Hello everybody.
I was wondering if anyone out there had an old Mac Portable (the Mac
laptop) that they'd want to sell. I really don't want to pay all that much
for it, and I don't need anything all that fast (I don't know all that much
about Macs), but it needs to run at least System 6.0.5. The main reason
that I'm looking for one, is that my school uses mainly Macs (the only PC's
that they have are a few XT's that you need to turn off the lights to read
the monitors), and I don't have a Mac. Whenever I'm working on a project,
I'm confined to the 40 minutes of classtime to get it done. I'm not
looking for a full-sized Mac, because (1) I don't have the room, and (2), I
sort of need the portability, because It's not very often that I'm at home
before 8:30 or 9:00 PM, and at that time I don't really feel like working
on stuff for school.
All I'm really asking is that it works, and can run System 6.0.5 (that's
what my school uses).
As always,
ThAnX in advance,
--
-Jason
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#-1730318
Folks,
This message might be borderline annoying to some, in which case I
humbly apologize, but I really wanted to give it a bit wider
distribution than its original list. I'd be very sad if they didn't
sell and had to be trashed; not quite like "Save the whales!"
Sales pitch follows, which you can happily ignore! Deleting is quite OK!
This is an unusual opportunity to obtain an historic machine of at least
some interest. These, as the message says, need cleaning up, but
apparently most are in good shape internally.
I have no connection with the seller, but believe him to be reputable;
he made a similar offer several months back, and there have been no
complaints at all about him on the List.
(Cliff, you can ignore all of what follows; if I got anything wrong,
feel free to holler, of course! (Cliff has an STW in tip-top
condition.))
The Friden STW was the standard desktop calculator of choice, widely
used, for scientists and engineers for several decades. It was the
successor to the ST, which was probably first sold in the early 1930s.
(Yes, the Depression! Friden started a successful company in Terrible
Times. It took an acquisition by Singer to destroy it.)
If you have any interest in historic calculators, this is an excellent
and very representative example. These machines had a different
architecture from today's electronic calculators, which I won't try to
explain (the message is too long, already!).
It's a motor-driven rotary machine with no printer, and a carriage. Its
capacity was usually 10x10x20, which is to say that it could multiply
two 10-digit numbers and display a 20-digit product. The Friden STWs
were very reliable and trustworthy when properly cared for.
It does all four operations of arithmetic automatically; also can do
d=a+(b*c) and d=a-(b*c). (These can be chained, so that the new a is the
old d, and new b and c are arbitrary, although either or both b and/or c
can be the same as the previous.) (Super-slow DSP, anyone?!)
Iirc, you can also display the sum or difference of two or more
quotients. It's practical to compute square roots on it by at least two
methods, I'm fairly sure. One uses a printed lookup table (hard to
find); the other is a clever semi-mindless algorithm called the "fives
method".
There are severe limitations on automatic transfers of numbers within
the machine; essentially, almost none. The numbers in the keyboards and
the results dials can be kept for the next calculation, however.
It has 10 columns of keys, 9 keys + a clear key in each column. You
could consider this a parallel-entry keyboard. (It was called a "full
keyboard.") The STW also has the unique, distinctive little 10-key
serial-entry multiplier section.
There are such features as selectively disabling the auto. clearing of
the main keyboard, also of the accumulator and/or the cycle counter
dials. Little knobs allow you to rotate the accumulator dials to preset
them (such as for rounding numbers). Many clever applications were
worked out based on accessibility of the individual parts of the
machine, so to speak.
Decimal points are not calculated by the mechanism at all, but there are
markers to keep things simple.
Speed is 600 cycles per minute.
One limitation is that subtracting one from the LSD of all zeros does
not give a string of 20 nines; you get about 14, iirc, on a standard
machine. "Full carryover" was an option. I think there is a warning bell
to signify an accumulator "sign change".
Just about sure that a stock Belden power cord will fit, but not sure
Belden still sells that particular item. (Sorry; don't have a Belden
catalog any more.) (It has three round pins, male on the calc, iirc, and
the center pin is offset and probably longer. It was a standard until
the rectangular-pin IEC connector so well known in computers supplanted
it.)
Hmmm... budding free-lance ad copywriter? (Heaven save us!)
No doubt, some work will be needed; it would be much wiser to remove the
covers and try to cycle the machine by hand to see that it doesn't jam.
The main driveshaft has a female threaded hole in the end for a
handcrank that you could make. If the machine jams under power, there is
a fiber gear (so I'm told by an experienced Friden tech.) that might
become damaged; he says it's a Major Pain to replace if you can get the
part, and parts are hard to come by! There is a crude safety clutch
(makes a terrible racket!), but it may not disengage before the fiber
gear strips.
Again, my apologies for the intrusion.
|* Nicholas Bodley *|* Electronic Technician {*} Autodidact & Polymath
|* Waltham, Mass. *|* -----------------------------------------------
|* nbodley(a)tiac.net *|* The personal computer industry will have become
|* Amateur musician *|* mature when crashes become unacceptable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1998 08:19:35 -0400
From: Julian Burke <julianb(a)ESPER.COM>
To: CALCLIST-L(a)TECHUNIX.TECHNION.AC.IL
Subject: Friden STW's for sale
Hello All, I'm not in this for profit but want to see these units go to
the right hands for collecting. I have a huge quantity of Friden STW's
for sale @ $30 each. These are as-is complete, dirty from long term
storage, might be missing a button or two and NO power cords. $30 +
shipping and packing from Knoxville, Tennessee. They will weigh 44
pounds each packed, so consult with UPS for shipping prices from ZIP
code 37909. If interested, I have "worse" (needing more cleanup or for
parts) for less and better units for more. Most people who have
purchased from me before say the insides look great and after a good
"typewriter bath", they survived very well. Hurry while selection is
good. I have hundreds of calcs for possible trade (cash also) and am
looking for a WANG 360SE at this time. (Suitcase with 4 slave calcs
>from the mid 70's) Thanks, Julian Burke
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--
Warbaby
The WebSite. The Domain. The Empire.
http://www.warbaby.com
The MonkeyPool
WebSite Content Development
http://www.monkeypool.com
Dreadlocks on white boys give me the willies.
At 02:34 PM 8/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
>$12100 for the world's flakiest S-100 box:
> http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=24409570
>
>(and the reserve was still not met, but I bet the guy sells, what do you
>think?)
I think this whole auction reeks of bull-shit! Everything from the
opening bid of $2500 to reserve of OVER $12,000 and the seller's
insistance of 1 day UPS delivery smells of being a FAKE!
Joe
I'll be doing a rescue early next week from a local company that's
surplusing out some old PDP-11's. There's more than I can use, so I will
happily parcel out what I don't need.
There will be at least one 11/04, possibly one or more 11/23's, and some
DSD-880 boxes. I'll post a list to the group once I get done collecting and
sorting.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272)
(Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin(a)jps.net)
"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..."
Well.....
----------
> From: Daniel A. Seagraves <DSEAGRAV(a)toad.xkl.com>
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: FW: Dos v2.11 apology
> Date: Thursday, August 13, 1998 2:43 AM
>
> [Uses MSmail?]
>
> I'd rather just get a telnet client and talk straight to the SMTP
interface
> than use Outlook.
> In fact, I normally do.
>
> HELO myhostname
> MAIL FROM: me
> RCPT TO: you
> DATA
> xyzzy
> .
> QUIT
>
> -------
> I'm impressed but try again! I have asolutely no problems in all 4
> corner of any worlds even on 386sx 25 bandaid notebook I have.
> (sloooowwwwly). What is your toshiba laptop?
>
Well, it's a VERY crappy 100MHz Pentium w/ 8 meg of RAM. The HD has blown
4 times already. Half the time the CD-ROM and floppy don't work, and
Resume never worked. The screen shattered about 3 months ago (while I was
using it). The modem may be part of the problem. It's a IBM 14.4 made for
Win 3.1 and OS/2, using software for a totally different modem, because
it's the only driver that works.
> No excess frill programs, extras to foul up your installation
> attempts?
>
--
-Jason
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#-1730318
The hard drive or the computer? If you're talking about the HD, than I
know what you mean. If you mean the computer, just go to the elementary
school that I used to go to -- They had 30 of 'em. The one that I have now
(and my other two 1000's) were given to me by my high school -free...
--
-Jason
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#-1730318
----------
> From: Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com>
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: Philips XT with 768K
> Date: Thursday, August 13, 1998 1:22 AM
>
> > I also have a neat XT. It's not a Phillips, but a Tandy 1000. It has
768K
> > RAM, and a 12MHz 286 processor. Only, I still have the problem of not
> > being able to access the upper memory. Being a Tandy, it's even harder
to
> > find a driver. Another setback is it's HD. It's a 20MB Western
digital -
> > and slow as a turtle. Does anyone, by any chance, have a spare
> > XT-compatible IDE HD without a stepper motor driving the heads??
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> That may be very hard to find!
> - don
>
Doug Yowza <yowza(a)yowza.com> wrote:
> An an amateur quasi-historian, I think the misperception about the
> Altair's significance is a shame. There are computers that were produced
> in similar numbers that are much more interesting, and even more fun to
> play with.
Here's what is significant about MITS and the Altair 8800:
It arrived on the scene with a price that firmly fixed in lots of
folks' heads the idea that "I can own a computer." And it was
obviously a useful computer that could be expanded to do real work
just like the real computer in the fishbowl at the office, not
something that could only be appreciated through the lights and
switches on its front panel.
And MITS' hardware was flaky enough that other folks felt encouraged
to build stuff for its bus, and even build other systems using its
bus. That made the Altair bus a de facto standard of its day,
and one that stuck around for the next few days too.
> The Altair and the Apple 1 both started at about the same time, but the
> Apple went on to have a much greater impact on "personal" interactive
> computing in the form of the Apple ][. IBM's PC was a response to the
> Apple ][, and that set the stage for the way things have been ever since.
I'd venture to say that Altair buyers saw the Altair as having the
potential to be this sort of "interactive" machine too. The base
configuration wasn't, but it was clear that you could buy more memory,
a current-loop interface, a Teletype, and run BASIC. And that was the
goal a lot of folks had then. That put you in the big leagues with
the minis that you might be using at work or in school, and put the
user in control of the computer.
That said, I think that if MITS hadn't done it with the Altair,
someone else would have done it soon enough.
-Frank McConnell
>
>I think you're the third person this year I know of that has found the
>sole surviving Altair kit :-)
I think what may have happened, Doug, is that over the
course of the year I have mentioned it in passing to
some of the people who read this list. I am not known
to you folks so I am guessing that the same unassembled
kit was brought to your attention by others. If that is
not the case and other kits have been found I would sincerely
like to hear from
those who may be in possession of them. I have some unanswered
questions about the example I found and would like to
compare it to any others.
>
>But the Altair wasn't the first personal computer, so maybe the Ford
>Model-T would be a better analogy. The Altair's place in history is
>really about Microsoft and the early hobbiest movement, not about
>computers in general. Affordable desktop computers have been around
since
>the 60's (and even the late 50's if you include analog machines like
the
>EC-1 at $199).
I did not
mean to suggest that the Altair was the 1st PC or even the
1st micro. However, the Altair is perceived at this time
to be "the start of it all" and it is the one that is available in
enough numbers to become a collectible. The Mark 8 and Scelbi,
for example, suffer from extreme rarity. They are now virtually
non existent. So will never attract the widespread interest of
the Altair.
numbers
>
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