Age

On Thu, 2005-03-17 at 16:55 -0500, David Woyciesjes wrote: Oh yeah, ditto - 30 here too, and I never got around to it either :-) Started out on a 48K Spectrum, which got me into programming. Went to a speccy +2 from there, then an Amiga. Gained an original IBM PC and an XT around 1990. After that I was on to Sun stuff (Sparc 1, 2 and 5) and the big Meiko computing surface I had access to at uni. Bought my first proper PC then too in order to hook up to the 'net and mess around with Linux (I just realised that its floppy drive still survives in my current desktop PC). I got into collecting Acorn stuff around that time, mainly because I was in the right place at the right time to get hold of things like my ARM evaluation kit and Cambridge Workstation, and it sparked my interest. Other interesting beasties followed on - DEC Rainbow, Commodore +4, lots more Acorn stuff (some pretty rare), RML 480Z fileserver, Tek XD88, NCR Tower 32. Diamond D5 wordprocessor, Philips P3800 mini. Gained a few more RML 480Z machines (seven) and a 380Z. Various Spectrums, VIC 20, another CBM +4. More Acorns. Memotech MTX500. Joined this list in 1998 :-) Got to play around with a whole host of SGI stuff around that time too - Indys, O200 and O2000 machines. Hit the motherlode of Torch stuff in umm 2002 I think; lots of machines and workshop spares / docs. Gained a Sun Ultra 1 last year, plus Nascom 2. Got rid of some stuff, but still have most of what I've collected over the years (probably about 50 machines or so) Been at Bletchley museum since late 2003, so since then I've pretty much had the pick of whatever hardware I want to mess around with. On the one hand it's great having about a thousand machines on tap, on the other there just aren't enough hours in the day and there's too much work to be done :-/ cheers Jules