Thrift Store Finds (was: Re: Latest thrift store find - Ruby iMac (400MHz G3))

I love thrift stores :). Not _exactly_ vintage (but contains vintage tech) -- recently picked up two TI-83+ calculators for a grand total of $2 from the Salvation Army. Considering that TI _still sells_ this model for about $80 (TI's profit margins on these must be HUGE), not a bad haul. I gave them to my dad who teaches math at a community college -- he has lots of students who will be able to make use of them. (And for those who don't know, these contain a Z80 CPU.) For those of you in the Seattle area, RE-PC (in both Seattle and Tukwila) are fun to browse from time to time, and they generally hold onto "vintage" computer stuff rather than just scrapping it. Since I started browsing their stores about two years ago, I've picked up a number of cool old machines (nothing too rare, but a lot of good 8-bit stuff, old dumb terminals, and a few things useful on my larger machines like 9-track drives.) If you're in the area, drop by and you might find something... My favorite find, though, was at Boeing surplus just before they shut down -- found a working HP-67 calculator w/AC adapter for $5. I don't usually get that lucky :). The card reader even works after all these years... - Josh Dave McGuire wrote: I found an interesting book at RE-PC -- it's a copy of Microsoft Press's first book, which was almost immediately recalled. It's the "MS-DOS Encyclopedia," which was a compendium of history (up to DOS 3.2!) and MS-DOS documentation. Unfortunately, the book wasn't properly reviewed before release and as a result actually contained information that wasn't meant to be made public. So it was pulled from the shelves. A good writeup is here: http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/06/14/155341.aspx. An interesting find for a buck :). And as far as computer-related books go, if you're in Portland, OR and have a few bucks to spend, Powell's Technical Bookstore is wonderful, if a bit pricey for some of their stuff... they have an interesting selection of books for many engineering professions, and they tend to keep interesting old books in stock as well. Picked up a copy of "IBM 1620 Programming For Science and Mathematics" from 1963 the last time I was there... - Josh