> At 09:50 PM 4/24/02 -0400, Doug asked:
> >
>
> >
> >Where will I buy water wetter?
>
> E-bay.
>
> >Where will I buy Nitonol wire?
>
> E-bay.
>
> >Where will I buy flock paper?
>
> E-bay.
>
> >Where will I buy cheap assortment of lab glassware?
>
> E-bay.
>
> >Where will I buy an ultrasonic cleaner?
>
> E-bay.
>
> >Where will I buy a good Chinese microscope?
>
>
> E-bay.
> >
> >and so on...
>
> Take a guess!
Joe-
I am not rich enough to be able to take E-Bay into the
bathroom with me... Having an Edmund catalog kept me
>from having to resort to National Geographic... ;)
-Douglas Hurst Quebbeman (DougQ at ixnayamspayIgLou.com) [Call me "Doug"]
Surgically excise the pig-latin from my e-mail address in order to reply
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away." -Tom Waits
GNATS is a pretty good bug tracking system (we use it here), easy to search
etc too.
What would be really useful IMHO is a means to sort the classiccmp archives,
since a great many "FAQs" are answered there somewhere... finding the answer
isn't that easy though :-) Googling for whatever I'm looking for and
including "classiccmp" in the search list is the best I've come up with so
far, anyone found a better way?
BTW if nobody's working on a searchable archive I'd be happy to take the
work on?
Cheers
Al.
I spotted this in the CPM news-group. It looks like a good deal for somebody.
From: Gerald Pine <gdpine(a)pacbell.net>
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Subject: Liquidating collection of CPM (and some other) machines
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X-UserInfo1: [[PAPDCAOXW[B^LX@JJDM^P@VZ\LPCXLLBWLOOAFQATJUZ]CDVW[AKK[J\]^HVKHG^EWZHBLO^[\NH_AZFWGN^\DHNVMX_DHHX[FSQKBOTS@@BP^]C@RHS_AGDDC[AJM_T[GZNRNZAY]GNCPBDYKOLK^_CZFWPGHZIXW@C[AFKBBQS@E@DAZ]VDFUNTQQ]FN
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 03:37:09 GMT
Xref: cyclone.tampabay.rr.com comp.os.cpm:20184
Hello,
I have sold cpm machines from my collection to several of you in the
past. I am finally running out of time to disperse my collection of
machines before my house is officially sold to its new owners. The
machines are in La Grange, Illinois, a southwest suburb of Chicago. My
wife is going to include whatever is not left in a garage sale that she
is holding next Saturday (the 27th or whatever date is a Saturday about
then--no calendar in front of me). If someone can pick up the machines
before then, or have a friend pick them up, they can be had for a VERY
attractive price. In fact, we'll let you name what you think is
reasonable. The more you take, the cheaper the better we'll like it. I
don't want to dumpster these if I can avoid it, and I doubt that the
local thrift store will be interested in them. Among what I have are:
Multiple Osborne I's --at least one I know is working. Some have
developed glitches sitting around for the last few years, and I think
that they could easily be made to work, but no guarantees. I do have at
least boot disks for most, but you might have to sort through some
diskettes to pick them out. Take them all and your job is easier.
Multiple Xerox 820-II's: 1 dual 8-inch floppy, 8-inch hard drive; 1
dual 8-inch floppy. 1 dual 5 1/4 inch floppy; some home made 8-inch
drive cabinets. Have software (much) for these, and even have one
pretty complete set of manuals and original diskettes, including a
technical manual, CPM and operating manuals of various types, and MS-DOS
manual, a CPM-86 manual, a graphics manual, wordstar, and probably some
that I'm not remembering. I'd like to get a few bucks for the manuals
especially.
A Sanyo MBC-1000(?) not sure of the number, but it is a single floppy
drive Z80 machine with boot disks and some software that I've
transferred. Almost new condition.
An Altos 580 and an Altos 8000: The 580 is in fine working condition
with CPM and MPM system disks and some software for CPM that I've
transferred from other formats. The 8000 needs a new power supply.
A Mac LC-II. Machine was working, but keyboard stopped responding
except for click noise. Haven't had time to diagnose it.
A Data General 1 portable MS-DOS machine (8086 or 8088, not sure
which). Works and comes with expansion docking station and external 5
1/4 inch drive. No software for docking station, unfortunately.
A Vic 20 with lots of goodies.
A TI-99. Not sure what;s with it.
A Columbia PC, PC compatible luggable, similar to Compaq original
portables.
A IBM XT with hard drive and CGA monitor.
4 Televideo terminals, 3 925's and a 950. Also one copy each of service
manuals and several operating manuals.
A Sperry terminal.
An Apple IIc with color and monochrome monitors and lots of software.
Wordstar 4 for CPM and for MS-DOS in original boxes.
SuperCalcII for Osborne.
Lots more software, getting too tired to list.
Send me your email address and I'll give you details about where it is
and how to arrange to see it. Please help me to keep from dumpstering
this. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to pack and ship it, so
local pickups only.
Gerald Pine
> Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 18:35:26 -0400
> From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch(a)30below.com>
> :
> [no room on the puny 6G HD for Linux, tho... it's fully Linux certified as
> well...]
LOL, you're kidding, right? :-) If not, contact me off list and I'll be
more than happy to forward instructions for installing a very useful Linux
setup onto an even punier 420Mb hard disk!
Cheers,
Al.
> Thanks a MILLION to all who have donated parts and/or money
> so far to get a separate dedicated classiccmp server.
> ...
> Decisions decisions.... if anyone still wants to donate to
> the cause, my paypal id is jwest(a)classiccmp.org
Ok, I will truncate the last digits in my account for you.
- Henk.
> >Ethan Dicks wrote:
>
> > > By the way, for myself, I would VERY much appreciate
> > > being in touch with all individuals who have a copy of the
> > > RT-11 Freeware CD V2.0 so that we might exchange
> > > information about RT-11. Tim Shoppa felt that he might
> > > be violating privacy concerns if he made the names, of those
> > > who ordered the CD, available.
> > I can appreciate Tim's discretion, but I don't mind it being known
> > that I ordered a copy from him.
>
> Jerome Fine replies:
>
> Is that OK just for myself or among others who are like minded?
> If the latter, then RT-11 announcements will be sent to all 4 or 5
> of you at the same time - makes it easier. I think Tim said he sold
> about 40 of the RT-11 Freeware CD, so many more names to go.
I did also buy a copy of RT-11 (1 CD) and RSX11-M (2 CD's) from Tim.
- Henk.
On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>BTW, when the NEXT boxes first came out, we had a few of them sitting around
>for people to look at and play with. I personally was not impressed. They
>were EXTREMELY low on gigaflops per picobuck and, aside from the OS, I don't
>remember any applications that didn't have the same look and feel as a small
>mono-MAC costing ~1/10 as much.
Finally gored my ox - but it's on-topic! Yee-hah.
Nice things created on NeXT systems:
* the WWW (or rather the html protocol underlying it) by Tim Berners Lee
(sic?).
* Mathematica - though probably is not useful to the work you do, it's
indispensable to some of mine.
* Zilla, the fore-runner of most of the distributed-computing,
grid-computing, commodity CPU projects buzzwording around today.
Distributed as an example application on NeXT 3.3 and used to crack several
outstanding mathematical compute-intensive problems.
* Attached sound and graphics files in email. Hmm, maybe this is not good.
Basically, a lot of the computing technologies you now rely on first
appeared on NeXT systems. They may not have impressed you then, but they
should now.
You are right about the Flops rating - that was only a bit higher than
Macs/PC's and well behind Sparc's, Alphas, etc. But Flops/dollar is not the
best metric of a general-purpose computer. If you think it is, buy yourself
a used (Sony) PS/2 and we'll all be happier. For many kinds of work,
developer time to a working solution is the dominant metric, and NeXT was
very near the good end of that scale.
>The problem with these machines, as borne out by the market, is that they
>weren't what the home user wanted.
Quite right - the home user wanted applications, rather than the ability to
develop applications, and the corporate user wanted Flops - which meant
Suns and Alphas. There were not enough developers to float the market for
the hardware. But note, the NeXT company did *not* fail - it successfully
moved its software to Sun, PA-Risc, and x86 platforms, where it maintained
a serious business niche until it eventually was bought out by a higher
volume hardware player - Apple. The same software is now the
second-best-selling (? am I right in claiming this?) OS on the planet.
There's a NeXT on my desk at work right now, running Mathematica and perl
tasks, websurfing, backing up my portable .... its utility (to me) exceeds
that of any Windows machine I've seen.
Count me in with James Rice - if you see a working NeXT of any sort under
$20 or so, and *particularly* if you see a cube hooked up to a color
display, I'd take it most kindly if you'd notify me, or at least someone on
the list. It ain't junk to everyone. Best contact for me is at the above
email address.
- Mark
>> > An easy way to spot a product intended for the toy market as opposed to
>> > one intended to be seen as a computer, is that the disk drive interface
>> > is external.
>I would propose that the label "toy" might be suitable for machines that
>have external disk controllers _and_ an external network interface
Woah... my PS/2 is a 'real' computer?
It has internal storage (built in DVD drive, and 2 user upgradable RAM
slots), AND has built in network interfaces (2 USB ports on the front
which can be used for connecting 2 PS/2's together, and a proprietary
expansion slot on the back for the recently released network/modem
connector for connecting your PS/2 to the internet.. which I would
classify as built in, since it connects to the single body unit, and was
intended pretty much for this network box, and really is more of an
optional part).
Glad to know I didn't spend $300 on a toy.
Oh... and the GameBoy is a real computer to. It has built in storage
(game card slot), and built in networking (head to head port).
I could probably go on with more examples... I could even narrow it down
to ones that have built in floppy drives (to fade off the non "disk"
drive concept, although I think claiming to need a floppy drive excludes
an awful lot of other legit storage mediums, like all those systems that
only use tape). There is a V-Tech kids learning "computer" that comes to
mind that used 3.5" floppies (although, it might have lacked the required
network port, but I think it had a serial port, but probably didn't
support a "network" protocol).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
In case anyone is interested, the Apple-1 sold for $14,000, right at the
reserve price.
A low number by my estimation, but respectable considering the overall
circumstances.
:)
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
>The same software is now the
>second-best-selling (? am I right in claiming this?) OS on the planet.
Actually, recent reports say that more copies of OS X are selling off the
retail shelves than Win XP... so looking at best *SELLING* OS, one might
argue it is the #1 best seller. (of course, XP beats it out by a long
shot when looking at most copies moved when included in bundles with the
computer... but again, one could argue it is the computer you are buying
then, and not the OS)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>