12 Sep
2011
12 Sep
'11
8:46 a.m.
--- On Fri, 9/9/11, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Hang on though... IIRC this machine there are
external
connectors
(keyboard, printer, probably RS232) on thr CPU board. If
you take the top
cover off the machine, you can't see the backs of these
conenctors, which
should imply there's something hidden under the main
chassis.
Yes but I wasn't that smart back then. Only slightly smarter now, which isn't
saying much.
Incidentally, some later Olivetti machines had a more
traditional passive
backplane design with the CPU/memory on an ISA card.
Well when I run into those, they're getting the once over no matter what! You
betcha!
I thought we tended to like the unorthodox stuff here
:-)
True, but I find some stuff to be beautiful (alluring?) because it's so plain, hum
drum. Hard to understand maybe. But take for instance the Atari PC? I saw on ebay.canada
years ago. Haven't seen it since. Perhaps it was a mod or a strange one off. It was so
freaking a plain beige box it was tantalizing. Don't know why. I'm strange I
guess.
This can be another result of board-swapping :-(. The
previous owner
finds a board has failed (ither from the diagnostics, or by
swapping it
with one in a similar machine) and then throws out the
defective board
becuase it's (incorrectly) believed it can't be
repaired.? Oh well...
Actually it's probably none of that. I have obtained cpu boards from this same guy.
He likes to tear out the guts oftentimes, scrounge the uP in particular. I wouldn't be
surprised if he pulled everything out of the thing, and left the case on the stoop (porch)
for dead, where I scrounged it. Anything is possible. I might need to go through his piles
of stuff one day soon to see if I can salvage this box. Because I love it. Did get a
couple of very rare monitors off this guy, for free, so I guess I can't complain w/any
legitimacy.