I've often wondered about this myself. The answer lies in the word "collect" which implies, in this case, INTENTIONAL accumulation of what most folks would consider junk, in order to play with it, fiddle with it, admire it, fantasize about how things might have been if you'd had one back when they were of some value, etc. I don't do any of those things.
I am just an accumulator, and once in a while, I even pass up a system, wholly functional just because I don't want equipment from that manufacturer. IBM and DEC are two such, and the latter, at least, is really popular among collectors. Both have in common that they maximized the terabucks per femptoflop, continuing to use old costly technology where newer cheaper technology would have been better. Hindsight's always 20/20, they say, but I think it differs from one person to the next. Looking back, most collectors are glad the systems they collect were. As for me, I'm just glad they're gone.
Of course, I do have my niche . . .
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Ram Meenakshisundaram <rmeenaks(a)olf.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Monday, November 15, 1999 2:18 PM
Subject: Dont want to start a flame war here but
Hi,
Just curious. What motivates someone to collect old minis and mainframes??? I can see it being nice to look at for a while, but something as big as a mini is very cumbersome to have around the house (let alone an apartment). And what pratical use does it serve running it at home anyway??? I see a lot of posts about collectors having paper tapes, reels, card readers, etc, but how often does one really use it or even turn it on. I would imagine that it probably sets idle for about 95-99% of the time and most people would turn on a PC instead. I have a SUN IPX and a PC. I rarely turn the SUN on, but I keep it around to do some practical UNIX programming on a real UNIX box instead of linux, freebsd, etc. As I said, I dont want to start a flame war or anything, just curious thats all......
Ram
PS: If I started to collect stuff like that, my wife will throw me out of the house. She already complains about my transputer equipment...
--
,,,,
/'^'\
( o o )
-oOOO--(_)--OOOo-------------------------------------
| Ram Meenakshisundaram
| Senior Software Engineer
| OpenLink Financial Inc
| .oooO Phone: (516) 227-6600 x267
| ( ) Oooo. Email: rmeenaks(a)olf.com
---\ (----( )--------------------------------------
\_) ) /
(_/
I thought cats only had 9 lives....
When I picked up this mini I was told it ran on 220 volts.. It has 3 twist
in 220Volt plugs on it....
Well, I was just about to hook it up to 220 when I thought *maybe* I should
double check the PSU jumpers.
Well,,, contrary to what everyone thought.... the thing was configured for
110 Volts... 1 PDP saved!
I wired it all up (I have NEVER used an 18 bit mini)... applied power and no
lights... (one little breaker was on off.. talk about scarey and I was
smelling around for smoke).
I flipped the breaker and..... one happy PDP-15
Selected "MO", read some core, wrote some back... then went for the ultimate
test.......
Grabbed a paper tape (MAINDEC) hit STOP,RESET,READIN... the paper tape read
in, and talk about "blinky lights" (I think I'll just wheel this mini to my
living room window and run a looping test tape every day til XMAS)....
The MAINDEC program ran.. The PDP-15 was Plug and Play. [no fun..not even a
bad chip/solder contact to find :-( ]
I don't know how to load FOCAL or even if it can be run from paper tape
(stand alone). I do have a drum memory unit and mag tape but don't want to
hook them up as I barely know how to operate what I have right now... (Took
20 minutes to go through some manuals to tell me how to load in the
MAINDEC...).
This is one weird mini.
I have "Disk Monitor" and pile of other software, FOCAL, BASIC, FORTRAN,
8-TRAN, MACRO, etc...
I don't know how to load any of these and there are just too many manuals to
go through right now.
If anyone here knows:
A) Can FOCAL be run stand alone on the PDP-15.. if so how? and how do I load
it?
B) What atre these "Paper Tape System" tapes for?
I have a teletype hooked up to it so I am hoping someone here can save me a
lot of reading....
john
Well, all the things which make the DECnet stuff painfully burdensome in a
simple environment like mine, turn around, I'm told, and make a more complex
and larger environment work better. Perhaps your system will benefit from
the presence of multiple protocols and layers. It doesn't look, from your
description, like a single segment. However, for my purposes, it's a single
segment if, without any intervening layers (other than the physical ones)
all stations can directly "see" one another, particularly, of course, the
collisions. Generally, people split up segments when the collision overhead
gets too large. It's hard to make that show up with half a dozen stations.
If you do as I did, by dumping vast quantities of highly dense data all at
once, you'll see the overhead rise.
When I got my 100 MHz stuff I was told by the tech support guy at Netgear,
an avid LINUX user, that I'd be best reducing the number of protocols
supported on my setup, so I deleted all references to Microsoft's NETBEUI.
I'm not sure it made things better or faster, but it hasn't hurt anything.
My setup is based on a NETWARE server, though, so I can't punt IPX/SPX and
the Windows boxes like to talk TCP/IP. Since I'm using that for WAN-ing, I
might as well make that the default. Now, if I could just find a TCP/IP
driver set for DOS that's not bigger than the NOVELL stuff . . .
Perhaps you could reduce the number of protocols a bit. It doesn't always
make a lot of difference, but you never know . . .
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh(a)aracnet.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, November 14, 1999 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: Effective Speed of 10BaseT
>>there were no ack's and no error management of any kind over the LAN.
IIRC,
>>Appletalk sends occasional traffic over an otherwise idle LAN. I don't
know
>>whether it does this when there really is traffic.
>
>Yes, Appletalk does send a little over the network even when nothing is
>going on, but not as bad as DECnet. Since I've got AppleTalk, DECnet,
>Samba, and TCP/IP all running on the same network I've probably got a
>pretty noisy.
>
>Hmmm, just ran a 'tcpdump' and it looks like I'm taking a hit on the
>network just by having a couple Appletalk shares mounted from the VMS box,
>about 56-bytes minimum every couple seconds.
>
>>The numbers you quote seem a mite low, but not embarassingly so. You are
>>configured as a single segment, are you not?
>
>Not sure how you mean a single segment, there are two hub's attached to the
>switch, as well as computers, plus I've got a 10Base2 converter and
>localtalk converter (for the HP 5MP Laserjet) plugged into it.
>
>Guess I'll have to turn on FTP on the DEC3000, and see what kind of speeds
>I get that way. Besides I want to get FTP and NFS turned on anyway.
>
> Zane
>| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
>| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
>| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
>+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
>| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
>| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
>| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
> I stepped outside and everything but the steering wheel & seat were removed
> from my truck... including the contents of the glove compartment & other
> places of "personal" storage.
>
> [[Editor's note - I'm not just picking on Canadian Customs - Years ago
> (when I was an infant, so that's ~30 years ago) my parents were coming back
> into the US when US customs stopped them, tore the car apart *including the
> seats*. When they were all done, they said "You can go. You have 15 minutes
> to be out of the building." *thankfully* my dad is one hell of a mechanic
> and had a full toolset with him and could reinstall the seats in a few
> minutes - despite the fact the tools were spread in a 10 foot radius around
> the car. No joke.]]
>
> Customs can be your friend, or they can be the most sadistic bastards
> you've ever known. Be nice to them even if they're assholes - or you'll
> regret it if you do any border crossing at all.
I've never had it that bad. The worst time for me was at Strasbourg, crossing
>from Germany to France (whatever happened to European free trade?) in 1995.
Bored customs officer + loaded estate car (station wagon) with GB plates =
obvious result. They didn't take the computer junk out of the car but insisted
on going through all my suitcases and asking silly questions - I speak very
little French or German and they spoke even less English, so how they expected
to understand my replies I am not sure.
Example of silly question: they find a (German) hymn book (FWIW I also collect
hymn books) and ask if I am a priest, and try to persuade me to sing something
>from it.
I eventually got away when they asked me if I was a spy, and I said yes...
>>I only ever got lucky once and got a girl I use to go to school with... wish
>>I had a Picasso in the car that day :-(
>
> You can *afford* a Picasso? You must have one hell of a computer collection!!!
> ;-)
No, he imports them for rich clients who pay virtually no commission. If he had
had one when he met his friend he could have pocketed the import duty and made a
profit for once ... ;-)
Philip.
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>> 12. IBM PS/2 model 70 portable (joke) seems to be a 386 with 12 meg HD.
>> Pretty heavy for a portable and only runs with a cord plugged into the wall.
>
> ah yes, the P70. gas plasma display so that's why it can only run on ac
> power. make sure your floppy drive works, there was an ECA about that. they
> seem to sell pretty good around this area, although i have spotted one in a
> computer junk store for $35, i'm holding off for cheaper. When it was new, it
> sold for over $7k.
$7k? Ouch!!
I passed one up a couple of weeks ago. Seller was asking 95 pounds, was
prepared to sell for 80, but no less - she claimed the Windows 95 installation
on the hard drive was worth that. I told her just what I would do if I got a
machine with Windows 95 on it... (hint: it involves a disk partitioning tool and
a Linux distribution kit)
Philip.
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-----Original Message-----
From: John Honniball [mailto:John.Honniball@uwe.ac.uk]
Sent: Monday, November 15, 1999 10:38 AM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: Re: HP 7550 plotter
You wrote:...My favourite feature of the HP 7550: little
"gravity-operated" lids over the three interface
connectors, to keep the dust out.
My favorite feature is writing speed.
We have one hooked to a network analyser, ploting color traces of cell tower
antenna impedances. Although the 7550 is not easilly portable, niether is
the Network Analyser. But you have many colors to discern different
antennae feedlines and the completed plots expedite proof of performance
reports. Storing traces to diskette might be an option, but it's still
slower printing to color inkjet back at the office. You can also more
quickly mark up the plots to keep them straight, rather than having to give
each file a descriptive filename on diskette.
Larry Truthan
> ***********************************************************************
> * John Ott * Email: jott(a)saturn.ee.nd.edu *
> * Dept. Electrical Engineering * *
> * 275 Fitzpatrick Hall * *
> * University of Notre Dame * Phone: (219) 631-7752 *
> * Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA * *
> ***********************************************************************
--
John Honniball
Email: John.Honniball(a)uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England
--- Kevin Schoedel <schoedel(a)kw.igs.net> wrote:
> >Those numbers are on a par with old MVIIs with DEQNAs and MV2000s (ca1988).
>
> Hey! What's wrong with DEQNAs and MV2000s?
One problem I know about is that they can't handle as much network saturation
as other equipment of the same vintage. At OSU, c. mid-1980s, a friend of
mine calculated the minimum back-to-back packet time that their Pyramids could
fling packets onto the network at. The idea was to raise network throughput
by reducing inter-packet time since most of the traffic was NFS and telnet,
not heavy, sustained, long packet traffic, IIRC.
When the modifictations to the Pyramid's network driver were implemented,
the lone MicroVAX-II crashed. The DEC interface apparently could handle
passing
a packet to the bus while receiving a new packet from the wire, but when the
next packet was coming in and the first packet wasn't fully off the card, the
DEQNA raised some sort of error which caused a kernel panic. In other words,
there was only room on the card for one unprocessed packet, not two. The
real problem was that when that extra packet came along, the DEQNA should have
ignored it, forcing a later retry, not lock up the Qbus. Software wouldn't
have fixed this problem.
I do not know why DEC obsoleted the DEQNA in favor of the DELQA. All I have
is a DEQNA myself and it's so new (to me), I haven't even plugged it in.
-ethan
=====
Infinet has been sold. The domain is going away in February.
Please send all replies to
erd(a)iname.com
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
Just had a delivery of more prime quality junk!
I have an HP 7550 pen plotter, complete with HP-GL manual
and quick reference. No operator's manual as yet. This
thing is huge, with a 68000 CPU, and takes A3 paper
manually fed as well as auto-feeding A4. However, here's
the question:
How do I get the plotter to open the paper drawer?
Is it a front-panel operation, or do I just pull? I've
pulled quite hard, so maybe it's just stuck :-(
Oh, and I also got a 4-track Philips tape deck, wherein the
belts have not just stretched, but liquified -- yuck!
--
John Honniball
Email: John.Honniball(a)uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England
Hi,
Has anyone ever experienenced corroding core memories ?
I have some core memories stored in my garage which is relatively
dry, but I don't like the risk that they get corroded.
Any views or contributions are welcome.
Thanks
Regards,
Henk Stegeman,
IBM System/3 owner.
Actually, I was wondering something similar myself :) I've got two old
VAXstation 2000's that i've been trying to netboot and neither one of
them are cooperating much.. They've both got lance boards that check
out alright with the ROM diags ("t 0"), link up fine (link light on
transciever and hub on), but when I try and netboot NetBSD on them, I
get strange %VMB-F-ERR type messages and it bombs out... I tried
pulling the box apart for inspection; the board looks like its OK..
I found a jumper on the lance board and tried moving it to the other
position, but it didnt do anything toward resolving the problem.
I get the same error with two different VAXstation 2000 systems, both
with lance boards that check out OK in ROM diags.. Is there something
I should know about configuring these little buggers or have both the
boards died in some strange way?
I'd appreciate any pointers anybody could give me on them!
Thanks,
-Sean Caron (root(a)diablonet.net)
