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IBM XT keyboard

IBM XT keyboard

It's a 5150-style 83-key keyboard.

I actually encountered the keyboard separately from the rest of the system on Friday, thanks to a practical joke played by the other guys in the department (I'm the new supervisor).

I have an IBM Model M 101-key on my desk, because they're so much fun to type on, and one of the guys hid it behind my monitor and swapped in the old PC/XT keyboard in its place! I didn't notice at the very first because the IBM keyboards do look similar. I thought it was the AT keyboard I had been refurbishing at first, but then I looked at the layout and the cord (not stretched at all, perfectly coiled) and realised they'd happened upon quite a treasure.

I asked them where it came from and they pointed to a new customer drop-off pallet on the floor. Unfortunately it had already been spray-painted but I was still very excited to see something like that.
 
Pc-8500?

Pc-8500?

Any chance you've run accross a NEC PC-8500 or more specificly the RAMDisk cartridge that was available for it?

My 8500 (nicknamed "Studly") has only the original 32K and the RAMDisk cartridge would make life soooo much easier. I don't have a 2G phone to use as a modem with it anymore (nor a landline at home for that matter) so I can't just dial up the home network and offload material to make space when I need to.

-chris
 
A CP/M laptop...that is teh sexy. Never seen one come in to work before.

By the way, no pics/updates on that IBM XT system today. I can't come to work because my son needs taking care of.
 
Well, it is now Tuesday!

Unfortunately, in my absence, the guys forgot to bring up the XT pallet until after the beautiful IBM Personal Computer Color Monitor had already been destroyed!

The keyboard, XT system, IBM color printer, and tape/HDD combo drive were all rescued without a scratch.

I suppose I can still get the XT going with a substandard monitor or something...
 
I wouldn't know what an Amiga mouse looks like at first glance...

Post or link to a few pictures - most of the time I don't even look at the old mice before the cables are snipped but it's nice to have a reason to!

Specifications would be nice too - # of buttons, pin count, etc.
 
Oh man, that really sucks about the monitor. I would have been very angry, and probably have thrown some stuff around....
 
I might have if I had been there - but if I had been there, losing the monitor would have been my fault.

Infrastructure and Demanufacturing were just doing their jobs. We get 48 cents per pound of CRT glass out of monitors and televisions, so we made like $8 off of it at least.
 
Amiga mice have a DB9 connector and typically have two buttons. An original Commodore mouse would be marked as such, otherwise you can hope it says Amiga somewhere on the underside. The connector normally doesn't have screws, unlike many DB9 serial mice on the PC side. Other than that, I doubt you can identify them at a quick glance. Atari ST mice share the same physical attributes as the Amiga, and are almost the same. Some mice were switchable Amiga/Atari on the back side.

I dumped the broken SCSI drive at my nearest recycling station today. Based on what computer stuff people dump here, it is mostly dull mid-90's PCs or newer. Often without the top cover even, sometimes leaving a couple of floppy drives or CD-ROM. Since the stuff is verboten to touch for outsiders, I couldn't look closer even if there was something semi-interesting. Nowhere near the variety you come across, and much worse condition. Of course, there might be other recycling stations in this country where the "good" stuff ends up, and someone at the big drop point occassionally makes the same kinds of finds as you do. Although I strongly doubt it.
 
I do have to agree that the vast majority of dumped computer equipment is indeed "mid-90's PCs or newer", but since we process computers and electronics in quantities approaching ten tons per day, the law of averages (and human stupidity) helps me get all kinds of crazy awesome stuff.
 
I'm most amazed that all those pre-1990 systems were not recycled years ago. Sure, people clean their garage and find an old Apple II which doesn't power on any more so they dump it, but I'd think something like that happens for one out of 10,000 people or even less. Maybe some collector who has duplicates of one machine. To make room for new finds, the broken unit or the one with most scratches is thrown away, since it takes too much time and effort to find a buyer.
 
I gave away my 1980s stuff long ago to a friend before moving. A very nice Vector Graphics/1, with 64K of Cromemco memory in it and a Lear ADM 3A my boss gave me that I got to repair myself.
I'm part of the crowd now - getting ready to throw away a 1996 Compaq PII/233 and a 1997 Compaq AMD 380Mhz. I highly doubt I will be leaving any kind of drives on it. Likely toss the 66Mhz sdram tho.
 
Well, most of the 1980s stuff comes from schools. I have had full pallets of just Apple IIes, or just Mac Plus/SE/Classic, or IBM all-in-one educational systems, stuff like that.

When I see "new" old computers come in by themselves, like the XT, I just assume that somebody died.
 
When you get a new machine, it's always interesting to look at what is on the drive as you can get a good idea what the machine was used for.

My XT was used in an office, so had WordStar, and Lotus 1-2-3, Norton Utilities and a few other insignificant utilities. The 5150 only had the IBM Assistant Series installed (at least since 1987), so I think that lead an even more boring life!
 
Har har! :p

Well, as things turned out, we found a Commodore plus/4 New in the Box (NIB) with the original Montgomery Ward price tag (looks like $279.99 or $229.99).

I'm pretty sure it's never been turned on.

I'd actually never heard of the plus/4 system until I encountered this one, it claims to be a productivity computer and apparently has business software in ROM, kind of like an old Magnavox Odyssey.

Is it worth a great deal or should I just add it to my personal collection?
 
If it is new in box and in very nice condition, perhaps it could command some value. If nothing else, the TED graphics chip and/or the 8501 CPU tend to fail quite often on these machines. It might be possible to source some other 6502 compatible CPU with additional circuitry, but once the TED has shut down, it is yet another spare parts machine. It means that percentage wise, I suppose there are fewer functional C16 and Plus/4 than there are C64 or VIC-20. Speaking in absolute numbers, the difference is even bigger.
 
I posted a thread in the Commodore forum - not much activity there anyways.

We also found a 1541 floppy disk drive, also new in box, plastic wrap and demo disk. included.
 
These items new in box sounds like some old store liquidated and all the remaining items going to recycling. Surely, items in that condition generate more money than what the components would sell for separately.
 
I wouldn't have agreed with your assessment, carlsson, except that one of the guys brought ANOTHER new-in-box 1541 drive upstairs at the last minute.

You're absolutely right about items in that condition being worth more than the raw materials. The responsibility for the determination of that worth rests squarely on my shoulders.

BTW, I powered up the IBM XT - since we didn't have any monitors with 9-pin CGA input, and I didn't feel like opening the XT up and switching cards, I used the composite output on the CGA card to get video onto a little 15" LCD TV, which happened to be a brand-new Viewsonic prototype monitor. It looks fairly bizarre. :p

I'll post about the IBM XT system and its contents in the IBM forum in a minute.
 
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