dreddnott
Experienced Member
I've been meaning to take pictures of my home collection of PCs for a few years, and I finally got around to it.
This collection does not feature the SX-64, Macintosh 128K or IBM 5150 because I haven't sold them to myself yet. They're still at work, waiting for me to rescue them.
There's a big long story to just about everything in the collection - I've been building it up since I was very young and knew little about antique electronics or vintage computing. If there's anything you want to know or suggestions for what to look for, I'd like to know!
Also, if these images are too low in quality for pleasurable viewing, I can upload larger or higher-quality versions at your discretion.
The full album location is here:
http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g54/dreddnott/vintage/
I'll post some of the choicest pictures inline, if I may:
My son Joseph is addicted to computer keyboards, whatever they may be attached to. This Commodore 64 appears to be unused, although one of the styrofoam thingies is missing. The manual and accessories appear to be untouched.
Anybody here recognise this? Not sure what it's from...maybe an IBM PC Jr.?
A beautiful Commodore Datasette tape drive. Never used - nothing to test it with!
This isn't the only Odyssey I have - I swear I've got a 250 or something like that floating around somewhere (in much worse condition of course).
My father swears up and down that he pulled this from an enormous hard disk drive from ye olden days of yore. Apparently it was part of the solenoid that ran the read/write heads.
A testament to the durability of Seagate hard drives in said ye olden days. I threw this drive back in the 386 from storage to back up all of the old data, and because I didn't screw it in it ended up shorting across that trace you see all fried on the bottom there. I saw lots of smoke, moved the drive around until it stopped burning, and continued the backup. It works to this day. The Seagate ST-251 makes quite an interesting noise when you fire it up. I doubt I shall ever forget that wonderful startup clonk or smooth seek sound.
This is the Roland DXY-1100 plotter I picked up new in box from work. It came with the pens still wrapped in the plastic, chooses betwixt 8 pens automatically and draws flawlessly on glossy A3 paper. I mostly got it for my mom, who programmed plotters in BASIC back in the early 80s on an HP 9830A 32-line desktop calculator (which was hopelessly obsolete at the time). She still has her printout of the program that drew seagulls and clouds, and the plotter output as well!
I could have taken 50 or 60 pictures just of the contents of this steamer trunk, but I ran out of batteries! My uncle's Model I Level II system with every scrap of software, schematics, diagrams, and documentation you could get at the time, plus some 80 Microcomputing issues.
This doesn't include any vintage electronics that aren't specifically computers (vintage calculators, oscilloscopes, tube stuff, etc.) or excessively modern computer equipment (Pentium III and up).
I'll have separate albums up for those in the near future.
This collection does not feature the SX-64, Macintosh 128K or IBM 5150 because I haven't sold them to myself yet. They're still at work, waiting for me to rescue them.
There's a big long story to just about everything in the collection - I've been building it up since I was very young and knew little about antique electronics or vintage computing. If there's anything you want to know or suggestions for what to look for, I'd like to know!
Also, if these images are too low in quality for pleasurable viewing, I can upload larger or higher-quality versions at your discretion.
The full album location is here:
http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g54/dreddnott/vintage/
I'll post some of the choicest pictures inline, if I may:
My son Joseph is addicted to computer keyboards, whatever they may be attached to. This Commodore 64 appears to be unused, although one of the styrofoam thingies is missing. The manual and accessories appear to be untouched.
Anybody here recognise this? Not sure what it's from...maybe an IBM PC Jr.?
A beautiful Commodore Datasette tape drive. Never used - nothing to test it with!
This isn't the only Odyssey I have - I swear I've got a 250 or something like that floating around somewhere (in much worse condition of course).
My father swears up and down that he pulled this from an enormous hard disk drive from ye olden days of yore. Apparently it was part of the solenoid that ran the read/write heads.
A testament to the durability of Seagate hard drives in said ye olden days. I threw this drive back in the 386 from storage to back up all of the old data, and because I didn't screw it in it ended up shorting across that trace you see all fried on the bottom there. I saw lots of smoke, moved the drive around until it stopped burning, and continued the backup. It works to this day. The Seagate ST-251 makes quite an interesting noise when you fire it up. I doubt I shall ever forget that wonderful startup clonk or smooth seek sound.
This is the Roland DXY-1100 plotter I picked up new in box from work. It came with the pens still wrapped in the plastic, chooses betwixt 8 pens automatically and draws flawlessly on glossy A3 paper. I mostly got it for my mom, who programmed plotters in BASIC back in the early 80s on an HP 9830A 32-line desktop calculator (which was hopelessly obsolete at the time). She still has her printout of the program that drew seagulls and clouds, and the plotter output as well!
I could have taken 50 or 60 pictures just of the contents of this steamer trunk, but I ran out of batteries! My uncle's Model I Level II system with every scrap of software, schematics, diagrams, and documentation you could get at the time, plus some 80 Microcomputing issues.
This doesn't include any vintage electronics that aren't specifically computers (vintage calculators, oscilloscopes, tube stuff, etc.) or excessively modern computer equipment (Pentium III and up).
I'll have separate albums up for those in the near future.