Hardest to Find Classic Computers (Was: RE: Way OT: Just say no t o squirrels & Pascal question)

From: Christopher Smith <csmith_at_amdocs.com>
Date: Fri Dec 14 13:14:52 2001

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Douglas Quebbeman [mailto:dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com]

> Also not intended as the thrust of the topic:

> Systems you most of all want

Well, you really can't get away from writing about systems you want, since
you couldn't claim they're hard to find unless you've been looking. ;) That
said, here I go...

> These systems might be generally available, and might
> go for a price you can afford, but you just can't *find*
> them where you're at.

> Around here for me, it would be PDP-8's and Lisa's.

S-100 based CP/M machines seem to be very rare where I am.

MVME-bus machines of any type have been difficult for me to locate.

Acorn Archimedes systems are difficult, too, I assume because they were
never really popular in the US.

NeXT hardware of any type has been difficult for me to locate as well,
especially recently. It seems that everybody would like to have it and
there's not enough surplus left.

Amiga systems are generally in the same boat as NeXT. Once in a while you
find somebody who'll actually part with an Amiga, but it's rare. Most
people still use them.

I've never met a scrap AS/400 in person, though some of them show up on eBay
once in a while, so I don't know if this will count.

I've been looking for a TRS-80 Color Computer 3 setup for a very long time
and haven't found one yet. I assume those are mostly just setting in
peoples' closets and will appear in scrapyards and yard-sales eventually.

Do peripherals count too? If so, try finding a 9-track drive that doesn't
take up as much room as your fridge. Any EDSI hardware and controllers have
been very elusive to me as well.

Machines with front-panels are very rare. I have one, a Heath H-8. (You
can select an address using the keypad and type programs in octal -- talk
about an intuitive interface! I think we should replace the GUI with
this... :) It's the only one I've ever met, honestly. (Speaking of which,
I must eventually get it to do something interesting. :)

I remember from old "Hot CoCo" magazines a few systems, namely the Dragon,
and the "Micro Color Computer," which I have not seen since.

It is difficult for me to find people who've even heard of, much less seen,
much less know where I can get, a Symbolics system.

The same applies to any of the Cray systems -- even when they were made in
relatively high-volume.

The SGI m68k machines are also relatively "unknown." (The Iris 2000/3000s)

I'm sure there are more.

Regards,

Chris


Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL

/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
 
Received on Fri Dec 14 2001 - 13:14:52 GMT