Vintage Computing..Show us yours...

[Morningside]

Sorry about this. I decided to take some pictures of my collection (Well some of it...This is about 10%).
Apple computer stuff:
Apple 2gs and old Apple 2 book.

I also have an Apple 2c and Apple 2 europlus boxed up. Note the Star LC10 printer box

A Mac Classic and Apple 2e

Some books for programming

Two thick folders:


Calculators etc:
TI-57 and printer. I also have a large box containing TI51,53, and 59's with the little magnetic strips.


A further box of calculators

Psion. I also have a XP as well including data eraser.

Handheld computer

Clever machine but never took off. Note the PRICE!!!!

Everyone has an old chess machine, dont they? I also have a couple of Z80 based ones from the 1970s

A MUST for ANY vintage collector!!

Strange touch screen computer

Remember this classic?

Big machines:
An old workhorse.

Future collectable? Note the 3Kw backup UPS above it.

Take your CPU for a test drive. (the bits on it are the packing material breaking up).

A classic microprofesser.


Other stuff:
Some old video and audio bits.


Old serial diagnostic tool. This is a spare. I also have a very clean one with podules.

Arcade time!


Need an old 360k floppy drive?

Budding 80's single ready to hit the street?


Lastly a classic game from the 1970's


I will get to the end of all this sorting....
In here is some classic 8051 and lots of Z80 deveopment units, test boards, logic analyers, CB radios, HP 3000 workhorse, audio bits and much much more.



This lot is excluding stuff in drawers (RCA CPUs, Psion stuff, old mobile phones). I think I should have enough to start my own (if not bizarre) museum.

Edited by Morningside on Thursday 23 October 19:27

[AndyWoodall]

I also have a fair amount of stuff in the same theme as you posted, although perhaps somewhat more recent. I moved recently so and filtered out the bits I actually want to keep.

At the moment I'm keeping my 512k Mac Classic, which I love, an original 1998 Bondi Blue iMac and my spare (but still very handy machines), a G4 Titanium Powerbook and a Blue and White G3 Tower, which I'm quite sentimentally attached too. Both of those last machines were only taken out of regular service a year ago and ran Tiger very respectably, but the move to Leopard has meant I can't really use them as my proper main machines.

Stuff that I've either gotten rid of, or are planning to get rid of from my hoard are...

>Powermac 6200 with a pretty nice AV monitor, cost a fortune in 1995!
>Powerbook Duo + Dock
>Amstrad Notebook, an NC200
>Some sort of old spectrum
>A 2001 Dell tower which I must say was a brilliant PC, and I can't stand the things.

I also found a Psion Revo as we were moving a month ago, which I thought I'd thrown away ages ago. Sadly it doesn't work, but I remember the wonder of using this in a cafe connected via IR to a Nokia 7110 and thinking that we were really living in the future. LOL

[qube_TA]

Morningside said:

Sorry about this. I decided to take some pictures of my collection (Well some of it...This is about 10%).
Apple computer stuff:

Calculators etc:
A further box of calculators
Handheld computer
Everyone has an old chess machine, dont they? I also have a couple of Z80 based ones from the 1970s
A MUST for ANY vintage collector!!
Strange touch screen computer
Remember this classic?
Big machines:
An old workhorse.
Future collectable? Note the 3Kw backup UPS above it.
A classic microprofesser.
Other stuff:
Some old video and audio bits.
Old serial diagnostic tool. This is a spare. I also have a very clean one with podules.
Arcade time!
Need an old 360k floppy drive?
Budding 80's single ready to hit the street?
Lastly a classic game from the 1970's
I will get to the end of all this sorting....
In here is some classic 8051 and lots of Z80 deveopment units, test boards, logic analyers, CB radios, HP 3000 workhorse, audio bits and much much more.

Nice collection,

single then?

[Pigeon]

I have a Calcomp thermal wax transfer printer dating from 1992... I'm not sure if it works or not. I can make it print its built-in test page and I have found a .ppd file for it so I can install it in CUPS and successfully transmit a page of data to it for printing... but will it actually print that page, will it buggery, nothing seems to persuade it to transfer the data from buffer to paper.

Apart from the .ppd file I can't find any actual drivers for it for any OS more recent than Windows 3.1... I keep wondering if one day I will get round to installing Windows 3.1 on a spare machine so I can either confirm it doesn't work or sniff the parallel port and figure out what I need to make Linux do to make it print the page.

But then on the other hand I might just figure that even if I do get it working, once it's used its transfer roll I won't be able to get another one so I might as well not bother...

I don't have much by way of stuff interesting by age rather than by obscurity... Probably the oldest thing I have is a Hornby "Zero 1" digital model railway controller. From reading the description I thought this was going to be the dog's bks... it got rid of all the complicated switchery required to run more than one train at a time with traditional methods, all the tracks were permanently live and carried a digital signal to a decoder/motor drive unit which you installed in each locomotive. You could control multiple trains on the same piece of track, the carriage lights didn't go out when the train stopped, and as a bonus you could connect additional decoders to the track to operate signals and points and so cut out the additional wiring for them too.

Trouble was, it turned out to be cack... Not only through being badly made with a graunchy speed slider and stty buttons. The motor speed and direction control module, in order to be simple enough and have a low enough power semiconductor count to be made small enough to fit inside a locomotive, relied on the track being energised with AC. That way the power semiconductor count was brought down to one triac which was fired with suitable timing to apply a suitable proportion of the appropriate half-cycle to the motor for the desired speed and direction.

The AC was plain 50Hz derived from the mains, and the noise from the locomotive motor when presented with half-wave-rectified 50Hz was horrendous. Steam locomotives making a noise like a hammer drill is just a bit st. And they ran rough as aholes with it.

And there was a terrible throttle delay on it, if you fked up and sent a train on a collision course and suddenly realised what you'd done and yanked the throttle down to zero the train would carry on going for a second or two before anything happened and there would be a crash anyway.

I'm not sure if I still have the three-in-one football, tennis and squash video game with rotary knobs to control the bats. I do remember taking it apart and fitting a switch to turn the speaker off because I was fed up with the bloody thing going beep... beep... beep at me all the bloody time. That was the only video game I have ever owned.

[dilbert]

I have;

1. 8086 with CGA graphics, and a 10MB disk, and a 5"1/4 floppy drive.
2. 80486 with both a DX2-50 and an SX66 processor.
3. PII-450 that's been pretty stripped out (but is marked to become a MIDI synthesiser one day).
4. P4 that I still use on my network.
5. Core 2 Quad (in use).
6. Epson full width (remember computer paper) dot matrix parallel printer, with tractor feed.
7. A3 HP HPGL serial plotter (someone paid a mint for that - but I think I was given it).
8. An ancient EPROM programmer, which does up to 27C512 devices, on the parallel port (thankfully he interface details are printed on the box - I have no paperwork)

• Numerous x86,C,JAVA,8051,6811,Z80 textbooks.
• The 80 86,286,386 device databook that covers the whole chipset including DMA controllers and co-processors (still pretty useful that).
• Casio FX730-P calculator with basic interpreter.
• Psion II Organiser.
• Donkey kong double screen
• Entex PacMan2

Edited by dilbert on Friday 24th October 03:06

[davidd]

Not really mine, but the icl me29 was the first system I ever worked on as an IT Pro

22 years ago!

D

Edited by davidd on Friday 24th October 22:26

[Meeja]

dilbert said:

I have;

• Donkey kong double screen

Do you mean one of these?



If so... Cool!!!

I still have one, in mint condition and still boxed. Looks like it has never been used, but trust me, it has!

Still works too!

[shadowninja]

I have two Acorn Electrons (one doesn't work) plus that thing you stick on the back for inserting ROM cartridges, a Quickshot 2 joystick and loads of magazines, games, books...

[plasticpig]

Have a few bits and bobs.

Tandy TRS80-102
Tandy TRS80-200
TI CC40
HP75
2 X Cambridge Z88's plus accesories
Olivetti M10
Husky Hunter
Husky Hawk
IBM Thinkpad 750 running OS/2 Warp

No idea if any of it works as most of its in my parents loft. Apart from the a Z88 and the Thinkpad which do still work and are used occasionally.

[Zumbruk]

I gave all my old stuff to the Computer Museum at Bletchley Park a couple of years ago.

[Morningside]

Zumbruk said:

I gave all my old stuff to the Computer Museum at Bletchley Park a couple of years ago.

I thought about this BUT I would still like to keep them but allow people to see the items...As I said this is a very small amount.
I also have some obscure stuff like a Sony Tantel monitor with original BT plug.

[Zod]

I can't match the OP, but I do have:

Apple ][ europlus, with two Disk ][ 5.25" floppies and a Microvitec Colour Cub monitor

NeXT TurboColorStation with 21" NeXT monitor

Sun SparcStation 5 with Sun 17" monitor

Psion Series 5

Psion Series 7 with NetBook ROM

Nokia 2110, 8110, 7110, 6110, 6210, 6310, 6310i, 8910i, 6230i, 9310, 9310i, N95, N95 8GB, E90

and loads of processors, RAM sticks, motherboards, hard drives, optical drives, graphics cards, sound cards, network cards etc

[wildoliver]

I had a lovely collection of various machines, from an old 286 (with twin 5 1/4" drives and no HD of course) a variety of standard and modified Atari STs ranging from an early ST through the Fms and eventually the delightful STEs with 4 meg of ram! Also had a cambridge "camputers" Lynx that was never the best of machines.

I always wanted a stacey (laptop ST). I remember using a dx2 486 at a friends house playing doom and from memory quake one and marvelling at the performance, then came the pentium and suddenly it felt as if the new revolution had come, in many ways that big jump has never been replicated by any processor upgrades since, they seem to get faster and faster every year, but it is hardly noticeable now.

I also remember 850 meg hard disks being the norm! I doubt you would even get a vista installation on one now!

[Jinx]

All I have left is a Amstrad Cpc 6128 (Colour monitor, with a knackered floppy drive - but I do still have a tape deck that will work with it) and a 486 DX2 - 8 mb Vesa local bus graphics running Dos 6.2 and Windows 3.11 for work groups.
At my dad's place though there should still be a Texas Ti99-4 (not the 4a) and a C64. I think he dumped the 8086 Amstrad 1640

[wildoliver]

from memory we had an amstrad cpc i think 64, it had 3" diskettes (wasn't that a good idea!)

[Alfa_75_Steve]

Stuff I still have kicking around, but can't be arsed digging out to take photos:

Mac Classic
Powermac 7500
Powermac 9600
iMac G3 (Grape)
Powerbook Duo
'Tonka' iBook
Apple eMate
Palm IIIc
Palm IIIe
Palm vX
Palm Zire (not so old, this one)
Dragon 32
Sord / CGL M5
2 x Vectrex (1 boxed)
Amiga 500+
Sega Saturn
Sega Dreamcast
Original shape Playstation 1
Original Gameboy
Newer slim Gameboy

Think that's about it.

[dilbert]

Meeja said:

dilbert said:

I have;

• Donkey kong double screen

Do you mean one of these?

>>>>Pic of the good old game and watch!<<<<

If so... Cool!!!

I still have one, in mint condition and still boxed. Looks like it has never been used, but trust me, it has!

Still works too!

Yep that's the puppy.
I've not seen it in ages, but it's in a box somewhere in the loft, with all the other obsolete tat!

Edited by dilbert on Friday 24th October 16:07

[Meeja]

dilbert said:

Yep that's the puppy.
I've not seen it in ages, but it's in a box somewhere in the loft, with all the other obsolete tat!

Someone told me relatively recently that these have become collectable and a worth a significant number of beer tokens.

Or I may have imagined that......

[dilbert]

Meeja said:

dilbert said:

Yep that's the puppy.
I've not seen it in ages, but it's in a box somewhere in the loft, with all the other obsolete tat!

Someone told me relatively recently that these have become collectable and a worth a significant number of beer tokens.

Or I may have imagined that......

Quite possibly, although I'm sure mine isn't. The attractive aluminium face on the lid on mine got pretty scratched up inside my school bag, and being an inquisitive child I took it apart. Needless to say I don't have the box.

It all went back together O.K., but I did have problems with the top screen. The only way I could hold it in alignment as I put the screws back, was to use some sellotape. You could see about 2mm of the tape right across at the bottom of the top screen, and because of the LCD polarisation, it stands out in a deep blue colour.

It got lots of use, I should think I was about ten!

Geek nirvana, must lie in the original Prestel terminals. I wonder if anyone still has one of those, and if it still works?

Edited by dilbert on Friday 24th October 16:19

[Neil_H]

dilbert said:

Meeja said:

dilbert said:

I have;

• Donkey kong double screen

Do you mean one of these?

>>>>Pic of the good old game and watch!<<<<

If so... Cool!!!

I still have one, in mint condition and still boxed. Looks like it has never been used, but trust me, it has!

Still works too!

Yep that's the puppy.
I've not seen it in ages, but it's in a box somewhere in the loft, with all the other obsolete tat!

Edited by dilbert on Friday 24th October 16:07

I sold three dual-screen Game & Watches a few months back, they were literally in mint condition, including mint boxes, used a handful of times.

Total made: £250 :eek2:

I have my Amiga 500, could never bring myself to part with that, and still dig it out occassionally for a game of FA 18 Interceptor.