10 Sep
2000
10 Sep
'00
3:29 p.m.
Bruce,
Well you did a lot better than I did. I went to the Melbourne hamfest
Saturday and it was a bust. There were lots of buyers there including
Steve Robertson but few sellers. Even the sellers that were there had poor
offerings. Almost no test equipment and NO classic computers or HP stuff.
Steve and I passed up piles of old Commodore and Atari computers, a 128K
Mac, a Zenith 161 portable and a Zenith Mini-sport with a 2" floppy drive.
This was a BIG disappointment since Melbourne is usually one of the best
hamfest in the state. It looks like most people are selling their good
stuff on the net
now.
Steve and I did get one decent find. I bought volumes I and II and the
workbook for Heathkit's Advanced MicroProcessor course for $.50 each. Later
Steve found and bought another volume II and the workbook. These are the
manuals that are used with the ET-100 trainer. The ET-100 is a Zenith Z-100
with an attached breadboard. I also bought a miniture version of the E6-B
mechanical flight computer. (Is that on-topic for this list?) While in
Melbourne, Steve and I stopped at a scrap place and bought a number of
Weller soldering stations and I bought a Cromemco terminal. FWIW I went to
the same place Friday and bought two large sections of space schuttle
flooring. The folks there thought they were some kind of strange heatsinks!
Joe
At 09:58 AM 9/10/00 -0700, Bruce Lane wrote:
This year's Radio Club of Tacoma (WA) swap was
both a miracle and a
disappointment. It's rare that the two go together, I know, but it did in
fact happen that way this year. I claim "appropriate posting" to the list
for this because what I brought back is over ten years old, and can most
definitely be used to troubleshoot computer systems.
The miracle: Every so often, someone will show up with one or more pieces
of hardware or test gear that are incredibly useful, are either working
(but may be out of cal) or have only minor problems, are priced to move
rather than at "E-pay average," and where the seller has little knowledge
of just what it is they're moving.
Such was the case yesterday morning, and the fact that I had gotten seller
space this year, and was as a result able to walk around the place before
they let the general public in, is the key reason I think I scored the
following for all of $250.
<big snip>