I got back from the Portland sale, pretty cool. Seems like most of the
people there were Hams, with some possible camara buffs. Most people
looking at the computers were interested in stuff for modern systems.
There were at least four other people there into the classics though.
I went a bit crazy, and ended up with the following:
PDP-11/44:
Rack 1: 2 RL02's and what appears to be the connections for terminals
Rack 2: CPU, dual floppies (8" I think), those funny little tape
drives
I've heard mentioned, and a Battery Backup
I'm questioning the identity of these two, it's how they were labled, but
they don't have a DEC nameplate.
PDP-11/23: 8" disk and 20Mb HD
PDP-11/23: 5.25" disk and 20Mb HD
Kaypro II: I'm hoping the floppies are in good shape, I've really been
wanting to get one of these.
VAXstation 2000
S-100 bus cards: ~6 floppy controllers, ~1 I/O controller, a lot of RAM cards
Q-Bus cards: ESDI floppy controller (YES!!!), 2 8Mb RAM cards, a whole pile
that looked interesting and I honestly don't have any idea what they are.
I think at least a couple are for a MircoPDP-11, and I'm wondering if one
isn't a CPU for the MicroPDP-11. I'll probably have questions on what some
of these are later, thankfully a couple days ago I found a pretty good
Excel Spreadsheet on the net that will hopefully help me to identify them!
A shrinkwraped copy of CP/M for the Rainbow 100, one of the manuals and
another expansion unit for the Tek workstation I picked up a couple days
ago, and maybe one or two other minor items I can't think of now.
What can I say I'm pooped, I got my Dad to go, so I could use his Suburban,
but I didn't think about how little he can lift nowdays. If it wasn't for
Jim Willing, and the guy selling the stuff helping I don't think I'd have
gotten the Rack with the 11/40 CPU in the truck. Unfortunately we couldn't
figure out how to get the CPU out of the rack :^(
I've gotten everything except the 11/40 out of his truck, that's going to
have to wait. Unfortuntaly it's starting to snow, so it's probably going
to wait until next weekend.
No idea if anything works, I'm going to start playing tonite after I get
done taking a break.
As for the place having the sale, it was incredible, piles of old
computers, tons of S-100 bus cards and computers. O-Scopes, ham junk, old
camera equipment, etc., etc., etc. Of course to my thinking the prime
stuff was was the PDP-11/44 and the VAX 11/730, with those around it was
hard to see anything else. I'd have liked to get the VAX, but in all
honesty now that I've got the /44 I think I'll stick to MicroVaxes, they're
easier to move.
I passed up a couple of Bell & Howell Apples (the black ones), they were
trashed and didn't have the floppies, I'd have loved them for my Apple
collection, but they were to far gone. I really should have picked up a
VT220 or one of the other terminals that they had. They had a lot of
Televideo stuff, but I didn't recognize what it was.
BTW, what is a DEC Professional 350? I passed on both that and a Rainbow
or two (they had a huge stack of Rainbows, but no monitors or keyboards in
sight). I really want to go back, and would tomorrow I think, but the
weather is turning bad, and I'm supposed to be elsewhere :^(
Well, that's it for now, I want to start checking stuff out!
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
| For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |
I was wondering if anyone knew how to install a Hayes 9600 modem into
an XT (Ogivar Tech.). There are a MASSIVE 21 megs in the hard drive,
and a 5.25 " drive. This is just a learning computer for a friend
who will buy up if this one can work. I'm on a non-graphical internet
account and the XT has a program already loaded on it to dial out,
but the modem isn't being recognized. All I've done is physically put
it into the slot ( it fits perfectly inside) and I haven't touched any
switches or the autoexec.bat at all. I have no idea it those things
are what I'd need to do anyway. Could someone help me out? Keep the
information in English, not tech-ese, I'm still learning too!
Thank you!
I picked up an Amigo computer today from a thrift store. Now, this is
something cool as I have never seen one before and it is an interesting
design for its time.
The CPU and CRT are in one unit. In fact, at first I thought this was
simply a dumb terminal because normally when you had a computer with
integrated CPU/CRT it was a lot bulkier than this one is. The motherboard
on this is tucked right under the tube. It has a Z-80 CPU and a 6502 (I'm
assuming the 6502 is for the video display). The keyboard is an IBM XT
keyboard (same key layout) but it has a 1/4" phono plug that connects to
the front of the CRT/CPU (just like the Apple Lisa keyboard). I also got
a dual half-height disk drive unit for it and two boxes of 5.25" floppies
with programs such as WordStar, Supercalc, etc. I got a couple CP/M
master disks with it as well.
It powers up and on the screen it says:
V.10 BOOT Insert system diskette in lower drive.
I can hear the drive spinning as if its trying to boot from the disk but
none of the system disks I have seem to work. Perhaps they are bad, or
the drive heads need cleaning.
What I really want to know is if anyone has ever seen or worked with one
of these, and if you've got any information on it.
Thanks!
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
I went to a hamfest today and picked up two systems that "AREN'T GOING BACK
HOME". One is a Rubicon II and the other is a Tandy 6000 HD. The Rubicon
uses 2 floppy drives and I think runs CPM. The Tandy is running Xenix (sp?)
and has a 8 inch floppy drive and 15Mb hard drive. Can anyone tell me
anything about these? How rare? When they were made? If they have any
value? etc.
Joe
> a PC type can't consider until he's bloated his system to at least
> 640K (or lately, 32Mb).
96MB is what I just put into mine. Corel 7 _flies_!
...but, it's hard to unlearn habits. I still find myself deleting <1K text
files to "save space". I don't program much anymore, but if I did, I
suspect I'd still be trying to squeeze a few bytes out here and there.
With memory and HDD's so cheap, tho', and the intense pressure in the
software market, it's simply not economically feasible to shave bytes.
Also, a lot of the bloat is not only in features ("PIM outputs next year's
schedule in HTML for easy posting to the web -- now with finite element
analysis of paperclips!"), but things such as clipart, which gets stuck on
the hard drive, for convenience...even MSWorks comes with clipart, for
Pete's sake. Everything comes with 20 fonts (reminds me of an English
restaurant: everything with chips) and a tutorial.
Pete,
Have to send this on list as your address bounces.
<Have you installed the "N" diskset - networking tools? If so then it
<should be in /usr/sbin.
I'd selected it for install but for some reson setup didn't install all
the files I'd selected. I ran pkgtool and put everthing from the "n"
diskset in and it's there now.
<With regard to the packet driver for your DE-100 card it may be worth
<visiting D-Link's web site.
The PDI8023 would be better if I could use it in the dos/win3.1 box. I'll
check the web site.
Allison
OK, the question of the moment is how do I connect a console to a
VAXstation 2000? Is it the plug with arrows pointing in opposite
directions or do I need a special cable?
I'm assuming for a terminal I can just use a laptop running a comm package
that does VT100 emulation.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |
| For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. |
| see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |
At 13:29 09/01/98 -0800, Kip Crosby wrote:
>Between Christmas and New Year's I was cleaning out my mother's house and
>found a Texas Instruments TI-71, complete with its docs and warranty card.
>This is a small, line-powered digital clock. Still works fine.
>
>What interests me here is that I recall hearing an unsupported contention,
>years ago, that this was the _first_ commodity digital clock that used
>seven-segment displays instead of flippers. Can anyone confirm or deny?
Yes, more or less the "nostalgic taste" is more or less the same with all
the '70 's innovations.
I recall my first electronic watch: it was one of those black TI with red
plastic display.
Because of it's strong energy consumption, I had to replace the cells every
year.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? Riccardo Romagnoli,collector of:CLASSIC COMPUTERS,TELETYPE UNITS,PHONE ?
? AND PHONECARDS I-47100 Forli'/Emilia-Romagna/Food Valley/ITALY ?
? Pager:DTMF PHONES=+39/16888(hear msg.and BEEP then 5130274*YOUR TEL.No.* ?
? where*=asterisk key | help visit http://www.tim.it/tldrin_eg/tlde03.html ?
? e-mail=chemif(a)mbox.queen.it ?
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I saw a Boox by Tom somebody (sorry, forgot last name) on
Vax-11 programming and assembly language at Barnes&Noble for $6.
Its a big hard cover book.
It was in the discount stack, if anyone is interested I'd get it
and ship it at cost. You might want to check your local B&N and
see if they can order it at that cost too.
Michael Fulbright
msf(a)redhat.com
Peter the folloing messages may be of interest to you.
< ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<<pjoules(a)lyndale-486.->
<
< ----- Transcript of session follows -----
<553 lyndale-486.-. config error: mail loops back to me (MX problem?)
<554 <pjoules(a)lyndale-486.->... Local configuration error
The rest of the crowd may be interested in this.
<Is your DOS box pure DOS or do you use Windows?
<Do you use any networking software with DOS?
Currently no networking with windows and it's windows 3.1. I call it dos
box as unlike Win95 win3.x is layered on dos.
I do however run trumpet(winsock), FreeAgent, winftp and Netscape3+ via
modem to the ISP.
<If you use windows 3.x then you will need to have a packet driver
<installed via autoexec.bat for your network card and then just install
<Trumpet Winsock and configure that.
Then I need a packet driver for either purdata PDI8023plus-16 or DECPCA
(DE100) card as that what I have.
However if I do that how do I run trumpet for the modem and the NI?
Allison
