As requested, I have posted a picture of my recently aquired TI980B at...
http://penguincentral.com/retrocomputing/pix/ti980b/02cj003a.jpg
I am still in the cleaning/checkout phase. I have not applied power to
it yet.
I need to get a better digital camera. Right now, I'm using an Apple
QuickTake 150, but I don't have the close-up lens. It would cost new
from Apple about 50% of what I paid for the camera, PSU, external
battery pack and download cable. :-( As it is, I've taken hundreds
of excellent outdoor shots with it. It's awful for indoor photos
where detail is important. I think its default minimum focal length
is about 24" and the flash is so bright it causes spots on reflective
surfaces (the closeup lens also has a flash diffuser).
I might try to rig up a 2' string and a flash diffuser to at least not
take pictures that will be clearly outside the boundaries of the camera's
physical limitations, but even so, I still need a new camera. My current
favorite is a Kodak DC290. The only thing I've seen with as much manual
control that's newer is the DC4800. Comparing them side-by-side, I
still think I want the DC290. Even got a fistful of 16MB CF cards to
go in it!
As for the TI 980B, with the exception of the very scary, undocumented,
rack-mounted 2-square-feet of prototyping board that was cabled into
the DMA slot, it looks very clean. I have no idea what this peripheal
was supposed to do, and since it was stored at a high-school electronics
shop (which is being cleaned out this year which is how I got the TI
in the first place), it's covered in bent pins and broken wires. I also
know there are several missing chips (they came in the bottom of the
box - some jumper blocks with jumper resistors and a few 74181s, at least).
I doubt I'll ever be able to discern what this homemade peripheral ever
did, so I expect to photograph it and recycle the chips into other
classic machines (there's some Motorola RTL chips on there! Perfect
for my attempts to replicate a DEC W706/W707 if I ever get that far).
If I can get my camera happy making closeups, I'll see about adding some
pictures of the CPU and memory boards to the pic of the front panel.
-ethan
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Received on Tue Mar 19 2002 - 15:43:53 GMT
