Hi from Auckland!
Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 4:33 pmHi everyone. I joined this board last week and I'm really pleased to see such a thriving little community of enthusiasts here. A little background on me, I came to NZ in 2010 from the UK. Over there I had a bit of a computer museum going, similar to tezza seems to have amounted here.
Unfortunately when it came time to move over, I didn't have a job to come to in NZ, nor a house (I stayed in a lodge home for the first 10 days!), then moved into a tiny kitchenette-type apartment in the city, a big come down from a big 4 bedroom house with my own room dedicated for my working computer museum! So I knew that it was going to be almost impossible to get my then wife to agree to ship all of the museum, especially as sprog number 1 was on it's way. So, with much sadness I passed my museum onto other worthy recipients so that they could carry the torch on.
I amassed lots of kit including things like DEC VaxStations, early Sun Lunchbox/Pizzabox sparc machines, BBC Micros, Apple //s, IBM 5160 & 5162 & Portable, Amstrad CPC 6128, Atari ST , Amiga , C64C and many more machines besides. I most liked my Apple // Europlus and also //e as I read the original Apple 'red book' from cover to cover and felt like I knew that machine down to the pinouts on the circuits. It was designed with love by Woz and so I spent a lot of time with that. I bought a Contiki card for it and had it surfing the web as well as FTP'ing down disk images.
As I grew up with an XT as my first 'real' computer, I naturally favoured my IBM PC XT, and later the 5162 (which was awesome - a AT/286 in an original retro XT case). Anyway, the 5162 unfortunately died a horrid death (although I'd seriously love to get my hands on one again). So I reverted back to my XT/5160 and for a while had a 80286 on a board which gave it that ability to surf the web and do other cool things that the original 4.77 8088 just didn't quite have the oomph to do, but the card proved unreliable after a while and so eventually I went back to 4.77MHz.
Anyway, I decided to keep my XT and my //e, storing them with my folks back home for 9 months until I finally got a decent job and house in Auckland. The //e sadly didn't make the trip, but the rugged old XT is still running as strong as it ever did, even with my strange SCSI hard drive upgrade the data was all intact (it's got a 120MB Apple SCSI hard drive in it from an old Mac LC2). I am still actively using that machine for all manner of things from writing a book to chatting on IRC and using FTP (I have the Xircom printer-port to network interface dongle thingy and a packet driver) which seems to work wonderfully for that.
I'd love to get an Apple //+ again at some point in time as I still have my software and books as well as some cards so I'll keep looking on this website and on trademe to see if one pops up at a reasonable price. I guess even a clone will do to begin with.
Very happy to be a member of this forum and if anyone needs any help with old kit I'm happy to see if I can help out. I've done some weird things with kit that was never supposed to work in that way, so perhaps I can help.
Cheers,
Ali
Unfortunately when it came time to move over, I didn't have a job to come to in NZ, nor a house (I stayed in a lodge home for the first 10 days!), then moved into a tiny kitchenette-type apartment in the city, a big come down from a big 4 bedroom house with my own room dedicated for my working computer museum! So I knew that it was going to be almost impossible to get my then wife to agree to ship all of the museum, especially as sprog number 1 was on it's way. So, with much sadness I passed my museum onto other worthy recipients so that they could carry the torch on.
I amassed lots of kit including things like DEC VaxStations, early Sun Lunchbox/Pizzabox sparc machines, BBC Micros, Apple //s, IBM 5160 & 5162 & Portable, Amstrad CPC 6128, Atari ST , Amiga , C64C and many more machines besides. I most liked my Apple // Europlus and also //e as I read the original Apple 'red book' from cover to cover and felt like I knew that machine down to the pinouts on the circuits. It was designed with love by Woz and so I spent a lot of time with that. I bought a Contiki card for it and had it surfing the web as well as FTP'ing down disk images.
As I grew up with an XT as my first 'real' computer, I naturally favoured my IBM PC XT, and later the 5162 (which was awesome - a AT/286 in an original retro XT case). Anyway, the 5162 unfortunately died a horrid death (although I'd seriously love to get my hands on one again). So I reverted back to my XT/5160 and for a while had a 80286 on a board which gave it that ability to surf the web and do other cool things that the original 4.77 8088 just didn't quite have the oomph to do, but the card proved unreliable after a while and so eventually I went back to 4.77MHz.
Anyway, I decided to keep my XT and my //e, storing them with my folks back home for 9 months until I finally got a decent job and house in Auckland. The //e sadly didn't make the trip, but the rugged old XT is still running as strong as it ever did, even with my strange SCSI hard drive upgrade the data was all intact (it's got a 120MB Apple SCSI hard drive in it from an old Mac LC2). I am still actively using that machine for all manner of things from writing a book to chatting on IRC and using FTP (I have the Xircom printer-port to network interface dongle thingy and a packet driver) which seems to work wonderfully for that.
I'd love to get an Apple //+ again at some point in time as I still have my software and books as well as some cards so I'll keep looking on this website and on trademe to see if one pops up at a reasonable price. I guess even a clone will do to begin with.
Very happy to be a member of this forum and if anyone needs any help with old kit I'm happy to see if I can help out. I've done some weird things with kit that was never supposed to work in that way, so perhaps I can help.
Cheers,
Ali
) But I will be taking all my collection with me, not starting again.
Good to see another youtube user too, I like having stuff to watch!