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My small collection

fxg said:
Amazing. There was NOTHING there! Well, at least I found a CMOS battery to replace the one in my Contura Aero toy...
Click to expand...

It's getting harder and harder to find vintage computer gear at flea markets, at least in the US. Another outlet for vintage gear was thrift stores, but they are drying up too.

One of the last bastions of non-eBay vintage gear may well be estate sales. Look in the news paper to see if there are any close by on the weekend. I think I am going to have to start going to some, to help feed both my computer and ham radio habits :)
 
Most flea markets won't even take computer gear any more. On the other hand, the one closest to my house is using a Commodore 1502 monitor as part of its security system. It has a few electronic game systems but almost nothing else electronic except for cheap stereo systems.
 
@pls, remember, I'm in Romania; things are quite different. In the flea markets you can find pretty much anything from chocolate to semi trucks... It's quite a large event, and usually you could find at least some old consoles and such.

I would take a few pictures, but there are so many thieves, I never take my camera when I go there :D
 
@dreddnott - Yes :| I saw a semi truck made of chocolate, but it was a special order :)

@carlsson - No, it was fresh enough to eat :p
 
Guys, how does a Sun Sparc Station 5 sound for about $50? I have the possibility to get one with the 20" monitor, but a connector broken [the guy has the replacement, but doesn't know how to fix it]; other than that, he says it's working fine.
 
If you are eager to extend your collection. Personally I grew so tired about SPARC systems that I'd probably not get it even including a monitor. But it probably is a fair price compared to the relatively few systems you can buy in the wild.
 
Well, I've never played on a Sparc system, that's why I'd take it...

One question though: can I find an adapter to use a normal [VGA] monitor? I already have a Sun monitor on my main system. A 20" monitor would take up some valuable space...
 
Yes, there were VGA adapters sold, probably still available new if you are lucky. Otherwise someone should have 2nd hand ones. They were not too cheap though. If you use it as a server or via a text terminal, you don't need the 20" monitor at all.
 
Yesterday I got a nice little Mac Centris 650. It's not quite vintage, but anything before the PPC period interests me... This one was introduced and discontinued during 1993; it had one of the shortest lifespans I've seen :)

Compared to the original specs, this is quite nice. It has the usual 25MHz 68040 CPU, but 80MB Ram [instead of 8MB], 1GB HDD [instead of the 230MB original drive], and a 2x CD-Rom [which uses a caddy and I don't have any]. MacOS 8.1 runs quite nice on this machine.

For $10, I guess it's a nice addition to my collection, and it's in a very good condition.
 
fxg,

I have an old Sony CDU unit that came out of a old Sun of mine that just failed that accepts caddies. I have the caddy and you can have it if you want it. PM with address and I'll drop it in the mail for you.

Matt
 
A little bit from everything...

A little bit from everything...

Hello fxg and all you in here,

I'm from Romania too (some kilometers away from Bucharest... in Iasi or Iassy in English).

I've read abour your collection. I've used to work with the ICE Felix HC85. I've been using a Russian ELEKTRONIKA tape deck with it. To me these were just simple astonishing clones of the Spectrum machines.

About COBRA 2.0... I've built one myself during the late 90's. If you knew where to find (at ITCI-Bv and not only) you could get not populated mainboards. Part list I've obtained from the same person, as far as I remember I've used Russian Kxxxx TTL logic circuits to replace the Romanian ME / CDB's. The TV modulator was color.

I remember I've destroyed it up for the logic parts in some late 96's. Still got the CPU though.

About my PC parts collection:

- UNiSYS 286 / 10MHz computer, originally fitted with a Quantum SCSI 52Mb hard disc and an AHA-164x SCSI controller, later I've fitted it with the mere Seagate ST-157A IDE disc drive.

- Kenitec 386SX-25MHz computer, this one I've brought to Romania in 1993, by plane (from France), complete with AOC Monochrome Monitor and XT/AT keyboard. I've bought it after some contract I was working. This one has an Seagate ST-351A|X disc drive, the best 40Mb disc drive ever from Seagate.

- Old COMPAQ 386SLT laptop. Big and heavy. It eventually broke up and I've donated it to someone close to me.

- Lots of spare parts from disc drives to various cards. An I mean various: modems, MFM controllers, SCSI controllers, IDE controllers, CGA, Hercules, VGA graphic cards, etc.

If I had the time I'd take them a photo and post here.

My passion is though collecting strange, odd disc drives. Some of them I've posted here: www.olddiscdrives.go.ro

Read and remember the golden era.

The sum of all respects,
MAV
 
Thanks for the kind words,

Indeed popups from that server are weird. But I believe the text / language looks unfamiliar to you. But when something binds us all (in our case, old computers) there's no limit of we can talk about.

The sum of all respects,
MAV
 
Yes, I don't know Romanian, that's for sure. I do know "0123456789ABCDEF" and so do you. As you said, plenty to talk about!
 
But if we'd be speaking in hexadecimal format... we'd fill the forum real quick (but the advantage of being a commonly wide-scale used format, everyone will understand... er, almost everyone or that would be a complete lie) -- ha ha.

To be at the object:

There are many bazaars in Romania, people come here especially in Sundays and you can find very interesting pieces of technology. There's old man (aged 65+) selling old computer parts and they even don't know what they are. The only problem is that they don't appear regularily so if you find something of interest then you must get it or someone else will get it and the occasion will (never) repeat. E.g.: I've found a solid state Quantum disc drive. Only managed to look at it (some other computer freak engineer was already preparing to put it in his bag when I arrived).

The sum of all respects,
MAV
 
Hello MAV, it's nice to see Romanians intereseted in old hardware :) Enjoy your stay on the forum!

Small update: I just came from the local fleamarket and, although it's not quite vintage, I got something nice:

DECpc LPv 425sx

486 SX 25MHz, 4MB Ram [72pin], 210MB HDD, 3.5" FDD, S3 805 video [1MB], ISA Crystal SoundCard, 32x CD-Rom [:)] and 145W PSU.

The whole thing works like a charm, but really needs to be cleaned up.

And something MAV might find interesting: a 2.5" double-height, Seagate ST9144A HDD [127.9 MB]. I still need to test this one...

The best part is that I paid about $6 for the PC + HDD :) [20 RON]

It's a good day...
 
Hello, fxg,

I'm aware of that piece of hardware that may be found in the flea market of Iasi. But I reckon I have in my collection a huge Seagate SCSI HDD, full height 5,25". I will take a snapshot of it and post it for your viewing pleasure. The noise it makes when the motor spins-up is infernal but unforgettable.

Other posting when I'll rebuild my home network, that would be on thursday I guess.

The sum of all respects,
MAV
 
A 486/25MHz is not a big deal. It easily could be overclocked without cooler or passive heat dissipator, to just 33MHz. In fact 486/25MHz are 486/33MHz or recto-verso. Intel used to relabel these processors from 486/25MHz to 486/33MHz to update its selling politics.

Back to the glory days of the golden era.

Note that most 386/33MHz or even 386/25MHz are faster than a 486/25MHz. Not to mention the almighty 386DX/40MHz, the king of all 386 processors. That was faster than most 486/33MHz. If I'd ever get my sticky hands on one of these... ever...

The sum of all respects,
MAV
 
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