Guys:
I dredged this up from comp.sys.cbm. Alot of you guys out there have
been talking about hunting down 'Heavy Iron'. Here's one who's struck
the Mother Lode of 'Lite Plastic'. I sure wish I knew where this
place was . . . .
Jeff
------------>>>> Forewarded Message Follows<<<<---------------
Hey All,
For those of you in the U.S. looking for backup systems, extra
drives, or just new and different Commodores, I have a small story to
share.
This weekend I had the privilege (sarcasm) of putting together
a low-end IBM-compat system for my dad. After hunting around, I found
that Good Will is now selling their computer systems separately at a
place called Good Will Computerworks. As I priced the PC items with
them, I asked casually if they ever dealt in old Commodore 8-bits.
"Well", the Good Will lady said, "we do get them in all the
time, but we typically put them in a salvage bin, where they end up as
scrap or garbage."
At that moment, I felt like one of those animal rights activists
watching the Science channel.
"If you like, though", she went on, "you can come down and sign
our request book."
Not an hour later I was at Good Will Computerworks, making a deal on
a VGA monitor for $50.00 and asking about signing up to have Commodore
hardware set aside. The lady asked what specifically I was after, and
I mentioned a few items. She then introduced me to another lady who
was in charge of salvage. She, in turn, brought me to the salvage
bin. The Good Will junk pile for computers.
As I sit here folks, my eyes got as big as saucers when I saw this
bin.
Commodore 128's, 1571's, 1541's, Vic-20s, bread box C64s, printers,
ALL
of it-- just lying there like turtles on thier backs.
Yesterday, my friends, I drove home with a VGA monitor for $50.00,
and
another box with a flat Commodore 128, Commodore 1571 DSDD disk drive,
assorted software in the box, a Commodore VIC-20, and power supplies
and power cables all around for $5.00!!!!!! I spent the rest of the
day testing, cleaning, and tinkering. It's all in perfect condition.
The VIC-20 was a particularly special find, as I had been looking for
one.
Today I've been downloading VIC-20 software from ftp.funet.fi and
playing some really great little games on it. The charm of this
computer can not be understated. If you can get your hands on one, I
highly recommend it.
The moral of this story? I'm not sure there is one, except that
there
are
Commodore computers all over this country on their way to their deaths
at the hands of the "Good" Will folks. Only we can stop them, and as
for my part, it's been a pleasure to.
- Bo
Kip Crosby <engine(a)chac.org> wrote (after a correspondent I've lost
track of):
> At 09:58 9/22/97 BST, you wrote:
> >The IBM AS/400 is, I am told, based on the S/38.
>
> I'd be interested in knowing how, and to what extent. When my company was
> installing a bunch of Novell LANs in the late eighties, we used to call an
> AS/400 "a '386 surrounded by a lot of expensive air," but I suspect that
> that was the same kind of disparaging performance benchmark as comparing an
> S/38 to an 8088. I also suspect that what's inside an AS/400 box has
> changed an _awful lot_ over the years while the badge has provided continuity.
Doug Jones wrote a nice little explanation of this in a.f.c in early
1996. It's in dejanews if you want to go looking (long URL follows):
http://xp8.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?recnum=4528820&server=db96q1&CONTEXT=8749…
The summary is that there's a capability-based CISC architecture that
derives from the System/38. That is what the compilers compile to.
The AS/400 loader takes that code and generates RISC code for the
underlying AS/400 CPU. That underlying AS/400 CPU has changed over
the life of the product, and they can change it again. Pretty nifty.
Apparently the underlying RISC architecture doesn't have much in the
way of access protections; all that is implemented in the
loader-generated code.
It's not clear to me whether this means that linked executables can be
moved from one flavor of AS/400 to another, or you have to recompile
>from source, and I don't enough about AS/400s to know whether its
users really care about stuff like that.
-Frank McConnell
At 09:58 9/22/97 BST, you wrote:
>The IBM AS/400 is, I am told, based on the S/38.
I'd be interested in knowing how, and to what extent. When my company was
installing a bunch of Novell LANs in the late eighties, we used to call an
AS/400 "a '386 surrounded by a lot of expensive air," but I suspect that
that was the same kind of disparaging performance benchmark as comparing an
S/38 to an 8088. I also suspect that what's inside an AS/400 box has
changed an _awful lot_ over the years while the badge has provided continuity.
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org
http://www.chac.org/index.html
Computer History Association of California
> 1) Is there a FAQ somewhere that lists all IBM part nubmers and what they
> are? I've got a friend offering me an IBM 3278, and I can't remember
> if that's a dumb terminal or if it's something more exciting.
>
> not that i know of, although i think you can call boulder parts for parts
> lookup. 800.388.7080 i can look up fru part numbers when i'm at work though.
>
> 3278 isnt worth much unless you have an ibm mainframe to connect it to. its
> just a plain old ugly terminal. i think the 3279 was colour and the 3278 was
> monochrome. I do have most of the parts to an ibm xt3270 around here
> somewhere...
"xt3270"? When I was at IBM, we called it the "3270-PC". Very nice machine,
but not as nice as the 3270-PC/G or 3270-PC/GX, the graphics terminal versions.
The latter had a graphics coprocessor box almost as large as a PC, and a 19 inch
monitor (I think 1280x1024 resolution)
3278 is an extremely dumb terminal. It not only needs a mainframe, but AFAIK it
needs a 3274 or 3174 "terminal controller" - a minicomputer dedicated to MUXing
terminals to an IBM channel, which also ran most of the local loop on the
terminal and sent packets to the mainframe (a sort of PAD, I suppose). I can't
remember how much of the "dumb terminal" functionality was in the 3274 but I
used to suspect it was quite a lot...
3278 is indeed monchrome, 3279 the colour version. Superseded (mid '80s) by
3178 and 3179, and some cheaper monochrome ones (3196?)
To reply to some other comments on the recent IBM thread,
Yes, I might take a system/38 if someone offered it to me. I don't have
anywhere to put it but I might find room at the back of my garage. I'd prefer a
System/34 though - mainly because that's the machine I worked on when I was at
IBM.
I agree with Tony, though - difficult to maintain with all the custom chips.
Allison, I don't think when [previous contributor] described it as a "room-sized
8088" he was talking about the processor involved. The processor is a custom
IBM minicomputer on ?several boards, based on the System/32 and System/34 and
things. I think he was making a performance comparison, and probably being a
bit unfair.
The IBM AS/400 is, I am told, based on the S/38.
Philip.
(4) PCjr cartridges --
Lotus 1-2-3 (2 carts)
Managing your money
BASIC
PCjr program disks --
Your PCjr Sampler
Exploring the PCjr
Snoopy's Reading Machine (Random House)
Charlie Brown's ABC's (Random House)
Math Rabbit (The Learning Company)
Make an offer...
ps Also have a bwoken PCjr system available -- probably bad motherboard.
manney(a)nwohio.com
In a message dated 97-09-21 21:51:33 EDT, c. starling put forth:
<< Two questions:
1) Is there a FAQ somewhere that lists all IBM part nubmers and what they
are? I've got a friend offering me an IBM 3278, and I can't remember
if that's a dumb terminal or if it's something more exciting. >>
not that i know of, although i think you can call boulder parts for parts
lookup. 800.388.7080 i can look up fru part numbers when i'm at work though.
3278 isnt worth much unless you have an ibm mainframe to connect it to. its
just a plain old ugly terminal. i think the 3279 was colour and the 3278 was
monochrome. I do have most of the parts to an ibm xt3270 around here
somewhere...
david
>>>My second job as a computer programmer put me in front of an IBM 5120.
>>>It was a desktop model which incorporated a B&W monitor, keyboard, and
>>>two 8" floppy drives in the main cabinet.
>
> Sounds like an early Datamaster to me. I have a Datamaster (5123), but it has
> a green-screen, not a B&W one. Otherwise the description matches.
Interesting. My datamaster is a 5322, and calls itself System/23. It
doesn't match the 5120 description except in the eight-inch drives. In
particular it does not blank the screen (that I recall) during I/O. The
screen is green; the keyboard is built into the system unit but looks
very like an early PC keyboard.
A brief speculation on IBM numbering. 5123 is probably a derivative of
5120 in some sense. 5322, on the other hand, looks like a variety of
System/32 (the 5320). System/32 begat System/34 (5340) begat System/36
(5360 = large, 5362 = desk side, 5364 = dekstop) begat AS/400 (I think).
System/38 also fits in there somewhere (5380) so you would expect a
System/23 to be called 5230.
> As I understand the Datamaster, it really was the predecessor to the PC. It
> was desktop based, although you needed a large desk <g>. It had an ISA-like
Nonsense! I've got mine on a very small desk! However, system unit and
printer between them take up the whole desk.
> bus into which you could plug-in cards. My guess, from talking to someone who
> worked on the project, that it was a business machine (A/P, billing, word
> processing, etc.) that fell out of favor when IBM introduced the PC in 1981.
It was indeed. There were two video options, Data Processing and Word
Processing. The DP video card had one byte per screen character, the WP card
having two. The difference to the user was that on the WP you could set the
attributes (blink, underline, intensify, inverse video) for each character
individually; on the DP model you used up a character space to make the change,
which then took effect until another attribute code appeared further down the
screen.
Mine, being a DP model, came with some sort of accounting application that I've
never used.
CPU was an 8085, using bank switching to access 128k each of RAM and ROM. Very
slow. The large ROM, though, had almost a complete mainframe basic with matrix
operations and all sorts.
Character code was EBCDIC, unlike the PC. What did 5100 use?
> The PC was 1/3 the size, probably 1/4 the weight, much faster, and used 5-1/4"
> diskettes.
And less than 1/4 the price. The previous owner of my datamaster paid
L11000 for it in 1980. The PC when it came out in the UK (1983?) was
L2399 I think.
> There are several Datamaster owners here who can fill in more about the
> actual specs. I don't use mine much because I have a blown ROM chip that
> prevents me from booting...
I was hoping that one of those hand-held machine EPROMS advertised here
a few weeks ago might act as a replacement. (No, I haven't forgotten!)
Philip.
Recently signed back on the list after being absent for a few weeks...
hope I haven't missed anything! :)
Two questions:
1) Is there a FAQ somewhere that lists all IBM part nubmers and what they
are? I've got a friend offering me an IBM 3278, and I can't remember
if that's a dumb terminal or if it's something more exciting.
2) Anyone have any suggestions for a **MASS** shipment of computer stuff?
I'm mainly concerned with keeping the cost down. I'm working on a deal
right now that might involve as many as five desktop-type machines
with monitors, lots of repair parts in original boxes and a "shelf of
software". I'm the one getting the goods, so shipping cost is my problem.
Are there any companies other than UPS I should look at?
Should I try to minimize the number of boxes, even if it means bigger
and heavier boxes?
Is it completely insane to try to get this much stuff shipped?
Perhaps I should just drive down to Florida and pick the stuff up...
thanks...
chris starling
>> At 02:25 9/21/97 +0100, ARD wrote:
>Hmmm... Well, us HP71 owners have the problem that the IDS....
>cost about \pounds 1000
>when it came out in the UK. That makes it _very_ difficult to find
>second-hand, since so few were ever sold.
>>choke<< talk about an HP collectible....
>> Which [the PC CP/M-86 binder] is sort of pink, for those who are hunting.
>
>Is it? I've seen a grey Digital Research binder for CP/M86
>for the PC.
The IBM PC -- not DRI -- binder for CP/M-86 a la Principles of Ops is
covered in calamine-pink vinyl. I've got one, seen another.
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org
http://www.chac.org/index.html
Computer History Association of California
At 02:25 9/21/97 +0100, ARD wrote:
>The
>releasing of the full TechRef for the first PC was something of a suprise
>to hackers used to IBM's behaviour in the past.
It is worth remembering, though, that the above-captioned item was a $125
extra-cost option, which did tend to (as someone once said about something
roughly similar) chase away the squirrels.
What's fun is to find one of those now, in its oh-so-refined lavender
binder. The only strictly comparable prize is an IBM PC CP/M-86 manual.
Which is sort of pink, for those who are hunting.
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org
http://www.chac.org/index.html
Computer History Association of California
