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Free! 2 x AT&T PC 6300 w/ KB, CRT

K

keepiru

Member
Joined
Feb 2, 2009
Messages
41
I have two AT&T PC 6300's. These were some of the best PC clones from the mid '80s. They've just been collecting dust in my garage for years, and it's time for them to go to someone who'll give them the love they deserve. One of these ran my old BBS back in the day, so it's hard to let go, but it's time.

Includes:
2 Color monitors
2 Keyboards (Some keypresses are missed; probably just dust)
1 Hayes 1200 baud modem
1 network card of some sort
1 Mouse Systems 3 button optical mouse (if I can find it)

Both have 8087 coprocessors, 640k, and dual floppies. Both POST, and are still in good working order. I only tested one of the monitors. They're dirty from living in the garage; if you clean them up they'll still have some scrapes, but they're in pretty good shape.

I posted these before and people were interested, but I had to back out. Second chance! They've GOTTA GO!

Available for local pickup in Sebastopol, CA.
 
They're great systems--and the video output can be used with a VGA monitor. A little unconventional, but built like a battleship.

The keyboards are easy to clean up--the user manual even has instructions for this.

If you get no takers, maybe you can part some of these out. I might be interested.
 
These systems are essentially a rebadged Olivetti M24 and I got one myself. They are amazingly fast and compatible for the time.
The color monitors are nice though. I have been dying to find one for my green monochrome one but damn, shipping would be stupid.
 
Held for Compgeke.

Yeah, they really are built like tanks. It's amazing that systems this old still run so well! I'd take them out and play with them for a few hours every few years and it never stopped impressing me that there were no exploding capacitors, failing bearings, cracked solder joints, or anything... They just turned on and worked every time. They don't build 'em like they used to and THIS is how they used to build 'em. :)

Like you said, they're a little unconventional. For those who haven't seen one, the motherboard is upside down on the bottom, the ISA slots are on a passive backplane, and the video card connects the two! I'm not sure how Olivetti dreamed that up but it's a pretty clean and compact design.

I had no idea you could drive a VGA with these things. I assumed that 25 pin connector would have some bizarre signaling that was hopelessly proprietary and specific to these monitors.
 
This may be a long shot, but I'm asking anyway.

Would any of those systems happen to have a "bus correction kit" installed in them? This was an aftermarket product to improve compatibility with EGA and VGA cards, manufactured and sold by W. ALLEN ASSOCIATES, part number #ABC02. Small change that any of your systems happen to have one, but you never know of course.

If you happen to have one in either of them, I'll gladly pay for shipping. I'd even be prepared to pay a (reasonable) price for it besides the shipping (just the bus correction kit, I don't need the entire machines). Thanks for checking.
 
I've got something odd on my 6300--a small PCB that plugs into a "16 bit" slot that has a bipolar PROM on it and a ribbon cable that goes to one of the IC sockets on the backplane. I can take a photo for you, if you want.

This should be fairly simple to reproduce, if youre interested.

I'm still on the lookout for an Atari ST mouse that I can use with the keyboard.
 
An ST mouse will work with the keyboard?
I saw that extra connector when I stripped my keyboard down to clean it but what kind of madness are you speaking?
 
Sorry, no. The only cards installed are the NIC and modem. That's an interesting addon, though. What does it actually do?
 
The 9-pin connector on the back of the keyboard is a passthrough of the standard keyboard connector. Quite a few times I plugged one of my keyboards into the other. The LEDs stay in sync and everything.

The port was supposed to be for an AT&T mouse. If you didn't have the mouse driver loaded it would click the arrow keys... Neat hack. I'm not sure that an ST mouse will be compatible, though.

I never had the AT&T mouse, but the driver for my Mouse Systems serial mouse would let you do the same thing.
 
No, I missed that. Hah! It's amazing all the hacks people have figured out for these machines.
 
Yes! Thank you!

Yes! Thank you!

Chuck(G) said:
I've got something odd on my 6300--a small PCB that plugs into a "16 bit" slot that has a bipolar PROM on it and a ribbon cable that goes to one of the IC sockets on the backplane. I can take a photo for you, if you want.

This should be fairly simple to reproduce, if youre interested.
Click to expand...

Chuck, my hero! :D What you describe is almost certainly the type of bus correction kit that I've been looking for for over 3 years. I also figured that it would be easy to reproduce, if only I could find an existing one to use as an example, since reverse-engineering the proprietary 16 bit bus of the 6300/M24 and redesigning such a bus correction kit from scratch would be well beyond my knowledge (and time). Unfortunately, up until I read your reply I hadn't been successful in finding that kit anywhere, and the company that used to manufacture them (W. Allen Associates in Cupertino, CA) has apparently been defunct for a long time.

We should indeed try to reverse-engineer a schematic based on your specimen, and share it in this forum for others to use. I'm sure Jack (Yzzerdd) will want to publish such a design on his AT&T 6300 Shrine as well.

So yes, please do make pictures, preferably in high resolution from several angles. Could you post them in this topic, please?

Thanks again! This is the missing piece of the puzzle in order to achieve my childhood dream of completing the mythical EGA upgrade of my Dad's Olivetti M24. This is so exciting! :mrgreen:
 
Sure, I'll get the thing hauled out this week and make some clicky-clickies of the thing.

I've also got an odd "piggyback" board plugged into the keyboard controller socket on the main board. I don't know what the purpose of it is, but it seems to work.
 
Ok, I've got 'em sitting here now, one with a Token Ring network adapter and one with a very large modem (well, this was the early-mid early 80's ya know). Both have 640 KB of ram and 2x floppies, I'm assuming 360k drives. One of the monitors works great, the other turns on then off immediately. I've tested one keyboard and it works great, haven't tested the other yet and finally the mouse appears to be a very early optical mouse that has a 25-pin serial connection that I haven't tested but I know that since it's a serial mouse rather than the one that connects to the keyboard I won't be able to use it like arrow keys.

I'm working on writing some AT&T MS-DOS 3.30 floppies but WinZip doesn't want to extract my multi-part zip archive of Win32s so I can run WinImage 6.
 
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