Another big haul - March 2013 edition

So I won an item on ebay for 1 cent and forgot about it, as did the seller.  About three months later, he wrote and asked me to come get it, as well as "a few other things" he had in his garage.  Well, I'm a fool for free stuff, so here's what I got.

That damned Google+ Picasa redirect

Hey Google - when I send someone a Picasa album or pic link, where do you think I want them to go?  Answer: Not Google+

This can be fixed by adding a "noredirect=1" argument to the URL but placement matters:

This works:

https://picasaweb.google.com/102190732096693814506/DropBox?noredirect=1#5822348278420254786

This doesn't:

https://picasaweb.google.com/102190732096693814506/DropBox#5822348278420254786?noredirect=1

This concludes our lesson.

Lotsa Balls

The correct name, of course, is IBM Selectric Typing Element. I've got a good pile and finally got around to inventorying them.


I was hoping there was a complete guide out there for IBM elements but I haven't found it (sounds like another project.) I did find some scans of a brochure from GP, who also made elements for the Selectric line. I compiled them into a PDF for the docs site.

Quick on the mouse-stick

Saw the headline and had enough caffeine in me to jump into action and win the Internets:

http://kimjongunlookingatthings.tumblr.com

AHA-2940 Under Windows 7

What's the most popular PC SCSI card of all time? 1541C? Maybe. Or it may be the AHA-2940 family. It's up there, anyhow. And what card did Microsoft (and Adaptec) drop support for in Windows 7? The AHA-2940. Fortunately, I found a workaround which appears to succeed:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/winserverfiles/thread/bf0bb207-3b5d-489d-be74-56031dfe4651

Basement Electronics Lab of Dqqm, v.91b

Today's upgrade is the home-made equipment rack. My first project involving my new table saw. No fingers were lost in this operation:

From the bottom:

- Micronta DVM

- Tektronix 466 'scope

- A pair of low-amperage, noisy PSUs (will be replacing as soon as I can pick out a decent one)

- China-brand frequency detector

- Micro-Seven PBX emulator

And in the front is a Heathkit analog/digital lab/trainer.

Google Books and Magazines

Here's an interesting note...Google Books has a whole lot of magazines up now. One of them is Info World. I've had it come up in a lot of searches for old tech products and the articles have been very helpful. If you browse their Info World selection, the furthest you can go back is 12/22/86:

http://books.google.com/books/serial/ISSN:01996649?rview=1&lr=&sa=N&start=960

However, most of the articles that have popped up in searches have been from the early 80s - prime time for oddball hardware and non-standard systems. So where are those issues? Well, let's tweak that URL:

http://books.google.com/books/serial/ISSN:01996649?rview=1&lr=&sa=N&start=1300

Looks like they now start at 12/11/78 - big difference!

They're still indexed by Google yet are not browseable. Intentional or just a bug in their catalog? I dunno.

What is it?

I uncovered this while sorting out all the Apple // stuff.  It has no other port on it.

Wall of DEC (and Sun)

VAXStations, VAXServers, DECStations, DECSystems, Sparcstations, Sun 3...we got it all.

Wall of CP/M

13 Kaypros, an Osborne 1 (plastic) and a pair of Altos 580s (which ran MP/M, too.)

Bag of Crap!

Operation: Defrag

It's time to get the house in order. There's the basement, the garage, the office, the office closet. I want to stack like with like - a shelf of Kaypros, a shelf of DEC stuff, a shelf (or three) for Commodore. I'm not sure, short of inventorying everything (not going to happen until it's organized) and mapping it all out in Visio first, if this plan will work. So I will employ a more haphazard algorithm, one common to many human endeavors: I'll just start doing it, hope for the best and make it up as I go.

What can I store safely out in the garage? It will be subject to some great temperature swings (it probably doesn't get more than a couple degrees off the house heat) but it's mainly dry. I've had terminals, desktops, routers, etc out there for couple years with no visible damage. I guess the easy answer is "the cheap stuff." So I'll be moving the SOL-20, etc inside...

Pictures when it's all done? Sure. But it will never be done!

New Acquisition: Pravetz 82

I've been looking for one of these for about a year now. I've got a contact (umm, eBay seller) in Bulgaria who qualifies as about 20% of the classiccmp scene over there. First he sent me a Pravetz 8M, a dual CPU machine that I exhibited at VCF-MW this year. But this is the beast I was after: the first of the Pravetz line, their clone of the Apple //+.

The build quality is definitely a step behind the 8M. The plastic is odd: flexible yet brittle and with a weird texture (which I tried to show in the pics.) The system ROMs are real Soviet chips, which I did not find in the 8M (I have yet to photograph that one in detail.) The PSU is downright scary and the input current is not switchable. The 8M's PSU appears to be a clone of the ones Apple used. This one is definitely home-grown. I have a voltage converter from Fry's which should do the job.

At VCF I used Apple-branded drives and an Apple Disk ][ controller in the 8M. This time I have real Bulgarian disk controllers (he was kind enough to send two this time to make up for the lack of one last time) and floppy drives. The drives don't seem to have been made under the Pravetz label. Instead they are marked with the "Kocho Tsvetarov" name, which appears to be some sort of electronics factory.

Here's a whole gallery of pics I took last night. And here's an interesting document: a US Gov (financed, at least) report on Eastern Bloc tech circa 1984. I found it when googling the name on the back of the floppy drives I got with the Pravetz 82. I OCR'd it and rehosted it in case it goes away.

SA600 Update

Back on Monday I attacked the front door panel to the SA600 rack with some cleaner, some CLR and some naval jelly. Amazing stuff! I don't think I'll even repaint it now (since I'll never get the color matched right.) Have a look at the before-and-after.

Next is getting that rear cable manager and side panels on.

A Random Project

I'm keeping a gmail task list of projects I could be/should be working on, but the usual "decision paralysis" sets in once it grows larger than five or so items (I think it's up to about 20 now.) So I just chose one at random and spent a bit of time on it tonight: re-assembling the DEC SA600 rack I picked up last weekend in Madison, WI. It came with two RA90 (SDI interface, 1.2gb - in 1989!) drives, which weigh about 50-60lbs each, and judging from the blank plates in the front panel, it probably held six at one time. It came from UWM, so who knows what data might lurk on those platters...

I bent the panel mounts getting the rack in and out of the truck but I've got them more-or-less straight now. I put a side panel on and she's looking pretty sweet. The major job that needs doing now is addressing the rust on the bottom third of the front panel. A trip to Home Depot is in my future, and a purchase of harsh steel-wool and some Rust-o-leum primer. Then I have to figure out how to match that distinctive DEC beige so I can re-paint the panel. I'd settle for a near-match if it weren't for the painted logo on the panel - if I fail to mask that perfectly (and I will,) I'll have a section of original paint around it that will be an obvious mismatch to the repainted sections.

Quite a bit of work for something I'll likely end up giving away, or worse :(

Kick Start This Thing

I'd like to start posting here again. I'm thinking about blogging some tech projects. I'm surrounded my infinite things to work on, so it might provide some focus and motivation, not to mention some entertainment, to record my work. Now, what to do first.........

Meanwhile, VCF-MW was a blast. I learned a few things about organizing a show and just how much stuff I can't do at the same time. I gained a lot of ideas about how to fine-tune things for next year. I've been collecting attendees' photo galleries on the main page:

http://vcfmw.org/

There's some really great stuff there. Check them all out.

Hacked a VoIP Router

Picked up a Linksys WRTP54G at Goodwill tonight for $20. It was in the box and even in plastic, but had clearly been used before. It had a WEP key configured for wireless. It's also missing the antenna, but I don't plan to use it for wireless anyway.

Unlike the Vonage box I got a few months ago and tried fruitlessly to open up, I actually found a procedure that worked for this device. Here it is for future reference:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r21123078-Unlock-TUTORIAL-VONAGE-WRTP54GRTP300-WITH-50104

Been a While

I guess in this age of Facebook and Twitter the ol' blog has been all but abandoned.  Here's an update from my new Motorola Droid smartphone.  Let's hope this helps keep Moto's boat afloat!

Deskmate lives

Tandy 1000 PC at ChiClassicComp meeting.  Also some random cool parts. 

Chester!

Closest thing we have in the Midwest to a Weird Stuff.

** UPDATE **

The Haul:

IBM Model M "Industrial" version (grey color)

SQ312RD drive/SQ200 cartridge - an MFM Syquest drive? Yes!

5.25" Bernoulli drive (SCSI)

50' (?) DEC AUI network cable and a smaller one

A bunch of 8" floppy disks, some 3M and some individually packaged pre-formatted ones.

Some odd IBM serial cables with huge molded connectors

Ameritech Cellular sales tape (Wisconsin market)

3x IBM CGA video cards

Some kind of ISA Twinax card (terminal emulator for System/36? network?)

Not a bad haul and better than most hamfests I've been to in the last five years. Of course, none of their stock will be replenished any time soon, so it's kind of a one-time deal.