Bravo Sellam!!!!
Superb work indeed, your incredible efforts deserve a HUGE round of applause!
Curt
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> The rescue of a very obscure 70s era mini-computer was accomplished last
> Thursday and Friday. It had been sitting in a storage shed on a forsaken
> piece of property in Tampa, Florida, for at least 15 years, quite possibly
> 20. Although it wasn't exposed to the elements, the humidity, termites
> and rats did a number on the machine. I was told of the machine by a man
> related to the person who used to own the property, but has been passed
> away now for several years. The property was tied up in probate, and he
> invited me to just come and take the machine whenever I wanted.
>
> The machine was made by Four Phase Systems, somewhere in the 1972-73
> timeframe. Four Phase Systems was a company that ran out of Santa Clara,
> California, from the late-60s through the 80s. I believe they were
> eventually bought out by Motorola. One of the biggest technological
> achievements of Four Phase was in producing a sort of microprocessor
> before Intel, in the 1968-1969 timeframe. It was called the AL1 and was
> intended to be a general purpose CPU for mini-computer systems. I don't
> have many details on it yet but I'm awaiting more literature. I became
> aware of it from my research during VCF 2.0, when I was promoting the
> unveiling of Ray Holt's F14 CADC "microprocessor".
>
> I don't know if the AL1 has all the elements of a "microprocessor" as
> defined by the base standard, which is the Intel 4004. But one professor
> at North Carolina State University wrote a paper arguing that FPS could
> have called it a microprocessor, but chose not to. He's sending me a copy
> of the paper he wrote and I'll report further when I receive it.
>
> The rescue was not without its challenges. Louis and his wife met me at
> the airport and we drove over to the site. It was a dark storage shed
> cluttered with junk. We immediately set about pulling out the computer
> hardware. Luckily, it was all in racks on rollers, but we still had to
> roll it out onto dirt to get it onto the truck. The machines were filthy,
> having been infested with rat's nests. We didn't realize the extent of it
> until we got them to Louis' warehouse. Louis had made a couple prior
> visits to investigate the site and to round up various bits of
> documentation. Some of the manuals were almost complete destroyed by
> termites. They looked simply water damaged until you opened them up,
> where you would find that they were almost completely eaten out by
> termites (with still live termites running around inside). Fortunately, a
> lot of the documentation did survive in relatively good shape. We grabbed
> up all the docs worth saving and stuffed them into two big garbage bags.
> I'll have to sort through them (and hopefully not introduce a horrible
> strain of termites to the California environment :) Some of the manuals
> that survived included schematics of the various boards that comprise the
> system.
>
> We loaded everything up onto the truck within the limits of the sunlight
> we had. We then drove it over to Louis' warehouse. The next morning we
> palletized everything for shipping. We had a 5' tall 19" rack for the
> CPU, another for the tape drive, and then a 3' tall cabinet that housed a
> removeable platter hard drive. We also got a smaller Xerox 800 word
> processing machine. All the racks had a tremendous amount of shredded
> paper, Spanish moss, and other undesirable elements from the rat's nests.
> One nest even contained the remains of one of its previous inhabitants.
> Luckily, Louis' shop had an air compressor. We tried to blow everything
> out as thoroughly as possible.
>
> Here are the pictures of the machine:
>
> CPU card cage
> http://www.siconic.com/computers/Four%20Phase%20Systems%20CPU.jpg
>
> CPU Front Panel (front cover removed)
> http://www.siconic.com/computers/Four%20Phase%20Systems%20Front%20Panel.jpg
>
> CPU (left) and tape drive
> http://www.siconic.com/computers/Four%20Phase%20Systems%20Mini-Computer.jpg
>
> This picture shows the grime and yuck that was inside the hard drive
> unit. A lot of the mess was the decayed sound-dampening foam lining the
> inside:
>
> http://www.siconic.com/computers/Inside%20Four%20Phase%20Systems%20Hard%20Drive.jpg
>
> This picture shows the rat's nest inside the Xerox 800 unit:
>
> http://www.siconic.com/computers/Xerox%20800%20Rat's%20Nest.jpg
>
> I didn't take any pictures of the terminals, but we saved four out of the
> 8 or 9 that were there. We also found an old Televideo all-in-one CP/M
> machine inside the house on the property.
>
> We put the CPU and tape drive on one pallet, and the hard drive on
> another. I left the Xerox 800 behind, for now. Louis is holding it for
> me until I can determine if it is significant enough to save. The reason
> I left it is because it is fairly rusted inside. I don't like to trash
> anything, but the circumstances being that it was very rusted and I didn't
> want to fill another pallet, I decided to leave it until I could research
> it further to determine if it is worth saving. It looks like it might be
> some predecessor of the Xerox 820 computer, as it has the same color
> scheme and badge. Or it may be related to the 8010 in some odd way. I'm
> not sure. But if someone has information on this machine I'd certainly
> appreciate you sharing it. It had a typewriter attached by a thick cable,
> and two digital cassette drives on the front. If anyone has any info on
> this machine then please let me know. If it ends up being worth saving,
> Louis will ship it out to me. If not, Louis will dumpster it.
>
> I shoved the rest of the terminals, keyboards and documentation inside the
> open space of the cabinets, first wrapping them in cardboard to give them
> some cushioning. Everything was very snug. We wrapped the machines in
> cardboard and then Louis banded them. Everything was tight.
>
> We had a guy from the business next door load everything onto the U-Haul
> we rented with a forklift. If we'd thought about it, we could have gotten
> by without the U-Haul, since we originally were going to use pallets that
> would not have fit inside Louis' pickup. But we ended up using very
> narrow pallets. Oh well. Something to keep in mind for next time.
>
> We drove the pallets out to Forward Air in Tampa for shipping.
> (http://www.forwardair.com). Forward Air is a favorite shipper amongst
> arcade game collectors (and myself) because it is so cheap. They charge
> USD$0.20/lbs from Tampa to San Francisco (rates vary depending on distance
> and other factors). The only drawback is that you must haul your pallets
> to and from their depots, which are located throughout the US (check their
> website for locations). But it's entirely worth it. The pallets weighed
> way more than we anticipated: 1,377 pounds total! I was thinking, based
> on the weight estimates I initially got, that it would cost me only around
> $120 to ship. It ended up being $294. Still, not bad for almost 3/4 of a
> ton.
>
> I will have more information about the machine once I retrieve it from
> Forward Air's depot in San Francisco either today or tomorrow. I'll have
> a chance to look over everything over the weekend.
>
> I'd like to profusely thank Louis Schulman and his wife for their help
> with this project. I certainly would have had extraordinary difficulty
> trying to do this whole thing without his help.
>
> While we're on the topic of Louis, I would just like to give a plug to his
> business, Island Wood Works. He makes fantastic outdoor wood furniture.
> This is real quality stuff. You folks in Florida (and just about anywhere
> for that matter...they've shipped furniture to places all over the
> country, including the San Diego Zoo) should definitely give Louis a call
> and buy some furniture from him. His number is 727/572.1119, or find him
> on the web at http://www.islandwoodworks.com. He's in Clearwater.
>
> Thanks, Louis!!!
>
> Lessons learned:
>
> I planned well in advance for this adventure. You all might remember me
> posting a message back in January asking for assistance on this project. I
> got a few responses (thanks, all), but Louis was right in the Tampa area,
> had a truck, the facilities to palletize everything, and a keen sense of
> adventure, so it worked out perfectly.
>
> I checked where everything was in advance (the nearest U-Haul location,
> the location of Forward Air, the hotel I'd be staying in, etc.) from
> MapQuest which helped me get an idea of the geography and how much
> driving/hauling would be involved.
>
> It was very, very helpful having Louis pre-field the site and try to
> determine how much everything weighed so I could estimate the shipping
> costs for my budget. This, it turns out, is more difficult to estimate
> than one might think. We thought each rack weighed only a couple hundred
> pounds but it turns out each must've weighed 400-500 each.
>
> U-Haul is always a fricken nightmare. Just trying to get them to answer
> the phone is a challenge. I've used them many times before, but I'm
> pretty well aware of what goes on inside U-Haul because they were a client
> of the last company I worked for, and I've visited their coporate HQ.
> The place is a mess. Still, it is the only game in town, and the best
> value (as long as the truck doesn't break down :) It cost $42 to rent a
> 10' truck, but only for the 4 hours they allowed us to keep it (their
> rentals are not "daily", but they still charge you the full 24 hour rate).
> Don't get me started on how much I hate U-Haul, but as I said, they are
> the only game in town unless you want to shell out a hundred bucks to use
> a truck for a day with a company like Ryder or something.
>
> Forward Air is a great company to use for shipping large loads of old
> computers. I used them before on a haul of Xerox 6085 "Daybreaks" from
> Raleigh, North Carolina, and that went well. Be aware that Forward Air
> does have a reputation for dropping things and damaging them. I hope my
> machine arrived OK, but I won't know until I go get it. I'll report on it
> once I do. Still, the value can't be beat.
>
> Always give yourself enough leeway in terms of time. Everything went as
> well for us as it could have, and so we actually finished quicker than I
> originally scheduled. I planned to leave on Saturday morning for Fort
> Lauderdale, but ended up taking off at 4pm on Friday instead. Retrieving
> the computers only took about 2 hours. Palletizing everything took about
> 4 hours. We did this leisurely. If we'd have rushed we probably could
> have done it all in 2 hours.
>
> This was a very fun project. Every serious big iron collector should do
> at least one long distance haul like this. Even you guys who only collect
> micros should try something like this once. It always makes for good
> stories to share with other collectors.
>
> :)
>
> Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
Received on Thu Mar 01 2001 - 16:26:34 GMT
