On 2/5/2016 9:26 PM, philo wrote:
On 02/05/2016 07:54 PM, wrote:
nder my mother got so mad when he bought it."

My former brother-in-law was a "financial planner" and "Investment
broker" who always had to have the best - at least in his mind. It was
champaign living on a beer budjet but he spent the money. His first PC
compatible (pre XT days) cost him just over $2000 - then another $2000
for a hard drive a few weeks later, Then another $3000 for a high
resolution colour display set-up -I think it was an EGA but not sure -
may well have been some standard that never caught on- so he had about
3 times as much tied up in his computer as in his new Country Squire
wagon - and then he just absolutely HAD to have a Laserjet printer -
another $3000.

I don't think he ever made enough in that business to even pay for his
equipment - they lived on my sister's earnings as a nurse.

Even though I was around back in the punch card days, by 1982 I was so sick of
computers I said I would never touch one again...and except for doing my
inventory at work, pretty much stuck to that.

My second "set of experiences" with computers was punching cards on an
IBM mainframe, "batch". Prior to that, a Bell 103 modem alongside an
ASR 33.

In 1995 my (now) wife spent $1600 for a Packard Bell P-1 75 mhz with 8 megs of
RAM, I thought for sure she was nuts.

In ~`86 I dropped ~$8K -- TWICE -- for a (pair of) 25MHz 386's with 13M of RAM,
each. Back when you had a video CARD and a printer/serial CARD and a sound
CARD and a SCSI HBA (card) and a network interface CARD and an external CD-ROM
(nothing writeable, yet) ... :

(i.e., number of ISA slots was *important*!)

When she got a P-II a few years later she gave her old machine to me so I
figured I might as well fool with it...and before too long got hooked.

Put in a 200 mhz cpu and maxed the RAM out to 256megs

a 20 Gig HD and dual booted Win98 and RedHat 5.2

My real computer knowledge started trying to get Linux installed and running.
Took me six months before I got everything configured properly.

I started running FreeBSD in '92 (v 0.9) and NetBSD about the same time
(v 0.8). Downloading dozens of 5 inch "floppy images" with a 19K modem
over a dialup line onto one of those 386 boxes. (I used external 4G SCSI
drives at that point so I could just swap the entire disk enclosure
out and be running Windows one day, FreeBSD the next and NetBSD the
day after!). I used to keep a shelf in the closet with bare 4G SCSI
drives each labeled with a sticker telling me what "system" it contained.

Back then, I was more active in the FOSS community ("made the time" to
be so). Now, there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do what
*I* want to do, let alone contribute to others! :-/

Don Y wrote:
On 2/5/2016 6:19 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 13:33:36 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/5/2016 1:08 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 13:57:59 -0500, wrote:
snipped
My archives consist of saving the hard drives from all
the old pc's ... doubt I could retrieve much from them
now, even if I wanted to ..
John T.


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

Why not? You can connect them to a windows machine and it will read
FAT just fine.
That depends. If it is an old RLL or MFM drive he might have a LOT of
trouble finding an interface card that would fit a new machine and
match the drive - and then to find one with driver support??? Even
harder yet would be an older ESDI drive.

It's not just the physical/bus interface (ISA vs PCI). Much old
software
talked directly *to* the hardware. So, expected to see particular
registers
at particular IO ports that caused particular things to happen *in* the
hardware. Much of that has now been virtualized (as it should have been
ages ago -- but MS is always a decade or three behind the times) and
likely
won't work.

I keep a Compaq Portable 386 for the express purpose of supporting
legacy
hardware and software devices. Granted, it's only a 20MHz machine.
But,
most of the hardware and software that I'm supporting were *designed*
for that
sort of horsepower. So, not really "slow"!

I have an old socket 7 (P1) machine here that has't puked up any bad
capacitors yet and it will still run old drives (40meg was the last

Re-capping a machine isn't tough. I've an Optiplex 745 USF (Core2 duo
@1.8G)
sitting on the floor (alongside *this* Optiplex 745 UFS) that I'll be
recapping next week (as a spare for this box)

one I dumped) but most of my legacy stuff is on SCSI drives and they
work fine on my fax/scanner/file server Latitude laptop.
The scanner is SCSI and I have an open port on the cable.

I have three HBA's on each of my "PC" workstations; two on each of the
Sun workstations. SCA drives essentially let me swap volumes without
even having to uncable the drive enclosures. (though the internal
drives in the Sun boxen are FC-AL so not really easy to unplug while
the machine is running -- hence the use of the external disk shelf's)

Two scanners are SCSI while the third and fourth I've elected to use
their USB interface (because they are physically two far from their
hosts for a SCSI cable -- without resorting to the "3B/s" SCSI
asynchronous rate for the entire cable!)

I still have the "data" drive that was on my work system when I
retired in 96 (including the backup of the C but it is also spinning
on this machine ... the whole thing about the size of a short video
clip.

My WfWG machines were ~4G when I retired them (early 90's?). A far cry
from
the 60M on my first PC (and the dual 8", 1.4MB floppies on my first
"computer")

I long ago archived all (old) my machines to 9T tape. From there, to
MO media. And, from there, to CD and DVD. Currently, the images reside
on external USB drives.

"Live" images reside on a SCSI disk shelf (JBOD) and run on a *hardware*
emulator (a 700MHz PC-on-a-card) in a SPARC chassis. I.e., I can run
a "real" PC inside a Solaris "window" and not have to worry about
hardware compatibility because the "emulator" has all the hardware
of a real PC!

But, as the SB2000 (that hosts that emulator) doesn't remotely support
an "ISA bus", I need something else to run "PC hardware". The Compaq
Portable 386 has two ISA slots (because mine has the expansion chassis
http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/compaq3drive.jpg). This
gives me support for 5" floppies and the ISA expansion slots without
having to keep an ancient PC/keyboard on hand just for that capability.

[And, it's got a cute little canvas bag so I don't have to keep dusting
the damn thing! : ]

So no one used system run on vacuum tubes?
Tape reels the size of a small car tire?
Punched cards with finger nails.(used to be a pre-indented
blank card stock) Programmed in machine code?

On 2/5/2016 10:35 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:
Don Y wrote:
On 2/5/2016 6:19 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 13:33:36 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/5/2016 1:08 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 13:57:59 -0500, wrote:
snipped
My archives consist of saving the hard drives from all
the old pc's ... doubt I could retrieve much from them
now, even if I wanted to ..
John T.


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

Why not? You can connect them to a windows machine and it will read
FAT just fine.
That depends. If it is an old RLL or MFM drive he might have a LOT of
trouble finding an interface card that would fit a new machine and
match the drive - and then to find one with driver support??? Even
harder yet would be an older ESDI drive.

It's not just the physical/bus interface (ISA vs PCI). Much old
software
talked directly *to* the hardware. So, expected to see particular
registers
at particular IO ports that caused particular things to happen *in* the
hardware. Much of that has now been virtualized (as it should have been
ages ago -- but MS is always a decade or three behind the times) and
likely
won't work.

I keep a Compaq Portable 386 for the express purpose of supporting
legacy
hardware and software devices. Granted, it's only a 20MHz machine.
But,
most of the hardware and software that I'm supporting were *designed*
for that
sort of horsepower. So, not really "slow"!

I have an old socket 7 (P1) machine here that has't puked up any bad
capacitors yet and it will still run old drives (40meg was the last

Re-capping a machine isn't tough. I've an Optiplex 745 USF (Core2 duo
@1.8G)
sitting on the floor (alongside *this* Optiplex 745 UFS) that I'll be
recapping next week (as a spare for this box)

one I dumped) but most of my legacy stuff is on SCSI drives and they
work fine on my fax/scanner/file server Latitude laptop.
The scanner is SCSI and I have an open port on the cable.

I have three HBA's on each of my "PC" workstations; two on each of the
Sun workstations. SCA drives essentially let me swap volumes without
even having to uncable the drive enclosures. (though the internal
drives in the Sun boxen are FC-AL so not really easy to unplug while
the machine is running -- hence the use of the external disk shelf's)

Two scanners are SCSI while the third and fourth I've elected to use
their USB interface (because they are physically two far from their
hosts for a SCSI cable -- without resorting to the "3B/s" SCSI
asynchronous rate for the entire cable!)

I still have the "data" drive that was on my work system when I
retired in 96 (including the backup of the C but it is also spinning
on this machine ... the whole thing about the size of a short video
clip.

My WfWG machines were ~4G when I retired them (early 90's?). A far cry
from
the 60M on my first PC (and the dual 8", 1.4MB floppies on my first
"computer")

I long ago archived all (old) my machines to 9T tape. From there, to
MO media. And, from there, to CD and DVD. Currently, the images reside
on external USB drives.

"Live" images reside on a SCSI disk shelf (JBOD) and run on a *hardware*
emulator (a 700MHz PC-on-a-card) in a SPARC chassis. I.e., I can run
a "real" PC inside a Solaris "window" and not have to worry about
hardware compatibility because the "emulator" has all the hardware
of a real PC!

But, as the SB2000 (that hosts that emulator) doesn't remotely support
an "ISA bus", I need something else to run "PC hardware". The Compaq
Portable 386 has two ISA slots (because mine has the expansion chassis
http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/compaq3drive.jpg). This
gives me support for 5" floppies and the ISA expansion slots without
having to keep an ancient PC/keyboard on hand just for that capability.

[And, it's got a cute little canvas bag so I don't have to keep dusting
the damn thing! : ]

So no one used system run on vacuum tubes?

No. Though I did design a two-player, interactive football game
using analog computers in high school (on a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood)

And, years later, used an 8i ("flip chip" technology).

Tape reels the size of a small car tire?

Sure! I still have a carton of 10" Scotch BlackWatch in my closet!
Though I discarded my last 9T transport a few years ago.

Punched cards with finger nails.(used to be a pre-indented
blank card stock)

Not since a Wang "electronic calculator" in high school (programmed
with punched cards)

Programmed in machine code?

For the Nova minicomputers, we'd "bit switch" opcodes/data into
core (REAL core) using the bat-handled switches on the front panel.
Then, hit the "run" switch.

For the i4004, we would "hand assemble" code (using a small cheat
sheet carried in your wallet for the "assembler").

For the Z80, we'd hot plug code using a custom monitor (so you could
enter/alter code into a running system and see how it fared) using
"split octal" (03770377 vs. 0xFFFF).

For a CPU I designed in the 80's, I'd write code using "macros"
(essentially text mnemonics wrapped around numeric codes) that a
COTS "assembler" would brute force convert into *my* "machine language".

And, of course, that doesn't count the assembly language coding
that permeates much of my career (cuz I code on "bare metal").

On 02/05/2016 11:57 PM, Don Y wrote:



snip

For the i4004, we would "hand assemble" code (using a small cheat
sheet carried in your wallet for the "assembler").

For the Z80, we'd hot plug code using a custom monitor (so you could
enter/alter code into a running system and see how it fared) using
"split octal" (03770377 vs. 0xFFFF).

For a CPU I designed in the 80's, I'd write code using "macros"
(essentially text mnemonics wrapped around numeric codes) that a
COTS "assembler" would brute force convert into *my* "machine language".

And, of course, that doesn't count the assembly language coding
that permeates much of my career (cuz I code on "bare metal").


I still have my Radio Shack "scientific" calculator from 1975

it uses a 4004

On 02/05/2016 11:12 PM, Don Y wrote:

snip

I started running FreeBSD in '92 (v 0.9) and NetBSD about the same time
(v 0.8). Downloading dozens of 5 inch "floppy images" with a 19K modem
over a dialup line onto one of those 386 boxes. (I used external 4G SCSI
drives at that point so I could just swap the entire disk enclosure
out and be running Windows one day, FreeBSD the next and NetBSD the
day after!). I used to keep a shelf in the closet with bare 4G SCSI
drives each labeled with a sticker telling me what "system" it contained.

Back then, I was more active in the FOSS community ("made the time" to
be so). Now, there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do what
*I* want to do, let alone contribute to others! :-/



Years ago all I did was fool with computers but I did little actual work


but now I'm actually doing useful things.

On 2/6/2016 3:21 AM, philo wrote:
On 02/05/2016 11:57 PM, Don Y wrote:

For the i4004, we would "hand assemble" code (using a small cheat
sheet carried in your wallet for the "assembler").

For the Z80, we'd hot plug code using a custom monitor (so you could
enter/alter code into a running system and see how it fared) using
"split octal" (03770377 vs. 0xFFFF).

For a CPU I designed in the 80's, I'd write code using "macros"
(essentially text mnemonics wrapped around numeric codes) that a
COTS "assembler" would brute force convert into *my* "machine language".

And, of course, that doesn't count the assembly language coding
that permeates much of my career (cuz I code on "bare metal").

I still have my Radio Shack "scientific" calculator from 1975

it uses a 4004

We used the i4004 in a maritime "position plotter". It converted
LORAN-C (predecessor to GPS) time-difference readings to latitude-longitude
in real-time and marked the vessel's (boat's) course on a chart.

This is the successor product, CPLOT-II (which was i8085-based with a
whopping 512 bytes of memory!) -- the original CPLOT is lost to
history (at least as far as google is concerned!):

https://books.google.com/books?id=d1mr8pCoz_YC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=cplot+lo ran+epsco&source=bl&ots=7YfpF6nyHF&sig=ngmQU6sIzOp 4nXxTIiJVSq4-hf0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc6fLv9eLKAhVD4WMKHR--CT0Q6AEIHzAA

On 02/06/2016 04:33 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 3:21 AM, philo wrote:
On 02/05/2016 11:57 PM, Don Y wrote:

For the i4004, we would "hand assemble" code (using a small cheat
sheet carried in your wallet for the "assembler").

For the Z80, we'd hot plug code using a custom monitor (so you could
enter/alter code into a running system and see how it fared) using
"split octal" (03770377 vs. 0xFFFF).

For a CPU I designed in the 80's, I'd write code using "macros"
(essentially text mnemonics wrapped around numeric codes) that a
COTS "assembler" would brute force convert into *my* "machine language".

And, of course, that doesn't count the assembly language coding
that permeates much of my career (cuz I code on "bare metal").

I still have my Radio Shack "scientific" calculator from 1975

it uses a 4004

We used the i4004 in a maritime "position plotter". It converted
LORAN-C (predecessor to GPS) time-difference readings to latitude-longitude
in real-time and marked the vessel's (boat's) course on a chart.

This is the successor product, CPLOT-II (which was i8085-based with a
whopping 512 bytes of memory!) -- the original CPLOT is lost to
history (at least as far as google is concerned!):

https://books.google.com/books?id=d1mr8pCoz_YC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=cplot+lo ran+epsco&source=bl&ots=7YfpF6nyHF&sig=ngmQU6sIzOp 4nXxTIiJVSq4-hf0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc6fLv9eLKAhVD4WMKHR--CT0Q6AEIHzAA






Yep I remember hearing the Loran signals back when I was an active ham
radio operator, that and Rtty

On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 22:19:47 -0600, philo wrote:

I thinned out my old computer collection quite a bit but don't see
myself as ever getting rid of my IBM ps/2 , that is one fine piece of
hardware.

The problem with PS/2 is you are either in or out. The hardware is so
proprietary you can't rely on having parts unless you have PS/2 parts.
That used to be pretty much all I had.
I could get all the parts I wanted but the cases had serial numbers on
them and were not able to be ordered so I built "woodies".
This was my PS/2 70 with the custom 5.25" bay for a CD or 5" diskette.
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/woody.jpg

On 2/6/2016 3:25 AM, philo wrote:
On 02/05/2016 11:12 PM, Don Y wrote:

Back then, I was more active in the FOSS community ("made the time" to
be so). Now, there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do what
*I* want to do, let alone contribute to others! :-/

Years ago all I did was fool with computers but I did little actual work
but now I'm actually doing useful things.

Given that my job is designing them, I tend to want to have very little to
do with them in my "off time" :

On 02/05/2016 04:55 PM, Oren wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 17:47:14 -0500, wrote:

What about 10, 20, 30, and 35MB drives???

The 10 made a good door stop


The first HD I used was a borrowed 10MB. The brand name was Rodime.

The first HD I bought (in 1990) was a 30MB Seagate for $299.95. That was
$30 more than a 20MB drive. Is was the same except for the included
controller, and was not compatible with 386 enhanced mode (for Windows).

I remember that is could be low-level formatted using the controller
ROM. You'd start DEBUG and enter something like gC000:000C.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim."
[Tammy Fae Bakker]

On 02/05/2016 07:22 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 15:58:34 -0600, philo wrote:

I also recall having to apply a patch to Win95 to get it running on a
CPU over 300 mhz

W98 works fine on a P4. Never had much use for W95. I was running Warp
in those days.


I actually installed W95 recently (on a Pentium-II compatible Celeron at
333MHz). I wanted to see what my website looked like on MSIE 2.

W95 won't recognize my ethernet card (W98 will), but I have an old
dial-up modem. No dial-up ISP, but I actually have a FREESCO setup
(provides dial-up network access) for another purpose (I can say
something about that if anybody cares.).

BTW, MSIE 2 will work with my home server, but doesn't support cookies.
It will NOT work with a shared hosting server (no Host: header).
Apparently, an upgraded version exists but I have no access to that.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim."
[Tammy Fae Bakker]

On 02/06/2016 10:05 AM, wrote:
On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 22:19:47 -0600, philo wrote:

I thinned out my old computer collection quite a bit but don't see
myself as ever getting rid of my IBM ps/2 , that is one fine piece of
hardware.

The problem with PS/2 is you are either in or out. The hardware is so
proprietary you can't rely on having parts unless you have PS/2 parts.
That used to be pretty much all I had.
I could get all the parts I wanted but the cases had serial numbers on
them and were not able to be ordered so I built "woodies".
This was my PS/2 70 with the custom 5.25" bay for a CD or 5" diskette.
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/woody.jpg




Nice project there.


Components are not common and it took me a while before I could find an
MCA net card to replace the modem.

I did have a reference disk so I could get rid of the "configuration
changed" message but even without that corrected, the OS recognized and
worked fine with the change of components.


Years ago I could pick them up PS/2's at a used computer store , next to
nothing. I told a friend who wanted a machine that I'd set one up for
him at exactly my cost.


A few weeks later I supplied him with an entire machine and said good
news/ bad news:

Here is a computer, a monitor and a keyboard $5.00

Bad news is I had to buy a new mouse which will make the whole package
ten bucks.

On 02/06/2016 10:15 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 3:25 AM, philo wrote:
On 02/05/2016 11:12 PM, Don Y wrote:

Back then, I was more active in the FOSS community ("made the time" to
be so). Now, there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do what
*I* want to do, let alone contribute to others! :-/

Years ago all I did was fool with computers but I did little actual work
but now I'm actually doing useful things.

Given that my job is designing them, I tend to want to have very little to
do with them in my "off time" :



Understood.

I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started
in the year 2000 when it became affordable.

On 02/06/2016 10:54 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 02/05/2016 04:55 PM, Oren wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 17:47:14 -0500, wrote:

What about 10, 20, 30, and 35MB drives???

The 10 made a good door stop


The first HD I used was a borrowed 10MB. The brand name was Rodime.

The first HD I bought (in 1990) was a 30MB Seagate for $299.95. That was
$30 more than a 20MB drive. Is was the same except for the included
controller, and was not compatible with 386 enhanced mode (for Windows).

I remember that is could be low-level formatted using the controller
ROM. You'd start DEBUG and enter something like gC000:000C.



I remember using "debug" to do that!


I also recall the day, nervous and with trembling hands, I replaced the
850meg drive in my P-1 with an enormous 2 gig drive.

Never thought I'd get that thing filled up!

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 10:54:54 -0600, Mark Lloyd
wrote:

On 02/05/2016 04:55 PM, Oren wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 17:47:14 -0500, wrote:

What about 10, 20, 30, and 35MB drives???

The 10 made a good door stop


The first HD I used was a borrowed 10MB. The brand name was Rodime.

That name rings a bell too. When I started in the computer bus back in
the late 80's the company I worked for had a stack of dead drives in
inventory - and I switched boards and bodies and managed to make about
20 drives out of about 75 function. One of them became my hard drive.

The rodime drives were from the UK if I remeber correctly. They held a
lot of patents that they pursued long after drive production stopped.

The first HD I bought (in 1990) was a 30MB Seagate for $299.95. That was
$30 more than a 20MB drive. Is was the same except for the included
controller, and was not compatible with 386 enhanced mode (for Windows).


That 30Mb drive was the RLL version of the 20Mb MFM
I remember that is could be low-level formatted using the controller
ROM. You'd start DEBUG and enter something like gC000:000C.

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:46:00 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 10:05 AM, wrote:
On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 22:19:47 -0600, philo wrote:

I thinned out my old computer collection quite a bit but don't see
myself as ever getting rid of my IBM ps/2 , that is one fine piece of
hardware.

The problem with PS/2 is you are either in or out. The hardware is so
proprietary you can't rely on having parts unless you have PS/2 parts.
That used to be pretty much all I had.
I could get all the parts I wanted but the cases had serial numbers on
them and were not able to be ordered so I built "woodies".
This was my PS/2 70 with the custom 5.25" bay for a CD or 5" diskette.
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/woody.jpg




Nice project there.

Microchannel architecture - they were like hen's teeth at the peak of
their popularity and it was all down-hill from there.
Not saying there were no advantages to Microchannel, but there was not
enough to give the product critical mass in a very "standards driven"
market.


Components are not common and it took me a while before I could find an
MCA net card to replace the modem.

I did have a reference disk so I could get rid of the "configuration
changed" message but even without that corrected, the OS recognized and
worked fine with the change of components.


Years ago I could pick them up PS/2's at a used computer store , next to
nothing. I told a friend who wanted a machine that I'd set one up for
him at exactly my cost.


A few weeks later I supplied him with an entire machine and said good
news/ bad news:

Here is a computer, a monitor and a keyboard $5.00

Bad news is I had to buy a new mouse which will make the whole package
ten bucks.

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 09:15:03 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

Years ago all I did was fool with computers but I did little actual work
but now I'm actually doing useful things.

Given that my job is designing them, I tend to want to have very little to
do with them in my "off time" :

I used to fix them but I did dabble in the software.
I wrote an online diagnostic program that ran as a DOS job with very
little impact on the customer. It was 360 assembler (PIOCS).
When fixing them became "cut open the box and replace it" I moved to
service delivery, fixing the process and in that job I became a user,
crunching data. Databases were my life ;-)
I did write an inventory program in dBase.
Trying to get a bunch of hardware guys to actually use a computer was
tough but if you make the user interface easier than filling out paper
logs, they will do it. I barcoded everything and made it a design
point that nobody ever had to enter the same thing twice. It ended up
being pretty successful. Even the hard core critics became fans after
they stopped "losing" parts.

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:46:00 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 10:05 AM, wrote:
On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 22:19:47 -0600, philo wrote:

I thinned out my old computer collection quite a bit but don't see
myself as ever getting rid of my IBM ps/2 , that is one fine piece of
hardware.

The problem with PS/2 is you are either in or out. The hardware is so
proprietary you can't rely on having parts unless you have PS/2 parts.
That used to be pretty much all I had.
I could get all the parts I wanted but the cases had serial numbers on
them and were not able to be ordered so I built "woodies".
This was my PS/2 70 with the custom 5.25" bay for a CD or 5" diskette.
http://gfretwell.com/electrical/woody.jpg




Nice project there.


Components are not common and it took me a while before I could find an
MCA net card to replace the modem.

I did have a reference disk so I could get rid of the "configuration
changed" message but even without that corrected, the OS recognized and
worked fine with the change of components.


Years ago I could pick them up PS/2's at a used computer store , next to
nothing. I told a friend who wanted a machine that I'd set one up for
him at exactly my cost.


A few weeks later I supplied him with an entire machine and said good
news/ bad news:

Here is a computer, a monitor and a keyboard $5.00

Bad news is I had to buy a new mouse which will make the whole package
ten bucks.

There are still a few hard core PS/2 fans on the PS/2 newsgroup. That
is where I sent all of my old PS/2 stash.
I had a PS/2 mouse apart the other day (working on my BowFlex project)
I never knew it but the PS/2 mouse was not optical (slotted wheel). It
actually uses a printed circuit on the disk and a wiper to detect
motion.

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:48:14 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 10:15 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 3:25 AM, philo wrote:
On 02/05/2016 11:12 PM, Don Y wrote:

Back then, I was more active in the FOSS community ("made the time" to
be so). Now, there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do what
*I* want to do, let alone contribute to others! :-/

Years ago all I did was fool with computers but I did little actual work
but now I'm actually doing useful things.

Given that my job is designing them, I tend to want to have very little to
do with them in my "off time" :



Understood.

I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started
in the year 2000 when it became affordable.

I had a "first day ship" 5150 PC1" but I bought it used in 84 from the
guy at work who bought it originally. That had two 128 m floppies, 16k
and an 8088.
It kept getting upgrades as I accumulated parts and ended up being
640k with a 30m Seagate.
My next machine was an AT in a wooden box. ;-)

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 10:54:54 -0600, Mark Lloyd
wrote:

On 02/05/2016 04:55 PM, Oren wrote:
On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 17:47:14 -0500, wrote:

What about 10, 20, 30, and 35MB drives???

The 10 made a good door stop


The first HD I used was a borrowed 10MB. The brand name was Rodime.

The first HD I bought (in 1990) was a 30MB Seagate for $299.95. That was
$30 more than a 20MB drive. Is was the same except for the included
controller, and was not compatible with 386 enhanced mode (for Windows).

I remember that is could be low-level formatted using the controller
ROM. You'd start DEBUG and enter something like gC000:000C.

On a Western Digital card it was -g=c800:5

On 02/06/2016 10:05 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:

I actually installed W95 recently (on a Pentium-II compatible Celeron at
333MHz). I wanted to see what my website looked like on MSIE 2.

Why get all fancy? Real men use lynx. Some sites are still more or less
usable with lynx and you certainly don't get those annoying popups.

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

On 2/6/2016 11:51 AM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 09:15:03 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

Years ago all I did was fool with computers but I did little actual work
but now I'm actually doing useful things.

Given that my job is designing them, I tend to want to have very little to
do with them in my "off time" :

I used to fix them but I did dabble in the software.

I design embedded systems -- computerized devices that don't *look*
like computers (sewing machines, gasoline pumps, arcade games, slot
machines, medical instruments, etc.). So, it's always a custom design
(never "let's take a PC and make these changes) for the hardware and
software.

I wrote an online diagnostic program that ran as a DOS job with very
little impact on the customer. It was 360 assembler (PIOCS).
When fixing them became "cut open the box and replace it" I moved to
service delivery, fixing the process and in that job I became a user,
crunching data. Databases were my life ;-)

My current project is the first time I've used a piece of off-the-shelf
software as a component of the system -- an RDBMS (PostgreSQL) as my
"persistent store" (no filesystem in the design; everything resides
in "tables" accessed through various schema)

I did write an inventory program in dBase.
Trying to get a bunch of hardware guys to actually use a computer was

Depends on background. I'm a "hardware guy" but equally deep in
software and systems design. So, I look at hardware and software as
a duality -- and opt for whichever is most effective in a particular
role in a particular solution. My software looks like hardware and my
hardware looks like software.

tough but if you make the user interface easier than filling out paper
logs, they will do it. I barcoded everything and made it a design
point that nobody ever had to enter the same thing twice. It ended up
being pretty successful. Even the hard core critics became fans after
they stopped "losing" parts.

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:51:58 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 09:15:03 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

Years ago all I did was fool with computers but I did little actual work
but now I'm actually doing useful things.

Given that my job is designing them, I tend to want to have very little to
do with them in my "off time" :

I used to fix them but I did dabble in the software.
I wrote an online diagnostic program that ran as a DOS job with very
little impact on the customer. It was 360 assembler (PIOCS).
When fixing them became "cut open the box and replace it" I moved to
service delivery, fixing the process and in that job I became a user,
crunching data. Databases were my life ;-)
I did write an inventory program in dBase.
Trying to get a bunch of hardware guys to actually use a computer was
tough but if you make the user interface easier than filling out paper
logs, they will do it. I barcoded everything and made it a design
point that nobody ever had to enter the same thing twice. It ended up
being pretty successful. Even the hard core critics became fans after
they stopped "losing" parts.
Fof a few years I did actual "board level" repairs on motherboards -
replacing chips and installing "flywires" to correct manufacturing
errors. Sometimes I even had to do the base troubleshooting to
determine where the problem wa.

I did some 6808 machine language coding too, back before I was in the
business, fixing programs on the CoCo. I wrote a few small programs
too - but that was decades ago, and I never got i nto coding on the
intel boxes.

On 02/06/2016 01:05 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:48:14 -0600, philo wrote:



Understood.

I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started
in the year 2000 when it became affordable.

I had a "first day ship" 5150 PC1" but I bought it used in 84 from the
guy at work who bought it originally. That had two 128 m floppies, 16k
and an 8088.
It kept getting upgrades as I accumulated parts and ended up being
640k with a 30m Seagate.
My next machine was an AT in a wooden box. ;-)




Back in my experimenting days maybe ten years ago, I was given an ISA
memory expansion card.

Just to see if I could do it, I bumped the RAM up on a 286 I had to 16
megs, the maximum a 286 can address. At the time the 286 was built, even
if one could have put in 16 megs of RAM it would have been unaffordable.

On 02/06/2016 02:08 PM, Don Y wrote:


Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...



Yep, I found it impossible to get my slides and negatives organized
until I finally scanned everything. Now I can do something with them
finally.


As to digital cameras, I have a friend who is such a geek...even though
he is younger than me and skinnier, I've seen him just take a photo of
something on the ground so he does not have to bend over to take a
closer look.

I am not quite that lazy

On 02/06/2016 12:51 PM, wrote:
th them in my "off time" :

I used to fix them but I did dabble in the software.
I wrote an online diagnostic program that ran as a DOS job with very
little impact on the customer. It was 360 assembler (PIOCS).
When fixing them became "cut open the box and replace it" I moved to
service delivery, fixing the process and in that job I became a user,
crunching data. Databases were my life ;-)
I did write an inventory program in dBase.
Trying to get a bunch of hardware guys to actually use a computer was
tough but if you make the user interface easier than filling out paper
logs, they will do it. I barcoded everything and made it a design
point that nobody ever had to enter the same thing twice. It ended up
being pretty successful. Even the hard core critics became fans after
they stopped "losing" parts.




I was always good with the hardware, but not so great with the
software...I don't think I have quite the necessary IQ.

Could be an attention span problem though.

On 02/06/2016 02:17 PM, wrote:

I did write an inventory program in dBase.
Trying to get a bunch of hardware guys to actually use a computer was
tough but if you make the user interface easier than filling out paper
logs, they will do it. I barcoded everything and made it a design
point that nobody ever had to enter the same thing twice. It ended up
being pretty successful. Even the hard core critics became fans after
they stopped "losing" parts.
Fof a few years I did actual "board level" repairs on motherboards -
replacing chips and installing "flywires" to correct manufacturing
errors. Sometimes I even had to do the base troubleshooting to
determine where the problem wa.



snip


I guess I can tell this story now, regarding "flywires".

The company I worked for many years ago, among other things manufactured
controls for industrial battery chargers.My job was field service and I
reported "bugs" the engineers had to fix.

Our engineers were just "moonlighters" who worked for a large (unnamed)
electronics corporation who supplied the avionics for a large (unnamed)
passenger plane manufacturer.


On day a customer told us he did not like to see those "green wires" on
the circuit boards. When I reported this to the chief engineer, he just
laughed and said "but it's a battery charger we have planes flying with
those green wires."


Never had a problem though.

On 02/06/2016 11:05 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 02/05/2016 07:22 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 15:58:34 -0600, philo wrote:

I also recall having to apply a patch to Win95 to get it running on a
CPU over 300 mhz

W98 works fine on a P4. Never had much use for W95. I was running Warp
in those days.


I actually installed W95 recently (on a Pentium-II compatible Celeron at
333MHz). I wanted to see what my website looked like on MSIE 2.

W95 won't recognize my ethernet card (W98 will), but I have an old
dial-up modem. No dial-up ISP, but I actually have a FREESCO setup
(provides dial-up network access) for another purpose (I can say
something about that if anybody cares.).

BTW, MSIE 2 will work with my home server, but doesn't support cookies.
It will NOT work with a shared hosting server (no Host: header).
Apparently, an upgraded version exists but I have no access to that.




Glad the 333mhz CPU allowed Win95 to run


First time I went on-line I used IE2

One of my friends had me update to IE5 at once, it was when IE5 had just
come out....so it must have been 1999

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 14:23:45 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 01:05 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:48:14 -0600, philo wrote:



Understood.

I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started
in the year 2000 when it became affordable.

I had a "first day ship" 5150 PC1" but I bought it used in 84 from the
guy at work who bought it originally. That had two 128 m floppies, 16k
and an 8088.
It kept getting upgrades as I accumulated parts and ended up being
640k with a 30m Seagate.
My next machine was an AT in a wooden box. ;-)




Back in my experimenting days maybe ten years ago, I was given an ISA
memory expansion card.

Just to see if I could do it, I bumped the RAM up on a 286 I had to 16
megs, the maximum a 286 can address. At the time the 286 was built, even
if one could have put in 16 megs of RAM it would have been unaffordable.
I remeber the memory chips being over $8 each for 1mbX8 chips!!

On 02/06/2016 03:08 PM, wrote:
On




Back in my experimenting days maybe ten years ago, I was given an ISA
memory expansion card.

Just to see if I could do it, I bumped the RAM up on a 286 I had to 16
megs, the maximum a 286 can address. At the time the 286 was built, even
if one could have put in 16 megs of RAM it would have been unaffordable.
I remeber the memory chips being over $8 each for 1mbX8 chips!!




There were no RAM slots, it was all on-board discrete chips. the machine
came with 512k


The expansion card I put in used those 30 pin SIMMs

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:45:01 -0500, wrote:

Microchannel architecture - they were like hen's teeth at the peak of
their popularity and it was all down-hill from there.
Not saying there were no advantages to Microchannel, but there was not
enough to give the product critical mass in a very "standards driven"
market.


Microchannel was really aimed at the commercial market and it
performed well there. We did not have all that IRQ conflict boondoggle
you had with open architecture machines. The hardware was all pretty
much going to be compatible with anything else you plugged in with a
simple autoconfig.
When combined with OS/2 it was a very stable platform for a business.
It was also unlikely that you had employees bringing in cards from
home to "improve" their work machine.

For the home hobbyist they were not as attractive. Parts were too
expensive.

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)

philo wrote:
On 02/06/2016 02:17 PM, wrote:

I did write an inventory program in dBase.
Trying to get a bunch of hardware guys to actually use a computer was
tough but if you make the user interface easier than filling out paper
logs, they will do it. I barcoded everything and made it a design
point that nobody ever had to enter the same thing twice. It ended up
being pretty successful. Even the hard core critics became fans after
they stopped "losing" parts.
Fof a few years I did actual "board level" repairs on motherboards -
replacing chips and installing "flywires" to correct manufacturing
errors. Sometimes I even had to do the base troubleshooting to
determine where the problem wa.



snip


I guess I can tell this story now, regarding "flywires".

The company I worked for many years ago, among other things manufactured
controls for industrial battery chargers.My job was field service and I
reported "bugs" the engineers had to fix.

Our engineers were just "moonlighters" who worked for a large (unnamed)
electronics corporation who supplied the avionics for a large (unnamed)
passenger plane manufacturer.


On day a customer told us he did not like to see those "green wires" on
the circuit boards. When I reported this to the chief engineer, he just
laughed and said "but it's a battery charger we have planes flying with
those green wires."


Never had a problem though.

So no one worked on a system made of vacuum tubes? Machine code
programmed punching holes on preindented blank cards with tip of pen or
pencil? Handled tape reels as big as small car wheels? Those were the
days. Memory was magnetic core bits with write wire, read wire, inhibit
wire(erasing bit) going thru the dunut holds. Stack of 4K memory was
bigger than a all in one mini PC box. Tube system needed tons of a/c
unit to keep the room cool..... Nowadays most field changes come down in
the form of software update/change. Rarely they do wiring change.

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 14:23:45 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 01:05 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:48:14 -0600, philo wrote:



Understood.

I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started
in the year 2000 when it became affordable.

I had a "first day ship" 5150 PC1" but I bought it used in 84 from the
guy at work who bought it originally. That had two 128 m floppies, 16k
and an 8088.
It kept getting upgrades as I accumulated parts and ended up being
640k with a 30m Seagate.
My next machine was an AT in a wooden box. ;-)




Back in my experimenting days maybe ten years ago, I was given an ISA
memory expansion card.

Just to see if I could do it, I bumped the RAM up on a 286 I had to 16
megs, the maximum a 286 can address. At the time the 286 was built, even
if one could have put in 16 megs of RAM it would have been unaffordable.

This is the PC AT I built in the wood box. It had 6 meg on an
expansion card and 512 on the system board. I had 4 meg of that in a
ram drive and the rest for the system. dBase IV was really the only
thing that used anything above 640k in DOS

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT%20inside.jpg

This was my mod 30 I made to replace the 5150 at home

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30.jpg

This was the mod 30/286 I made for a parts inventory machine

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30-286.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30-286.jpg

Like I said, parts were easy, getting cases was tough ;-)

We needed a cash register so we could test the printers, cash drawers,
keyboards or whatever in the shop after we rebuilt them and I came up
with this.

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%203684.jpg

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 15:20:21 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 03:08 PM, wrote:
On




Back in my experimenting days maybe ten years ago, I was given an ISA
memory expansion card.

Just to see if I could do it, I bumped the RAM up on a 286 I had to 16
megs, the maximum a 286 can address. At the time the 286 was built, even
if one could have put in 16 megs of RAM it would have been unaffordable.
I remeber the memory chips being over $8 each for 1mbX8 chips!!




There were no RAM slots, it was all on-board discrete chips. the machine
came with 512k


I know - the chips are what I was talking about. 1MB X 8 were the
little ones. Mabee they were 1X8. I think they went up to 8X8 about
the time of the chip shortage caused by a fire in a resin factory
somewhere in Thaikand or something like that. The pdips were plastis -
the most common - and cerdips were ceramic and less common - and more
expensive.
They were pdips or cerdips, and if they were not in screw-machine
sockets they tended to walk themselves out with thermal cycling. We
used a very expensive product called Stabilant 22 - it is currently
about $55 for 30ml of the stuff - on the sockets to keep the contacts
from going bad. With the stabilant on the sockets we didn't have to
reseat the chips so often (memory, processors, roms, and even
interface cards.

The expansion card I put in used those 30 pin SIMMs

Most of the memory cards we used used even numbered pin DIPP chips
(no chip dip jokes, ok?) and there were even simm module boards with
sockets to insert DIPP ram in.

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 16:47:32 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:45:01 -0500, wrote:

Microchannel architecture - they were like hen's teeth at the peak of
their popularity and it was all down-hill from there.
Not saying there were no advantages to Microchannel, but there was not
enough to give the product critical mass in a very "standards driven"
market.


Microchannel was really aimed at the commercial market and it
performed well there. We did not have all that IRQ conflict boondoggle
you had with open architecture machines. The hardware was all pretty
much going to be compatible with anything else you plugged in with a
simple autoconfig.
When combined with OS/2 it was a very stable platform for a business.
It was also unlikely that you had employees bringing in cards from
home to "improve" their work machine.

For the home hobbyist they were not as attractive. Parts were too
expensive.
So you do agree they had a VERY limited market? Getting things like
datta aquisition boards or any other special purpose boards you were
pretty well restricted to one or two suppliers, and 2 or 3 years after
the machines went out of production you were pretty much restricted to
one - if you could buy them at all.

We supplied computers to the commercial and even industrial market,
and in the tier 2 marketplace MCA product was only readilly available
for about a year or 14 months. Made for a lot of problems when we sold
computers with 3 year warrantys and the comuter failed in month 35 -
with not a replacement part to be had.

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:02:50 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)
I know a guy who indexes ALL of his pictures, music, and videos in a
SQL database. so he can say he wants a western released in 1946 with
John Wayne in it, and he will get a list of all thet fit, or pictures
of birds by a river in newfoundland - and if there are any they will
pop up. Means he needs to catalog/index them as he saves them

Could be who wearing colour where when and
have
wife bathing suit red hawaii 1896
daughter cat suit greenbostonhalloween
1983

etc

On 02/06/2016 04:16 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 14:23:45 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 01:05 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:48:14 -0600, philo wrote:



Understood.

I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started
in the year 2000 when it became affordable.

I had a "first day ship" 5150 PC1" but I bought it used in 84 from the
guy at work who bought it originally. That had two 128 m floppies, 16k
and an 8088.
It kept getting upgrades as I accumulated parts and ended up being
640k with a 30m Seagate.
My next machine was an AT in a wooden box. ;-)




Back in my experimenting days maybe ten years ago, I was given an ISA
memory expansion card.

Just to see if I could do it, I bumped the RAM up on a 286 I had to 16
megs, the maximum a 286 can address. At the time the 286 was built, even
if one could have put in 16 megs of RAM it would have been unaffordable.

This is the PC AT I built in the wood box. It had 6 meg on an
expansion card and 512 on the system board. I had 4 meg of that in a
ram drive and the rest for the system. dBase IV was really the only
thing that used anything above 640k in DOS

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT%20inside.jpg

This was my mod 30 I made to replace the 5150 at home

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30.jpg

This was the mod 30/286 I made for a parts inventory machine

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30-286.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30-286.jpg

Like I said, parts were easy, getting cases was tough ;-)

We needed a cash register so we could test the printers, cash drawers,
keyboards or whatever in the shop after we rebuilt them and I came up
with this.

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%203684.jpg




Love the pix!

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:16:34 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 14:23:45 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 01:05 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:48:14 -0600, philo wrote:



Understood.

I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started
in the year 2000 when it became affordable.

I had a "first day ship" 5150 PC1" but I bought it used in 84 from the
guy at work who bought it originally. That had two 128 m floppies, 16k
and an 8088.
It kept getting upgrades as I accumulated parts and ended up being
640k with a 30m Seagate.
My next machine was an AT in a wooden box. ;-)




Back in my experimenting days maybe ten years ago, I was given an ISA
memory expansion card.

Just to see if I could do it, I bumped the RAM up on a 286 I had to 16
megs, the maximum a 286 can address. At the time the 286 was built, even
if one could have put in 16 megs of RAM it would have been unaffordable.

This is the PC AT I built in the wood box. It had 6 meg on an
expansion card and 512 on the system board. I had 4 meg of that in a
ram drive and the rest for the system. dBase IV was really the only
thing that used anything above 640k in DOS

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT%20inside.jpg

I'll bet it didn't pass FCC or DOT certification - or UL either!!!!

This was my mod 30 I made to replace the 5150 at home

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30.jpg

This was the mod 30/286 I made for a parts inventory machine

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30-286.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%20m30-286.jpg

Like I said, parts were easy, getting cases was tough ;-)

I never had any troble getting cases - from pizza box cases to
hardened industrial cases - with standard PC/XT and AT cases being
available in so many styles it would make your head spin.

There were usually a dozen "prototype" cases in the back of the
warehouse at any particular time - cases that we had gotten in for
evaluation and for some reason did not adopt for production.

And usually a few "scratch and dent" production cases as well.

We needed a cash register so we could test the printers, cash drawers,
keyboards or whatever in the shop after we rebuilt them and I came up
with this.

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/woody%203684.jpg