>
>
>
> > Ok, you have just put us all to eternal shame. Do you have a list of all
> > you've got? cuz I'm entirely interested to know. Or perhaps just an
> > excerpt of your more rare systems. Where the hell do you store it all?
Wow.... This lot totally dwarfs my little collection (I think I have about
150 machines, including calculators, but excluding interesting
peripherals), and I thought I was doing pretty well!
>
> As to where I store it ... all over! I tend to forget what I have but I
Ditto. Storage is a _BIG_ problem, and one which I guess all people on
this list have to deal with. A mad friend of mine is a calculator
collector, and he's fond of pointing out in his lectures that his
collection will fit under his bed, while mine (pointing to ard on the
front row :-)) will barely fit in the house
> the earliest is probably the PDP 8i, and PDP 11/05. Of course the Mits
Do you have any other minis? I find them a lot more interesting than
micros, as I think I've mentioned before, since you can actually
understand how the CPU works at gate level.
> Altair and Imsai. As to being rare, I don't have a good handle on that
> part. The collection includes the early Pets with the Chicklet keyboard,
> Atari, Heath Data Systems, Northstar, Altos, CompuPro, Wang, DEC, Timex,
> Commodore, Lobo, Polymorphic, Vector Graphic, Intel, Corona and Cordata
> (the company that took over Corona,) Morrow, Ohio Scientific, some Apple
> stuff, Tandy and Radio Shack, Sol, Cromemco, Xerox, NCC, Televideo, NCR,
> Kaypro, Osbourne, IBM, Sanyo, Compaq, Jonos, Eagle, and probably a bunch
> more I can't recall off hand.
A partial list of manufacturers in my collection :
Acorn, Apple, Commodore, Atari, Tandy, IBM, DEC, 3RCC/PERQ systems, ICL,
HH, Panasonic, Research Machines, Oric, HP, Northstar, I2S, Intel, FTS,
Exidy, Xerox/Diablo, Tektronix, Olivetti, CCS, Sharp, Torch, Philips,
Epson, Ramtek, Grinnell, Sun, Apollo, WCW(no complete machines - yet!),
AES, Zilog, Sage, Sinclair, Sanyo, Tatung, SGS, CASU, Jupiter Cantab,
Grundy, Genrad/Futuredata, NEC, PPL, Evans and Sutherland, Sanders, Facit,
Cipher, Teletype, Novus, Casio, etc.
>
> When I first started collecting, the idea was to save these things from
> the dumpster. As time went on, a lot of people kept their eyes open
I think most people start like that. You suddenly realise that a lot of
computer history is going to be lost for ever unless somebody does
something about it - and you're that somebody.
> for me and were willing to give me the stuff rather than have to junk it.
A tip : Get known where you work (and at church, clubs, etc) as somebody
who wants old computer and electronic 'junk'. It's amazing what you get
given - several times people have said 'Oh, we're about to throw this out,
do you want it' where 'this' is a complete computer system with all
manuals.
> Another thing I am looking for are the docs and schematics for the Zenith
> H-67 Hard Disk sub-system used with the H-89. The H-67 has a bad power
> supply board, and without the schematics, it is a bit hard to
> troubleshoot.
Power supplies are either linear or switchers. Linears are next-to-trivial
to sort out (at least if they use any of the standard regulator IC's), and
switching units can be repaired. There are a number of standard IC's, and
if any of those are used, you can generally guess the configuration in
about 5 minutes with a bit of practice.
SMPS's that either use standard linear IC's (723's, 555's, etc) or which
are entirely discrete transistors are more of a pain, but again, there are
circuits that turn up again and again. I've found that reading a handful
of service manuals (especially TV or monitor manuals) will often turn up a
circuit that's similar to yours.
If there are any IC's in the PSU, post the numbers, and I'll see if I can
guess what's going on.
--
-tony
ard12_at_eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill
Received on Sun Jun 08 1997 - 22:13:15 BST