--- Bill Sudbrink <wh.sudbrink_at_verizon.net> wrote:
> I wasn't able to go. Does anyone have any tales
> of great classiccmp finds? Or any other stories?
I was there from 08:00 to mid-afternoon on Friday. I only found
about three arm-loads of stuff worth buying. The two classiccmp
finds I got were an external 5.25" floppy enclosure that's the
mate to another one I got 15 years ago, and a box of S-100 stuff.
The drive box held two 5.25" floppies up on end, and has a
converter board inside - Z-80 based, with a 34-pin connector
for the floppies, and a 50-pin connector for the system. It
is almost certainly not SCSI. My older enclosure says "Burroughs"
on the front, IIRC. This one is nearly identical, but does not.
My older one also did not come with the controller board. Don't
know what I'm going to do with it, but the old one I used to use
to hold MFM hard disks for my external WX-1 ST-506 drive controller
that I used to use with my Amiga 1000 (through an 8-bit ISA adapter).
The S-100 haul was, essentially, all of a Cromemco system except the
PSU and cabinet - backplane, CPU, wad 'o memory, video card and
diskette controller - all Cromemco, IIRC. It even came with a Persci
8" floppy drive with a motorized eject. I couldn't carry the box,
so I came back for it later, but it took me about an hour to re-locate
the booth. Found it and it was my last trip back to the car.
I did stock up on machined-pin sockets (especially 40-pin sockets to
protect the Fluke9010A 6502 pod I got from Dan Cohoe on his way
through Columbus) and other connectory bits. Nabbed some GPIB cables,
new in bag for $5 each. Got a pair of 10Base5 transceivers for $5.
Now all I need is a few meters of etherhose (and a coring tool). One
OT find - a SPARC5/110 w/mix of 8MB and 32MB DIMMs and Sbus 10/100
Ethernet (no disk) for $35. Ultra 5s were $300 from the same vendor.
I missed one good find - a skinless BA213 w/KS650 (uVAX-III of some
flavor) with KDB50 and *dual* DELQA - Dan took a pass on it, and Mitch
Miller of Keyways got it for $20 (it was already marked "SOLD" when I
spotted it). Talking to Mitch later, he didn't even notice the CPU - he
was after the ethernet (and who wouldn't be for that price). Maybe I
should have offered him $10 and deinstalled the Ethernet for him and
disposed of the carcass. :-)
I went around looking for old, cool stuff, but found little to buy. Did
see a demonstration of an Enigma, but I've seen one before, in Munich.
Could have been nicer weather, though.
-ethan
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience
http://launch.yahoo.com
Received on Tue May 21 2002 - 15:24:27 BST