Who collects vintage computers?

[AdamAnt316]

Originally Posted by Eric H

Not an antique , but this Intel i5 machine I'm using is ten years old, in 2010 a ten year old PC was just about useless, but the obsolescence seems to have slowed down a bit.

Yeah, I've been known for 'nursing' older Macs along as long as I can. I made use of a Power Mac G5 tower until it was about 15 years old; surfing the 'net with a older PowerPC Mac takes some jiggery-pokery, but it served me well up until it developed an issue with one or more of the memory slots. In its place is a 11 year old Mac Mini with an Intel processor, and it should be useful for my needs for a long time to come.

Originally Posted by Tube TV

Still using both of these daily. Both circa 1994.

HP100LX palmtop MS-DOS 5.0

AST adavntage nb 486/33

Very nice! In addition to the Omnibook 300 shown earlier, I have a number of HP palmtops, including a few 200LXs (upgraded version of the 100LX), a 360LX (Windows CE, monochrome screen) and a 660LX (similar to the 360LX, but with a color screen). Here's a photo of one of my 200LXs next to the 360LX:

And for good measure, some side-by-side photos of the OmniBook 300 and one of my 200LXs, showing how similar they are design-wise:



Anyway, I have another old computer find to report, and once again, I managed to get a damn good deal by avoiding eBay. A pair of Apple IIes, a standard ('enhanced') model, as well as a later 'Platinum' version with a keypad. The latter has a special place in my heart, as one of my first experiences with a computer was when I started fourth grade in the early '90s, and discovered that the school's computer lab was stocked with Platinum IIes (plus a IIgs at the teacher's position, along with a IIc which briefly sat near one of the lab doors). We had a hand-me-down original IIe at home at the time, so I was able to put what I'd learned at home to good use at school, and vice-versa. Here are some photos of the pair (plus a DuoDisk dual 5.25" drive), which I picked up at a swapmeet for all of $50:




(some of the photos can be clicked on for an alternate view)

[Tube TV]

God that early Apple IIe brings back memories. It was the first computer I used at school. They had the double disk drives and matching monitors with the power switch on the top right side of the cabinets. In around 1990 they were replaced with around 25 Mac Plus's tied into a server. (another Mac Plus with a hard drive).
It was SLOW.

Love that Omnibook. I'd like to get one of those some time.
HP sure was building quality stuff back then.

[SueAnders]

next

[SueAnders]

OK... hows about these 3 REALLY vintage compys we have...
Just a bit before any Apples: so who's old enough to be familiar with these?
I was an IBM programmer back then in the ol' punched card batch processing days of yore.
Ah, those halcyon times of VS/MVS, JCL, Fortran IV, Cobol, Pascal.
But here's a hint - these are NOT IBM! I like switches and blinking lights! LOL
More likely to be found in the science labs of grad schools in those days.

[rld-tv01]

When I was a IBM assembler programmer for the City of Tucson Arizona around 1976 the city was using the PDP-8s for the police and fire department. They were also installing PDP-8s to run a new traffic light management system being installed. A couple friends and I were assembling a microcomputer (digital group) from a mail order kit and one of my friends invited the head traffic light engineer to help assist us. I took a comparative assembly language course at University Arizona (IBM assembler, CDC compass and DEC assembler). The University of Arizona at the time had a DEC 10 front-ending CDC Cyber 64. The CDC Cyber had what was called a pipeline process at the time including PPUs (Peripheral Processing Units) and CPUs. It didn't do time sharing well so the UofA placed a DEC10 on he front for submitting jobs to the CDC and running plotters, scanners and printers. It was at the University of Arizona that I first found out about the concept of computer hacking. Students would print out blank computer cards instead of buying them at the student union. There was the cookie monster hack where the CDC would ask for a cookie "I want a cookie". If the CDC computer operator didn't reply an answer to the cookie request the cookie monster would type out on the console and print out all the printers "gooble, gooble, gooble" and simutaneouly eat all the memory while copying itself to disks and tapes. There was another version of this code which would type "don't touch me" when the operator type on the master console then type a message and eat memory. I learned of the CDC hacks from a U of UofA computer operator who got hired by the City of Tucson as a programmer. In the CDC portion of the assembly class we learned to write code that would build dynamic code on the fly and do a hard jump and execute of the code being written.

[AdamAnt316]

Originally Posted by SueAnders

OK... hows about these 3 REALLY vintage compys we have...
Just a bit before any Apples: so who's old enough to be familiar with these?
I was an IBM programmer back then in the ol' punched card batch processing days of yore.
Ah, those halcyon times of VS/MVS, JCL, Fortran IV, Cobol, Pascal.
But here's a hint - these are NOT IBM! I like switches and blinking lights! LOL
More likely to be found in the science labs of grad schools in those days.

Very nice! I'd love to own one of the DEC minis, but even the later PDP-8s go for absolutely silly amounts of money these days. Closest thing I have to one is the front panel board from a PDP-8m. I do have some DEC hardware, notably the VAXstation pictured above and the parts from a VT-180 "Robin", but their equipment seems to be oddly hard to find even though I live within (relative) spitting distance of where DEC got its start.
-Adam

[KentTeffeteller]

Originally Posted by SueAnders

OK... hows about these 3 REALLY vintage compys we have...
Just a bit before any Apples: so who's old enough to be familiar with these?
I was an IBM programmer back then in the ol' punched card batch processing days of yore.
Ah, those halcyon times of VS/MVS, JCL, Fortran IV, Cobol, Pascal.
But here's a hint - these are NOT IBM! I like switches and blinking lights! LOL
More likely to be found in the science labs of grad schools in those days.

DEC PDP8 I have experience with. What I learned computing on to be exact. RSTS and DecTape. Later got upgraded to a PDP 11/70 with DecTape and disk drives. Have some experience with Vaxen too.

[Airedale]

I've a few classic computers.

TI-99/4a assembled on a breadboard
Sinclair ZX-81 in a custom cabinet with a rematrixed TI-99/4a keyboard
Commodore Vic-20
Atari 400
1996 Macintosh Power 4400