Subject: Re: Warehouse load of antique

From: [email-masked] (Eric J. Korpela)
Date: 30 Sep 1993 16:45:40 GMT

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
>
>1) A Charles River Universe 68 system
>2) A PDP-11/04 with a TFI disk controller
>3) A TRS 80 Model II system, with printer on a stand, 3 keyboards and
>    a second monitor.
>4) An IBM 5224 line printer and 2 IBM 5251 data display terminals.  
>5) A Singer Programmatic Flexowriter 2201 and a Singer Friden Selectadata
>    box to go with it.  
>6) Two Burroughs L6000 accounting machines.  
>7) An NCR electromechanical accounting machine
>8) A pile of old power supplies, dumb terminals, and electronics scrap.
>

Someone please go pick this stuff up.  It's making me ill just thinking 
about the possibility of it being thrown away.  Somebody call the
Smithsonian.  Stop the destruction of our history!  If I could afford
it I would make the trip to Iowa just to get the stuff.

Eric

{Sorry for the Xpost to a.s.pdp8 and c.s.tandy.  Figured you guys might 
have museum connections. Full details follow}
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Last night, I went through a small warehouse in North Liberty Iowa to
look at a load of old computers.  Much of this stuff is of doubtful
value, but some of it may be of value as antiques, and some of it may
be a good base for serious hacking.  Here's what I found (I'll give a
bit of history at the end of the list).

1) A Charles River Universe 68 system, with lots of manuals and diskettes.
    This is a MC68000 based small timesharing system, running UNOS (a flavor
    of UNIX).  The box is a bit bigger than an IBM PC (and heavier), with
    an 8" diskette drive for backups, an internal hard disk, and 4 serial
    RS232 ports.  The diskette collection includes the original system disks
    from Charles River, a full backup of the root file system, and one or
    more backups of the user file system.  Each of the backups seems to fill
    an entire box of 8" diskettes.

    I figure this might be a great box for a cash strapped UNIX hacker,
    and in terms of cash value, it might be the most valuable system in
    the warehouse.

2) A PDP-11/04 with a TFI disk controller, a CDC 9762 disk drive (top
    loading washing machine sized!), 4 disk packs and a big hulking
    dataproducts (chain) line printer.  The CPU and disk controller are
    mounted in a desk pedistal, but with the top missing.  There is a
    small stack of spare ribbons for the printer (17 inch wide ribbons!)

    I figure this might appeal to PDP-11 hackers, but you need space for
    those old disk drives!  If someone wants it, they'll need a truck to
    haul away the peripherals.

3) A TRS 80 Model II system, with printer on a stand, 3 keyboards and
    a second monitor.

    This might appeal to a TRS 80 freak, but I figured the cash value was
    nil.

4) An IBM 5224 line printer and 2 IBM 5251 data display terminals.  Also,
    a pile of IBM "twinax" cables to connect these to their host system.
    There's a good maintenance manual and parts catalog for the printer.

    If you have an IBM System 36, or something similar, you need these.
    If you don't, you probably have no use for these.

5) A Singer Programmatic Flexowriter 2201 and a Singer Friden Selectadata
    box to go with it.  Together, these made one wonderful word processing
    system back before computers.  There is one paper tape punch and two
    readers, and the thing can understand control codes on tape that make
    it switch between readers and the keyboard, allowing, for example, a
    form letters to be read from one tape reader while mailing addresses
    are read from the other reader and typed additions come from the
    keyboard.  No manuals and no supplies.

    This is possibly a museum quality antique.  Is there a museum of
    word processing hardware anywhere?  This belongs there!

6) Two Burroughs L6000 accounting machines.  These have paper tape readers
    for loading programs, and they have fixed head disks for main memory.
    The machines date from around 1969 or 1970, and they have a mixture
    of discrete component and RTL logic in them, with wire-wrapped
    backplanes.  They're the size of a desk, with integral printer and
    keyboard, and the logic stacked vertically behind.  The disk spins
    freely when you play with the fan belt, so these are probably
    in operational condition.

    These are museum pieces.  Fixed head disks as main memory seem
    to have hung on longer than I thought in the area of accounting
    machines!

7) An NCR electromechanical accounting machine, from around 1964 to 1966.
    The machine is "programmable" by attaching a steel bar across the
    carriage.  This bar has stops on it that control carry propagation
    and similar functions, so that the different digit positions in the
    very long accumulator can be used for different purposes.  The machine
    has 4 or 5 "programming" bars.

    This is a museum piece.

8) A pile of old power supplies, dumb terminals, and electronics scrap.

So:  What should I tell this guy about the stuff?  Most of it is too big
to ship unless it is more valuable as museum pieces than I guess, and
most of what I've called museum pieces are probably going to end up in
the junkyard.

A bit of history:  The guy ran a collection agency.  The NCR machine
(item 7) was his first accounting machine.  It proved inadequate as the
business grew, so he bought the Burroughs machine (item 6).  As time
passed, it came time to retire it, so he got the PDP-11 system (item 2).
That was eventually replaced by an IBM System 36, and the System 36 was
sold (but not the peripherals (item 4)) when the guy retired.  The
Flexowriter (item 5) was used as a word processor by his company until
computers took over that job.  The Charles River machine (item 1) and
the TRS 80 system (item 3) were repossessed, as was most of the
electronics junk (item 8).

The guy did say that conversion from the PDP-11 system to the IBM
System 36 was a real pain!

Finally, if you want some of this stuff, make the guy an offer.  His
name is Paul McKeen, (319) 337-2035 or cellular phone 331-1808.  Keep in
mind that he's unlikely to want to ship anything to anyone, he's likely
to be willing to let you have most of the stuff free (particularly the
museum pieces), just to get rid of it, if you can get to his warehouse
to pick it up, and he wants to vacate the warehouse by this coming Friday.

    Doug Jones
    [email-masked]
-end-included-text-----------------------------------------------------------
-- 
Eric Korpela                        |  The two most common things in the
[email-masked]            |  universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
                                    |        -Harlan Ellison

---

From: [email-masked] (Jeffrey C. Ollie)
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 22:03:54 GMT

>>"Eric" == Eric J Korpela <[email-masked]> writes:

Eric> In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked]
Eric> writes:
Eric>>  1) A Charles River Universe 68 system
Eric>>  2) A PDP-11/04 with a TFI disk controller
Eric>>  3) A TRS 80 Model II system, with printer on a stand,
Eric>>     3 keyboards and a second monitor.
Eric>>  4) An IBM 5224 line printer and 2 IBM 5251 data display 
Eric>>     terminals.
Eric>>  5) A Singer Programmatic Flexowriter 2201 and a Singer
Eric>>     Friden Selectadata box to go with it.
Eric>>  6) Two Burroughs L6000 accounting machines.
Eric>>  7) An NCR electromechanical accounting machine
Eric>>  8) A pile of old power supplies, dumb terminals, and
Eric>>     electronics scrap.
Eric>> 

Eric> Someone please go pick this stuff up.  It's making me ill just
Eric> thinking about the possibility of it being thrown away.
Eric> Somebody call the Smithsonian.  Stop the destruction of our
Eric> history!  If I could afford it I would make the trip to Iowa
Eric> just to get the stuff.

I'm willing to do some of the legwork if someone wants some of this
stuff.  Don't know how much I can do for you, but I'm willing to
help.

Anyway, if you're interested in any of this stuff, let me know and
we can arrange something.

Jeff Ollie
[email-masked]
--
--
Jeffrey C. Ollie
[email-masked]
"The Happy User"