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Good Vintage Computers?
The Crooked Elf asks: "I'm going to be running an event dedicated to vintage computers and game consoles in a month for the computer science department at the University of Southern Maine. My current arsenal includes a TRS-80 Color Computer 3 and an old NES (with Zelda, Mario, etc), but I feel I need a few more items to display. I have a budget of around $600 for this event. Slashdot, what do you feel are other decent vintage systems that would be the most valuable and educational to present?"
You might try asking on the Classic Computers mailing list: classiccmp.org. You might get people to loan you systems of interest.
For my money, you'd probably be in good if you got a Commodore 64 (for obvious reasons) and a machine like a IMSAI 8080. Perhaps an Apple 2.
In the grand scheme of things, the Tandy Color Computer 3 was largely irrelevant by the time it came to market...
If you want to show the systems that really drove the home PC adoption market you have to get a TI99/4a and a Commodore 64, and I'd say an Apple 2e.
You need an Altair.
That was my first in the 70's. Great fun and very open. Build your own cards. Wire wrap. Learn to solder. Great fun, great fun.
Also, the Sincliar ZX80, Sinclair ZX81/Timex 1000, Kaypro II, Osbourne.
When I strapped a 32K, banked switched ram pack to my ZX81, a buddy told me that I was crazy to have wasted my money, that I'd never use the 16k in one bank. The Sinclair had a the nasty habit of recording the entire memory used or not, when you saved to tape. So, the more memory you installed the longer the load.
I also owned a few pirated computers:
Anyone remember the Orange? It was an Apple, made in Taiwan from the specs Apple provided a factory when they wanted to go into mass production.
I had a Genie, which was a knock off of the TRS-80 Model I, but you could get it in kit form. RS didn't much care until Genie started selling assembled units, if I remember correctly.
And, my first "IBM PC Compatible was a Heath-kit.
That was all when hacking meant building your own stuff, or getting into the hardware and making your own changes. Of course the lead solder didn't affect my mind...too much.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
You will never be able to afford a real Apple I. However if you want to let people play with a vintage computer (and a very important one at that) without risking a real classic you can by the Replica I for about $200. It is a replica of the Apple I (since Woz still owns the rights to the apple I and not Apple he has the rights to let others make replica's and clones) but it uses more modern parts. Here is the website: http://www.brielcomputers.com/
Back in the day, before the "IBM PC", almost every company was coming out with their own computer.
Sharp had the MZ80K that had its own monitor and build in tape deck, and contrary to what others were doing at the time, instead of loading BASIC, it ran Pascal.
Now, anyone have any info on the Acorn, and the BBC computer?
I was stationed in the UK in the early 80's, at RAF Upper Heyford when the BBC ran a test. They broadcast, on TV, a short 1 minute blast of binary. I recorded it onto cassette (it had been pre-announced for the week that they would do it) and then I loaded it into my Sinclair, and viola, it ran.
I think the BBC was the first to run a regular computer show. If a tape of that specific episode could obtained, no museum exhibit would be complete without it running on loop.
Does anyone remember the plethora of magazines that had tons of code listings? How many people learned to code from those?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
SGIs are also gorgeously good looking. A 16 CPU Origin 2000 went for £620 on last week; I have to say it was quite the temptation.
Stroller.
From the DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) inventory...
A MicroVAX II. First system with the CPU on one chip.
A "Jensen" AlphaStation 150. Representing early 64 bit processing.
A DECtalk or DECvoice unit. Featured voice in "War Games" and Steven Hawkings "voice."
An 11/780. Would take up a lot of space, but there's a guy that converted the cabinet of one into a bar...
Any of the long list of failed DEC PC products... better, but incompatible: VT180 "Robin", Rainbow, VAXmate, Pro 350... I believe that the "Rainbow" was author Peirs Anthony's first computer and featured in his author's notes of several novels, and quite likely the inspiration of the "ComPewter" of Xanth.
Many people may not remember the mini or mainframe computers they used, as they may not have ever been in the same room. They might however remember the terminals they used. Can I suggest:
- VT100, the early face of online terminals in the 1980s.
- LA100, this hardcopy terminal was the console of many a systems and the face of online computing for those without a CRT terminal. This hardcopy terminal could double as a printer too. They came with many different labels and brands, but they are all essentially the same beast.
- 2780 terminal, for those IBMers out there.
Some sample cables: an RS-232 cable, a parallel printer, a thick wire Ethernet cable, transceiver and transciever cable, a thinwire Ethernet cable and T connecter, etc.
Some sample media with storage capacity: computer card, paper tape, 9-track tape, misc. floppies, TU-52, TK50 (20 year-old predecessor to the current DLT family.)
I second that. You can find old SGI gear (Indigo2, or maybe even an Octane) for nothing, or next to nothing. Not only are they relatively cheap, but they look impressive as well... and you can tie them to things people relate to -- for example, I remember reading somewhere that the graphics folks working on Hollow Man and Gladiator were working on Octanes, and using some of the bigger SGI machines for the actual rendering.
Universities are a decent place to pick up old UNIX workstations as they're 'repurposed'.