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um, hello...

R

Rockin' Kat

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2005
Messages
56
Location
Kent, WA
Hi,

I found myself here through a mailing list I'm on and thought why not just register a username....

My name is Matthew and I'm 22, well I will be in about 9 days.... I've been interested in older computers and video games for several years now. In all honesty I'm primarily into this for gaming... all things else, like using my Apple IIgs for IRC over broadband are entierly secondary...I also have a lot more game consoles and handhelds than computers (something like 23 to 6..but I havn't been counting lately)

What I do have as far as older computers go:

Apple IIgs (my favorite system.... lots of cool stuff installed)

Commodore64(first classic system I picked up)

CommodoreSX-64(I took it to the school's computer club meetings before they turned the meetings into study sessions for the schools MSCE class. I think the teacher who oversaw that thought I was nuts, though most of the students oogled over the SID files and games I brought with it)

Mac SE(My main computer is a Mac, the Mac SE was the first Mac I ever had access to before getting my own Mac so I thought I should get one.)

Amiga 2000(I only got it a couple weeks ago... I'm slowly getting some hardware to get it going nice, it looks like it should be a cool computer.)

Wyse 286 (my dad's first computer... he didn't really let me do much with it becuase he thought I'd mess it up..like if I hit the delete key it'd implode and suck in the whole solar system.... I used to go over to my friends house a lot because his dad let him do whatever he wanted with his Apple IIgs. Now I generally use the 286 to play old DOS games he never let me play on it when it was new... )

That's about it for now I guess.
 
That's a nice collection!

Games are always a strong pull into these older systems. They just made them special back then. . . :)

Enjoy!

Erik
 
Hi there and welcome aboard :).

Rick is right, I'm part of those manys that regret parting with a few vintage pieces. In my case it ranged byond hardware alone. I had complete series of magazines dating back to the first "personal computers" era (late 70s to mid 80s) like Compute!, compute's Gazette, Ahoy! magazine, the Transactor (that I found online somewhere ;-) ) and a few others about different 8bit systems.

As far as hardware goes, I had a TI-99/4A, C-16, c-64, C-128 Atari 800XL and a rare import, the Atari 1200XL (main reason was running out of space and I had to make a choice between pleasure and business at the time). it's the only reason. And still today I would love to have all these back :).
 
Heh! I took a computer class once at my local adult high school, and I used to freak the class & teacher out by lugging my Kaypro II into class. They were trying to teach us BASIC programming, which I couldn't quite grok, so I would do all the assignments in dBase II, and I'd have to bring the K-II in to show the teacher that I'd done the homework.

--T
 
Well I saw the kaypro 16 before but not the II so I looked it up...I really like it's looks :)....DBaseII to Basic convertor? if you'd have done that back then you'd be rich by now...me too LOL....
 
Clipper started out as a DBase III compiler. and followed to compile DBase IV and then wen't it's seperate way afterwards it could still compile dbase but had many other features that dbase didn't have and that gave it power and speed :).
 
Rick Ethridge said:
You have a nice collection! Whatever you do, don't let anyone try to talk you into getting rid of your vintage machines. You'll regret it. Many have.
Click to expand...

Get Rid of stuff? :shock: But I'm getting way too good at cramming stuff and making it display well at the same time to do anything like that.

Personally I'd be more concerned that if I move out after finishing school and can't take it all right away, how to make sure my parents don't trash it before I can come back to get it.
 
Maybe you can stuff them vertically in a useless room of your new appartment....like the bathroom....you don't eat or drink when you play with those, so what use is a bathroom? LOL
 
Hi Matthew, I'd be interested in seeing a picture of your Wyse if you get the chance. Some of these were pretty stylish. The earlier ones anyway. Some computers I find interesting due to their groovy stylish looks, some I like that are pretty utilitarian looking. I go back and forth. I gotta be me :).
 
Chris2005 said:
Hi Matthew, I'd be interested in seeing a picture of your Wyse if you get the chance. Some of these were pretty stylish. The earlier ones anyway. Some computers I find interesting due to their groovy stylish looks, some I like that are pretty utilitarian looking. I go back and forth. I gotta be me :).
Click to expand...

I have pictures online already(though they can't be found through links on my site:

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/.Pictures/out_linking/286/1.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/.Pictures/out_linking/286/2.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/.Pictures/out_linking/286/3.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/.Pictures/out_linking/286/4.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/.Pictures/out_linking/286/5.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/.Pictures/out_linking/286/6.jpg


I had it opened a few months ago to use our aircompressor to blow out the crud.... I've also fully scrubed the case, keyboard, and mouse...looks about new. I'd really like to fill the RAM card in it, hook up a 3.5" floppy drive I have(it has an adaptor so it would physically hook up) and put in a bigger hard drive(the one in it has some sort of compression used and still it is so full.) I have the BIOS setup disks, which I recently backed up to some new disks I got from www.floppydisks.com ... I've never really felt quite up to it though.... I take one look in it and it's just overwelming all the stuff my dad had in there, and he really doesn't remember at all what he did when he set it up..

[edit]And because my dad keeps everything, we still have the manuals as well as the setup disks... my sister threw out the box a couple years ago though. ... it wasn't really much to look at though, I seem to recall it was water damaged.... so while I do like to keep original boxes, I don't think it was that much of a loss... [/edit]
 
Yup, that's the one I remember. There's this guy outside of Philadelphia that I have to go visit. He has 2 of them he wants to give me. Not sure if they look the same. I won this weird 80186 communications board on Epay last year, and got to talking to the guy. The emails went back and forth for about a week. Turns out he's some sort of developer (or was) and back in the day developed a chat server, using a Wyse '286 and maybe 4 of these boards. It could handle 256 simultaneous users in 600 chat rooms. I think he wrote it in Modula-2 or something, an early object oriented language, like C++ or Java (or Delphi/Kylix). His intention was to sell it to the Genie online service (pre internet), but instead they bought some expensive system using a mini computer and software that probably cost thousands. A really interesing story. I'll have to dig it out one of these days.
And it wasn't really prior to the internet. Just that the internet wasn't available to the masses the way it is today. Thanks for the pics.
 
Well, I popped the 286 open and pulled the RAM card out. I'm not real familiar with upgrading RAM cards like this...

I have a couple pictures of the card, they aren't the best.

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/.Pictures/out_linking/286/ram/1.jpg

http://homepage.mac.com/superpsycho/.Pictures/out_linking/286/ram/2.jpg

Considering that there are risers at the four corners around where the RAM chips go, and a row of pins at the bottom it would look like the card could actually accept a second card that would piggyback onto it to allow to add even more banks of RAM. As it is though it has two of three banks full.
 
Ok, those are 256x1 chips, so they aren't too hard to come by. The 100-nanosecond ones that are on there are a little slow, even for a '286, but replacing them with faster chips is probably more trouble than what the board is worth. With the two banks that are populated it's at 1Mb now, and filling the other bank will only take it up to 1.5Mb. It looks like there was a daughterboard option to up the mem, but the chances of finding one today are pretty slim. Are there any identifying markings on the board? (If it's a standard one, like an AST, it'll be easier to find than the no-brand ones).
If you have another ISA slot open, you could add in another mem board. I have a couple of AST 2Mb boards available(cheap), but if you just want enough chips to fill out the board you have, I'll send you some for just the cost of postage.

--T
 
I'll have to check tomorrow afternoon as far as looking to see what kind of markings are on the RAM card.

As far as adding other cards: the computer has 3 open slots, however one of them has it's back opening filled with a plug that is hooked via ribbon cable to an interface card. I would be interested in your 2MB cards... would I need to remove the current memory card or would these be able to work with it still installed?
 
I'm not sure how well your board plays with others, but the AST boards I have can be used together and/or (usually) with other companies' boards. They have switches that are set to determine the base address of each board so there are no conflicts.

--T
 
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