It's been awhile (hi, new stuff, help, apologies, etc...)

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Wed Jul 19 11:54:35 2000

Hi Mike,

   Good to hear from you. I've been wondering where you've been. I have a
pile of Exorciser stuff for you. I finally finished helping Avitar pick up
all the loads that they bought. Whew! I picked up a SGI Onyx Reality Engine
2. Man, That sucker is huge! It's as big as two full size refrigerators put
together. I called Bob R and he promptly came over and bought it (for a
very reasonable price, IMO. The thing was delivered to MMC in 1993). I
helped him load it and take it home. I didn't think we've ever get it
loaded and unloaded. We checked it out, it has 8 R4000 CPUs and 1 Gb of RAM
in it!!! But the dammed thing needs 240 volts 30 amp 3 phase power! Bob
says that that may finally give him the incentive to move into his own
place. BTW Bob loves SGIs and he bought one of these for work a few years
ago so he has all the docs and software for them. He's happy as a pig in a
wallow! That's about all that's new around here.

    Joe

At 11:02 PM 7/19/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi everyone! It's been a bit since I allowed myself the luxery of
'dropping in' I've missed you guys.
>
>I've been playing around lately with a pretty complete TRS-80 Model 1
setup( LNW EI, RS EI, Holmes EI (real cool), Plug&Power, LightPen, Voice
Synth, Floppies, Exatrons, Plotter, Quick Printer, LinePirnters, Acoustic
and dc modems, sans software) . Anyone have some trs-dos or newdos systems
disks and software and I'm especially looking for the software driver to
run the voice synthesizer. One day I'll find a Voxbox too. Also been
tinkering with the RCA Cosmac Dev 4, what a cool machine.
>
>I also finally got the processor board I needed to get my PDP 11/05
running. Can someone help me out with a 'restoration checklist' for the
machine? (no docs...cept' a 11x processor handbook)
>
>And of couse I was able to interleve in some classic computer hunting with
the many temporary bouts of insanity and on a low budget I must brag.
>
>First, at a school sale, I picked up a Commodore PET 4008, and a PET
40032, and a TRS-80 Plotter 1 for $1 each.
>
>Then, a comrad going through spacial compression, ;), yielded 2
station-wagon fulls of stuff including a TRS-80 m1 monitor, 3 minidisks,
a128k mac, 3 ][+'s, 15 ][e's, many ][ and /// monitors, many ][ drives, a
Commodore 1581 floppy and light pen, two Adam floppys (one boxed), and
more. He wouldn't take money. I had to fight being given money for the
"work done cleaning."
>
>A Tandy 4D, one of the few RS computers through the 6000 that I was oddly
missing.
>
>Then, found a great apple 2gs system with a Mac Crate card and 30mb
harddrive with gsos 6 on it. It rocks! and cost $5
>
>Then, found another Osborne 1 at a fleamarket. Heh, when I opened the
keyboard lid, water drained out. Lets say that negotations began then. ;)
At that same fleamarket I also found the oldest Commodore that I now own
for $5. It's a logo'd model 202 electromachicanical adding machine that's
beautiful and works.
>
>A Tek 464 Storage Scope for $9.
>
>And then the sequence began that would put some wood in the ole pants...
>
>I won a lot at the auction for $15. Under the pile was a 1988 NeXT Cube
(fist year of production after six years of umm, development), matching
NeXT laser printer, and keyboard, and mouse. Trading the rest of the cart
off got me also a 21" radius monster for free that I niavely hoped I'd be
able to use with the Cube.
>
>I got the Cube home and after first glance I realized that I wouldn't even
be able to turn it on. I was missing the MegaPixel display. Mouse plugs
into keyboard, keyboard plugs into monitor, monitor plugs into the Cube,
Cube plugs into wall, funny bone's connected to the... Anyway, the power
switch is on the keyboard. I coudn't even turn it on because of the
missing monitor link.
>
>I thought that one was going to take a *long* while to find. I 'got a fix
the only way I could' by reading "Steve Jobs: The NeXT Big Thing" by and
recommend it. Early PARC and a little Apple is touched upon, and Jobs
stewardship of NeXT and more is evaluated pretty openly.
>
>Anyway, employing blue feather technologies, not the company, guess what,
the MegaPixel display showed up the *next time* at the same auction. Major
probability earthquake! This time though, someone else was intereted in
something else on the cart (all junk) and it took $40 to win it. Damn!
Auction dynamics in action, At other times it would have been $5. But the
other bidder was known to 'just sit' on purchases and desperate situations
call for desperate measures. I marginalized $20 and scored!
>
>I rushed home with my new MegaPixel, fondiling it along the way, and
immediately hooked everyting up. Power! ...Well, it boots. I get to the
NeXT rom monitor ver 1 rel 46 and can exercise the machine from there. It
doesn't have the floptical in it and a 'b sd' boot command returns a read
capacity error on the scsi hard disk. With the rom monitor I can boot to
an ethernet attress or scsi target. Is there anyway I can get a disk image
of ole NeXTStep on a compatible scsi drive and can I use something like an
Apple scsi CD-ROM with it?
>
>That's all of it for the 'new stuff'' section, I think I also owe some
people documentation (Allison and Doug) and will get those copies out early
next week. I'm very sorry it is taking so long
>
>Also been trying to organize the collection, an inhuman feat. One of my
Mt. Everests, among many.
>
>Joe, where are ya buddy? I'd have been down there earlier but my car's
been acting up. D'oh. Howzit going?
>
>And, should anyone find themselves in or going to Jacksonville FL, drop me
a note for a little north Florida VCFing.
>
>Cheers
>- Mike: dogas_at_leading.net
>
>
>
>
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Received on Wed Jul 19 2000 - 11:54:35 BST