Decisions you regret Was: Mystery IC: Allen Bradley

[steven at malikoff.com]

My Dad used to bring home bits of dead System/360 from work, my brother and I
would of course pull this stuff to bits 'just to see what was inside'.
Printer trains, SLT cards, a pile of SMS cards from his earlier workings with
IBM 650s, all sorts of bits of electronic and electromechanical items. Dad
turned a punched-card sorter chassis into a workshop bench, I recall it was
dark charcoal grey and had a pull-out bucket on the front, not sure if that was
for cards or chads.

One thing we had fun with was one of those 2260 delay line units recently
discussed here. Inside the box was a beautifully coiled length of Nichrome(?)
wire, zooiiinnggg that was out, played with by stretching and tapping on the wire,
and most likely thrown out.

I had a complete General Automation SPC-16 minicomputer in a 6' rack, ASR33,
two Documation card readers, disk packs with DBOS I think. This took up quite a
bit of room in my flat so I sold it off very very cheaply, practically gave it
away. Wish I had it now, of course. Along with my S-100 system, that went to the
same buyer, a uni student I recall.

Dad brought home a disposed-of 2741 I/O Selectric we were going to interface to our
F-8. Never got done so it sat in the cupboard for decades. It disappeared when my
folks moved interstate.
Recently I found the platen from it in their garden shed. It still has the terminal-
style knobs on the ends, like on the 1052 terminal but grey instead of blue. I'll
save that for the time I get around to looking at some form of Selectric I/O, or
at least as a keepsake of the stuff we had :)

Steve.