Dayton Hamvention

From: Dan Veeneman <dan_at_ekoan.com>
Date: Thu May 20 11:36:58 2004

At 02:04 PM 5/19/04, you wrote:
>Another year and another missed Hamvention. Did anyone go? How was it? What
>did you pick up?

Friday weather was pretty good. Classic computer-wise I picked up
a Heathkit ET-3400 with the Memory I/O expansion, along with all
the manuals. Got a Heathkit EPROM programmer with one module
(I saw the other one that Roger mentioned but thought it was too
expensive). From the same seller I also got a Tandy Color Computer
EDTASM cartridge and a 16K memory module for a Timex-Sinclair.

I bought a Micro PDP-11 and borrowed the seller's hand-truck to
get it out to my car. Right now it's in my garage -- I have no
documentation and haven't had time yet to check it out.

I bought four BCC52x single-board computers, with manuals and
interface documentation. These use the 8052 BASIC language
processor discussed on this list recently.

I hefted a Heathkit H-47 eight-inch drive housing (no drives) back
to the car. Quite heavy.

I bought a TRS-80 Pocket Computer in a case with a photocopied
manual, along with two handheld electronic games (Tandy Cycle Race
and Tandy Championship Baseball).

Also picked up an HP-35 calculator and AC adapter. Later I bought
an HP-41C and 82104A card reader, both in the original boxes with
all the manuals, along with an HP-28 and manuals. I also bought a
whole bunch of Texas Instruments calculator repair parts, which
happened to include a few TIL-311 LED displays.

I met fellow list-member Dan Cohoe, who had a truck full of HP
equipment (mostly 64000 stuff). Very nice guy, except that he's
taking all the old HP gear up to Canada! :-)

Saturday was mostly rain, but I did get a Hayes Micromodem II
card for the Apple, as well as some non-computer test equipment
and manuals. Sellers were motivated to drop prices since there were
few buyers out and many of them decided to leave early.

Sunday was much better, weather-wise. I bought two HP 5036A
microprocessor learning systems (the ones in the Samsonite cases).
I got an HP-85 and a number of boxed ROM module accessories
from an ex-HP employee, as well as some interfaces (HP-IB
and serial). He also gave an an HP NetBeamIR box that provides
network connectivity via infrared links.

One popular sport on Sunday is trashbin scrounging. Sellers will
throw out or leave behind equipment and parts that they weren't
able to sell, so many folks make the rounds searching through
trash piles. I managed to find a new-in-the-box AOR WX-2000
weather fax receiver, some Apple II cards (nothing too exciting,
just serial and disk interfaces), an ATI 3D Rage video card, an
AMD AM2960 evaluation kit from 1984, and a complete Laplink
package with cables, manuals and software.

As others have said, the amount of classic computer equipment at
Dayton seems to be dwindling year by year. Occasionally there are
interesting items (the Micro PDP-11, for instance), but you have to
dig to find them.

This posting is probably too long already, but I'll be happy to provide
more details off-line for anyone who's interested.


Cheers,

Dan
www.decodesystems.com/wanted.html
Received on Thu May 20 2004 - 11:36:58 BST