My junkyard

[pogo]

My "collection" is mostly home micros that I've owned and been unable to part with, with the odd workstation that I've used during the course of my programming "career". A while back I used to frequent the car boot sale just up the road from where I live, and one day I noticed an old Acorn Electron sitting on a rickety table. "I've always wanted to have a play with one of those" I thought to myself, and after a bit of "you must be joking! A fiver?"-type haggling I walked off with the Electron and a big smile.

After that there was no stopping me. For a while, the car boot sales were enough. Then I discovered Ebay...

I'm much better now. I managed to get my problem under control, and now I'm content to stick to my original interest - Xerox workstations.

So here's what's currently cluttering up The Room Of Doom, in order of acquisition:

• 
  Sinclair ZX81 - my first computer. Altogether now... ahhhhhh. Still works, too.
  Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K - my second computer. Rubber keys. Very battered, but works.
  Dragon 32 - my third computer. Bought it on the flimsy pretext that I needed it to help with my 6809 programming at college.
  Sinclair QL, JM ROM - my fourth computer. Bought during my sandwich year when I was finally earning enough money to be able to afford the terrifying £200 being asked by Currys at the time.
  Memotech MTX-512 - my fifth computer. Bought for a snip when I noticed a small ad in the back of a computer mag - Memotech had just folded and somebody was offloading the last of their production inventory for ludicrously low prices. Hard to resist, but of no real use to me. Probably this was the first "hmmm... why not?" purchase - collecting for collecting's sake.
  Atari 1040STFM - my sixth computer. Bought solely to run Steinberg Pro24, and later Cubase 1.0. Still works a treat, and now has an SH204 hard disk thanks to the miracle of Ebay.
  Acorn Electron - my first car boot bargain. Played with it for a week or so, now it's gathering dust.
  Commodore 64 - the older-style VIC-20 shape. Dodgy spacebar. Bought primarily because of the memories associated with the first computer I ever used, a PET 4032 at school. Well, they've got the same keyboard, almost. Any excuse, like I said...
  Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ 128K - the end of the line for innovation at Sinclair. You could tell they'd lost the plot when they released this strange excuse for a machine.
  BBC Master 128 - an Ebay purchase. Plays Elite and Planetoid (aka Defender) marvellously. Bought primarily because I could never afford a Beeb when everyone else had them. Ha. Now I've got one. Nyah nyah
  NeXTStation - mono slab, originally with 20Mb RAM and a 100Mb hard disk. I upped the RAM to 32Mb and replaced the hard disk with a 1Gb job from a Sparc, and now I use it to tinker with OpenSTEP 4.2 Developer. Objective C is cool. Black machines are cool. Say no more.
  Sun SPARCStation LX - everyone needs a Sparc, don't they?
  DEC VAXStation 3100 - this box is painfully slow, but it's fun to relive the early days of my programming life hacking about on VMS.
  Sun 386i/250 - noisy, slow, strange beastie that runs SunOS 4.0.1 and SunView. Good for a laugh. Makes a nice X terminal too, but rarely gets used as such.
  Mac Classic II - cheesily cheerful little box - used almost every day for writing, it does the trick marvellously. I've had to shut the whining loudspeaker up by plugging the mic jack into the headphones socket, but other than that it's hard not to totally love this little machine. One day I may even write an app or two for it, but it's primarily my just-about-portable typewriter.
  Sun SPARCStation IPC - it's hard to believe I used one of these daily for nearly 5 years while working for AT&T.
  SGI Indy - currently in the process of being resurrected - the CPU board's dead (replacement's in the post as I write this, though) and I don't have a copy of IRIX to run on it, so I'm looking at NetBSD. Maybe.

There are a couple of PCs and a blind laptop in there too(anyone got a working Hyundai HX13x12-101 screen they don't need?), but we don't talk about them, do we

Between the Atari and the Electron I briefly owned a Xerox 1186 AI workstation. The hard disk died after about a year, and I foolishly gave it away to someone who said they could resurrect it. I so wish I'd kept it. After the Xerox fiasco I had a Sun 386i/250 for a while too. I swapped it for a 486-66, long since dead. I recently had a PERQ 2T2, but the monitor died and my limited hardware skills and lack of free time dictated that it went to a more deserving home.

 

[vic user]

Hi;

Do you have pics of these machines?

It would be nice to see what some of those machines look like.

Chris

 

[pogo]

:lol:

I've got a photo of the PERQ (RIP) somewhere, and I guess it'd be easy to post snaps of the others too. I'll have a play with the digicam and see what I can do.

 

[Erik]

That's a very nice collection of machines! I'd love to see a picture of your "Room of Doom" someday!


Erik

 

[DoctorPepper]

Nice Collection

Nice Collection

pogo: Sounds like you've got a nice collection of machines there. It also looks like you lean a bit to the Unix side of the OS house.

Have you tried Objective-C on Linux or *BSD? I messed around with it some, as well as on my Mac.

 

[pogo]

Objective C

Objective C

Haven't looked at objc on Linux ... yet. I've played about with it on the NeXT and was impressed with it's Smalltalk-like syntax and generally intuitive syntax. Still trying to find my way round the NS frameworks though, so it's slow going... too many other projects to juggle with too ;-)

Yeah, I'm more a Unix fan than Windows/Mac, although Xerox kit is my real interest. Rarer than a Tony Blair apology, though

 

[DoctorPepper]

Re: Objective C

Re: Objective C

Haven't looked at objc on Linux ... yet. I've played about with it on the NeXT and was impressed with it's Smalltalk-like syntax and generally intuitive syntax. Still trying to find my way round the NS frameworks though, so it's slow going... too many other projects to juggle with too ;-)

Yeah, I'm more a Unix fan than Windows/Mac, although Xerox kit is my real interest. Rarer than a Tony Blair apology, though

One nice thing to think about... Apple's OS X user interface it based on Cocoa, which is an extension to the OpenStep API's, and the development tools are Objective-C. In fact, I've read several articles about cross-platform programming using Objective-C on OS X and GNUStep on Linux. GNUStep is based on the original OpenStep specification created by NeXT.

BTW, if you prefer a more formal Unix than Linux, you can use FreeBSD, which has it's roots in Berkley Unix. You can install all of the development tools and GNUStep frameworks on FreeBSD as well.

 

[John P. Carr]

Erik! I had a large collection of TIs 10 in fact, all complete. Three never opened. I gave most of them away, but I still have a lot of programs on Disk & unless I threw them away I had allmost every module they made. I threw away over 500 floppies of pgms.
Would you like to have what ever I have left or any one else in the group. All they would have to do is pay the postage.


John Carr

3096827937

 

[Terry Yager]

Erik! I had a large collection of TIs 10 in fact, all complete. Three never opened. I gave most of them away, but I still have a lot of programs on Disk & unless I threw them away I had allmost every module they made. I threw away over 500 floppies of pgms.
Would you like to have what ever I have left or any one else in the group. All they would have to do is pay the postage.


John Carr

3096827937

I hope you do manage to find a good home for the TI stuff. To donate it is much better than to throw it away.

--T

 

[CP/M User]

"Terry Yager" wrote:

> I hope you do manage to find a good
> home for the TI stuff. To donate it is
> much better than to throw it away.

What's this sensatation people have
throwing away perfectly good hardware?

Does it feel good or something?!

Cheers,
CP/M User.

 

[Terry Yager]

What's this sensatation people have
throwing away perfectly good hardware?

Does it feel good or something?!

Cheers,
CP/M User.

Actually, it's downright painful . Yes, I too have been forced from time to time to throw out perfectly good hardware, etc. My only consolation in such cases is that whatever I put out to the curb didn't usually stay there long enough for the trashman to get to it, so mebbe all that stuff did go to a good home after all. Because of this phenomenum, I took to putting the computer stuff out a few days ahead of trash day so as to give the local scavengers plenty of opportunity to carry off the goodies. OTOH, it feels real good to donate something, especially to a worthy cause (like our local computer museum, where much of my former collection now resides).

--T

 

[CP/M User]

"Terry Yager" wrote:

> Actually, it's downright "painful" .

To us, yes it is painful Terry. Though I noticed
over a long period of time that people in Usenet
& recently here, have this way of saying, "For
anyone who wants it here it is, otherwise it's out
with the garbadge". One bloke in the Amstrad
newsgroup came out & stated that he had a large
pile of Amstrad Actions to throw out, anyone
who wanted them come get 'em (else it's out in
the garbadge). Lots of people pleaded with him
in the newsgroup, to which no responce from
him was the go. So unless someones e-mail him
personally, they look to have gone!

> Yes, I too have been forced from time to time
> to throw out perfectly good hardware, etc. My
> only consolation in such cases is that whatever
> I put out to the curb didn't usually stay there
> long enough for the trashman to get to it, so
> mebbe all that stuff did go to a good home after
> all. Because of this phenomenum, I took to
> putting the computer stuff out a few days ahead
> of trash day so as to give the local scavengers
> plenty of opportunity to carry off the goodies.

Some fellow CP/M Users (who also collect
computers) have actually gone down to the tip &
found working systems (mainly IBM based). So
they have fun getting bits & pieces from IBM
based machines & building a complete working
system! ;-) So it just goes to show what you
can do by visiting the dump. Down here, we
don't have anything like that. They tell you that
if you have an Ol' system to get rid of to take it
to the Computer Recyclers, which collect
Computer parts & build non-computer related
things!

> OTOH, it feels real good to donate something,
> especially to a worthy cause (like our local
> computer museum, where much of my former
> collection now resides).

That's okay, as long as they don't dump the system!

Speaking of Scavangers, we get 'em bad here as
well, so I don't know where it came from. Now
I'm working for a bunch of Scavanging type
people who go to lengths of recycling stuff.
Where the Scavanging part comes in, is where
there're out looking for junk people throw out.
Some time back we had the council offer us a
system where you'd put your junk on the nature
stip (in frount of your place) & boy did that
bring out the Scavangers. They just left the place
in a mess! :-(

CP/M User.

 

[Terry Yager]

"Terry Yager" wrote:

> Actually, it's downright "painful" .

To us, yes it is painful Terry. Though I noticed
over a long period of time that people in Usenet
& recently here, have this way of saying, "For
anyone who wants it here it is, otherwise it's out
with the garbadge".

I usually only throw stuff away as a last resort, if I can't find anyplace to donate it. (There's always the Salvation Army).

Some fellow CP/M Users (who also collect
computers) have actually gone down to the tip &
found working systems (mainly IBM based). So
they have fun getting bits & pieces from IBM
based machines & building a complete working
system! ;-) So it just goes to show what you
can do by visiting the dump. Down here, we
don't have anything like that. They tell you that
if you have an Ol' system to get rid of to take it
to the Computer Recyclers, which collect
Computer parts & build non-computer related
things!

Here we go again with the mis-communication. (Remember, we don't speak "English" over here, we speak "American"). Anyways, what is meant by a "tip"? Is that short for "tipsy dumpster"? We don't call 'em that, we just say "dumpster". (A large metal bin found in back of businesses, usually, where refuse is disposed of). As far as scavenging goes, I'm quite the scavenger myself. There used to be several computer shops whose dumpsters I would hit on a regular, sometimes daily, basis. I just couldn't believe some of the great stuff they'd throw away. I built up a lot of systems, which I used to donate out again. (What the hell, didn't cost me anything...). Some of the stuff was even good enough to re-sell, which I did. (I've always made my hobby pay for itself).
In some places over here, they will refuse to pick up any computer parts, which are considered *toxic* waste. They expect you to take them to the recyclers for proper disposal, not in a landfill. (I've even heard that in some cities, you can't even donate them to Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc. for the same reason. They have to pay to get rid of what they can't sell).

That's okay, as long as they don't dump the system!

Actually the local computer museum has had to shut down (temporarily we hope) for lack of fundage. Nothing has been dumped, tho...just moved into storage till they can find another place to house it.

Speaking of Scavangers, we get 'em bad here as
well, so I don't know where it came from. Now
I'm working for a bunch of Scavanging type
people who go to lengths of recycling stuff.
Where the Scavanging part comes in, is where
there're out looking for junk people throw out.
Some time back we had the council offer us a
system where you'd put your junk on the nature
stip (in frount of your place) & boy did that
bring out the Scavangers. They just left the place
in a mess! :-(

CP/M User.

I don't mind the scavengers so long as they don't leave me a big mess to clean up. I'm actually glad they are around, to insure that the stuff does get recycled. We don't always have curb-side recycling in all areas here yet. I'd rather see it recycled than end up in the landfill.

--T

 

[CP/M User]

"Terry Yager" wrote:

> Here we go again with the mis-communication.
> (Remember, we don't speak "English" over
> here, we speak "American"). Anyways, what
> is meant by a "tip"? Is that short for "tipsy
> dumpster"? We don't call 'em that, we just
> say "dumpster". (A large metal bin found in
> back of businesses, usually, where refuse is
> disposed of). As far as scavenging goes, I'm
> quite the scavenger myself. There used to be
> several computer shops whose dumpsters I
> would hit on a regular, sometimes daily, basis.
> I just couldn't believe some of the great stuff
> they'd throw away. I built up a lot of systems,
> which I used to donate out again. (What the
> hell, didn't cost me anything...). Some of the
> stuff was even good enough to re-sell, which
> I did. (I've always made my hobby pay for
> itself).

The term Tip is perhaps more of an Aussie word,
I don't know if the word originates from Europe
(it could have I guess - any Europeans care to
tell). The Tip where garbadge goes is perhaps a
place where you can chuck any junk. Long time
ago, Tips did a lot of harm than good based on
there they were. In one case the one place I
worked (at planing plants) was the site of an Ol'
Tip. Before then it used to be a swamp, but from
what I've heard, back in the early days swamps
were mostly used as Tips. It's basically a place
where you used to dump you're garbadge &
eventually it would be covered up & left to
decompose. Garbadge (for example Rubber)
doesn't decompose. Todays modern version
would be a recycling centre, where you take
your stuff & tip it off (hence the word Tip).
What's non-recycable I believe is still filled into
the ground & what's recycable gets recycled.
Also our recycable centres are special sections
for your rubbish to go in. For example if it's
garden based, then it goes into the Garden
rubbish, Wood, Plastic, Metal, Car Components
would also be other sections.

> I don't mind the scavengers so long as they
> don't leave me a big mess to clean up. I'm
> actually glad they are around, to insure that
> the stuff does get recycled. We don't always
> have curb-side recycling in all areas here yet.
> I'd rather see it recycled than end up in the
> landfill.

I'd guess our Tip would be your term for a
landfill. I'd guess if Scavenger could be clean
& tidy then I wouldn't mind if they took the
garbadge (if I had some). But Aussies are
messy for some reason! ;-)

I'd guess our recycle centre could be termed
as a Tip (because you're 'Tip'ping off garbadge)
but they probably don't like it! ;-)

Cheers,
CP/M User.

 

[Terry Yager]

The term Tip is perhaps more of an Aussie word,
I don't know if the word originates from Europe
(it could have I guess - any Europeans care to
tell). The Tip where garbadge goes is perhaps a
place where you can chuck any junk. Long time
ago, Tips did a lot of harm than good based on
there they were. In one case the one place I
worked (at planing plants) was the site of an Ol'
Tip. Before then it used to be a swamp, but from
what I've heard, back in the early days swamps
were mostly used as Tips. It's basically a place
where you used to dump you're garbadge &
eventually it would be covered up & left to
decompose. Garbadge (for example Rubber)
doesn't decompose. Todays modern version
would be a recycling centre, where you take
your stuff & tip it off (hence the word Tip).
What's non-recycable I believe is still filled into
the ground & what's recycable gets recycled.
Also our recycable centres are special sections
for your rubbish to go in. For example if it's
garden based, then it goes into the Garden
rubbish, Wood, Plastic, Metal, Car Components
would also be other sections.

I took the inititive yesterday and decided to look the word up myself. I spent the better part of the afternoon checking in various "slang dictionaries" on the net. I couldn't find the word "tip" listed in any of them, not even the ones in the UK. I did find the word tip in an "Austrailian" slang dictionary, but it didn't have anything to do with garbage. According to that one, a tip is a V-8 powered "ute", which I presume is short for "sport-ute" or sports utility vechicle, which we usually call an SUV. (These are the vehicle of choice for "soccer moms", a term I hope is self-explanatory). Among hot-rod folks here, the term sport-ute is still heard occasionaly, but it has mostly gone obsolete. Anyways, the Oz dictionary went on to describe that version of tip as having a large "bull bar" (roll bar?), arials stuck all over it, many huge driving lights, large mud flaps, stickers all over the rear window & tailgate, and usually a Mack truck hood ornament stuck on the "bonnet" (hood, in American). Yes, we have those over here too, but there is no special name for them, AFAIK. (Well, sometimes you hear the term "Cowboy Cadilac", but that is not very common, and may be used to refer to *any* chrome-plated, over-accessorized pick-up truck). Finally, after a fruitless search of slang dictionaries, I thought to look it up in a more mainstream publication, The American Heritage Dictionary on-line. There I found that "tip", in the UK can be a noun or a verb. The noun form refers to a place where refuse is dumped, or "tipped", and the verb is to engage in the act of "tipping" or dumping the refuse. So, mystery solved. In America we call the place the garbage eventually winds up a landfill, or sometimes a dump (same as you?). A dump usually refers to a small local disposal area, usually in a swamp here, too. Landfill refers to a larger operation, sort of a mega-dump, where they dig a huge hole in the ground, then begin to re-fill it with a layer of garbage, then a layer of dirt, etc, until the hole is no longer a hole, but has become a mountain instead, at which point the place is abandoned and a new hole is dug elsewhere, and the process begins all over again. (I know, way more information about garbage than you ever wanted, eh?)
We also have recycling centers, but thay're not very common, and are usually a PITA to get to, etc. In many areas, tho, we have "curb-side recycling", where all your recyclables are placed in a special container, which is put out to the curb on trash day, then a special truck (not the regular garbage truck) comes round and whisks it off to the recycling center. Curb-side hasn't reached all areas yet. I live in a trailer park where we don't have it, but the neighborhood all around the park does have.

I'd guess our Tip would be your term for a
landfill. I'd guess if Scavenger could be clean
& tidy then I wouldn't mind if they took the
garbadge (if I had some). But Aussies are
messy for some reason! ;-)

The trick is to sepatate the "good stuff" from the garbage when you set it out. Make a separate lil pile for the computer stuff, so they are not compelled to dig thru all the other stuff to get what they want. Or, set it out a few days before trashday...works for me.

I'd guess our recycle centre could be termed
as a Tip (because you're 'Tip'ping off garbadge)
but they probably don't like it! ;-)

Cheers,
CP/M User.

Our recycling centers don't take in any ordinary garbage (organic material, which is bio-degradable). That stuff goes straight to the landfill.

--T

 

[Bigwonga]

I'ts been a while I see - still got the Memotech by any chance ?