Shopsmith Forums

dusty wrote:I run into trouble when I get to all of the OLD computer stuff. Items like the 8" and 5" floppies and floppy drives and the old operating systems.

I cannot employ any of them anymore but I just cannot bring myself to dump them.

If I could even read the disks, will anything that is available today run CPM.

Does anyone need a 300 baud modem and acoustic coupler. Having this allowed me to complete homework without going to the computer lab every night after work (unless I needed punch cards).

MMMOST was our answer to multiuser CPM. Though I think it maxed at 3 users.

I keep an old 5MB Western Digital hard drive (2+ inches high) as a paper weight. I still remember when I bought it (EXPENSIVE!), never figuring I would fill it up. I'm sure it still has AutoCad and WordPerfect on it with loads of data files. I still have the 386SX which was my salary raise for the year (generous boss). $100 a set of 1MB for ram chips. I've also kept my HP which had 5 1//4, 2 1/2, and CD, so I could transfer and update programs. Those were the days!

[quote="benush26"]And PDP11 stuff if you need that, too! ]

Now that brings back memories! My very first robot controller in grad school was a PDP11-70. A hand-me-down from DARPA. When we got it, I think it had 128kb of core memory, in two cards. And I do mean core memory. As in a matrix of tiny little magnetic donuts, each with two wires passing through it at right angles. Each donut storing one bit of data.

Hey, it beat vacuum tubes!

Somewhere, I still have a big open-reel mag tape with the robot control program on it.

dusty wrote:I run into trouble when I get to all of the OLD computer stuff. Items like the 8" and 5" floppies and floppy drives and the old operating systems.

I cannot employ any of them anymore but I just cannot bring myself to dump them.

If I could even read the disks, will anything that is available today run CPM.

Does anyone need a 300 baud modem and acoustic coupler. Having this allowed me to complete homework without going to the computer lab every night after work (unless I needed punch cards).

I got cpm if you have a pc that boots from a floppy.

BuckeyeDennis wrote:Now that brings back memories! My very first robot controller in grad school was a PDP11-70. A hand-me-down from DARPA. When we got it, I think it had 128kb of core memory, in two cards. And I do mean core memory. As in a matrix of tiny little magnetic donuts, each with two wires passing through it at right angles. Each donut storing one bit of data.

Dennis, there were more wires than that.

I remember that much, although, when my father was only 45, he worked for a company that made the replacement chip. The intel 1101.

http://www.nzeldes.com/HOC/IntelFirsts.htm

IF you can find one of those chips, and successfully remove the cover, you'll see intel's logo back then. It was actually ON the chip. (And, the reason I'm not capitalizing intel.)

steve

Geeze-O-Pete, guys.
I save scraps of wood and odd/weird nuts and bolts I'll prolly never use but outdated, unusable computer media?????
Old Christmas tree light strings and boxes of scraps of quilting material are infuriating enough.

I have an Atari 800 with floppy drive, I wonder if it would fire up ?

Gene Howe wrote:Geeze-O-Pete, guys.
I save scraps of wood and odd/weird nuts and bolts I'll prolly never use but outdated, unusable computer media?????
Old Christmas tree light strings and boxes of scraps of quilting material are infuriating enough.

The funny thing is that much of that stuff still works. My first commercially built computer, a $3000 Gateway, still boots up and joins the internet while producing a reasonably good image.

I am not sure why (or even when) it got moved to the storage shed.

But, that won't be true anymore. Because of this thread - it is in the process of being parted out. Just for the fun of it, I am going to list the mother board for this and the computer that replaced it on EBay. We'll see what happens.

dusty wrote:If I could even read the disks, will anything that is available today run CPM.

Yes, try Z80pack. There are some others.

I have been messing with computers since some time i the seventys. I've thrown away more computer hardware and software than most people have seen.

The toughest thing for me is cables. I hate throwing out old cables because if I need one of them and they don't make it anymore they can real expensive to replace or very difficult to find. I have boxes full of cables. If I put them in the trash I'll surely need one about the time the garbage tuck rolls out of sight.

I keep good quality drives of any kind until they become useless. I have boxes full of adapters, fans, and power supplys. I have several generic computers and cases on hand several of which are reaching the end of there useful life. I don't keep mother boards because they are usually near the end of their useful life or fried.

Being raised very poor I have a very hard time getting rid of anything that might be of use to me but over the years I came to realize that if I can find it I don't have it. Its a bit easier to get rid of stuff than it used to be.

For the first half or more of my life I averaged moving every 18 months. When you move you purge. I've been in the same location since 1991. Things get put away and if you never use them forgotten. More stuff comes along and gets used stored away and forgotten. After awhile stuff expands to fill all available space. I really need to pile everything out in the yard and get rid of most of it.

rlkeeney wrote:Yes, try Z80pack. There are some others.

Thanks. When I get to the back of the shed, I may find a need for something like this.