8 Jun
1997
8 Jun
'97
3:13 p.m.
> Ok, you have just put us all to eternal shame. Do you have a list of all
> you've got? cuz I'm entirely interested to know. Or perhaps just an
> excerpt of your more rare systems. Where the hell do you store it all?
Wow.... This lot totally dwarfs my little collection (I think I have about
150 machines, including calculators, but excluding interesting
peripherals), and I thought I was doing pretty well!
As to where I store it ... all over! I tend to forget what I have but I
Ditto. Storage is a _BIG_ problem, and one which I guess all people on
this list have to deal with. A mad friend of mine is a calculator
collector, and he's fond of pointing out in his lectures that his
collection will fit under his bed, while mine (pointing to ard on the
front row :-)) will barely fit in the house
the earliest is probably the PDP 8i, and PDP 11/05.
Of course the Mits
Do you have any other minis? I find them a lot more interesting than
micros, as I think I've mentioned before, since you can actually
understand how the CPU works at gate level.
Altair and Imsai. As to being rare, I don't have
a good handle on that
part. The collection includes the early Pets with the Chicklet keyboard,
Atari, Heath Data Systems, Northstar, Altos, CompuPro, Wang, DEC, Timex,
Commodore, Lobo, Polymorphic, Vector Graphic, Intel, Corona and Cordata
(the company that took over Corona,) Morrow, Ohio Scientific, some Apple
stuff, Tandy and Radio Shack, Sol, Cromemco, Xerox, NCC, Televideo, NCR,
Kaypro, Osbourne, IBM, Sanyo, Compaq, Jonos, Eagle, and probably a bunch
more I can't recall off hand.
A partial list of manufacturers in my collection :
Acorn, Apple, Commodore, Atari, Tandy, IBM, DEC, 3RCC/PERQ systems, ICL,
HH, Panasonic, Research Machines, Oric, HP, Northstar, I2S, Intel, FTS,
Exidy, Xerox/Diablo, Tektronix, Olivetti, CCS, Sharp, Torch, Philips,
Epson, Ramtek, Grinnell, Sun, Apollo, WCW(no complete machines - yet!),
AES, Zilog, Sage, Sinclair, Sanyo, Tatung, SGS, CASU, Jupiter Cantab,
Grundy, Genrad/Futuredata, NEC, PPL, Evans and Sutherland, Sanders, Facit,
Cipher, Teletype, Novus, Casio, etc.
When I first started collecting, the idea was to save these things from
the dumpster. As time went on, a lot of people kept their eyes open
I think most people start like that. You suddenly realise that a lot of
computer history is going to be lost for ever unless somebody does
something about it - and you're that somebody.
for me and were willing to give me the stuff rather
than have to junk it.
A tip : Get known where you work (and at church, clubs, etc) as somebody
who wants old computer and electronic 'junk'. It's amazing what you get
given - several times people have said 'Oh, we're about to throw this out,
do you want it' where 'this' is a complete computer system with all
manuals.
Another thing I am looking for are the docs and
schematics for the Zenith
H-67 Hard Disk sub-system used with the H-89. The H-67 has a bad power
supply board, and without the schematics, it is a bit hard to
troubleshoot.
Power supplies are either linear or switchers. Linears are next-to-trivial
to sort out (at least if they use any of the standard regulator IC's), and
switching units can be repaired. There are a number of standard IC's, and
if any of those are used, you can generally guess the configuration in
about 5 minutes with a bit of practice.
SMPS's that either use standard linear IC's (723's, 555's, etc) or which
are entirely discrete transistors are more of a pain, but again, there are
circuits that turn up again and again. I've found that reading a handful
of service manuals (especially TV or monitor manuals) will often turn up a
circuit that's similar to yours.
If there are any IC's in the PSU, post the numbers, and I'll see if I can
guess what's going on.
--
-tony
ard12(a)eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill