On Tuesday 22 May 2007 18:25, Zane H. Healy wrote: Likely they all died, based on my experience with those things... :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

\begin{aol_mode} Me too. \end{aol_mode} I am not sure why, but I read it as '1000+ year old' too. And then wondered what on earth it could be. Alas when I read the message it was nothing all that special :-( -tony

On 23/05/07, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: Absolutely. It put me very much in mind of Pratchett's druidic stone circles: << "Ah, so you're an astronomer?" said Twoflower. "Oh no," said Belafon, as the rock drifted gently around the curve of a mountain. "I'm a computer hardware consultant." "What's a computer hardware?" "Well, this is," said the druid, tapping the rock with a sandalled foot. "Part of one, anyway. It's a replacement. I'm delivering it. They're having trouble with the big circles up on the Vortex Plains. So they say, anyway; I wished I had a bronze tore for every user who didn't read the manual." [...] Belafon: "Almanac?" Rincewind: "It's a book that tells you what day it is. It'd be right up your leyline." Belafon: "Book? Like, with paper?" Rincewind: "Yes." Belafon: "That doesn't sound very reliable to me. How can a book know what day it is? Paper can't count." [...] Rincewind: "Have you ever heard of culture shock?" Twoflower: "What's that?" Rincewind: "It's what happens when people spend five hundred years trying to get a stone circle to work properly and then someone comes up with a little book with a page for every day and little chatty bits saying things like 'Now is a good time to plant broad beans' and 'Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead,' and do you know what the most important thing to remember about culture shock is?" Twoflower: "What?" Rincewind: "Don't give it to a man flying a thousand ton rock." [...] "It looks like a lot of rocks," said Twoflower. Belafon hesitated in mid-gesture. "What?" he said. "It's very nice," added the tourist hurriedly. He sought for a word. "Ethnic," he decided. The druid stiffened. "Nice?" he said. "A triumph of the silicon chunk, a miracle of modern masonic technology -- nice?" "Oh, yes," said Twoflower, to whom sarcasm was merely a seven letter word beginning with S. -- Liam Proven ? Blog, homepage &c: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508

At 01:42 AM 5/23/2007, woodelf wrote: Reminds me of a funny pass-along video about "the first help desk call", involving a book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eIFoz-Tjf8 - John

On May 23, 2007, at 1:43 PM, Richard wrote: I've started a dialog with Rawn. We'll see where it goes. Thanks to the OP for the lead. ok bear

How close is this place to Seattle? (<<too lazy to map it). Transportation is one thing - where are *y'all* gonna bloody well store all the stuff? He really should allow people to come in and cherry pick what they want, he'd make more money that way undoubtedly. And what's a 1000+ lot of that old stuff worth anyway? As a bulk deal a few grand... BUT...if anyone finds a Canon AS-100 in the_pile, consider it claimed :). My up and coming baby is going to need some company before too long ;). Man it's been too long a wait, but the day is approaching... Oh by the way I could be in Seattle in 5-7 weeks... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Don't pick lemons. See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html

On Wed, 23 May 2007, woodelf wrote: Inadequate, or even total lack of, documentation is a computer tradition since the very beginning. Althought the initial command is reasonably self explanatory, there is no documentation of the possible command line options for "LET There Be ('='?) Light"

I'm about 12 miles away from this. If somebody gets it and can use some labour loading up I can wander over to help. To my interests, there's not much of interest there, but then I'm more into 70's-and-earlier stuff.. In dollar terms I would wonder how one does a cost recovery just on moving and storing it. Before it was mentioned in this thread I had never heard of Rawn's; it doesn't have a high profile around here, IME. Going by the phone book there is no retail-level store-front. (And yes, over the years I've been to every second-hand/surplus/used-goods store in a 25-mile radius I could find.)

if anyone cares *snifful* I'm Atari ST starved to this day. There seems to have been some of that stuff IIRC. What could be cool is for some people to make a list of what they want, and it could be placed in storage on this side of the border. I know that once I got out that way I'd be willing to ship stuff around. It won't be immediately, but in 5-7 weeks I'll be in the Seattle area. A long shot, but I just figured I'd mention it. ____________________________________________________________________________________Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php

Richard wrote: I would if I had a digital camera. Looks like bear has it covered anyways. I've been wanting to get a digital camera but have to work up the enthusiasm to brave the shopping malls. Which reminds me I have a question for camera buffs. If I can justify asking this here, the main motivation for getting a camera is taking pictures of old equipment for addition to web pages. I'm not into photography in a big way, in my life I've probably taken more photos for tourists ("take photo please, just press button") than I have for myself. My main concern for taking close-up (oblique, not just plan view) photos of equipment is depth-of-focus. I know/figure it's mainly a function of aperture size (smaller --> longer depth-of-focus) and (optical) zoom (to minimize the ratio of focus-depth to lens-to-object distance). (And smaller aperture means less light which requires longer exposure.) If I have the above principles about right, the practical question(s) are: Is your typical $200 / 3*-optical-zoom / 5-MPixel camera good for this or does one have to go to something higher end with a special lens, etc.? It's subjective as to what's adequate of course, but I'd be interested in opinions. Is there a spec regarding the aperture range that I should be looking for? By way of example, I like this photo: http://www3.telus.net/~bhilpert/tmp/markusToshibaBC1624_diode.jpg although I guess one could say the depth of focus is not really that great (?). (It's the internals of a late-60s nixie desktop calculator (the diode farm is discrete logic gates, of course). It was sent to me by a fellow calculator collector a few years ago but I don't know what camera equipment was used.)

Tim Shoppa wrote: Neat, I did an ASCII dump on the jpg and see that info now.

On Sunday 27 May 2007 06:52, Tim Shoppa wrote: I gotta admit that when I first read that I had this mental picture of that info being stuffed into the image or somesuch. The bit about the ASCII dump surprised me. And octal? What does that get you? Can't say I've ever tried that one, either... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

At 07:04 AM 5/26/2007, Tim Shoppa wrote: Yes, it's called "EXIF". There are lots of tools to peek and poke that info. I even have one for my browser, so I can right-click on a pic on a web page and see what camera/date/settings it was taken! www.exif.org - John

Bob Bradlee wrote: The idea that the (optical) zoom matters, presumably because people think that more zoom means getting further away and changing the viewpoint and therefore means greater depth of field[1], is actually a fallacy. For any given width of view of a subject (in other words, getting the same amount in the frame), using a given aperture, the depth of field is the same regardless of the focal length of the lens.It may seem counter-intuitive but it's because the depth of field and the aperture both are related to the focal length. Anyone who doesn't believe this is welcome to check the equations in any standard textbook such as LP Clerc's "Photography" :-) Of course, changing viewpoint does make a difference to the perspective in the view. 1] This is the correct term for what many people wrongly call depth of focus. Depth of focus is something different, internal to the camera. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

Assuming your computer/PCB/whatever is not going to run away, I would recomend 'stopping the lens down' (setting a small aperture) to get the largest depth of field that uyou can and having a long exposure to comensate. Most (good) digitcal cameras have several sensitivity settings, described as ISO/ASA settings by analogy with film speeds (sensitivities). A lower sensitivity setting generally produces an image with less noise in it, but of course you need a longer exposure. Assuming everything (camera and subjext) is static, use a low sensitivity setting. More exactly f/ numbers (the slash is part of the name). For example, an aperture of f/8 means what it says, the (effective) diameter of the aperture is 1/8th of the focal length of the lens. I wouldn't call it logarithmic. There is no log or exponential function anywhere in the definition. The amount of light coming through the lens depends (linarly ) on the effective area of the aperture, which is clearly related to the square of the diameter. So to halve the amount of light, you multipy the diameter (or f/ number) by sqrt(2), Most lenses have the apetrure scale calibated in approximately sqrt(2) multipes : 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, 45 Moving my 1 step (or 'stop' as photographers call it) halves or doubles the eposure. SImilarly the shutter speeds are set in an approximate doubling seires, so that changing the aperutre by 1 stop and chnaging the shutter speed by one stop in the opposite direcion produces the same exposure ta the film/sensor.But of course the depth of field, and the ability to 'freeze motion' will be different in the 2 cases. To be precise ,a telephoto lens is not simply a long focal length lens. It's one where hte 'back focus' is shorted than the focal length -- the lens has been made shorter by these optical tricks. In particualr, in single lens reflex cameras you have a swinging mirror behind the lens. Obviously no part of the lens must get in the way of that, so wide angle lenses (short focal length) need to have a back focus longer than the effective focal length. The is a 'retrofocus' or 'reverse telephoto' lens/ -tony

Brent Hilpert wrote: Some other points to consider: Lots of cheaper cameras are extremely light weight - light enough to seriously harm usability when not using a tripod (and there are times when tripod use is impractical!) There are times when an optical viewfinder is extremely useful - not all digital cameras have them these days, and some have miniature LCD "electronic viewfinders" which in my experience are next to useless. LCD screens which can hinge away from the main body are important - both for using the LCD in difficult lighting conditions, and for setting up shots "round corners". Surprising how often this is useful when taking shots of computer internals, or close-ups on the tripod. Remote controls can be handy - if I'm taking photos of PCBs say, I'll set the background and tripod up, then just use the remote to take shots so that I don't have to disturb the camera. Watch out for cameras which can't be run directly from the PSU - if you're indoors taking lots of shots / movies then it's far more convenient to run the camera direct from the power supply than to have several charged batteries on stand-by. It can be handy to have a hot-shoe flash socket on the camera too for certain types of shot - it's less relevant than the other considerations, but it's surprising how many camera manufacturers don't spend the extra couple of bucks in adding one. Finally, watch out for cameras which don't even have a standard tripod socket - I believe that some of the lower-end models don't bother, as they expect use to just be point and click. Phew. Food for thought anyway. Shop around - ideally by visiting a few camera stores and physically seeing the item you're about to spend lots of money on :-) Case construction quality varies wildly, not to mention that some layouts fail horribly when holding the camera by hand (fingers naturally cover up important sensors etc.) - these sorts of things are difficult to find out from a small picture on a website! After you have a short-list, read lots of reviews, too - there will be certain 'glitches' with all cameras which may or may not matter to you, so it's worth doing some reading around. (e.g. my Canon is fine, apart from the auto-focus gets a little confused at times, and the camera doesn't remember zoom setting between power cycles. I can live with them as it's a fantastic camera otherwise, but I could see them driving some people nuts :-)

I don;t havea digital camera either. It makes absolutely no sense for me to get one. If I bought a digital camera, I'd also haev to buy a modern computer, the equipment to maintain that computer, software, and the like. And I'd probably have to upgrade various bits of it every couple of years -- more expense. Now, much is made of the fact that digital photographs are cheaper than film photographs. Probably ture until you consider those upgrade costs as well (A good film camrera will go on for decades without problems). At that point you realise you have to shoot an awful lot of film to make it worthwhile. I've also yet to see a digital camera that comes close to the qualtiy of results from my film cameras. I am not talking about apparent sharpness, that can be tweaked. I am talking about detail in the image. Most high-steet film processing 'minilabs' can put your inmages onto CD for a nominal extra charge. The scans aren't great, but I always get the CD anyway. That way, I have the film negatives, which I can always print myself or rhave sanned at a higher resolution, I also have the machine prints and the CD whoch is probably adequate for web pages, etc. And the place I use takes 30 minutes to process and print the flim and burn the CD. Hardly that long. Anyway, rant over... You mean depth of field. Depth of focus refers to the allowable error in the postiion of the image plane (film), not the object plane. True. The log expsore shouldn't be a problem though. Arrange a stand for the camera, fix the object and the ligthing (I made a copying stand from n old enlarger and some metal bar). I routinely use exposures of 1s or longer for this. LEns resolution is worse at very small apertures due to difraction effects. But for close-ups where depth of field is limited anyway, keep the lens stopped down (smallest aperture). You want a camera that gives you manaul control over the aperture setting. I am told some cheaper digital cameras are auto-only, and are unlikely to be very suitable. More expensive ones certainly do have such control. Depth of field doesn't actually exist, if you think about it. There is exactly one object distance that gives a sharp image on the film for a given lens position (focus setting). The only reason that you get an apparent depth of field is that small circular areas on the final print look like perfect points when viewed by the human eye at normal viewing distances. If you have each point blurred out to, say, 1/1000", it'll still look sharp. Now, actually, digital cameras can do better heer because of the more limited resolution of the sensor compared to good film, and the image processing you can apply. If the blur (the technical term is 'circle of confusion' is smaller than the size of a pixel on the image sensor, it's sharp. The right way to get better depth of field for oblique shots is to tilt the lens (!). There's a well known principle, the name of which I can neither spell nor pronounce that basically says the image plane (film), subject plane, and a plane throughthe centre of the lenx perpendicular to the optical axis should all interstect in the smae line. The problem is that no digital camera has a tilting front. Few film cameras do either other than large-format (5*4" sheet film) technical cameras, which to be honest are not what I'd recomend to you. They produce excellent results, but they take a lot of practice to use properly, you need a darkroom, and so on. Yes, there are digital backs for them, but you want to sit down before hearing the price (_Way_ more than the cost od a decent car, for example). I think you want something a bit higher-end than that, but I might be wrong. Personally, I'd want interchangeable lenses (extreme close-ups are one of the times when this is useful, not just for fitting special lenses corrected for short object distances but also to be able to extend the lense further from the vamera).. I'd also want full control over the various settings, in particular manual focus and aperture controls. That said, it deptend on what you want to do with the photos. If you want to just keep a record of how something wnnt together, how the cables were routed, and so on, then just about anything will do if it can focus close enough. Similarly, you probably don't need anything special if you want to put pictures oan a web page so you can point out compoents on the PCB that are inovled in a particualr function amd which you had to test as part of a repair. -tony

On Sun, 27 May 2007 00:28:11 +0100 (BST) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: Scheimpflug. There are also special shift and tilt lenses for (D)SLR cameras. Some bellows and extension tubes have shift / tilt fuctions for macro as well. So you can shift / tilt with any lens using this macro extension tubes. There is a cheap trick that makes this discussion nearly on topic: Some hackers have fited a flat bed scanner to the back of a 8"x10" view camera. Obviously it works only for static ceens. Sometimes you can get real 4"x5" scanbacks quite cheap, just like drum scanners. One word to the depth of field problem: The low end (i.e. non SLR) digital cameras have small CCD / CMOS image sensors. Often only 1/2" in diagonal. So the "standard focal length" on these cameras is already quite short. As has been said already: D.O.F. depends on the focal length. The shorter, the more D.O.F. So you get large D.O.F. out of any "cheap" digital camera. Usually you have the problem to get a _small_ D.O.F. out of this digicams, e.g. if you wane use a small D.O.F. for compositional / artistic purposes. (Typical: portrait of a person with blurry background.) -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

Err no. I don;'t own a 6*6 camera (although I can borrow my father's). I have a couple of _large format_ (5*4" sheet film) cameras. -tony

Ineed there are. There are also digital backs for 5*4 and 10*8 l;arge format camaras. I am not convinced the results for eitehr are better (or even as good) as the equivalent film, though. A factor of at least 100* :-) -tony

On 28 May 2007, at 18:54, Tony Duell wrote: Well, the market for digital in such large format is hardly large. IIRC a 12mp SLR with 35mm-sized sensor is capable of producing A3 at 300dpi. For most applications I don't see that even posters (A2, A1) would justify more resolution than 12mp - you would have to be looking pretty close to tell the difference. It is the consumer market driving digital camera sensor development - take a look at the results from the APS-C-sized sensors in $650 dSLRs. Stroller.

On 5/29/07, Gordon JC Pearce <gordon at gjcp.net> wrote: What's your cutoff for a "good digital SLR"? I have an Olympus E-10. It was top-of-the-line over 5 years ago - fixed lens with true 9mm-36mm focal length ("1/4 sized CCD", so 36mm-144mm equivalent), 62mm diameter (large compared to most digital cameras, so at f/2 - f/2.4, its lens is a bit faster than you commonly see), but being as old as it is, "only" 4 megapixel. When it was new, this camera retailed around $1800-$2000. I picked it up in 2003 for $650, when it was no longer at the top of the pack. A friend of mine just got one My best resolution with this camera is on the order of 2.5K x 1.5K pixels. That's still quite a bit less than film. For webbish stuff, though, plenty of resolution. I still have a few 35mm cameras, but with the cost of film and processing, I don't do as much with it as I used to (less than a dozen rolls of slide film per year). I do, however, use it when I want to take stunning pictures of Antarctic scenery. Between noisy pixels and contrast differences between ASA 50 slide film and a CCD, the visual impact of real film is amazing. For indoor shots of computer bits under controllable lighting conditions with a target image size of 800x600 or less, there's not much difference in perceived quality. If by "good digital SLR", you mean something in the 8-10MP range, with removable lenses that one can tailor to the application at hand (by spending enough $$$), then I would say that they are approaching SLR resolution (numbers I've heard from a Hollywood cameraman are that 35mm movie film is considered to have "4000 lines of resolution" for the purposes of generating special effects and certain kinds of image subtleties), but not quite there. $5000 worth of digital camera (body and lenses) can compete with a $100 used SLR. $1000 worth of digital camera can't in many circumstances. -ethan

Ethan Dicks wrote: But I'm starting to see cameras that were $5000 appearing on the used market. I am looking at picking up a Kodak DCS Pro/14n which was in that price range, and has a full-frame 35mm 13.7Mpel CCD, a pro-quality Nikon body and takes the full range of Nikkor lenses, and I'm planning on spending $500-750 for a lightly used body. You can get deals on digital SLR if you're in the market. Peace... Sridhar

Actually 5*4 large format, but anyway. My commant is that I will consider buying a digital camera when the results are better than those from my film cameras. And yes, I own3 large-format cameras. I don;t dispute digital cameras have their uses -- if I was a press photogrpaher, it would be very silly not to use a digital camera onw. But I don't see the use for one myself. Even for taking a quick snap of a PCB, I'd just use a 35mm SLR. As I said in an earlier post, I can take the exposed film to a high street shop and, 30 minutes later get a set of prints, a set of original negatives, and a CD-ROM of JPEGs. No the rssolution of the prints (or CD-ROM scans) is not all that my camera can manage, but like a 'cheap' digital camera, it's good enough. And I have the negatives if I need anything better. OK, if I had a digital cameera, I'd use it. But to be honest, I can't afford one. YEs, I'd save the cost of film and processing, but I'd have to buy the camera, buy a pC, by the equipment to maintain them, and so on. That'd buy an awful lot of film. I;ve yet to see a digital camera service manual, so %deity knows what I do whne it fails. For my (totalyl mechanical, I may add) film cameras, I just take them apart and fix them. And they'll be good for a few more decades. -tony

But as I poitned out, it's not _just_ the cost of the camera. What do you suggest I connect it to? Can you get digital cameras that connect to PERQs or PDP11s? That is totally against my principles, and always will be. A very good reason for not getting one, then :-) -tony

--- Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> wrote: Not a bad suggestion, but he probably won't want to work up the software (just my guess). All you need is one of those pcmcia adapters for a desktop pc (does he have one of those?), although they're kind of slow. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php

On May 30, 2007, at 11:06 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: Indeed, and many not-so-ancient ones have standard async serial ports. The comm protocols, however.. :-| -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On May 31, 2007, at 12:02 AM, Ethan Dicks wrote: Ahhhh, that's very cool indeed, I thought gphoto was for USB cameras only. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated: Get one? I've got one. Granted, it slowly goes out of focus [1] from time to time, but I have it. Somewhere. And it comes with a DE-9 serial connector, and I found some software [2] that would allow me to download pictures from it. Okay, the resulting pictures [3] are only 640x480, and not great quality, but it's something. I even think it's on topic. Or almost on topic. So, you repair burt resistors instead of tossing them? Neat! -spc (And yes, that is a poster of Cerebus [4] on the wall of my office ... ) [1] http://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/1998/focus.html [2] http://photopc.sourceforge.net/ [3] The photos in [1] were taken with the camera in question, but resized for the web. [4] The Aardvark. He doesn't love you, he just wants your gold.

Perhaps - but film still has attributes which digital cameras don't, such as lack of aliasing artifacts (because the grains are randomly dispersed in the film instead of being in a neat rectlinear grid). /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

ECRM is certainly on topic, my PDP8/e was used in first ECRM machine, an OCR scanner. Used a laser and a fotocell, and plenty of additional Omnibus boards. Two of those form a nice 80x25 char video output, with lots of attribues ( underline, blink etc.) My PDP8/m was used in a meat processing factory. Versatile machines they where... Jos Dreesen

Except digital camera pixel specs are deliberately misleading. 27 MP probably means 27 million monochrome pixels with a color filter stuck on top of the imager. No one would accept LCD monitors sold this way... (You will notice this is you try to image high spacial frequency images with different colors - works fine in black and white, crumbles to a mess of aliasing in color) Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics (\__/) (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

On Sunday 16 December 2007 22:36, Alexandre Souza wrote: (Snip) Speaking of which this brings to mind another old project idea I had that never went anywhere. That was using a 3" scope tube to "write" to film, and then after developing, to read it back again. I vaguely recall "flying spot scanner" being somewhat related to this, I think there was some equipment out there that'd actually take a 35mm slide. Though I'd envisioned a roll of film, driven by a stepper motor. The mechanical complexity of it really put me off from ever developing the idea, though I do have the scope tube. :-) Also the idea of having to try and get the film developed, figure out what sort of film and focus / intensity settings would give the best results, etc. My own idea of "optical storage". :-) Seems to me that moving an electron beam has gotta be seriously faster than spinning the media, which is what everybody else seemt to be into doing. I wonder what I'm missing here? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Brent, Start cheap. Consider a Digitrex DSC-2100. Here's one on eBay as we speeque: http://cgi.ebay.com/Digitrex-DSC-2100-Digital-Camera-built-in-MP3-Player_W0… ...$10 You'll be surprised the results you can get (with a bit of care) w/essentially a *toy* cam _supposedly_ rated @ 2mpix. You'd be surprised with the results you'd get w/1mpix. My very first cam was an Aiptek Pencam SD (yes takes SD cards, have a 1 meg card, not sure if it'll access the whole thing though. Can't even find the thing...). Prior to this past week, I haven't spent more then ~$30 on a cam, having found a deal on a Nikon Coolpix S9 at Target ($67 w/tax, watch Target if they're in your area. You can find astounding deals on the endcaps from time to time). I can't find a price of less then $199 online for the same unit. That thing does 6 *effective*? mpix. Sometimes I get a good picture with it (shooting from the hip). Other times blah. But if you're doing stills all the time, you can fiddle to your heart's content. I'll reiterate, start cheap, and you'll know what you're getting into. The only problem I can see with buying say the Digitrex model I pointed out is that it takes cflash cards, and few other cameras do these days. But you won't be put out too much if you spent $20 on a 1gig Cflash card, being that they're useable for *other types* of storage, especially in the vintage category. Figure a kit of rechargeable batteries and charger into your expenses (again the D* uses AA's, my Nikon comes with a lion battery, which is emminently frustrating, cuz it takes 2 hours to charge. My AA's ~25mins). The D* seems much better on battery life also. The Nikon was a little disappointing in that department. You DON'T want to own a digital camera w/o rechargeables. What I wouldn't do to be able to buy some other cam down the way that uses cflash and my rechargeable AA's. I'm also not crazy about the diminutive size of this coolpix thing, but it was so reasonable, I couldn't pass it up. I like something I can feel in my rather large mit. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Don't pick lemons. See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html

----- Original Message ----- From: "r.stricklin" <bear at typewritten.org> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 8:55 PM Subject: Re: 1000+ old computer in Canada, for sale Unless you have a few people interested in different categories of machines and are fairly local to the haul I don't see the point in snagging it (unless you sell on ebay for a living). Even if you have the space to store it (large basement, shop etc), and can actually sell the ones you do not want you are still talking a large part of your life (for a decent period) shifting machines you could care less about. I pass on free (or close to it) equipment I don't collect just because I don't want the hassle of having to sell it (even if I could make a profit). Doing that just takes time away from what I want to do. If you are only interested in a few machines wait around until the guy gets desperate to get rid off them any way he can and buy what you want. If he won't sell individually then scout around the area for recyclers and tell them what you are looking for since the items will eventually end up there for disposal anyway. I am sure the guy has looked into locals who would want them before looking farther away. TZ

Speaking of rescues, was there any word or resolution on that warehouse full of stuff up here (Vancouver/Burnaby, B.C.) from a couple of weeks ago?

On 13/06/07, r.stricklin <bear at typewritten.org> wrote: Aren't IIgs machines still in some demand? I know I've always wanted one and I think I know several others who do, too... Not enough to pay international shipping, mind you! -- Liam Proven ? Blog, homepage &c: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508

There was a flood of the systems out there from schools who finally ditched them (most being stock units and were engraved with school info). I am not sure if the glut has been disposed off yet. I have a IIgs system (ROM 1) with a SCSI card I added later. The machine itself was pretty much a few bucks over shipping charges, the SCSI card was $50. While the stock system itself isn't worth much, the SCSI cards, RAM boards over 1MB, and CPU accelerators are very much in demand and they cost quite a bit to buy them on ebay.