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Collecting Classic Computers
chriton writes "There's an interesting article at Reuters about collecting classic computers. There's mention in the story of an even more interesting website www.classiccmp.org Unfortunately, most of the website is still under construction. The mailing list has been around since Jan 1997, and they clearly have plans for more accessible resources, but that just hasn't happened yet. If you are like me and have a an old Osbourne 1 in the closet and Commodore 128D stored at your mother's house she's telling you to take home lest she chuck it, you might find the list archives none the less."
A lot of classics end up at the Digibarn ( http://www.digibarn.com ) including the "shielded" Black Mac from the 80's. Seriously, any geek worth their propeller hat has a cache of old chassis, memory and motherboards. One of the classics from my collection is the mid 90's IBM Think Pad 701C, orignal design for the size and folding keyboard.....Is it worth anything? Most likely not, but it's history and history is worth something, to someone, for some reason......
~corporate tool, but employed~
Commodore 128D stored at your mother's house she's telling you to take home lest she chuck it
That's a very true comment...
Since I've been married, my wife CONSTANTLY tried to throw out my old atari stuff. I had an awesome 800xl setup with happy810 drives, toggle switch to switch between O/S's, the works.
I would try to explain to her, this is what I started out on when I was like 10. Didn't matter, week later I would find it all packed up. I tried explaining that it was a collectors item, didn't matter, if I had it out on display she would haphazzardly pack it all up, sans a few cable that went into the trash. I tried explaining to her you just cannot get that vintage POKEY sound with an emulator. She'd point at my SBLive wavetable card.
We must have gone through the whole my unpacking / her packing things about 10 times before I gave up. Finally I just said fuck it, i'm going to make sure it went to a good home. I packed it all up, and went to the nullsoft offices in San Francisco, since I had read that those cats were once atarians.
They were pretty stoked on what I gave them, I think Brennen said he was going to use the drives to dig up some old code he did back in the day just so he could see how much it had changed. Justin made a crack about how he missed the simple flow of line numbering in atari basic, and Christophe ran off with a trackball.
Geek guys like this sort of stuff and geek girls don't. So ladies, my question is, what gives?
--toq
I think the guys over at Lucasfilm turned an SGI box into a beer tap during the production of Episode 1. It was big enough to keep a keg in, so they hollowed it out, and put a spout on it.
I can't find the link to the Wired article. I do remember reading this jsut before Ep1 came out.
In any event, drunken artists and such may explain something about how that movie turned out.
Huh?
I collect old computers. :) I have about 90 of the things - my favourites are the Apple Lisa, the Apple ///+, the OSI Challenger 4P and the Microbee. But what disappointed me about the article is that it focused on money - collecting anything is, in my experience, rarely about money, at least for the majority of those who collect. My collection is about the recording history of something I love - like many geeks, I grew up with these computers, and either had one (occasionally) or desperatly wanted one (often). So when I see a Commodore 64sx for $5 I buy it (or rather, I bought it) - not because it may one day be worth anything, but that it means something to me and I want to preserve the history.
:) The problem is storage. I keep hoping that one day someone in Australia will finally start a computer museum, and then my collection will finally have a decent home.
Well, that and I like to play Paradroid still.
I still have the first computer I ever owned.. an Atari 400 with 16K of RAM and a 1.79MHz 6502 CPU. Also I may still have the first modem I ever owned, which was 300 baud, but one o' them new-fangled direct-connect ones (without the acoustic couplers).
I never set out to be an antique computer collector, but I do have an awful lot of old machines from the 1980's (most Atari, Commodore, TI, and Apple, but some weirdball ones too... remember the Mattell Aquarius?)
It's not much fun to just collect them & leave them sitting in a closet, to me you don't really own a machine unless you can write code for it. Unfortunately, a lot of those old boxes, I have no storage for.. No, they didn't come with hard drives, and the floppy drive was usually an expensive add-on, and made from lowest-bidder parts (therefore unlikely to still be working today, even if you have one).
My favorite weird old architecture to code for has got to be the Atari 2600. 1.2MHz 6502, 128 bytes of RAM total, to be split between variables and stack (most games use litle or no stack though), no OS or BIOS, no video memory, no I/O except the front panel switches, the joysticks, the paddles, and the cartridge slot.. no R/W line was routed to the cart slot, so you couldn't (easily) use it to add RAM, only ROM (usually 4K, but as much as you want via bankswitching).
Just lately (in the past couple of years), I've actively started collecting UNIX boxes (Sparc, Alpha, SGI, etc.)... these are still useful (a throw-away SparcStation 10 with a 40MHz CPU, 64M of RAM, 2G SCSI drive, and Solaris 2.6 makes a dandy DNS & dhcp server for your LAN, and will be a lot more reliable than a 486 PC from the same time period).
Anyone have or know where I can get an old version of DEC UNIX to run on my Alpha?
You can have one running in a terminal on your computer :)
Hercules Project
Emulates a 360/370/390 series system.
...is more important sometimes than preserving the actual machine itself.
Manuals get lost. Tapes and Floppy Disks wear out. And then capacitors and other components go bad and without technical info, you're often left with an interesting doorstop.
With that imformation, emulators can get developed, software can be archived into modern formats, and new floppy disks containing software for these systems can be custom created so we don't have to worry (too much) about the originals wearing out.
I like to collect early 8-bit/Pre-PC computers. At the moment I have the following machines (among many others):
* Exidy Sorcerer (1979-1983-ish)
* APF Imagination Machine (1980-ish)
* Compucolor II (1978-1979 ish)
Of those three, I have the technical service manuals and schematics for the first two. I can fire them up and amuse myself by making them do things. I also have some software for them. I've made it a point to freely provide copies of all my technical documentation to other people interested in these old machines, in order to spread the knowledge and lower the chances of it getting lost.
For the Compucolor II though, I acquired a unit that had been converted to 240 volts (Australia). I have it because it was one of the very first computers I ever used, and a cool machine (8080, 48K RAM, 8 Color Display: 80x25 text, 160x100 graphics). I had no idea how rare it was even back then (1978), so decided I wanted to acquire one to add to my collection.
So far, I have no schematics or technical information, and no software (it had a single floppy drive built into the monitor), and have been unable to use it given my limited hardware reverse-engineering skills. The company that made it disappeared over 20 years ago. Thus, with out information and software, it's likely that in time no one will even remember it existed.
-Mp
I've been working on restoration of my old Sol-20 for several years. The big stumbling block is locating keyboard refurbishment parts. They say that the Keytronics KB-101 keyboard can be cannibalized for parts. I used to sell by KB-101s by the hundreds but now I can't find ANY. If anyone knows where I can get some cheap, even broken KB-101 units, let me know.
Oh man, I am so close to getting my old Sol-20 running 100%. Then I have to see if I can get my 20+ year old data cassettes to read. I'm going to dump the audio straight into my Mac, since the tapes will probably shred on the first pass. One preservation capture, then burn to CD. I could probably just use my Mac as a big dumb cassette player like the Sol was originally built for.
Here's a link to a site where a guy describes his plans to restore one of these classic machines.
It's a short read, but it's nice to see someone trying to restore one of thse boxes.
Ken Thompson used to have a link on his page to someone who was restoring one of these. But since he's retired, it's not there now.
Huh?
Yep, that's the machine I learned to program with. I started with 4k ram, then moved to 16k, then to 32K. First I had one rom (color basic), then I had two (extended color basic). The CoCo basics were written by Microsoft btw. Just type cls 9 and press enter and the word Microsoft comes up. I still have the machine with a 160k single sided floppy drive. Everything still works like a charm. I got the thing for Christmas of 1980 for $699. It's the original silver case with black chicklet keyboard.
I also learned 6809e assembly language with the EDT/ASM expansion cartridge. I used to use the thing for microcontroller development using the 6801 and 68HC11 controllers.
The system had everything you needed to learn computing. It had a D/A sound port that you could write to. It had 2 joystick inputs that worked via true A/D. It had a bus that allowed you to connection expansion stuff to. It had a multiplexed keyboard, and serial I/O. It also had a frame buffer display adapter controlled by the 6847VDG.
I learned how to program very efficiently on that machine. Sometimes I would write my code in Basic, then make calls to my 6809 machine code to speed things up. It was a good bit like a swiss army knife of computing in those days.
I even made some hacks to the machine. I hacked up a video output, instead of using the NTSC T.V. channel 3/4 signal. I hacked up my RAM expansions for free by piggy-backing the RAM. I even wrote an oscilloscope program for it so that you could feed a varying voltage into one of the joystick x axis inputs and watch the display of audio.
Lots-o-fun. But eventually I had to leave the world of fun and move to a real machine in 1984 called the IBM PC. The rest as they say, is history!
Apple IIe (soon to be networked via localtalk, but the rom is ruined on the workstation card.. no wonder the ebayer sold it for $1)
;)
Apple IIgs (networked to my linux server via localtalk)
Mac Plus (networked to my linux server via localtalk)
Mac SE (networked via ethernet)
A slew of 9" black&white macs
Mac LC (networked to my linux server via token ring)
Apple Pippin (set top box)
NeXT Colorstation
Amiga 500
Amiga 2000 (networked to my linux server via arcnet)
Amiga 3000
Amiga 4000
Commodore Vic20
Commodore 64
Commodore 128
DECstation 5000/133
PDP11/04 (with dual board unibus etherneton the way, and in my 42U rack)
Vaxstation 3000
Vaxstation 4000
DEC Multia (alpha chip, though a horribly crippled one)
Atari ST 520 (networked with homebrew ACSI-ethernet)
Atari ST 1024STFM
Atari 600XL
Sparcstation 2 (with a dual slot HIPPI card, still need hippi for my linux server!)
TRS-80 Coco 1, 2 & 3
TRS-80 Model 4 (soon to be networked via Omninet, assuming I can find a ISA omninet card)
TRS-80 Model II (soon to be networked via Omninet, assuming I can find a ISA omninet card)
TRS-80 Model 6000 (68k cpu, I need an arcnet board for this baby... ran xenix, and billed as a multi-user system by Tandy. Also in *MINT* condition)
Altos Bidmaster (ran xenix on a 186...blech)
Timex Sinclair
TI994a
HP Netserver (running Banyan Vines 6)
Several 386/486/pentiums (running Netware 2-6)
Several PS/2's(running OS/2 v1.3 - Warp 4)
My home lan consists of:
Localtalk, Token Ring (4/16/100mps)
Ethernet (10baseT/2/5/100/802.11)
VG Anylan, Arcnet (2.5/100mps)
FDDI, ATM (155mps, need to find the 622mps optional module for my Cabletron ZX-250)
DOCSIS (are there any direct DOCSIS PCI cards? My ifconfig output is only 3 pages or so...)
To be implemented:
HIPPI (pending, need PCI card and switch)
Omninet (have the multiplexer and vintage cards, need card for linux server)
Econet (have cards for Archimedes, would need the incredibly rare Ecolink ISA card for the linux server, and some Acorn machines)
Starlan (have a 6300, need the boards, switches.. will be done eventually)
By my count, that means I have these CPU families...
65xx, 68xx, Z80, x86, alpha, 68k, PPC, TMS9900, Sparc, MIPS, Super Hitachi
(ok, so its a sega saturn, still counts)
?? (whatever the PDP has, know the board number, but what do you call the cpu family?)
??? (same, for the Vax)
I've lost count of OS's, but it's something like 40+.
I'm obviously missing the Bebox, and Apple Lisa. The Bebox though, I'm holding out for the Lucent Hobbit CPU prototype... no lame PPC here
I suppose I also need an HP-UX machine, for another OS and the PA-Risc chip. Wouldn't hurt to pick up a cheap SGI Indy either, or for that matter an earlier RS6000. But I really want a Xerox Alto or Star... anyone selling? Oh, and definitely must have a Falcon (Atari ST, last of the line).
You see, it is a lifetime goal of mine, to have the most evil, bastardized localtalk network ever. That means having
Apple II (already done)
x86 PC (The most NICed linux box in history)
Macs (easy, of course)
NeXT (harder, pretty sure I will have to write the drivers myself)
SGI (their RS-422 ports seem to be agreeable with netatalk)
Atari (Falcon or TT030, has the rs-422, even in miniDIN8, but never any drivers)
Amiga (had a chance at the Zorro2 localtalk board, but was broke... guy wouldn't hold it for me:( )
And if that isn't bad enough, my newly bought 19" rack (for $1 no less!) is already half full. Bay Networks and a a Cisco router (2514), and my lovely PDP11 (oldest computer I own)
But the worst part is, by far, I'm just getting started.
- Atari 800XL
- Two Atari XEGSes
- A C64
- A non-working Commodore 128D
- Amiga 500
- Amstrad PPC640 (getting PSU details)
- Another Amstrad PC compatible in a keyboard profile (like the Amiga 500)
- Does and Intellivision with a keyboard add-on count?
To compliment these computers I've been purchasing stuff like the SIO2PC cable adapter (connect a PC to an Atari 8-bit) and I've just ordered the Catweasel MK3 (read/write pretty much any floppy format ever). I salvaged a nice supply of DD disks (including a lot of interesting-looking original software) a week or so ago.EBCDIC anyone?
We don't have any IBM systems here, but my firm regularly makes EBCDIC tape archives every week for one of our customers, and distribute them to about 20-odd banks and insurance firms. Most go out on 3480 cartridges, plus one QIC Data Cartridge, and one person still receives theirs on a 2400FT 9-Track tape reel! Mind you, they now have to supply their own tapes, as 9-Track tape production ceased at the end of last year (too little demand to justify keeping the operation going, as I recall).
We used to have a MicroVAX in a corner, for the simple reason that it was the only way, at the time, to duplicate DEC DLT (TK50) tapes. Went to the scrapyard once we had DLT drives that could be connected to a SCSI-equiped PC. (We write our own duplication software)
-MT.
My father still has his hand built NASCOM in the garage someplace, with a joystick made from a broom handle and a keyboard where each key is wirewrapped together.
Used to re-boot each time the central heating switched on... but it was the first computer I saw as a kid for many years.
Got boxed up and replaced with an A500+
Perhaps not a generic clone, but I suspect that some of the early name brands will become collectors' items. Things like an intact original IBM PC from 1981 will increase in value, for sure.
I've seen people go apeshit collecting some really stupid stuff. Sometime in the early 90s, I remember Hostess Chips including mini trading cards with STTNG characters on them in each bag of chips. People got right crazy over them, and towards the end, with some of the cards being rarer than others, people were selling complete sets for in excess of $200, and I know one clown who forked out something like that.
Old computers? That's a no-brainer!
What about any of the stuff related to computers being collectible? I'm thinking old software here, perhaps in its original packaging. Remember the old Wordperfect "hardcover" cases? I still have a disk based copy of OS/2 Warp, Red Spine, still in the original box, all docs etc included. Somewhere, I've also got the 5.25 floppies for Microsoft OS/2 V1.1! Anybody see a pattern here? Bur seriously, folks...