Minimum hardware requirements (Was: Old, but not "Classic"

-----Original Message----- From: John Ruschmeyer <jruschme(a)exit109.com> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Saturday, 14 November 1998 11:57 Subject: Re: Minimum hardware requirements (Was: Old, but not "Classic" I saw a strange machine here a couple weeks ago. It was called an Altos 486, and a guy brought it into the shop because it had a password and he couldn't get past it. He thought it was a 486 PC obviously, but when he brought it in, he brought a serial terminal in with it! When we eventually fired it up, it turned out to be running SCO Unix (somewhat trimmed!) on an 8086, with (I think) 512k of RAM. It also had z80's on there, port controllers I think. Evidently it multitasked pretty well, it had 4 terminal ports and was bundled with a business package, that did debtors & creditors, stock control and word processing etc. I'm trying to get him to part with it. The guy is about smart enough to turn on a light switch without written instructions, but I tried teaching him enough about it to make it useable for his (very) simple purposes (just some record keeping) but it was a hopeless cause. I'm going to do up an old 386 with a VGA monitor and see if he'll swap it for the Altos. Seems he bought it at auction (thought it was a pc because it said 486) for A$40. Anybody here got any more info on it? Couldn't find a date on the machine itself, but the chips seem to be circa 1979. The terminal was also an Altos and was ansi/vt100 based. It also had a Wyse 50 term with it. Cheers Geoff Computer Room Internet Cafe Port Pirie South Australia. netcafe(a)pirie.mtx.net.au