washington.edu by smtp.itgonline.com (PostalUnion/SMTP(tm) v2.1.9i(b5) for Windows NT(tm)) id AA-1998Oct07.110957.1767.68258; Wed, 07 Oct 1998 11:10:00 -0400 Received: from host (lists.u.washington.edu [140.142.56.13]) by lists4.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with SMTP id IAA02277; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 08:07:26 -0700 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with ESMTP id IAA36360 for <classiccmp(a)lists.u.washington.edu>; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 08:07:17 -0700 Received: from racsys.rt.rain.com (racsys.rt.rain.com [199.2.210.34]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.1+UW98.09/8.9.1+UW98.09) with ESMTP id IAA12 828 for <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 08:07:15 -0700 Received: from localhost (localhost.rdrop.com [127.0.0.1]) by racsys.rt.rain.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id IAA24650 for <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>; Wed, 7 Oct 1998 08:10:55 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from george(a)racsys.rt.rain.com) Message-Id: <Pine.BSF.3.96.981007080210.24636A-100000(a)racsys.rt.rain.com> Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 08:10:53 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu Sender: CLASSICCMP-owner(a)u.washington.edu Precedence: bulk From: George Rachor <george(a)racsys.rt.rain.com> To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Subject: Eventual fate of our machines In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.981007072916.6874A-100000(a)shell1.ncal.verio.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 beta -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN

25 years, 9 months

Top 10 Holy Grails of Classic Microcomputer Collecting

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< I meant, what was the proportion of each media at the time? No idea, seems biased to tape where I lived (LI NY). < Back in the days of my IMSAI experience, we had both an ASR-33 and < a cassette interface card. I don't remember the relative costs, < though. A cassette interface and deck were less costly than < an ASR-33, even at ham radio prices? 1975-76 time frame a used ASR33 was 500-900$US. The only machines at the ham meets were BAUDOT with 5level tape (and slower), they ran 75-150$US for a good working one. The ACR and a cassette tape were like 199$US and 35-45$US and faster as well. The third choice was an optical PTreader homebrew or commercial and they required a parallel port (cheap or trivial build) and inexpensive. Punching was again a cost thing and the old teletype BPRE punches were a good find at 100-200$. The point being things we take for granted as cheap or available now (or during the 80s) were less common and expensive in the mid to late 70s. Back in '76 showing up with some kind of terminal storage and more than 4-8k of ram and Basic generally put one in the fortunate class. My altair by late '75 had a home made ascii keyboard attached to a MITS-PIO and a modified (for 64char, 16line) SWTP CT1024 and a MITS 88-ACR and 12k of very flaky (solder plated edge connector rot) 88-S4k ram. I was able to run MITS 4kbasic, 8kbasic and Programming package II. That for its time was a power system. A bit more history... the other systems seen at the time that were pretty neat were the AMI EVK series (6800 SBC with decent amount of ram and rom) and the SWTP 6800. I havent seen either one in years. Both were pretty nice systems and less hardware intensive for the user. It seemed to me at the time that the 6800 camp were doing more software work and the 8080/s100 camp were into hardware. Anyone remember the Viatron systems that were turning up surplus around '75-78 time frame? It used tape and had a multichip LSI cpu. Allison

25 years, 9 months

North Star Horizon Help

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< I would do that is I knew how. My memory board has several < jumpers and a couple of 8-switch dip switches but I have no doc on < the board so don't know memory settings. It is a 64K board so I < would assume I have a full address space. It is a N* RAM board < BTW. Can't help on that no docs for that board. < > Are they personalized for the machine and are all the port headers don < > the mother board set up correctly? Are the media the correct density < > the controller in use? < < Good question. These were sent to me by someone on the list. < The disks are 10 sectored (hard) double sided double density. The < controller is an N* Micro Disk Controller MDS-AD or that is all I can < see on it. The MDS-AD is a double density controller...ok there. Now the disks can be formatted as 48tpi or 96 tpi as the controller will support most 5.25 drives and if the drive is wrong... Personalizing, if they were set up for different IO they may not work on you NS*. < Any other tips to help out? Get docs! Your working blind without them. Allison

25 years, 9 months

For sale stuff gone.

by william＠ans.net

OK, all of the stuff is now spoken for. I had to flip a few coins on some of it, as there was demand for some of the things. Sorry to anyone that lost the coin toss - I wish I had more. I am still looking for those IBM 5103 ribbons. William Donzelli william(a)ans.net

25 years, 9 months

Top 10 Holy Grails of Classic Microcomputer Collecting

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< >How do you know it was paper tape... MITS basic that was "pirated" was < >often supplied on MITS ACR format audio tape. Still have one! < < At the time, were ASR-33s or cassettes the more common media for exchang Yes! ASR33 was expensive so many people used terminals or VDM1/parallel port keyboard or other combinations. Also ASR33 was 10 cps and ACR was 300baud... considering the 4k basic was a 8-9 minute load on the tty and about 3 on the ACR it should be obvious tape was a better way to go. Allison

25 years, 9 months

Top 10 Holy Grails of Classic Microcomputer Collecting

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< 4) 'The original' paper tape of BASIC that was pirated from Bill Gates. How do you know it was paper tape... MITS basic that was "pirated" was often supplied on MITS ACR format audio tape. Still have one! Allison

25 years, 9 months

Tron, con't

by jfoust＠threedee.com

Regarding Tron and the recollection of friend-of-a-friend-who-worked there anecdotes, it reminds me of what's still happening in the computer graphics business today: everyone wants to take credit for what's on the screen. For example, the company I work for, Viewpoint DataLabs <http://www.viewpoint.com>, did the modelling for the recent movies Godzilla and ANTZ. What does this mean? It means our artists and 3D modelers created some of the data used by some other company's animators. Of course, our PR people trumpet the fact that Viewpoint made Godzilla. Well, we made the computer model by digitizing and finesse-ing some big rubber scale models made by someone else. And it goes on and on... some other company does the animating, someone else does the rendering, someone else does the compositing of real and fake images, someone else produced it, someone else funded this or that, someone else's 3D software was used to render it. At Siggraph, the industry's big trade show, the Kingston memory chip booth wasn't far from our booth, and they spent the week telling people to buy their memory because it was used in the machines that rendered scenes from Titanic. Back to Tron, though - three-four years ago, I remember meeting someone at a Siggraph who claimed to have worked on Tron, and who still had a copy of the original computer 3D models. I think he was a Caucasian wearing a robe and Sikh-like turban, but my memory may be faulty. If the truth is ever documented, I'm sure Tron was assembled using what equipment they could afford, and whatever could get the job done to the satisfaction of those paying the bills. - John

25 years, 9 months

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test-drb October 1998