I found an Altair 8800 yesterday in a computer
repair shop.
It has been upgraded with a 16 slot motherboard
and the MITS cards were replaced with a
Cromemco CPU and Cromemco 64k ram card.
Does the upgrade significantly hurt the value
of it? Or are the Cromemeco boards equally
valuable?
The owner will sell it for $500 and will throw
in some other non-MITS S-100 cards (Cromemco
TUART, Cromemco Quadart, Godbout 32k ram card,
etc.
I have a pretty good idea of what the Altair
8800 is worth in it's original configuration
but I am in the dark when it has been upgraded.
Does anyone know where I might find an original
Altair 8800 CPU card and 8 slot motherboard. I
have a MITS ram card.
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Bob
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Tim Shoppa <shoppa(a)alph02.triumf.ca> wrote:
>And you also have to consider that at least 95% of the Walnut
>Creek CD-ROM was simply assembled from materials lying around
>the net and on various CP/M BBS's. I'm not sure how they
>got permission for the remaining 5% (things such as the Ampro
>Little Board BIOS sources, etc.)
That's the big pitfall of publishing supposedly public domain CDs...
even if you are absolutely careful and secure written permission
>from everyone who claims to have made something on the disc, you
can never be quite sure that someone wasn't telling the truth,
especially if there's any sort of compensation involved. If you
redistribute something that the creator doesn't want distributed,
you could be in for trouble.
And of course it takes a lot of effort to nicely assemble and
categorize the thousands of files on a CD. That makes a good product,
but not all CDs are as good as they could be.
lisard(a)zetnet.co.uk wrote:
>erm, isn't the walnut creek cd-rom predominantly stocked with the same
>stuff that is on oak? which kind of implies that so long as you aren't
>doing it for profit, it's just another kind of distribution.
It can be tough to tell who really owns what, in terms of the "collection
copyright." By means of analogy, a publisher who makes a book of poems
retains the copyright of the way they assemble the poems, and they need
to secure the right to redistribute each poem, but it doesn't mean they
own the poems. It's possible that the people who organized the Oakland
site never considered that they were sitting on a valuable property.
In 1994 my company secured permission to press a CD of the popular
3D model ftp site called "Avalon" without any payment whatsoever.
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
I might as well jump on while everyone else does...
I'm not too new, not too old to this list, starting in October/November.
I'm 12 years old, and therefore, as far as I can tell, the youngest person
in this list. (Although, I could, of course be wrong) I'm the sond of an
American diplomat, and have lived in Bahrain for nearly 3 1/2 years. This
July, I'm moving to Guyana, after going back to Witicha, Kansas and DC.
As the age implies, I probably haven't been into computers too long. My
main computer actually is my first, it WAS a Compaq Presario CDS 633, with a
486SX 33MHz processor, 4MB of RAM (immeidately upgraded to 12MB), and, after
upgrading, now it's a 486DX/2 66, 28MB RAM, 2.1GB HDD, but still with the
same video, sound and controller cards as before. It's role is getting
slowly replaced with my new Cyrix 200 that I built in December. (The 31st,
just before Midnight).
Back in 1994, when I got my first computer, I was always interested in
programming. I started with QBasic, and still use BASIC to do most work.
Just today I've made my first (partially useable) C++ program.
Let's see: I'm unemployed (except always bored as a 7th grade student),
am not married (as you could guess, living in the Mid East's getting to me),
have no children and do not live in New York. But, in my spare time I work
with my friend Zack Boyd (we met on the Internet) on the web page, The
Review Guide (at http://members.theglobe.com/ReviewGuide/index.html) We
hope to be moving soon to a .com address, just after we get reviews up, etc.
It's basically for fun, to try new products, and, for me, mostly to get
credibility for college, etc. (yes, I'm already possed with it, and would
like info that anyone has on this subject, right now, I'll do almost
anything....)
I started collecting with a PC XT, and still have it, it's still waiting
for a controller and HDD. ;-)
Lets see... I'm starting an online community, and am going to be asking
in the next few days for people interested. I'm really unsatified with the
learning going on in school, (you'll understand with the online community
post) , and love learning, like classical music up through lots of different
stuff that I don't know what category it goes under... use Windows, am
getting familiar with Linux... and, that's it.
Bye,
Tim D. Hotze
Bill Yakowenko <yakowenk(a)cs.unc.edu> wrote:
>I've been dorking around with this idea for a while now, and
>this seems a good lead-in. The basic problem was that the
>classiccmp web page seems to be permanently dead.
Very cool idea and implementation, although something inside me likes
finding machines through chaos and luck, as opposed to having an
well-organized team. :-)
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
I saw this on comp.sys.apple2. Can anyone help? I don't think he is on the
list.
-- Kirk
-----Original Message-----
From: James <jmcp(a)pacbell.net>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Date: Sunday, March 01, 1998 2:10 PM
Subject: help: Apple][<==> PDP-8
>Hi.
>I would like to replace my near dead teletype (paper tape works, but the
>CR does not work properly) with either my //c or //e.
>I figure I could just use a serial port, but the PDP-8 (compatible) uses
>a teletype connector, and I don't know how to create a proper cable.
>Also, how would I get the PDP-8 programs from the paper tape reader on
>the teletype to the Apple ][?
>Has any one done something like this before? I have heard that people
>have done this with a PC. The PDP-8 news group appears dead, and I have
>not been able to find any web resources on this subject.
>
>You may ask "Why?"
>Well, I'm not really sure, but I sure do love watching all those pretty
>LED's flickering on the PDP-8 front panel! I also have loads of paper
>tape, and I want to know what it all does.
>
>Thanks for your help,
>James
>jmcp(a)pacbell.net
>
>
MAINFRAME HEWLETT PACKARD Model:64100A
THE 64100A IS THE FUNDAMENTAL UNIT OF THE 64000 DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM, CONSISTS
OF CONSOLE WITH INTEGRAL 12" CRT, FULL ASCII KEYBOARD, RS-232 INTERFACE AND
SPACE FOR 10 OPTION CARDS. UNIT HAS 64941A OPTION CARD CONTROLLING 2 X 5"
FLOPPY DRIVES
This is available for CAN$45
Is this rare/desirable? I'm thinking of passing it up anyway, but just
curious.
A
>That particular unit (a CASIO) had a problem dividing by 0 - it
>tried to!! The display patiently counted from 0 up to... well I never saw
>it stop before the batteries gave out. I guess thats what started my prime
>interest in computers - the quirky and unusual.
>
My first calculator, a Sinclair Cambridge, did that as well. Perhaps
someone on the list could enlighten us as to whehter this was a common
weakness of early calculators, and possibly why those who wrote the code for
them allowed it to happen ;-)
My condensed bio:
I am 40 years old and live near Shrewsbury (UK), on the border between
England and Wales. I have had an interest in computers since 1985 when I
worked for the local council as a Meat Inspector. The Environmental Health
Department got their first computer and I wrote some applications for it and
then decided that I wanted to be a programmer for the rest of my life. I
have been to University 1 day per week for the last 5 years and gained a BSc
in Computer Studies last September. I am currently working (bored and
underpaid ;-() as a MIS programmer for a college of further education
producing reports in Access. Apart from collecting computers I enjoy
motorcycling and rock climbing.
My collection consists of:
1 MicroVAX II with a TK50, 4 RA81s and an RA82
3 Sun 386i, I working and 2 with dead/dying NVRAMs
1 Tulip PC Compact 2 - NEC V30, 40Mb hard disk
1 Sinclair Spectrum 48k
1 Sinclair Spectrum +2
1 Amstrad CPC464 with colour monitor
(and off topic)
1 486DX2 PC running linux 24/7 except when I have to reluctantly reboot into
Win95
1 Toshiba T3100SX portable with dead LCD display
Wish list:
The one I would really like is an ICL Quattro - The first machine I
programmed and administered. It was an 8086 based machine with 10Mb hard
drive and 1Mb RAM running CCP/M86 and capable of supporting 4 terminals each
of which could support 4 virtual terminals giving a theoretical total of 16
users. Not bad for an 8086 :-). The later 'go faster' version had a 286
processor.
Regards
Pete
>I'm kind of curious as to the demography of the Classic Computer
>Mailing List. What are people's backgrounds, what are they doing now,
>and so forth.
Hi,
I'm Hans Olminkhof, mid 40's, a mechanical engineer living in Sydney
Australia. Married, 3 kids. I don't have much to do with computers for a
living, building the occasional Lotus Notes database being about it.
I was originally exposed to computers as an undergraduate and remember
writing my first program on punchcards in Forgo, a students version of
Fortran2. It ran on an IBM 1620 or something at the University of Western
Australia where we could see in the next room a PDP6 in all it's blue glory.
Never got any closer to that though. The next year we were limited to remote
teletypes linked to the new computer, a Cyber72 which I never saw.
I had no contact with computers again until about 1986 when I finally found
something useful to do on them, Finite Element Analysis. (engineer stuff).
We bought a 286 for home about 1991 and spent $500 a year later get the 80Mb
hard drive in it fixed. Not long afterwards I figured out how easy it was to
do all that myself.
One day in about 1993, I said to someone in a shop what a museum piece the
IBM AT I was looking at was. Somehow the conversation got around to me never
having even seen the original IBM PC. Then came a trip to the back room to
see racks and racks of them. I walked away with one for $20, got to fiddling
with it and a few weeks later owned another dozen or so. They would have
been on their way to the tip otherwise.
I got very interested in the idea of keeping them alive and in the whole
idea of how quickly this technology was progressing and disappearing.
Anyway, now I've got a whole heap of old computers, maybe half of them
working, lots of old software to go with them, manuals etc. I spend a few
hours a weekend looking around for more.
The list includes:
IBM PC's, XT's, AT's, Portable PC's, Convertibles, Displaywriters
Compaq Portable's, Portable Plus's, Portable II's
Kaypro II's, and IV's
Various Apple II's and early Mac's
Atari 400's and an 800
Various Apricots
A heap of Sirius's (Victor 9000 in USA)
Decmate III's
Osborne 1's and Executives
DOT's
An original PET
A CBM3032 and the wreck of an 8032
A Compupro box
A Cromenco C10
Various BBC's
HP 85's, 71B's and a 110
An MAI 4105
Various Microbees
An NEC APC and a number of APC III's
NEC 8201, 8401, Tandy Model 100
Olivetti M21
Panasonic 840
Sharp PC 5000, 2 X 7000's, MZ811
Sinclair ZX81 and Spectrum's
Epson HX20
Canon A200's
probably some I forgot, and some uniquely Australian machines,
a "Porchester Executive", a "PortaPak" and a Dick Smith "Mini Scamp" (a 1977
kit)
I've also got some PDP11 stuff coming when I organise a truck!
