-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Ismail <dastar(a)wco.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, 17 May 1998 8:07
Subject: IBM 5100 Manual Set
>
>Well, certainly the find of the day was the IBM 5100 manuals. I found
>them in a crusty used book store in a last-class indoor flea market,
>buried amongst old binders.
>
>I got the "APL Introduction" and "APL Reference Manual" and the "BASIC
>Introduction" and "BASIC Reference Manual". The BASIC portion is a
>photocopy of the original but the APL set is the original. By the way,
>there's a reason why you don't see Microsoft Visual APL these days. What
>a messed up language!
>
>Sam Alternate e-mail:
dastar(a)siconic.com
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>Ever onward.
>
> September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2
> See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
> [Last web page update: 05/11/98]
>
email: desieh(a)southcom.com.au
desieh(a)bigfoot.com
museum_curator(a)hotmail.com
Apple Lisa Web Page:
http://www.southcom.com.au/~desieh/index.htm
yeah there is lots of good finds out there if you take the trouble to look
for them.....
I love digging around at my local 'tip shop' for old computers and books....
<> CCS, compupro, altos, Vector and a few others had S100 boxen that were
<> equal or better (compupro was really good!).
<
<Altos, Allison? All of the ones that I have ever seen were essentially
<single board computers.
Don,
Single board as in s100 or single board as in no bus? The early ones
were SBC s100 though it ws common to put them in a box with more IO,
hard disk or customer unique periperals.
There were several single board systems that were s100 bus, SDS, teltek,
macrotec were a few. Some were complete systems on one card others
required FDC or other IO, most could be extended using hard disk
controllers, more IO or multiple processors.
Allison
At 09:25 PM 5/13/98 -0400, you wrote:
>last Friday May 8th -- coincidentally the 10th anniversary of the
>death of Robert A. Heinlein {who wrote about the most _likeable_
Ummm... hate to be nit-picky, but RAH passed on while I was working with
Aetna, about 5? years ago... I remember; I cried. (Jerry Garcia was when
I was at Longs, the first time around.)
At 09:26 PM 5/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
>The problem with introducing elementary and middle school kids to
>computers so early is that they either a) know more than the lab admin, or
>b) aren't allowed to use them in any constructive way. I'm only in the
>tenth grade, but I've already seen seven new labs installed in area schools.
>The school districts almost ALWAYS spend WAY too much on new computers,
The problem there isn't that computers are a waste of money; it's that the
educators aren't knowledgeable enough to know how to put them to use. It
would be better to buy a few less computers and send the teachers to a
course on how to integrate computers into their curriculum.
My girlfriend does a wonderful job of putting computers to work. So does
the rest of her school. But she has an advantage; not only did she grow
up/lives in SF (where computers are overly prevalent) but she has me for a
boyfriend, one brother is a successful programmer/sysadmin, and the other
one is going to school for the same. She has spread herknowledge/skills to
the rest of the school.
>aren't used until high school, when word processing/database, programming,
A shame and a waste.
>and other such courses are offered. Anything before is mainly a waste of
>money.
Not true. Computers without training (as in ANY industry) are a waste of
time. Computers in the hands of educators who nkow what they're doing is
an incredibly powerful tool.
>What about the 'net? I don't understand why people think that the
>internet is such a great "tool" that will help schools. Just do a search
>for "barbie" on Yahoo. Or, for that matter, try "video" or something
The 'net is a tool for communication, excellent at bringing together people
of disparate backgrounds. Just as we're doing here. I've a friend who's
on his way back from South Africa; when he gets back, he and Rachel are
going to get together to see about getting kids there talking with kids here.
It is also an excellent reference. Sure, putting a single word into
Yahoo's search engine will get you all kinds of (irrelevant) hits, but
something like AltaVista's search syntax is incredible, if you know how to
use it, and it does promote thinking about your problem/goal to come up
with the keywords that will return the most relevant hits.
>In other words, most of the money spent on computer equipment is a waste.
Well, send 'em out here to Garden Village Elementary in Daly City. They'll
put 'em to use.
At 04:22 PM 5/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Anyone heard of such a beast. It's a rather large "laptop" with a
scrunched lcd
>display. Has two half height 5 1/4 floppies. From the keyboard it looks
like a
>pc clone, but it also has a db25 terminal out port on the back.
Yep. Got one. It is a semi-compatible PC, iirc.
<[NS* terminal .vs. video board]
<
<Oh, agreed. The original Horizon configuration was to have a serial
<terminal. I seem to recall a pair of 8251-based serial ports on the
<motherboard, one of which was used for this.
There was exactly that, two serial ports, a hearbeat interrupt and a
parallel port. In the 78-81 time frame, most video cards were 64char
and only some had decenders. Terminals onthe other hand were 80char,
full upper/lowercase and generally required less software than a memory
mapped display.
<a serial port (and a standard MDA card), etc), I wondered if a Horizon co
<be set up with an S100 video card as well. I guess it can.
Most s100 crates could be...even a SOL could ahve more than one!
<YEs, it does look to be a nice machine. One day, when I've got a few
<minuts spare, I'll dig mine out again and look at it more seriously.
After working with the Altairs noisy bus and toggling boot loaders
it was a pleasure to see good signals and boot on reset. The IMSAI
was a better machine than altair but when I moved up I really didn't want
a front pannel and I needed more serial IO, the NS* box, CPU and the MDS I
had in the altair solved most of my problems.
CCS, compupro, altos, Vector and a few others had S100 boxen that were
equal or better (compupro was really good!).
Allison
<email: desieh(a)southcom.com.au
< desieh(a)bigfoot.com
< museum_curator(a)hotmail.com
<Apple Lisa Web Page:
<http://www.southcom.com.au/~desieh/index.htm
<
<I have own a NorthStar Horizon very nice little computer abit heavy, mine
<in the wooden box and has a pair of 5 1/4" floppy drives in the front an
<yes it runs off an terminal.....
Of course it does, mine has for 20 years!
<mine even has full docs and the origianl receipt of purchates from aroun
<1976.....
Try '78 or very late 77 as the MDS floppy predated the horizon.
<many of the cards inside it arom from an Altair if my memory is correct..
<A VDM -1? i think thats whats its called...anyway in the manual for this
<video card it has the source code for the programmng code for a Altair an
<IMSAl mechines....
Yes, still have my VDM-1 (from 1976) and the docs for it. Originally used
in my altair.
Brief history: I started with S100 in 1975 with the order of my altair
(box, 4k, acr and PIO) assembled it in early january 1975. Here in the US
the article was December 1974, I ordered as soon as I recieved the
magazine (Popular electronics), so it has a low serial number. Over time
It was extended with more ran and a VDM-1. Within a few months the NS*
MDS floppy was offered and I bought the kit, still have that too. The
Altair with it's noisy bus was not reliable and I was tiring of it's poor
power supply (despite mods), poor cooling and flimsy box. When NS
introduced the Horizon I ordered the s100 box kit (back then metal top was
optional!) and the CPU to get a z80 and transfered my ram, MDS floppy,
VDM-1, ACR, PIO to the NS* horizon case in early 1978. Less than a year
later I would add a Heath H19, Anadex dp800 printer and more ram.
Now twenty years later I still have the Horizon and the H19 in use nearly
daily with a softsector floppy and a teltek HDC. The MDS floppy, DP800
and VDM-1 are used with another system less freqently (installed in a
Netronics explorer 8085). I might add the three SA400s still work just
fine. Most of the altair stuff is stored, front pannel is good for debug
but otherwise too unreliable. I built the NS* Horizon as it was the first
system I'd seen in late '77 that looked like 24x7x365 was possible. Over
the years it would be altered, restored to original and hit by lightening
twice...and it's still ticking.
<only around 30,000 of these fine mechines where ever built so i would sa
<that they are very rare these days....
They are common enough in the USA being made in California.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Saturday, 16 May 1998 11:08
Subject: Re: Another EBay absurdity
>> >> IBM PC model 5150: $100 Please. Hundreds of thousands made.
Free.
>> Laugh it into the ground... Free is the only price. And if that's not
good
>> enough, I recently picked up a Compaq 386/20 with multisync VGA monitor
for
>> free...Too bad I can't get the &^$&$(@$%#& 3.5" floppy to work.
>
>Maybe that's why the 5150 is more desirable :-). After all, you can
>always fix those given the techref - no custom chips, full schematics,
>etc. No problem...
>
>> Now to add something new to the list... What are the best/worst for RFI?
>
>Well, my old Tandy model 1 radiates a bit.
>
>I would think some of the old DEC backplanes with no metal screening at
>all (like the RK11-C and DX11, and even machines in the BA11-F, like the
>PDP11/45) would not be trivial to get through EMC tests. I've never had
>problems running any of my machines with normal broadcast radio/TV in
>adjacent rooms, so it's not a big problem in that sense, but it may be a
>pain for amateur/SWL work.
>
>Worst problem I know is that the harmonics of both the TV line scan and
>the VGA line scan are close enough to our standard time service (Rugby
>MSF on 60kHz) to totally swamp the RF stage of any such receiver. I
>generally have to put the aerial/RF stage in another room at least.
>
>-tony
>
heh well on a more moden note my IBM monitor is terible for RF floating
around
when the monitor kicks in it makes all lights and other computers in the
room flicker....
oh yeah it dosent like to be in the room with any other computers ether or
thie IBM monitor
will start to play up as well.......
Oh well......I suppose IBM dosent like to other too many of these mechines
around......
The only problem I have with my rather conventional equipment in terms
of RFI is when my monitor changes modes, and I am using an AM
receiver right next to it. The sound flickers a bit. I would think
that the home computers and games systems like C64, PCjr, etc.
couldn't put out too much RFI, since they used TVs for monitors...
>
>Maybe that's why the 5150 is more desirable :-). After all, you can
>always fix those given the techref - no custom chips, full schematics,
>etc. No problem...
>
>> Now to add something new to the list... What are the best/worst for
RFI?
>
>Well, my old Tandy model 1 radiates a bit.
>
>I would think some of the old DEC backplanes with no metal screening at
>all (like the RK11-C and DX11, and even machines in the BA11-F, like
the
>PDP11/45) would not be trivial to get through EMC tests. I've never had
>problems running any of my machines with normal broadcast radio/TV in
>adjacent rooms, so it's not a big problem in that sense, but it may be
a
>pain for amateur/SWL work.
>
>Worst problem I know is that the harmonics of both the TV line scan and
>the VGA line scan are close enough to our standard time service (Rugby
>MSF on 60kHz) to totally swamp the RF stage of any such receiver. I
>generally have to put the aerial/RF stage in another room at least.
>
>-tony
>
>
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