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Sad story

PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 5:58 pm
by nama
I met a man today who works at Canterbury Uni in the computer department. We got talking about my hobby, and he mentioned that about a month ago, just before Xmas they had a big clear out of 30+ years worth of old stuff. Dozens of old machines and electronic gear including digital oscilloscopes, BBC micros and god knows what else all went to the dump.

I almost cried

Re: Sad story

PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 7:09 pm
by palmheads
Argh!!

With that sort of stuff, you've just gotta hope someone in the various university/school/office computer departments realise that someone, somewhere would LOVE to have what they think is obsolete rubbish.

Reality is, could be a money spinner for them!

cheers
Daryn

Re: Sad story

PostPosted: Sun Jan 04, 2015 7:39 pm
by Clym5
Up at the science and tech department of Auckland Uni, they have a little showroom on each floor! They have everything from nearly every major revision of Macintosh and other Apple computers.

From memory, some of the more significant machines were a IBM 1620, with punch card reader, and populated plugboards, some pretty crazy Burroughs stuff, like a fixed head hard drive and a modular 286, awesome IBM 3D graphics rendering machines, part of what I recall to be a System/360 22 (maybe) and other awesome stuff. Portable TRS80 looked neat!

There's a website here with some of the stuff, but it's wayyyyy better in real life.

Also, there are a few piles of networking gear, all the way from a funky VT100 terminal straight out of the 70's and lots of 90's servers.