17 Jun
1998
17 Jun
'98
6:43 a.m.
On Mon, 15 Jun 1998, William Donzelli wrote:
Been to Rochester often. My company was once a division of Bausch & Lomb
(an instrument division). I had to run up there often for meetings and
support of some equipment the Test Equipment Engineering dept. built for
our facility. B&L is where my DG Nova 1200 originally came from. They sent
it down as part of a hand-me-down piece of homemade printed circuit board
test equipment which never worked well. I rescued the 1200, paper tape
reader and associated test electronics rack from a pile of junk in an old
warehouse of ours before it hit the dumpster back in '81 or '82. Still run
up there three times a year at minimum for AWA board meetings and our AWA
National Conference every September.
"Sure ", you say, "just rent a
truck or something to go fetch that S/370
system!" Well, I likely would if it was within say, 100-200 miles or so and
virtually free for the taking. But all joking aside, that doesn't happen
(besides, if W. Donzelli even sniffs a nearby-to-me
370's availability he'd probably be there in ten minutes or less <grin> )
Yes.
I would indeed travel quite some distance to pick up a S/370. I have
driven 1800 mile roundtrips (that's 900 each way) over a weekend to pick
up some non-computer goodies. In fact my first roadtrip, about four years
ago, involved me driving from Chicago to Rochester, NY (kind of your neck
of the woods) to pick up a 650 pound radio transmitter, all done in two
days. So, my point (other than to boast!) is that even if
something seems too
out of the way to get (especially the big stuff), some nuts on this list
would probably go to pick it up.
OK, how about a test...
Say a real goodie shows up, like a perfect DEC Straight-8 or an unbuilt
Altair kit. Assume the price is good, like $250 for either. Assume that
you have the time and a working car, plus a loved one that will not scream
too much. Assume that the current owner can not ship the thing. How many
miles would you go?
Yeow! You know how to really hold my feet to the fire regarding this
hypothetical test William!
Yes, I would go possibly 300-400 miles (a day's drive) to fetch either of
those and the wife would possibly help too (Beverly appreciates my
collection of antique radios and would recognize the significance of either
of these hypothetical items after she learned what they are (or were) to
computing. Gotta keep costs down as we have a big mortgage and other
associated remodeling expenses for now.
Notice I said "hypothetical"! Fat chance in Hades for me (or many of us)
to luck onto one of those as you describe. Besides, I'd get trampled to
death by some of you other folks while on my way to pick them up because of
some unknown telepathic message entering your minds from parts unknown
because you had put up your internal, subconscious radar in dire search of
them and suddenly got a 'hit' ;)
Tho, if I found a free source of either a good disk/tape drive for my HP
250, all technical CE documents for the 250 and its components, VSE OS
manuals for my IBM 9370 (or even VM and AIX distribution tapes and
books!!!), Heath H11 OS distribution s/w with all documents or a Motorola
MVME167 VMEbus system running OS-9 version 2.4 or 3.x and all docs and the
owner(s) could not ship anything and it would soon be trashed then I would
certainly have little choice. These are on my hot-hot list (hint-hint :-) )
Then I would for sure hit the road -maybe with not so much of Beverly's
encouragement as we have a five-year-old son, but I'd sure give it a whack
for the 300-400 miles!
--Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY USA
Member of Antique Wireless Association
URL: http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/