At 19:39 29-04-98 +0100, Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: -- snip -- Good luck in repairing/restoring it. -- snip neat stuff I'm into and understand but not used to those "strange" tube(valve) numbers :-) I had a problem when I got my IBM 9370 system in which I WANTED the rack cabinets but had absolutelly NO way of getting them into my house. Each of the two steel cabinets were too large and rather hard to handle. IIRC, they were 29"(74 cm) wide, 36" (91 cm) deep and about 72" (183 cm) tall and each weighed nearly 300 pounds when completely stripped. (Hmmm, there beggets our expression "big iron".) The only place they could go was into the basement. Stairway much too small. The garage was out of the question as we live in a climate with COLD winters and cool, damp springs and autumns. So, when I was given this big iron thing I had to let the salvage yard take the empty cabinets. Darn, drat, doggonit, %~^# !, etc. The system still works with the DASD (hard drives) and other components stacked upon each other though it won't finish its IPL. Gotta troubleshoot that later this year. Even in our new house we just moved into a month ago, the same darned thing: if I had the cabinets, they still could not fit into the house :( By the way, a second, more minor problem was my wife. When I was describing the size of the 9370 system before I brought it home, here eyes got real big and she stated: "Just where are you going to put that!??!" And when I got two six foot tall 19"rack cabinets from an old machine controller at work that I tore down, I temporarily set them in the new garage sometime before we moved in. She spied them, stared at them for a few seconds and asked "What are _those_ monstrosities?" I had to do some quick explaining to get through that incident. She generally supports my collecting though. Wish I could afford a heated, insulated garage. -- Chris -- -- Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/

OK, you asked for it... Why did the Post Office and Air Ministry hand out _identical_ type numbers to _completely_ different tubes? Hmmmm????!?!! If I dig back in the Boatanchors archives, I can find some examples. I think the VT90 is one of them. At least when we pulled that stunt, we gave the tubes prefixes (UV-203A or WE-203A). William Donzelli william(a)ans.net

As a collector of old radios from the 20s and 30s, I too have seen several beautiful old cabinets gutted and transformed into things like wine bottle holders. Our most recent find in this area was a King Radio cabinet, a 20s classic, with labelling still intact. The hinged top had been screwed down, the finish stripped, and the handles replaced by gaudy 70s wrought-iron ones. The interior had been made into a wine rack. I was able to un-fasten the lid, remove the "wine rack" bits, and with a little more work the cabinet now holds an Atwater-Kent model 10-B breadboard radio from 1923. It's nice to put these "modernizations" right when possible. Kevin -- Kevin McQuiggin VE7ZD mcquiggi(a)sfu.ca

At 08:56 30-04-98 -0600, "Jeff Kaneko" <Jeff.Kaneko(a)ifrsys.com> wrote: --- snippers --- Some people have no clue. But in retrospect to that statement, those people are probably not technically oriented like we are so there is no awareness of anything's actual worth as a technological collectable. Thankfully, the metal/plastic boxes our old computers were made with have virtually no value as 'interior decorations' (yet). However, there could be exceptions for maybe a couple of models. I recall some list members here had commented upon some as being rather attractive in appearance. I haven't come across those yet.

On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Doug Yowza wrote: Of course you guys have heard of converting a Mac into a fish tnak? Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't blame me...I voted for Satan. Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! [Last web page update: 04/25/98]

Tony Duell wrote: Actually, I think it was a series of cartoons in Kilobaud(or maybe even 80-Micro). The 3B1 is a bit lumpy, due to the squarish hump in the case to fit the full-height hard disk. The 7300 was the beauty -- especially if you can find the late-model keyboard. While I have to use my PC keyboard as the X input to my main Linux box, the 7300 (well, one of them) is the true console in VT-100 emulation with all system messages recorded to disk instead of going where forgotten electrons go. A trick I developed at the San Jose Unisys plant when I was doing SQA for the U-6000 servers in the building where the 7300/3B1 were designed, though I didn't go to work there until almost four years after the darling was discoed. But there were quite a few laying around -- I had three in my cube. -- Ward Griffiths They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. Of course, the main reason they cuddle up is to screw somebody else. Michael Flynn, _Rogue Star_

On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Sam Ismail wrote: I don't have a problem with that as long as they are small fish! Reminds me of a friend who has stacked up Kaypros to use as end tables to a small sofa. - don donm(a)cts.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology. Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412 *--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--* see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj visit the "Unofficial" CP/M Weg site at http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm with Mirror at http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm