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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?"
Basically anything with a tape reader, or even better if you can find them, anything with puch cards.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Especially those lunchbox-sized Sparcstation IPX/IPC/LX/ZX computers. So cute, even your girlfriend will love'em.
I hear these are still in use in jungle research because they can withstand tempature and other issues that come in the jungle. I have a 100 and a 102 model, both with 8k of ram. I also have the tape recorder to go with that and some software (tape and rom based). It was a great system to get me though school in those days; even though it was a bit heavy. Quella
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...
A nice example of the rarely-seen-these-days vector monitor. Available for about $50 on ebay.
Those things were staples of every computer room as a file server, plus they had great games and that classic mac shape. They are remarkably stable, etc. I still have a Mac Classic, its awesome as well, but not quite as boxy.
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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.
This would be particularly interesting, since you can point out to the Mac users in your audience (and there's bound to be more than a few) that most of the basic concepts behind OS X were laid down in 1989. The downside is that a NeXT machine is likely to eat up your entire $600 budget and more.
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.
Suggestions:
But seriously, if you post the location, date, and time here - I expect a few people would be willing to show up with their oldie-but-goodie systems. Mine got junked for my last move, otherwise I'd certainly bring mine in! Good Luck!
The old SGI, such as a personal Iris, an original Indigo (when they were indigo), or an Indy (with its jazz-riff startup sound) would all be good choices. Even the screensavers such as Electropaint are a sight, when you realize that they were running when PC's shipped with 4 unreadable colors or glowing green.
I recently saved the memory from a DataGeneral NOVA-II; 16K of genuine Cores. You should look for some older core memory from an old IBM mainframe, or a Nicolet 1080, as those cores are big enough to see without a magnifier.
I'm still fond of the VAX, but that's a conniseur's architecture. Nobody is going to casually understand the significance of a washing machine with blue trim.
Just to be odd, you could try to get a full-sized picture of a Cray-1 or Cray-2, some add from the era touting their work in high-end computational science, and then put a Palm-pilot or some such down with its speed in Crays next to it. I had this discussion with my students the other day that I did most of the calcs for my thesis (not so long ago, either) on a machine that had less memory than a standard graphics card. It was a lot bigger too. It's good to show. Maybe just a big sketch showing size of machine at constant performance, starting with a Cray or IBM-360, and going to the modern equivalent.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
you can rent my Wang for $100.
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.)