Hi,
I new to the list and recently decided to persue my 'new' old hobby.
I was wondering if anyone has any of these old systems:
Gavilian
Fortune 32:16
Momenta
Anything with the Go OS
I'm fortunate to have an old Go OS system...an IBM Thinkpad. Stupidly
several years ago let a friend throw away the entire Go documentation set as
well as SDK. About the same time I threw away one of the first notebooks
made - an old Bondwell 8088 machine (mid-80's it was a real clunker of a
machine)...my Mom wouldn't let me keep it due to space constraints....it
went along with all my Creative Computer and Interface age issues! It pains
me to think about all that stuff (including all the prototype systems I had,
some which were never sold). I didn't know...honest.
-Chandra
I vaguely seem to remember that the Plato Courseware also ran, or they had a
version for, the TI99/4A.
They were pushing it at schools and the like IIRC.
My first real computer was a TI....Still got it here somewhere, complete
with the expansion box and 24k of additional ram, and a 5.25" FDD.
Cheers
Geoff Roberts
Computer Room Internet Cafe
Port Pirie
South Australia.
netcafe(a)pirie.mtx.net.au
You wrote...
>Hi Jay,
>
> Welcome to the list. Where are you located? I collect smaller HPs
>(9000s, 98xx stuff, 85s, calculators, etc).
St. Louis, MO.
Smaller HP's (9000)? The K and V class machines aren't that small <grin>!
What's 98xx?
Calculators? Nifty! I have an HP41C that I treasure, but a plastic connector
cracked so the top half isn't always in good contact with the bottom half.
Grrr... Anyone have a totally dead 41C that I could steal to use the plastic
parts from?
> I just send two HP 7907s with MAC interfaces to another list member.
Humm... I must admit not being familiar with the 7907's. What was different
about them from the 7906? I never saw any TSB docs that mentioned them...
Got any 7900A's ? :)
> What do you do at The Software Exchange (tseinc.com)?
> Joe
We Exchange our software for other people's money! <grin>
I'm the owner there. We sell HP9000 series 800 machines (that's the HP-UX
Unix boxes), but we sell only new machines (not used) as part of a vertical
solution (with our manufacturing and distribution software). We also do
custom programming, network consulting, and we're an ISP as well. Pretty
diverse! We only deal in new HP Unix/RISC gear though, not any of the type
that I like collecting (2000 TSB related). Also, our DARship only allows us
to sell the series 800 stuff with our software. So - no - my desire for 21mx
stuff is strictly for my personal collection at home (the 2000E was the
first system I ever learned in high school).
Other systems in my collection include Dec PDP-8E, PDP-11/23, PDP-11/73,
HP1000E (2 of them), and a wide range of period peripherals (LA36, LSI &
Hazeltine, Microterm, TU10, Kennedy tape drives, RX02's, etc). My current
project is finishing restoration of the 8E (almost complete).
Glad to be here on the list, and hope to contribute!
Jay West
> It obviously doesn't have enough electronics to be more than a keyboard
>terminal, but I don't recall seeing a box in the picture. I had understood the
>displaywriter to be a stand alone machine. Did it have an additional box or was
>it meant to connect to a CRT terminal hooked to a mainframe ?
> At present it would seem to be about to join the 3270 monitor I have (can't
>remember the model #) as interesting but unusable.
The Displaywriter system I have has the keyboard, a monitor, a monitor
base-unit, and a box that would sit besite the monitor, etc. It houses dual
8" diskette drives and the rest of the electronics. The cable that runs from
this box to the monitor, etc. is permanently attached to the box explaining
why you see only a connector. The printer plus form-feed attachment have a
footprint that matches the rest of the system, but is even higher than the
rest of the system. Early, unobtrusive office automation at it's best.
In keeping with the 3 states of computing (hardware, software, eveyware),
early IBM word processing technology elegantly passed through the first 2
states. In 1964 IBM coined the term word processing when it released the
Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter followed the the Magnetic Card Selectric
Typewriter and finally the Displaywriter product. This was the hardware
state since these products were huge, dedicated pieces of hardware. Then IBM
came out with the Displaywrite software series. The hardware melted into
software and the technology entered the second state. Now word processing
technology is everyware - fax, email, order entry, customer service...; it
dissolved from software into everyware. There.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------
Kevin Stumpf * Unusual systems * www.unusual.on.ca
+1.519.744.2900 * EST/EDT GMT - 5
Collector - Commercial Mainframes & Minicomputers from
the 50s, 60s, & 70s and control panels and consoles.
Author & Publisher - A Guide to Collecting Computers &
Computer Collectibles * ISBN 0-9684244-0-6
.
You wrote...
>> WP... workspace pointer. back when the 9900 was new registers (memory)
>> really ate up chip space and TI had an archetecture in the 990
minicomputer
>> where register were in memory instead of in the CPU. So the WP is a
pointer
>> that points to a block of 16 locations in ram that are addressed in
>> instructions as R0 through R15.
>
>Wow! What a cool architecture! That would be a very handy feature to
>have in any processor.
Wouldn't that be an awfully handy feature for doing a context switch? It
would seem simply adjusting WP would perform the appropriate "change of
personality" to select the next user/process...
Jay
Daniel sent this to the list, but it got rejected because of a suspicious
address -- he sent it as root -- and landed in my mail. So I'm resending it.
I thought it best to take his address out of the message, so it wouldn't get
harvested for spam. To contact him, replace "minako" by "bony" and replace
"system" by "root".
-- Derek
> Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 18:27:16 -0600 (CST)
> From: Daniel Seagraves [e-mail address deleted]
> To: [a bunch of other people]
> Subject: VAX mail shut down.
> Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.990130181926.2556B-100000(a)bony.umtec.com>
> Approved: Why bother?
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
>
> Just so everyone knows, the address SYSTEM(a)minako.umtec.com has been shut
> down. It appears the MX software I have has no spam-blocking abilities
> and always relays, and an upgrade to the version that does have these
> features costs $500, which I don't have. Software has been released which
> allows a spammer to sweep entire subnets for open relays, so ANY open
> relay is unsafe! I'm extremely unwilling to do anything that aids
> spammers (Like having an open relay) so the mailer daemon there was shut
> down, permanently. Mails to there will probably bounce. I haven't had an
> incident yet, but I'm not going to either.
>
> Daniel Seagraves | I'm an International Clandestine Arms Dealer!
> #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
> $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
> lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
> What is this? See http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa | 36 BITS 4EVER!
>
>
>
I picked up an IBM Displaywriter keyboard unit in a local thrift after eyeing
it for a couple of weeks and finally couldn't resist adding it to my
living-space challenged collection.
I remember seeing mention of it in an old 81 datamation mag and a 50s
style picture of a dedicated secretary busy at work on one and other info in
possibly an old Byte. It was touted as being very popular to the point that it
was touted over the PC and that CP/M programs were being ported to it.
I opened it up and it has only a small I/O board with a 15 pin connector and
takes it's power off that. It looks like an oversized C64.
It obviously doesn't have enough electronics to be more than a keyboard
terminal, but I don't recall seeing a box in the picture. I had understood the
displaywriter to be a stand alone machine. Did it have an additional box or was
it meant to connect to a CRT terminal hooked to a mainframe ?
At present it would seem to be about to join the 3270 monitor I have (can't
remember the model #) as interesting but unusable.
Or could I get gadzillion bucks for it on e-pay ? Any info ?
ciao larry
lwalker(a)interlog.com
>I think that would be a wonderful idea. The only downside I can see is
that
>a note cannot be posted to the list from someone, lets say, reading an
>archive copy, without joining the list. Maybe that would be a good thing
>though.
Joining the list is pretty easy. And if someone is going to make a post,
they might as well stick around a little to read the responses.
- Joe
>Is it possible to run them without a display via the serial
>port on the back?
I have a related question... is it possible to run a VaxStation 3100 with a
VR319-DA monitor? (The VR319 came with a DECstation 5000/125.)
- Joe
