defining 'vintage'

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave" <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 3:10 AM Subject: RE: defining 'vintage' The problem you tend to have is the people who are ditching these old machines are not the original owners (grandpa died and we are cleaning out the attic type of thing) or just some reseller who got some old crap dumped on him he wants gone with no fuss. So people have no clue how to turn the machine on or what OS if any is loaded into it. Asking them to see if it works means you have the possibility of people plugging in CGA monitors in the the wrong ports and blowing things up. Non hobbyists also have no clue how old a computer is (anything not in a black case is vintage to them). You can probably start by mentioning does it have a 5.25" floppy drive which means it is early 90's or older. Is that floppy drive in a separate enclosure (that gets you into 8 bit computer territory like C64/Atari 800 etc)? People also tend to think of anything that doesn't look normal as maybe a server (could also be because it is made of solid metal and not flimsy aluminum), who knows what will turn up.Anybody who kept a 20+ year old machine (remember that's a 486 era and older) might have kept the software as well, asking about a few titles will give you a clue of what the machine is or hell just grab the software!