Hey all,
Just got back from visiting this gentleman's...shall I say...museum...
Was an interesting experience.
His name is Tony. I got to his place, he walks over to my car and says, "I'm getting in the back seat" - and literally he just opened the car door and sat down. He said we needed to drive around the corner.
So we drive to a very old house that he said dates back to the Spanish-American War. The house also happens to be for sale. Very very old.
So we get inside and, well, I can't describe it. It's stacked from floor to ceiling with everything you can think of that's old and electronic: power supplies, radios, oscilloscopes. In the computer department, he said he had just recently sold a PDP-8 and dismantled an IBM 1401. He had some old disk packs laying around. Old acoustic couplers and other assorted modems and an old vintage Bell System Data-Phone unit.
In the vintage computer department, he had a Coco I, Coco III, a couple of old silver TRS-80 printers, a TI 99/4a with some carts, a DECwriter, couple of Teletypes and other portable terminals, a huge stack of AT's and clones, an original IBM PC-XT, two Apple II+ (one looked in very good shape with 3 or 4 cards in it). Many old monochrome monitors, and a stack of AT&T 4410 terminals (some branded as Teletype). I lost track of everything he had there. You really just need to go there and pick through what he's got, that's all I can say.
So I ended up picking up the old Northstar Advantage (very dirty...definitely needs some TLC), a dual Vector Graphics 5.25" floppy unit and some other 5.25" floppy unit, and a very odd looking Syntrex machine also with dual 5.25" floppies in it, all for $135. He told me he had more Northstars but sold them. They apparently came from Rutgers University, which happens to practically be next door.
I can understand why it would be very difficult for him to ship this stuff. He's got it all in one place, but I can tell he really just wants the stuff gone so he can sell the house. His daughter appears to be the one kind of coordinating people who want to come down to take a look and buy.
So I'll post pics of what I got real soon...