When Geeks Go Collecting

[bjarvis]

I like collecting old personal computers. Yes, they're obsolete and slow as hell by comparison to current hardware, but they have a certain charm for me. Perhaps its because these were all built in the days before the kernels were multiple megabytes in size and were therefore comprehensible by mere mortals instead of exclusively by large corporate software development laboratories.

In any case, the father-in-law gave me two of his older machines yesterday. They had been sitting unloved in his office for years and he's finally clearing out the stuff he doesn't use or need any longer. Thus, I have inherited:

	Apple Macintosh SE/30 Motorola 68030 16 MHz CPU, 2 MB RAM, 40 MB hard drive, 1 floppy disk drive, MacOS 6.1.7, manufactured in 1988.
	Apple Macintosh Performa 6200CD 75 MHz PowerPC 603 CPU, 16 MB RAM, 1 GB IDE hard drive, MacOS 7.5.1, 1 floppy disk, 1 CD-ROM drive, manufactured 1995.

Some of my other happy children include the following machines. I still have a working original model Commodore 64 and Vic20 back in Canada with my parents, along with the Gemini 10x printer I bought with them back in 1984. I hope to bring those home to join my other machines some time soon.

	Commodore 64, circa 1985 64 KB RAM, Commodore BASIC, slow-as-hell external floppy drive (5.25", 170 KB single sided), 1 MHz 6510 CPU
	Commodore SX-64 portable, circa 1983 64 KB RAM, Commodore BASIC, built-in floppy drive (5.25", 170 KB single sided), 1 MHz 6510 CPU
	Apple Macintosh Classic, circa 1990 2 MB RAM, 10 GB hard drive, 16 MHZ Motorola 68000 CPU, System 6.0 MacOS
	Toshiba T1200XE, circa 1987 1 MB RAM, 20 MB hard drive, 12 MHZ Intel 80286 CPU, LCD screen, MS-DOS 5.0
	Radio Shack TRS 80 Model 100, circa 1983 32 KB RAM, 1 MHz 8085 CPU, LCD screen (8 lines by 40 chars, not backlit), 300 baud internal modem, built-in word processor, BASIC and telecom application.

All are in working condition, BTW.

I'd love to collect more and larger machines but our storage space is limited and kent4str was already bitching loud and long about the two I picked up last night. sigh

Comments

[urbear]

Gawd. I spent uncounted hours with all the machines described above and many more. Exidy Sorcerer, anyone? Cromemco? Fortune 32:16? You and I should talk about history sometime.

And I still think that the Model 100 is the best note-taking device ever built. I'd love to see a $50 modern equivalent.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Note taking is why I bought the Model 100 in the first place, back in 1987; even spent $100 extra to have the memory upgraded to an exciting 32KB. :-)

In 2003, when Hurricane Isabel tore through the DC area, I was finishing a degree online via the University of Maryland. Our power was out for five days but I still had papers due. Rather than drain the batteries of my office laptop, I got the Model 100 out of storage, popped in four AA batteries and prepared my papers on it. Alas, the screen wasn't backlit so I had to bring a number of candles in real close to let me read what I was preparing. Later, I used the serial cable to pipe the raw text to my office laptop for formatting in MS Word and emailing to the professor. Definitely one of my goofier computer experiences.