Vintage Computers

jannievanzyl said:
Anyone else here collecting vintage computers? Especially from the Home Computer era before the IBM PC became pervasive, i.e. from the 70's and 80's era.

Still building my collection but have the following so far:

- Ohio Superboard
- Apple II
- Vic 20
- Commodore 64
- Sinclair ZX80
- Sinclair ZX81
- Sinclair Spectrum
- HP 85
- HP 86
- Osborne 1
- Texas Instruments 99
- Acorn Atom
- BBC Micro
- microProfessor

Still looking for a few systems.

Would love to hear what you've got.
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Thanks for the trip down memory lane

Owned 8 on your list ;-)

My favourite pre PC era was the Sharp MZ80B running CPM with a built-in cassette storage

Amazing what we could do on 16/32/64 K memory

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=173
 
Amiga in constant trade on ebay and amibay, ebay.de seems better priced but importing major headache, especially for RGB monitors.
 
I had a few back in the 90s, one guy retired that collected a boat load of old stuff and gave it all to me as his wife was getting pissed off with all the "junk", I in turn gave it all away.

I never had any affection for anything Z80 or 808x based in those days, my love was all for 6502/6510/680x/680x0 stuff.
 
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jannievanzyl said:
Anyone else here collecting vintage computers? Especially from the Home Computer era before the IBM PC became pervasive, i.e. from the 70's and 80's era.

Still building my collection but have the following so far:

- Ohio Superboard
- Apple II
- Vic 20
- Commodore 64
- Sinclair ZX80
- Sinclair ZX81
- Sinclair Spectrum
- HP 85
- HP 86
- Osborne 1
- Texas Instruments 99
- Acorn Atom
- BBC Micro
- microProfessor

Still looking for a few systems.

Would love to hear what you've got.
Click to expand...

Had an HP 85 till a little while back, was sorry when it finally died. Used it for checking the validity of new algorithms. Since it offered higher numerical precision than one gets from a PC any differences in output pointed to possible ill conditioning in the algorithm.

Still have Hp 71B hand-held computer. The ease of on-the-fly programming for specific tasks while on the road gives it capabilities that are difficult to replicate with current equipment.
 
garyc said:
Had an HP 85 till a little while back, was sorry when it finally died. Used it for checking the validity of new algorithms. Since it offered higher numerical precision than one gets from a PC any differences in output pointed to possible ill conditioning in the algorithm.

Still have Hp 71B hand-held computer. The ease of on-the-fly programming for specific tasks while on the road gives it capabilities that are difficult to replicate with current equipment.
Click to expand...


http://www.kaser.com/hp85.html
http://hp.giesselink.com/emu71.htm
 
It probably beats lugging extra hardware and certainly doesn't add to its wear and tear. Emulators can be awesome (or painful).
 
etienne_marais said:
Amiga in constant trade on ebay and amibay, ebay.de seems better priced but importing major headache, especially for RGB monitors.
Click to expand...

eBay is just crazy pricewise and then, as you said, shipping is even more crazy. But I've bought stuff on eBay if you can't get it locally such as a very clean Sinclair ZX80.
 
ponder said:
I had a few back in the 90s, one guy retired that collected a boat load of old stuff and gave it all to me as his wife was getting pissed off with all the "junk", I in turn gave it all away.

I never had any affection for anything Z80 or 808x based in those days, my love was all for 6502/6510/680x/680x0 stuff.
Click to expand...

Pity the Motorola CPUs never went mainstream, especially the 16 and 32-bit chips. Z80 was a great CPU, much better than the 6502.

Guess in those days MOS/Zilog/Motorola was a bit like Windows/OSX/Linux today! You had your favourite and defended it religiously. :)
 
jannievanzyl said:
Pity the Motorola CPUs never went mainstream, especially the 16 and 32-bit chips. Z80 was a great CPU, much better than the 6502.

Guess in those days MOS/Zilog/Motorola was a bit like Windows/OSX/Linux today! You had your favourite and defended it religiously. :)
Click to expand...

Think Big Blue is to thank for that.

The 68k instruction set was particularly well suited to implement Unix,[5] and the 68000 became the dominant CPU for Unix-based workstations including Sun workstations and Apollo/Domain workstations, and also was used for mass-market computers such as the Apple Lisa, Macintosh, Amiga, and Atari ST. The 68000 was used in Microsoft Xenix systems as well as an early NetWare Unix-based Server. The 68000 was used in the first generation of desktop laser printers including the original Apple Inc. LaserWriter and the HP LaserJet. In 1982
Click to expand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000
 
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Teaching my son to program in Spectrum BASIC

The reasoning behind this is that he will not be able to misspell any keywords, plus there's tons of magazines that you can download for a good type-in listing

When he can do a proper program on his own, he can upgrade to C or Pascal or whatever he chose to.
 
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