17 Apr
2005
17 Apr
'05
5:46 a.m.
It did seem to be mostly PC stuff and rackmount
servers, neither of which interest me particularly. I
was there from about 11.00am onwards. However there
were some other bits and pieces buried in amongst the
new stuff.
Was it me or was there a really *bad* smell in the air
? Anyway in spite of the smell I came away with quite
a bit of gear. I have questions on these items which I
will post separately.
DEC Professional 350 ? no monitor or keyboard. When I
inspected the unit at home I noticed the screws from
the PSU cover are missing so I hope that doesn?t mean
someone has been interfering with it. The unit is
otherwise complete and appears to contain an RD51
drive (10MB) and the monochrome graphics option. I
haven't tried powering it up yet - the missing screws
on the PSU cover bother me enough that I want to poke
around at it first before applying power.
HP-9134A 5MB disc unit. These things are ancient. I
have been looking for something like this to replace
my HP7908 which is still languishing in the corner
with power supply problems.
Charles River Data Systems Universe/68 computer,
badged as a Datapoint system. This is about the size
of a MicroPDP-11/73 (perhaps a little fatter). In
addition to the CRDS Universe subrack, the chassis
houses a lot of terminal I/O ports and an 8? floppy
drive on the front. There?s a SASI interface connector
on the back for mass storage.
Zia Tech ZT 488 GPIB Analyzer. I have had a CS/80 disc
emulator project for Linux on my to-do list for some
time. Perhaps this will get me moving on it.
A couple of ?? tapes for my 9-track drive. Always
useful.
Books ? a couple of National databooks from the mid
70?s; a 1970 System/360 JCL book; a book about
repairing music synthesizers and a Springer-Verlag
publication ?Computer Architecture?, 1975.
I passed on two Televideo 925 keyboards. I also
passed on what appeared to be an IC test system. It
had dozens of test cards corresponding to DTL/TTL
devices of yesteryear, and a test slot where you'd
presumably drop in the test chip. Looked like fine but
was rather large. I forget who the manufacturer was.
Regards,
Dave
--- chris <cb at mythtech.net> wrote:
I went to the Trenton Computer Fest today. I
didn't
get over to the MARCH
table, sorry. I did see John Allain however, but
down the end of a row,
and by the time I got down there to say hi, I lost
track of him.
Back to the point. I picked up a pair of NeXT slabs
for $2 each. I think
even Sellam would agree that is a good price ;-)
One is a Turbo the other is a Color. No idea yet was
is in them other
than visually, there is a floppy drive and a hard
drive. I've never
played with a NeXT, and at that price, I wasn't
going to ask many
questions.
The Turbo has a DA-15 connector that looks like a
Mac RGB connector. Is
it compatible with Mac monitors? The Color has a
connector that I don't
know what it is called, but looks like a Sun monitor
connector. Is it
compatible with those monitors? I'm crossing my
fingers for a yes on both
counts since I have both available to me already.
And to verify, the keyboard/mouse uses ADB correct?
These slabs were just
the computer, nothing else. (although I did find a
guy that had a NeXT
mouse, but he was holding it to sell with his MacTV
and wouldn't part
with it. I considered getting the MacTV, but since I
got one from John a
while back, I decided against spending the $50 since
it didn't have any
docs, software, cables, keyboard, remote, or the
correct mouse).
The only other thing I picked up that might be of
interest to this group
is some kind of video conferencing terminal. I don't
know anything about
it at all yet, I wasn't actually interested in it,
but the guy said if I
took it away right then, I could have it for free,
so I took it simply
because it looked cool.
Over all, I was a little disappointed this year in
the items available.
It is only the 2nd time I've gone, the first was two
years ago, and I
remembered there being far more vendors with a
better selection. This
year was a bunch of so-so priced used PCs, TONS of
old laptops, and some
over priced used Macs. I was surprised I couldn't
find a decent deal on a
rack mount PC server, or much in the way of RJ-45
patch panels (I needed
two 72 port ones, I was able to find two 48 port
ones at an ok price, and
that was about it). Its possible that some of the
vendors just weren't
there yet or fully unpacked, I was there from about
10 am to 12:30. I
also didn't go indoors anywhere, so I may have
missed a bunch of other
dealers (I had limited time today as I had to be
back home by 2, and it
takes about 1.5 hours on the drive).
Anyone else get anything of interest? Oh, and Hi
John, since I didn't get
to say it to you today. :-)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
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