Hi folks,
I happened upon a rare beast last weekend and it finally dropped into my
hands yesterday. Most folk know about the ICL One-Per-Desk which was
essentially a Sinclair QL with re-engineered microdrives and sold massively
well here in the UK (British Telecom rebranded it as the BT Merlin) and
Australia (Computerphone) and I think it made it to the US too?
People don't seem to know about its predecessor, me included. STC (Standard
Telephone & Cable) had this designed in the late 70s but it didn't make it
to market until 1984 - the STC Executel 3010. It's an AMD8085A powered desk
phone with 5" monitor that could store your phone entries, diary
appointments, autodial and connect to Viewdata services - PRESTEL in the UK.
It was expensive and didn't sell, some googling seems to show that there are
only maybe half a dozen in existence with 4 of them in the Cambridge area,
apt since it was designed by PA Consulting who amongst other things
redesigned the Tandy Coco for the UK and marketed it as the Dragon32.
What's interesting from a US standpoint is that it apparently DID make it
over the pond and was sold as the 'Buckingham' so the question is, anyone
heard of it?
http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/STCExecutel01.jpg
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
Hi,
Pictures can be found here: http://sierracircuitdesign.ddns.net/temp/pdp11/
The system is located in Portland, Oregon. Local pick-up is preferred.
Not sure if it still works. I have not tried to turn it on in years.
I do not have any software of floppies for it.
I'm not sure what it's worth. If you are interested in it, make me an offer.
Regards,
Scott
On Sun, Oct 2, 2016 at 8:20 PM, jim stephens <jwsmail at jwsss.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 10/2/2016 6:23 PM, Ian S. King wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've posted looking for help with a TeleVideo TPC-1, and I've heard a lot
>> of crickets <snip>
>>
> I saw your FB posting, good job, and chirp chirp.
>
>> I've ordered an exact, tested/guaranteed
>> working replacement from ePay,
>>
> Those were common drives, but be sure to do a careful inspection, as some
> of the drives had variants that were subtle.
>
> good job, great you got it working.
> thanks
> JIm
>
>> and I'm going to have everything working to
>> spec before I snap this thing back together.
>>
>> Yes, I'm having fun. :-)
>>
>> OK, my 'new' Teac drive arrived and passed inspection. I carefully
jumpered it to match the original, reassembled just enough that I could
plug it in, and... success! So to recap (pun intended), the machine had
bad caps in the power supply (leaking goo) and a bad drive 0.
What I want to record here for posterity is how to open one of these
things. It was a real pain, which I've heard was intentional. Reassembly
was challenging, too, but at least I could see what was happening. So here
goes:
To disassemble, you need to remove four screws. Facing the unit as it sits
on the bench (i.e. operating position), there are two screws on the top of
the machine at the front corners and two others on the rear, vertically
centered and near each vertical edge (one of them is in the recess where
you can store the power and keyboard cables). Now it gets fun.
The unit disassembles into a top cover that wraps over side-to-side, and a
rear piece that holds the majority of the electronics. The bottom piece of
the main case holds the power supply, floppy cage and some of the video
electronics. There are plastic 'teeth' that fit into indents at various
point along those pieces. For the top cover, the 'teeth' are part of the
cover, one per corner. For the back panel, the teeth snap into the top and
bottom of the main part of the case. The teeth are also accompanied by a
very thin indent in the case piece.
It's sort of a muscle job to get these things separated. I got the back
piece free before removing the top piece, with a little help from a putty
knife in those indents.
There are screws in the bottom of the case that hold in the power supply
and the floppy cage One of the floppy case screws is located underneath
the tilt 'foot'.
Putting it back together: be sure you have the logic board *inside* the
screw points for the back panel, but don't put in the screws yet. Seat the
top cover with its teeth in place, and insert the two front screws (don't
screw down tightly yet). Then, lever the back panel's teeth into their
slots, watching the top cover to be sure it doesn't try to pop off. Insert
the two rear screws and tighten. Now tighten the front two screws, and
it's back together. It may take a little jostling to get everything to
reseat completely.
Now to go through the metric butt-ton of software I got with this thing -
over a hundred floppies. Looking at the labels, some are duplicates, some
are 'working' disks, and some are original TeleVideo floppies with system
software. Fortunately, one of them is Kermit, which will make the
archiving job a lot easier!
OK, that was fun. Next! Probably the Kenwood TH-77A I bought that won't
transmit. Cheers -- Ian
--
Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu>
Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical
Narrative Through a Design Lens
Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org>
Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org>
University of Washington
There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."
Right on... The most important thing is.... IS THE OBJECT BEING SAVED?
Even if you restore something today it will be crap in another 50 years
If you do not restore it now it will run like crap too.
SO... in 50 years both are equal.. they will both run like crap no
matter if restored now or not.
The only caveat to the above examples is in ANY and EVERY case make sure
the old batteries are out of it!
And lastly... usually the people that raise the most protest 'about
something not being used' are those that do not have one. Draw your own
conclusions...
Ed#
In a message dated 10/8/2016 9:46:04 A.M. US Mountain
.......................
> Just like the car collecting, comic book collection and just about
most other hobbies when they mature. The same type of people who complained
about the price of an Xmen#1 because people would just buy and display them
and not read them, complain when someone buys an ALTAIR to sit on their
desk and doesn't turn it on. Better that than the garbage heap, without
money coming into our hobby it would eventually die out and many artifacts
would be lost to the dump.
I have an RD53 disk drive. When I plugged it in the other day something blew
up, smoke etc. I found that it was a tantalum capacitor on the motor control
board that had gone. I suppose I am wondering if just replacing it is a good
idea, could the failure be a symptom of another problem, could it have
damaged something else? I realise that without a schematic it may be
difficult to comment, but I suppose it is more a question about what can
cause these caps to fail?
If anyone has a schematic, or a drive they can examine, it is C1 on the
motor control board, quite close to the molex socket for power.
Regards
Rob
A buddy located this just in time, it was out at a scrapyard and we are
about to get hit with a hurricane over here in florida. Picked up a
commodore amiga 2000 with the keyboard, no mouse or monitor. I hooked it up
to a tv via composite and get to the boot screen. It appears to have a scsi
hard drive controller in it.
I figured this would be the place to ask... It looks as if PC compatibility
boards can be added to the machine, boards with a 286, 386, or 486 and
some memory on a board, capable of running MS DOS. IF i were to install
such a board, what kind of graphics capability would the dos side of things
have?
I just got started with the machine, im still trying to get it to boot up,
but if it would be pretty capable with dos then i will keep an eye out for
one of the cards.
any suggestions to get started would be appreciated.
--Devin
> From: Fred Cisin
>> Did you tell the dumpsterers that they'd thrown out stuff worth
>> thousands of dollars? (I would have made to sure to let them know
>> that, with great spite.)
> "So? Boss said throw out everything in the closets. ..."
Clearly, the Indians weren't to blame. But I sure hope someone told the
chief...
> From: Corey Cohen
> As for stuff in vintage computer that is going up, it's not just Apple.
> It has to do with how mainstream and how rare something is. ... I do
> agree the rare Apple stuff is growing faster, but that's because it can
> pull from the business community as buyers who love the comeback story
> of Apple and what it represents.
Oh, I don't have any issue with Altairs going for $1-2K; I think one can make
a rational case for that; they were a key machine the growth of personal
computers, etc, etc. But I do think that when it comes to Apples, there is a
certain level of irrationality in some/many buyers. ($20K for a pair of
floppies?) There is definitely an Apple cult, which I think is a factor.
Let me make another analogy with cars (which I also used to collect). I think
early Ferraris are really, really cool - and the 330 P4 is, in my eyes, one
of the most beautiful race cars ever built (maybe _the_ most beautiful). But
if I had $10M, I sure as hell wouldn't spend the whole lot on an original P4;
I think better value would be to buy a down-to-the-last-bolt-exact replica,
for say $500K, and have $9.5M left over to buy other cool stuff with.
This goes quintuply for an original GTO, at $50M. One could do all sorts of
amazing things with that much money. Is having an original _really_ worth as
much (or more) than all those other things? Like I said, a certain level of
irrationality.
Noel
-------- Original message --------
From: Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca>
Date: 2016-10-07 8:46 PM (GMT-08:00)
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Twiggys [was: Re: ka... ching!]
On 2016-Oct-07, at 5:17 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> On 10/7/2016 5:21 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>
>> That simply defies logic. I *really* don't get this collecting business.
>
> It's Apple-related. Some Apple devotees seem to have an, ah, excessive
> attachment to things Apple. (Q.v. $1M Apple I's.) I'm suprised that some of
> them didn't commit suttee when Steve died.
I agree this valuation is primarily "Apple"-driven rather than say "vintage-computer" driven,
but here's an interesting non-Apple sale, just completed:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cromemco-Dazzler-JP-1-Joysticks-D-7A-S-100-Card-Doc…>IMSAI-/291888851989
And yet the untouched original Mark-8 boards I bought only went for $1500. ?I don't get it.
90 mm f 2 summacron was a great lens!
wish I had one back for our M2.
In a message dated 10/7/2016 7:15:36 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
cisin at xenosoft.com writes:
On Fri, 7 Oct 2016, COURYHOUSE at aol.com wrote:
> Leicas dumpstered? OMG !?
> oh.... the humanity!!!!!!!
Indeed!
M2 AND M3, with marvelous lenses. CHead had promised me the Summicrons,
which I have always dreamed of having.
I found 2 cases that the dumpsterers missed, containing a mint 2-1/4x3-1/4
Graflex and lenses, and a Visoflex Tele-Elmarit with serious cosmetic
damage due to the foam deteriorating. When it became clear that the rest
were gone, I did a quick sale of the Tele-Elmarit for $1000, kept a 47mm
Super-Angulon (almost fills 4x5!), and gave the Graflex with the rest of
its lenses to another of CHead's friends who wanted to learn what HE
considered "large format". I'm currently playing with swings and tilts
with the Super Angulon on a Hama/Kenlock/Spiratone bellows as a miniature
technical camera.
> From: Fred Cisin
> I found 2 cases that the dumpsterers missed ... I did a quick sale of
> the Tele-Elmarit for $1000
Did you tell the dumpsterers that they'd thrown out stuff worth thousands of
dollars? (I would have made to sure to let them know that, with great spite.)
And if so, what did they say?
Noel
