It's been quite a while, but I've been spending a bit of time over the last few days tidying up the workshop a little and finding my workbench again, so this afternoon I thought I'd have a quick look at some of the gear I picked up. There's a lot of work ahead of me, but today I had a first look at some of the gear and found:
CBM 8032 - makes a little sqwarking noise, no display. I've read these things don't like being left for 30+ years untouched, so it'll be a project for later.
CBM 8050 - missing a little plate holding it together, but otherwise looks unmolested. There's no real point looking at it until I get the 8032 operational.
HP 85 - has an 82903A 16K memory expansion and 82936A ROM drawer, containing 00085-15004 matrix ROM and 00085-15003 I/O ROM. The tape drive powers up, but no main power LED. That probably indicates a straightforward fault, such as a loose connector.
Amstrad CPC6128 - works, wrote a little for...next look printing some numbers, but I didn't have any software handy - it's all stored in my office. Nice to get some life though.
Apple //e - this is a non-enhanced PAL, chip date codes are all 83 so earlyish for NZ, and being non-enhanced confirms that. All of these computers came from a medical lab, and this one has origins in the public health system (based on asset stickers). Money would have been no object, and it has some interesting cards - obviously the obligatory Disk II and parallel printer cards (the latter labelled C.Itoh/NEC), but then it gets interesting.
There's a long card in the aux slot, a Titan Neptune. It's obviously an extended 80 column card, but has a lot of empty sockets so potentially more than a standard 128k - I'll do more research. A Computer Shop SERCOM-II is probably a serial card, and there's an interface card for a Houston Instruments HIPAD digitiser - would be nice if I had the actual digitiser!
More interesting is the Micro Works DS-65, which is a video digitiser. It is hard-wired to a box with three pots in it - these have been wired in where three skeleton presets sit on other pics I've seen - and a 3 pin header connected to two RCA sockets. A little research shows this computer was probably used for early computer analysis of radiography - see
http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/27/4/549.full.pdf.
I will power up the Apple IIe once I've taken some photos to document what's there, and changed the x2 caps in the power supply.
IBM PC 5150 - this is a late 5150, with a 64-256k system board, and 83 date codes on the chips. Still five slots though. The cards are an IBM 1501483 XM Black & White/Parallel card (MDPA), IBM 6181682 XM floppy drive controller, a WD1002-WX2 controlling the hard drive and an Emulex card that I'm not sure of the function of. It has various markings including 375364 and PT1010218-A, "SMC (C) 1984," a small switch on the back and a ribbon cable connected to an IC socket near the keyboard and cassette connectors. I'd guess RAM, but not sure of the function of the ribbon cable and switch.
Obviously the half-height hard drive isn't original, but the power supply appears to be - it has a 63 watt one which is consistent with it being original. As with the Apple IIe, I'll wait until I have documented it and changed X2 caps before attempting to power it up.
So, I've got a lot of work left, but at least I have a better idea of what I have out there. I've still got to see what the condition of the Compaq LTE 486 laptop and C64C is like, and then some more recent acquisitions (a Z88, DEC Pentium laptop and a BBC Master Compact) - but at least I can see bits of my workshop!
I'll be really interested to see if that goes.
