At 17:30 29-04-98 +0000, Philip.Belben_at_powertech.co.uk wrote:
>Doug:
>
>> Is the reason those old radio/phonograph boxes are not being thrown
>> away is that noone notice the cover and thinks it's just a pretty
>> dresser w/o drawers :)? Also hideaway sewing machines.
>
>:-) I doubt it...
>
>The real crime is those who buy sewing machines with pedestals and
>treadles, throw away the sewing machine and turn the pedestal into an
>olde worlde iron framed coffee table. I am told by a friend in the
>trade that this is v. common.
There were folks who took a late-20's/early 30's radio which was built into
a beautiful wooden cabinet and turned it into a piece of furniture by
gutting it. Then there were the late 40's and early 50's TV cabinets which
met the same fate. At least I've rescued several of each of these kinds of
receivers for my collection.
>> Of course, the System/36 (I think, maybe not) was built into a desk.
>
>There was a system/36 that was the size of a desk pedestal but I never
>saw that particular variant. The system/32 (and possibly the s/38?) had
>a desk built into _it_...
Anybody remember seeing (or even heard of) the HP250 business computer?
Hewlett Packard offered it built in two ways: one was a desk-like
arrangement while the other was the standard box-like cabinet on wheels.
Electronically, both were pretty much identical except the desk or console
style had a CRT display built into it. I've got the wheeled cabinet style
250/30 system with separate terminals (a HP2622 variant). The computer
cabinet is the same dimensions as the typical HP7908/HP791x fixed disk
drive units. Used the processor from the HP9845 with probably a bit
different microcoding to allow multiple users and/or strictly business
style useage. Gotta find more on this sometime soon.
>
>> And then there were the teletypes (are the ones that are mostly used
>> as examples of teletypes ASR-33?), printers, etc.
>
>Yes.
That's right. I have several 33's. One is an exceptionally clean/unused one
I got in 1985 from a group of test equipment from the IBM Endicott plant
which was shut down around then. Just right for my DG Nova 1200. It's a
noisy thing especially when I used to hook it up to my R390 communications
receiver through a terminal unit and listen to RTTY (radioteletype) in the
ham bands or commercial traffic elsewhere in the shortwave frequencies.
That 33 was probably one of the last 33's built at the TeleType Corp.
plant. I can check that out with the folks in the Greenkeys listserver group.
--Chris
-- --
Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY USA
Member of Antique Wireless Association
URL:
http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/
Received on Thu Apr 30 1998 - 08:01:19 BST