On 07-May-97, classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu wrote:
>So what's the point? Preserving the machines is good, but it is only
>part of the picture. What is the good of preserving a machine if all
>of "culture" that surrounds the machine is lost?
Agreed, which is why my more common systems, such as the Atari 800 and
Vic-20 are fairly filled out with peripherals and such. Take for example my
VIC-20..it has the following:
VIC-20 boxed, VIC-1541 floppy, VIC-Modem, VIC-1525 printer, C2N Datasette,
manuals for the VIC-Modem anad 1541, as well as 9 cartidges and about 6
original cassette tapes of programs, including one tape still in it's
packaging.
This to me is quite a well rounded system, much like one would find someone
using on a daily basis. Unfortunately, for some of my systems, such as the
Aquarius, it's not so easy to find the software and such for it. But I
definately pay at least as much attention to searching out the add-ons as I do
the systems themselves. In fact, at this point, my attention is likely to
turn mostly to the add-ons and such, as I've aquired the more common systems
I've sought and likely won't be aquring them as a whole as often.
>Save those manuals, flyers, ads, boxes, packing foam, and twist-ties.
>Save them even if you don't have a machine to go with them.
One thing I always noticed about people into antique and classic cars is
that a lot of them also search out the advertisements and such for thier
favorite marque. It'd certainly be interesting to do such a thing for the
computers as well. Too bad I tossed out all of my older magazines years ago.
Jeff jeffh(a)eleventh.com
--
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Sent from an Amiga 3000..the computer for the creative mind!
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Collector of classic home computers:
Amiga 1000, Atari 800, 800XL, Mega-ST/2 and XE System, Commodore
C-128D, Plus/4 and VIC-20, IBM 5155, Kaypro 2X, Osbourne Executive
Radofin Aquarius, Sinclair ZX-81, TI-99/4A, Timex-Sinclair 1000,
TRS-80 Color Computer-3 and Model 4, plus Atari Superpong and
2600VCS game consoles.
Hi!
I have in my basement a genuine ADDS Multivision machine. It's runs a
multitasking version of CP/M, called MUON, and used to run
brilliantly until I accidentally ran the SYSGEN utility which, I
found out later, overwrote the config information. It now refuses to
boot, saying "Stack error" or something equally useful :-(
Has anybody heard of this machine before - or, even better, does
anybody have boot disks for MUON v2.3 ??
I would phone up ADDS, but they're in America and I don't
particularly fancy all the international phone calls from the UK!
I don't have their address or fax number or anything - and that's not
even mentioning the fact that quite probably, nobody there will know
a thing about this machine! :-(
If any of you can help in any way, it would be much appreciated!!
Thanks,
___ _ _ ___ _
_| (_)(\)(-) | (-)(-)(\)
Well, I had a good weekend, acquiring lots of stuff too numerous to
list. I got a genuine IBM PC (this time for sure), an Atari 1040ST, a
Visual Computer Inc. Commuter "lap-top" (circa 1983 with a small flip-up
LCD display, runs DOS), a Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000, TI Silent 700 Portable
Data Terminal, Atari 800XL...
I also picked up some extras for trading. Currently I have a couple
original IBM PCs and PC XTs and a couple TI Silent 700 protable data
terminals (with acoustic couplers).
One of the IBM PCs is an oddity: it is actually labelled the IBM 3270
Personal Computer and inside it has three cards connected together to form
the video card. It has one 9-pin male 'D' connector on the back (like a
standard monochrome monitor adaptor). I was told this was for an enhanced
graphics monitor. It also had a card in the slot next to the CPU. The
card has a CPU on it, and has a ribbon cable going from the card to the
socket on the motherboard where the CPU used to be. Any ideas what this
is? I don't know if I want to trade this just yet. But if anyone is
interested in a genuine IBM PC for trade, I can get more.
Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
At 01:09 PM 5/18/97 -0700, you wrote:
>
>On the line of interesting storage devices - does anyone remember the
>"scanner" that read strips of encoded data. I don't remember what it
>was called, but for a little while they printed some of these strips in
>Nibble. I think it was an Apple II only thing. I guess you could read
>and print these strips and they generated programs when you scanned
>them.
It's called a Causin 'Strip Reader'. Cable and software kits were
available for both PC compatable and Apple II series computers. I have one
in my collection, but with no software at present. (have not got a picture
on the web page yet either - foo!) Have been trying to track down the
software for either system...
>Also, some personal bad news - my van was broken into on Friday night
>and a large load of classic equipment was stolen (I'm preparing to move
>and the it was the easiest place to store it).
Aw heck! ('course, I do the same...)
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
In a message dated 97-05-18 01:02:33 EDT, Sam writes:
> Exactly. The Apple ][e bootstrap does a lot of work to read the boot
> sector off the disk. It creates the 6&2 encoding table, looks for the
> boot sector and reads it, decodes it and then jumps to it, all in less
> than 256 bytes. Impressive as all hell. Woz is a god damn GOD.
AMEN brother. Jobs who?
Lou
Hmmm, I don't know if it was caused by last night's drunken stupor, but
the e-mail from the person interested in the RX-02 got lost somehow. If
you were the person interetsed, could you pleae e-mail me again? Sorry
about that.
Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
On Sun, 18 May 1997, Jim Willing wrote:
> On the line of interesting storage devices - does anyone remember the
> "scanner" that read strips of encoded data. I don't remember what it
> was called, but for a little while they printed some of these strips in
> Nibble. I think it was an Apple II only thing. I guess you could read
> and print these strips and they generated programs when you scanned
> them.
Yes, I very much remember these and very much remember it always being on
my wish list of things to add to my Apple. I never did get one. I
posted a WTB ad on an Apple newsgroup a while back for one and some guy
responded but he gave me this bullshit "tell me what you're willing to
pay" line for it and so I told him $25 and he never replied. Anyway, if
anyone's got one and wants it to go to a good home, let me know.
> Also, some personal bad news - my van was broken into on Friday night
> and a large load of classic equipment was stolen (I'm preparing to move
> and the it was the easiest place to store it). So, if you live in the
> greater Seattle area and you see a good amount of the following show
> up when you're poking around, please let me know (I'm not as much
> concerned about the equipment as I am about my addressbook, insurance
> folder, and vehicle registration.).
>
> Stolen: IBM 6360 disk drive, Macintosh, Mac 512, Box of CompuPro s-100
> boards, Box of misc. manuals, Commodore DPS-1101 printer, TI99/4a
> expansion box, Turbo C64 disk drive, CBM 8050 dual disk drive, Atari
> 520ST, 2 commodore vic-1541 disk drives, 1 blue chip disk drive.
Now this is some seriously fucked up shit.
> I'm sure the thieves thought they really scored but I'm guessing it
> will soon turn up at a thrift store or pawn shop when they can't
> move it. Some of the equipment may be blood-stained. I have mounted
> razor blades across the bottom of my car stereo and they found them
> when trying to rip it out ;). The dash was very bloody - quite
> gratifying.
HAHAHHA! That's great. Well, I hope you get your stuff back, but at
least you made the assholes suffer.
Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
I picked up a Digital RX-02 dual 8" drive unit today that I have
absolutely no use for but figured someone in this discussion group would
want. Please contact me personally if you are interested in taking it
off my hands (dastar(a)crl.com).
Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Sam,
That's not entirely true. ;-) I'm being paid to write optimized
assembly code for an upcoming game from (of all people) Microsoft.
12,000 lines of hand tuned assembly, with some truely wonderful gems of
small, efficient code in it. I must admit though that we had an editor
>from one of the gaming magazines come by the other day and mention that
the only other gam company still writing serious assembly was
NovaLogic... It does seems like a dying art.
But I'm off topic.
What I wanted to bring up was Creative Computing Magazine , pre 1981. I
was only 10 - 14 years old during that time period, but I remember the
content as being fantastic. There were fewer rules and a much more
hardcore audience then. Does anyone remeber "Computer Myths Explained"
and the great line drawings of robots and wierd machines that took on a
life of their own. I'd love to get a collection of those drawings...
-Matt Pritchard
mpritchard(a)ensemble.net
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Ismail [SMTP:dastar@crl.com]
> Sent: Saturday, May 17, 1997 2:41 AM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: Re: Magazine retrospectives
>
> On Fri, 16 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:
>
> The Apple disk conrtoller ROM which read the boot sector off of a disk
>
> was 256 bytes! Amazing piece of code. You won't find anything
> comparable today, at least in any mainstream software (ie. windows).
>
> Sam
>
I don't think I have to add anything to this email I recieved today... Can
anyone out there save it?
ttfn
srw
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 19:09:49 +0100
From: Mike O'Neill <mikeon(a)globalnet.co.uk>
To: walde(a)dlcwest.com
Subject: Osborne computer
Hi and I wonder if you can help. I have and Osborne computer (I'm not
sure which one but it is an 80 col display with 2 x 185k drives and
EProms fitted to hot it up and allow burning in of favourite software
such as Wordstar and dBaseII). I don't want to trash the machine and am
trying to find out a contact in UK who might be interested in giving it
a home as a piece of computing history. The machine still works and is
in good order although I havn'e fired it up for some time. Any help you
can give would be appreciated. I can be reached at
mikeon(a)globalnet.co.uk. Hope you can help and thanks in anticipation.
Best wishes
Mike O'Neill