As I wrote before, there aren't so many, but I make a distinction between those likely to repair them and those likely to let them sit an rust while they fantasize about what it might have been like to have one back when they were relevant. Repair is the proces, among other things, of turning total rubbish into something of potential use. There's lots of good that comes from that. Unfortunately, it's often necessary to sacrifice one potentially repairable machine in order to repair another. I have no patience for those who poo-poo that notion. Where do they think those replacement boards, no longer manufactured since sometime a couple of decades back, come from? Whatever repair plans one may have, if one has the intention, or, at least, hope, of restoring a machine to a useable state I think that's fine, but just to have a bunch of big iron sittin on the back lot or in the barn (I once did this, so I have a good idea of how useless it is.) with no idea of how to run it, particularly when power or other resources unlikely to become available, are required, makes no sense to me. Would you, Tony, store an old IBM box that required 440-Volt 3-phase power, and was missing a 48" disk drive without which it had little hope of working, and without any notion of where to get software? Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 12:22 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... other will

I won't say you're alone there, but I've more often than not seen people, particularly people paid to do this sort of thing, isolate faults to the board level by swapping boards, then sending the board off for depot repair. I guess if you don't mind that the machine is down until the board is fixed then it doesn't matter, but if that's the case, the machine isn't that important. Having spares of everything is a strategy for keeping a system running. It may not be the most sophisticated, but it is a strategy that ensures minimal downtime. When I was working in the aerospace industry, it was not unusual for a system to have two spares of everything on site, just to ensure that the system could be kept running as much of the time as possible. In many cases this was very difficult to do, since various system revisions had to match the board spares, and the replacements had to be exact. If you didn't want to wait for replacement parts, though, the only option was to buy them in advance. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 2:38 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... poo-poo and and

While it's probable you're right about your own relationship with your computers, others seem to have different relationships. My own experience suggests that if I replace the serial port board with a fully functional and identical one, the fault in the serial port board can be fixed AFTER the system is running again. Otherwise, I have to fix the board first. If that's the box I use to order the parts needed to fix the serial board, I have a problem that a board swap will fix and no other method will handle as quickly. Now, maybe swapping out the offending component won't fix some systems, but I don't have any of those. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 4:33 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... board guess may

see below, plz. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 12:09 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... Well, it certainly doesn't find the fault in the serial board, but it does find and fix the fault in the computer. Since serial boards cost less than the 10 minutes it takes to swap them, and it costs 100x that much to fix the serial board, at a minimum, it seems to make sense to swap the board. That does fix the computer, doesn't it? That's true if it's a serial board. However, if it's a mono video board, also costing less than a half-hour's time, and replacing it gets the server back into service, while tracking down and replacing the 100-pin fine-pitch pqfp that costs 10x the retail cost of the new video board (don't ask me why, but it does) and that only if you buy 100k of them, it's still cheaper and more sensible to fix the computer by replacing the video board and tossing the old one. Of course, if it's just a memory IC, perhaps that can be fixed later when there's an odd hour to waste. system box that a True, but not if you don't fiddle with the cables. Moreover, even the few minutes needed to desolder the transmitter, and that fails more frequently than the receiver, for some odd reason, in my experience, you've still spent more than the entire replacement card costs. several of my old S-100 boards use the 75154 and other somewhat odd parts. I hand-wired a mezzanine card that plugs into the sockets occupied by two 8-pin transmitter parts and one 75154 and replaces them with a 1488 and a 1489, just because of that. Apparently there were supply problems or cost issues that caused CCS to design with the TI parts. In recent years I've found it MUCH easier to find a replacement serial board for a PC than a replacement 1488/89. The fact they're not so popular as they were back when they weren't on the motherboard makes a difference. They cost typically $1 for two at the local thrift stores. I I'm sure that with all your experience, the replacement of a faulty IC is thoroughly executed and produces a reliable result. For me, though, since the electricity to desolder and resolder a faulty component often costs more than a replacement board, I prefer to swap the board. That doesn't mean I toss it afterwards, since it can normally be fixed, and, eventually, there won't be spares so readily available. BTW, when I worked in aerospace, whole computer systems were considered components in larger systems. I meant board-level components in my remark, not an IC. There was a time when I loved isolating and replacing faulty IC's. Sockets made it easier, by far, and quick enough that it was worth doing. However, those same sockets made the board more costly and less reliable. The sockets some fellows liked best often allowed parts to fall out of them if the local fan was running out a bit and caused vibration. I've seen plenty of them let go of an IC as they were extracted from their backplane. I had a tough time convincing some fellow micro enthusiasts that the common and readily avaiable TI low-profile sockets really needed one to fasten down the IC's with a clip or wire-tie if one wanted them to stay in place. Consequently, I developed a liking for the later generation of gas-tight sockets that didn't let go so easily, and, in fact, would take your fingernail off if you attempted to use it to extract a part.

see below, plz. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 2:54 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... find 10 I've heard of such things, but never seen one myself. fix I'd never spend more than that 10 minutes I mentioned before on a serial port board, because they only cost 50 cents or a dollar at the thrift store. If you have a complicated serial board, i.e. one that doesn't talk the "normal" asynchronous protocol, and that runs at a higher rate, e.g. 4.762 Gbps, and is built using discrete GAs logic it might take a while. I generally don't use stuff like that though, and it's only in cases like that I'd be likely to find it justified. These boards with soldered-on ASICs aren't worth fixing, and the ones with socketed components seldom break. It's only going to break if the part is soldered down. also into Then why do they break? and why don't they socket the transmitters and receivers? than Yes, they're common, and I have about a dozen and a half spares of each. However, buying a handful of spares, i.e. 3 of each, at the local surplus dealer costs more than a half dozen serial boards cost. I think I had to pay $0.65 for the 4-bit transmitters and receivers (MC1488/1489) last time I bought them, and that was some years back. I scrounge MAX 232's either as samples when I feel like it, or off circuit boards where the necessary capacitors also are avaiable, so I don't even have to look in my parts bins. I 8-pin just Yes, they can still be had, but not at what I like to pay. The ones I like the best are the 8-pin 75155, which, BTW, is available at Radio Shack.com, though they're not free either. That's a 1-bit transmitter/receiver pair that requires external supplies. However, for simple setups one can use + and - 5. I like sticking that part and a '2691 in a 32-pin x 0.300" socket. to make a complete serial port, uart, transmitter/receiver, baud rate generator, one bit wide. With a single-chipper, you can leave out the uart and brg, of course. for were The common PC at a thrift shop has had the "interesting" boards removed, along with most of the RAM and drives, and normally has just a PSU, simple video board, keyboard, and monitor. They ask $5-10 for the computer. The monitor is often separately sold for $5-10. They always have the basic stuff in them, though the memory and hard disk often are absent. However, if the fan in the PSU works, it's worth buying the entire box for the fan. In the US, an AT-type replacement PSU fan costs $40. The PSU, fan and all, costs $30, and a case with PSU and fan costs $22. At the thrift store, you get a used fan with the PSU, but it will get you through a few days until you can order and take delivery of a new case. Me too. PC shops only sell what's in fashion this week. I like to shop the web. I'm getting too old to replace those teensy 0.25" pin-pitch so packaged parts, barely the size of a pinhead. When the serial ports on the motherboard die, I disable the ones on the motherboard and plug in one of those old ISA I/O boards. I don't know what I'll do when they no longer have ISA slots ... <sigh> ... the last motherboard I bid on on eBay, just this week, has six PCI slots, but no ISA. We'll see ... the than a last week I got 35 boards for $1.99 at one of the local thrift stores. 3 of them were fully functional 10/100 mbps ethernet boards, capable of either rate, and at full duplex at that. There were three SCSI boards, too. Half a dozen or so were multi I/O boards with serial, parallel, FDC, and IDE. A couple were VLB multi-I/O types with a separate ROM so they can serve as additional IDE ports, not that it will help much, and a couple or three others are VLB video boards. I'll probably scrounge the VRAM from the latter. I haven't even looked at most of them, but the rest are just common multi-I/O boards, some with disk I/O and some without. I also got a bag of shielded external SCSI cables with various combinations of connectors for about $6 for the dozen or so. It's not months, but electricity isn't that cheap here. My soldering iron uses butane, by the way, but still, it's much cheaper to replace the entire board. If I'm bored and want to do some mindless soldering, I'll take and remove all the 1488's and 1489's from a half-dozen I/O boards and replace them with sockets. Then I put the 1488's in a tester and subsequently put the good ones in the sockets. Then I test the 1489's and do likewise. I won't do that, however, until after I've gotten a new glass catcher tube for my solder-sucker/soldering iron, as I dropped and broke the %$#@! thing. I bought that station thinking I'd use it a lot, but I generally use the mechanical one instead. It doesn't take as long since it doesn't have to warm up. made Yes, but they cost like the devil, and the pins on the wire-wrap types are too long to suit me. For soldertails, I like the ones made by Burndy and Augat, among others, that really pinch the pins against the plastic or against the other half of the VERY firm opposing contact. They require you to use a screwdriver to remove the parts, but they don't fall out in transit. The sockets take up considerable space perhaps better used for air flow. That's a reason not to. yes, that's true, though the down-wind part adjacent to a socketed part seems to get less benefit from air movement than it should. The lifetime supply of those folded-metal (the gas-tight variety) that I have is on big memory boards having 288 or 192 memory sockets on each, along with about two dozen sockets for the schottky drivers for the memory addresses and data. These were reputed to be extremely reliable error-correcting memory boards with discrete logic to do the SECDED using parity gates and random logic with the aid of the host bit-slice processor.

Yes, those odd-ball high-cost or many-years-obsolete devices certainly are different from the popcorn $4, new 4 for $1, used serial boards. Of course, a "real" serial board, with, say, a TCM 78808 instead of the garden variety uart on it, well, that's not so easy to fix. I remember the DEC guy telling me that it's cheaper to toss one of their 16-port boards than to have it fixed. I never liked DEC ... Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 12:03 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... serial does port you is few withstand should along PSU, of uses board. too That's

I think I would look at hacking one of those little office size refridgerators.

I recently was given a Western Digital Hard Disk 20AP, obviously intended for use with an Apple computer of some sort. It identifies itself as a Western Digital WD1006-something-or-other but doesn't spin up, and that suggests to me that there might be an interesting bridge controller in this box. Unfortunately, I don't know how to open the box. Does anybody know how that might be done? Does anybody know how to operate this device (low-level details, not Apple-user instructions)? Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 4:33 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... board guess may

Why do you say obviously intended for use with an apple? I don't recall anything by WD that was for an Apple, or even Apple friendly. 20AP sounds more to me like some old parallel interface PC thing.

When my WD20AP unit is attached to an ADAPTEC AHA1542B under DOS and allowed to boot with the drive turned on, it "sees" and reports the presence of a device, WD-1006-something which it later reports it can't spin up. It looks like it belongs to the late Apple-II/early MAC period, being shaped and colored to match. (take the color info with a grain of salt, though, since I'm "chromatically challenged.") It's pretty clearly a SCSI device, else the SCSI controller (AHA1542B) would not be able to communicate with it via the SCSI-1<=>DB25 (Comonly used with Apple SCSI ports) adapter cable. I wouldn't bet on a healthy result attaching the device to anything not SCSI. It's possible that my unit had a dead drive in it, at least if there's a bridge controller, which I'd readily believe, but if there's a bridge, it probably wants to be set up, i.e. told what sort of drive it's got, which has to happen in most cases. Now, a couple of other Apple type external drives with which I've experimented have had customed firmware that prevents the bridge controller the Apple setup routines before doing anything. I'm not at all certain about that. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Chomko" &lt;chomko(a)greenbelt.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 6:01 AM Subject: Re: old external Apple drive Western but one

OK, pretty common item, a zero footprint, ie it sits under a compact mac like the Plus, and inside is a bare SCSI drive and power supply, no bridge thingy, just wires to the SCSI drive from the connectors and ID switch. The failure mode is about 3:1 drive vs power supply, so many are like yours, talks but doesn't spin. If you replace the drive, and the power supply is still good, they are pretty handy to have around in a mac environment, since almost all macs support external SCSI devices you can put one of the early flexible OS releases like 7.5.3 on a small hard drive and then use it to boot test systems etc. With a larger drive it is handy to both boot old systems, and to make quick copies of the internal hard drive before formatting etc.

The ones that had a bridge, were they Apple Harddisk 20's, that plugged into the floppy port? I have one of these for my 4meg Mac Plus that I don't use. Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA Richard Erlacher wrote:

Yes, that's why I'm so curious about how to open the box without breaking something. The 1006V boards I have are ISA boards, one being RLL (with a boot ROM) and the other being an MFM board (no ROM). If there's a SCSI (I know about their SASI bridges) bridge from Western, it's certainly eluded me. The ID switch on the box, BTW, is a 16-position HEX-labelled rotary switch. Viewed via the SCSI adapter in the PC, the drive is dead, but from what I hear, it's quite alive, making normal wake-up and stretch exercise noises as it powers up, and settling within about 10 seconds. however, there's nothing that can be done with it from the PC via the ADAPTEC controller. It's a handy size box, not that I have a shortage of SCSI boxes. I figure that once I've learned what I can from it, I'll give it to a friend who's portable-drive-poor, though I may replace the drive with something more sizeable. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Maslin" &lt;donm(a)cts.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 5:04 PM Subject: Re: old external Apple drive to device, and I'm not Apple SCSI. bridge happen itself, controller see about sounds SCSI, it info?

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote: I have one of about those dimensions that has four identical rubber buttons on both top and bottom. The buttons are perhaps 7/8" diameter and show on the side of the box for about that same dimension. A bit of judicious work with a small screwdriver will jack mine straight up. That done, exposes screws on the bottom side, and unused provisions for same on top. Mine, however, has dual 50-ribbon connectors on it - definitely SCSI and Apple also. - don

Quoting Tony Duell &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt;uk>: A fellow enthusiast that was the source of my first PDP-11 gets the same enjoyment. One time, he had just finished readying a PDP-8 to run and turned it on. Unfortunately, he did not notice the ground wire that was wandering around loosely in the card cage! The PDP lit up like a christmas tree. It took him nearly a year of work to locate and repair all the faults, but he succeeded. He keeps every one of the faulty components in a drawer somewhere as a memorial to his victory. -- Jeffrey S. Sharp jss(a)ou.edu

Quoting Tony Duell &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt;uk>: Right. I would, however, tack on a note saying that it's ok to try and make money off of classic computing items IF that money is used to recover costs incurred in your collecting activities. -- Jeffrey S. Sharp jss(a)ou.edu

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeffrey S. Sharp" &lt;jss(a)ou.edu&gt; to try used I could not disagree more. Whether someone makes a profit off selling a classic computer item, and what he does with the money, is entirely his own business. If it were not for the guys that are making a living by selling classic computers and/or parts on eBay, I would not have much of a collection at all, and most of my PDP-11's would have been scrap metal by now*. I have found eBay to be a great place to find things that otherwise would be inaccessible to me, at very good prices. It's time to let up on eBay and the people that use it. Overall, they're doing a good job. We ought not to be judging and criticizing people that we don't know. Let's talk about computers instead. -- Jonathan Engdahl Rockwell Automation Principal Research Engineer 24800 Tungsten Road Advanced Technology Euclid, OH 44117 USA Euclid Labs http://users.safeaccess.com/engdahl *footnote: if you ask my wife, they became scrap metal anyhow, except it's in the family room.

I've got to chime in here. If you can get some dough for something you might otherwise be inclined to pitch, or at least allow to gather dust in a corner of the basement, it doesn't matter whether you use the proceeds from the sale to buy another dust-collector or to pay the electric bill. After all, the electric bill supports your hobby too. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Engdahl" &lt;engdahl(a)cle.ab.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 3:45 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ...

FINALLY! A voice of reason in this seemingly endless debate. Well said Joe. If you add up the time spend digging stuff out of musty basements and barns, gas and wear & tear on vehicles driving hundreds of miles and time cleaning, testing, etc .... what little return you receive [even at eBay {gasp!} prices] is well deserved. AND ...all this time and effort does get the machine to a person who WILL preserve it. After all, they just spent good money for it. That said, I just "saved" a couple more TI 980B's from the clutches of the recyclers. Had to buy a huge pallet of stuff to get them and compete with several guys solely interested in the metal content. One actually seems to still be working!! Probably to appear on eBay in the near future. Craig [ip500 on eBay and actually proud of it!!] joe wrote:

At 08:55 AM 6/12/01 -0500, John wrote: Exactly! I doubt anyone on this list makes a living by selling on E-bay. I do it to find homes for some of the more interesting stuff that I find but can't keep and to help pay the expenses of looking for the stuff. Even then I doubt that what I make from E-bay justifies the time and effort of listing, packing and shipping the stuff. Joe

On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, joe wrote: Well, except for the fact that it is kind of fun and satisfying. Isn't it, Joe? - don

On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Tony Duell wrote: I'm in for the fun of using old computers... but as some others have said here before. I'm not against the idea of people selling some equipment fund their hobbys. If someone sells some classic Z-80 system to fund their PDP-8 habit, I think that's okay. I don't see it as quite a black and white situation where selling things automatically makes someone an evil opportunist. There's a whole spectrum of grays in there. -brian.

Yeah, that's a tough one ... you part with something you've hoarded for years on the off-chance you'd get around to using it, but, you didn't. Now you've got to decide who gets the stuff ... the guy who'll give you a few pennies on the dollar, or the guy with the checkbook in his hand, but who won't do what you would have done. It's like finding a home for a puppy. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 3:04 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ...

It is, perhaps, an honorable sentiment, what you suggest, Tony, but not practical if you expect your hobby to help support itself. What you mustn't overlook, however, is that removing the parts that might be of interest will, in most cases, not reduce the scrapper's interest in the box, since it's the metal that interests him, and removing the cables, boards, and dissimilar metals reduces his profit, since he's got to pay for the labor. That's a way to get spare parts. There's probably a way to work with rather than against the scrap salvage guy. He doesn't get much for the boards, drives, etc, since there is too much labor in separating the types of metals, the purity of which determines the salvage value, it's easier for him to let you have the boards, cables, drives, etc, so he can sell or scrap the sheet metal. That may not seem very appealing, but it seems a potential compromise. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 12:49 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ...

At 11:23 PM 6/12/01 +0100, Tony wrote: Just as a rule of thumb, the edge connectors USED to be worth about 1 cent per contact however the price of gold has dropped considerably. Makes you sick doesn't it? Joe

People are often screwy when it comes to gold. One scrap place I visit has a guy thats nuts for it, and constantly ruining valuable cards that I take up to the owner show him the damage and tell him the price I would have paid for the card if it wasn't ruined.

You're right of course, about the PCB's that are of interest to you, but what about the ones that aren't? I've often snagged boards, not because I knew and wanted what they do, but because I knew and wanted what the IC's on the board could do and I wanted that in my inventory. I once built up a very-wide-word ALU using parts salvaged from several discrete DSP boards I was able to scrounge anything. I've never seen so many 74S283's in one application since then. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 4:23 PM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... <snip>

If you're suggesting that every board I acquire should be left intact, then you're also saying that I should leave it at the junkyard, since most of them are of no value to me if I don't own the system into which they might fit. I frequently grab boards just because I know I'll eventually need a part "just like that one" and that's why the board ends up in my possession instead of in the shredder. I don't buy stuff unless I see a use for it, and that's why I've left lots of DEC, HP, SUN, and other boards and systems right where I found them. I've also left boards from systems I reecognized, like Apple, and lots of PC/ISA boards. I'd buy an Enigma for a few bucks, because I could get more for it, on eBay, say, than it cost me, or, maybe, because the rotary switches might be of interest at some later date. I don't use simple rotary switches much, though. I've had four of them in my stock for over 25 years and have never once been moved to use them, though I've used encoded thumbwheel switches quite frequently. My outlook is clearly different than Tony's, first of all since I really don't enjoy fixing broken stuff, though I'd rather fix something I need that's broken than buy a new one, so long as it doesn't cost more to fix it than to replace it. The more I have to fiddle with the old stuff to get it to work, the more likely it is that it will be stripped of potentially useable parts and the remainder discarded. I'm really tired of stuff breaking all the time. I still have my very first PC, and it still works perfectly, AFAIK. I would that my more modern computers were so trouble-free. A few days ago I tossed out all the old Pentium motherboards that I had in a corner in the basement. The oldest of them was earlier, PC mothers that I've had. I took half a dozen socketed GAL's off them, desoldered the easily accessible crystals and other potentially reusable components, and chucked 'em in the trash. At least the older boards have sockets and stuff you can reuse. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" &lt;cisin(a)xenosoft.com&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 10:20 AM Subject: Re: Ebay horror ... what and board very-wide-word

Of course, like most of my answers to this list it will likely be corrected later on, here's a quick answer: Keyboard (1 letter press = 1 signal line) goes to... -> Arbitrary plugboard (''fixed'' rotor) -> Rotor: N signal points in, N out in scrambled order, angle dependant -> Rotor, with diff. scrambling AND angle -> Rotor, again -> Light array (1 signal line = 1 Illuminable Letter) The rotor as you may guess increments with each keypress. Later improvements included a fourth rotor and a reflection arrangement which apparently allowed each rotor to pass the signal both to its right AND to its left without ever having crossed wires (neat). It would reach the far wall and then be sent back eventually to the rotor origin. A wire cross anywhere would cause non unique mappings, IE 2 letters out at once, which was designed out. John IIRC.

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On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote: You'd know it as soon as you saw it. If the top was on it, it says "Enigma" in on a little oval shaped label. If the top isn't on it, you'd still spot it for the typewriter like keyboard with a panel above with little letter lamps on it. I'd practically give my left arm for a an Enigma rotor or even a steckerboard(sp). *wistful sigh* Your chances of finding even Enimga parts in a junkyard are about as good as my chances of getting the back half to the F-15C I have. You're pretty safe. *laughs* g. -- http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.

I actually found it by accident at the Olympia Air Museum here in WA. A guy local to me owned it and I got it from him. AFAIK, it's the only F-15C (in any condition) in civilian hands, not owned by the USAF. g. -- http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.

--- Paul Braun &lt;nerdware(a)laidbak.com&gt; wrote: Missed it, but it was raining on and off on Friday, the only day I was there. -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, John Allain wrote: By the way, Steve Roberts' bike is in the Computer Museum History Center now. He wrote a book about his travels called "Computing Across America". I just scored another copy of it (autographed :) at a thrift store. Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

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