Uncle Roger asked:
>A quick question... How many people know how to work on their cars? How
>many drive older vehicles without as much "black-box" stuff?
'68 Plymouth Sport Suburban (= 3-seat Fury wagon *not* the Chevy Suburban).
I'll work on the stuff that makes it go but I let professionals
handle the stuff that makes it stop or turn.
I sometimes fantasize about a medium big terrorist nuke at very
high altitude using EMP to shut down all the microprocessor-controlled cars
in the state. I don't think that would stop my car with its points and
coil. 'Course, the road will still be jammed full of inert new cars....
....and my classic computer collection will be garbage! Auuugghh!!!
I don't fanatasize about that very often.
- Mark
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Large Asteroids headed toward planets
inhabited by beings that don't have
technology adequate to stop them:
Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.
At 06:47 PM 8/15/98 -0500, you wrote:
>> Whether that is true or not is completely irrelevant to the pricing of
>> Altairs as collectibles.
>
>Not at all. It's the *perceived* significance and rarity that makes these
Exactly! That perception need not have any basis in fact.
>Bill Gates first wrote BASIC for the Schmaltztair rather than the Altair,
I'm not sure how much Gates has to do with the perceived value of the
Altair; it may be that people just think of it as the "first".
>those brilliant bastards at Ty came up with a scheme for artificial
Doncha wish ya was one of them? 8^)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
At 11:30 AM 8/15/98 -0700, you wrote:
>I don't think ZDNet will post my comments, as mine started with:
>
>Piracy YES. Commodore 64 NOT!
Actually, they did; it was my comment that didn't get posted. I berated ZD
(et al) for proclaiming a computer dead simply because they do not receive
any advertising income from its users.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
At 04:11 AM 8/15/98 GMT, you wrote:
>inflation of the price of something that should belong to people who
>respect it as other than a "collectors item". Now I'm sure this
Why does this idea always come from the people who don't have/can't afford
the objet in question? If works of art, classic computers, '56 corvettes,
etc., should all belong to the people, then maybe we should all switch to
socialism. I have no problem with that. Everyone on the list could then
turn over their classic computers to the state, and take 3 or 4 homeless
people into their apartments. Certainly, if old computers should be shared
amongst all, then more so should food and shelter.
On the other hand, if we want to stick with the system we've got (and if
you've got a roof over your head that doesn't leak, you're doing pretty
well with this system) then we have to accept that artwork, cool cars, hot
babes (and hunks), and computers all go to those who can afford them, and
we need to quit whining about it and work to get ahead so we can be one of
those who can afford a $12K altair.
In the meantime, there are plenty of other computers out there to play with
and if you're just interested in it as a technical toy, Compupro's were
much better, or you can design your own S-100 box. And I doubt someone who
paid $12k for an Altair is going to use it as a boat anchor or flowerpot,
so don't worry about its survival.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/
I dunno. I was thinking more in terms of hardware
availability, and actual adherence to the IEEE
standard. I used to play with GPIB alot, but that
was some years ago . . .
Jeff
At 03:58 PM 8/17/98 -0500, you wrote:
>At 01:45 PM 8/17/98 -0700, you wrote:
>>At 07:14 PM 8/17/98 -0500, you wrote:
>>>A minor success story compared with some I read here, but I wanted to
>>>share it with you...
>>
>><Story on how our intrepid hero kludged Commo and Tek Snipped>
>>
>>Maybe you would have been better off using an HP IEEE disk drive:
>
> Will these use HP drives? Has anybody tried using one on a Tek or PET?
>
> Joe
>
On Mon, 17 Aug 1998 16:40:15 +0200 (CEST), Jason writes:
cl> Another setback is it's HD. It's a 20MB Western digital -
cl> and slow as a turtle. Does anyone, by any chance, have a spare
cl> XT-compatible IDE HD without a stepper motor driving the heads??
Those hard disks were very slow, and noisy too. They also suffer from
sudden head stiction. You are lucky it is a Western Digital.
Older machines had Miniscribe hard disks which were worse.
You can switch off the XT-IDE hard disk port with switch 8 of the
DIP switches in the Philips XT and install a regular MFM disk controller
and hard disk in the machine. Works like in any other XT.
Kees
--
Kees Stravers - Geldrop, The Netherlands - pb0aia at amsat dot org
Sysadmin and DEC PDP/VAX preservationist - http://vaxarchive.ml.org
Net-Tamer V 1.08.1 - Registered
> >
> > Yeah. All the docs would be cool. The thing that really
> bugs me is that
> > I dont remember how to boot one :)
> >
> > Sure did meet Allison, she's still got a Compupro RAM card floating
> > around somewhere for me. Since we work mere blocks from
> each other, it
> > shouldn't be tough to get it from her.
> >
> > We can meet up at the Sept flea somewhere, I'll have my PDP
> collecting
> > girlfriend in tow.
> >
> > I actually want to entertain the idea of maybe joining up
> with the west
> > coast folks to see if we can get a VCF together for us east
> coasters.
> > Hell, cant be any worse than running a Japanese Animation or Sci-Fi
> > convention (both of which I have done in the past).
> >
> > Tony
>
> We should consider doing it with the Trenton Computer Festival
> http://www.tcf.net which was full of old stuff in the good
> old days -- but
> it's been moving to newer stuff (and PC's) lately. I haven't seen an
> 8 or 11 there for a couple of years.
>
> I've seen Sun3/4's, DecStations, some old PC stuff in
> addition to the current
> stuff.
>
> Bill
>
If people out here in the east are really interested, I'm willing to
lend my convention experience... Lemme warn ya beforehand, Its alot of
work.
Tony
At 07:14 PM 8/17/98 -0500, you wrote:
>A minor success story compared with some I read here, but I wanted to
>share it with you...
<Story on how our intrepid hero kludged Commo and Tek Snipped>
Maybe you would have been better off using an HP IEEE disk drive:
1. They're really common (at least, here they are)
2. You can get floppy, Winchester, or Tape
3. IEEE implementation is a little more 'standard'
But then again, mebbe you *need* to read commo disks with this
thing. Either way; well done, guy. Don 'cha love twiddling
those bits?
In this neck of the woods anyway, Commodore IEEE related 'stuff'
is pretty scarce . . .
Jeff
< As for noise, yes. It's noisy by today's standards. All of the old
< drives were touchy WRT handling. I didn't consider it more so than
< any other 8 year old drive.
The ST251 is easily over 12 years and known for spindle problems.
It runs real hot. Not a great drive compared the Quantum d540 (31mb)
that is voicecoil(fast), reliable and known to be very unfussy about
handling. Also the ST251 was very flakey compared to it's 20mb
counterpart the st225. Not all were touchy WRT to handling. The biggest
problems is that between new developments and company turnovers some
really poor drives made it out the door due to design errors or worse
poor quality control.
I still use st506, st412 and st225s but NOT st251s. I also have some 7
Quantum D540s that refuse to die in my PDP-11s, vax, and CP/M systems.
Allison
A recent storm blew a tree over and into my garage. It so happens
that I had an computer near the spot where the tree went through
the garage. Although not physically damaged by the tree, there was
a lot of water damage to the computer and especially the monitor.
Being an older machine, I am not sure how to place a value on it
for insurance purposes. If anyone out there has seen anything
recent on the machine as to what they are selling for,
I would appreciate sharing of that info.
The computer is an IBM RT Model 135, Type 6150. It has a 5 1/4 floppy,
and two hard drives (100MB & 300MB), plus the usual video and
network card.
The monitor is an IBM Model/Type 5081-19, 19" color with RGB inputs.
I am not trying to come up with some inflated value for this thing
to take advantage of the insurance company, just a reasonable fair
value to settle the claim. The machine worked fine before I parked
it in the garage. I know that there is probably cases where the
machines have just been thrown or given away, but would like to get
some compensation for it, if nothing else for what was a working
19" color monitor.
Thanks in advance for any helpful info.
Mike Thompson
mzthompson(a)aol.com
