[Kirok]

Like many people I have the skelingtons of computers past still hidden in the attic. I'm a collector of sorts and these are going to be the family heirlooms I'm passing on to my children (along with a couple of mechanical calculators). Working from memory (its night and I don't want to come face-to-face with one of the possums who seem to hold nightly cotillions up there!) I've still got...

• A suitcase sized monster that is best described as a programmable calculator on steroids that my father brought home from work in 1971 because they were throwing it out. Old? This had nixitubes for the numerical readouts!
• My first computer: a Sinclair ZX-81 with exactly 1 (one) kilobyte of RAM!
• A Dick Smith Cat (an apple clone).
• A Commodore, the Volkswagen of its time!
• An Atari 520 (I think) I've got two of these! (It seemed like a good idea at the time)

You might say that I've made a few, uh, less-than-right decisions when it comes to technology... Why, yes, I do own a BetaMax. Why do you ask?


After that I decided to stop taking chances on technology and stuck to the mainstream - Windoze - but I still have most of the old carcases lying around. Recently I got interested in Crimson Skies, an old PC Game and found that, because of video card "updates", the only computer that would play it was one of the old clunkers in the garage. This got me thinking, I really should do something with all the old post-Atari tech I have lying around the place.

Obviously I'm going to put together a "legacy" windows machine for gaming, but I was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions for imaginative uses for the old tech that I'm sure everyone has lying around? One thing I've always wondered is if you could scavenge all the hard drives and put them into a case then network them for compartmentalised storage.

Cheers

K

[Bill]

My computer days started in High School with punch cards.

My first computer was a Commodore which I still have tucked away. I keep saying I am going to pull it out and fire it up. I had a lot of games for it. Dot matrix printer, cassette tape drive. I think I was the first to use it in my business for invoicing.

My older son and his cousin went vintage computing a few years back and picked up a lot of TRS80 stuff. Of course its all in my attic.

I also have ponder creating a tower with all those old drives. Boot drive Q for windows 3.1, R for 95, etc. As always the enemy is time.

[Kirok]

Bill, on 10 April 2010 - 09:47 AM, said:

I also have ponder creating a tower with all those old drives. Boot drive Q for windows 3.1, R for 95, etc.

...with Star Trek abandonware loaded on them...or a different emulator on different drives: Commodore, Atari ...with the obligatory dot matrix printer attached!

[Kirok]

Hmmm, just reading the VHS is dead thread - I wonder if I can connect my VHS camera to a laptop (yup, got an old Toshiba here somewhere!) to film in a digital format? Or I could create a retro media centre with a cassette deck, LP record player, shortwave radio, the Betamax...

I could throw retro parties where we could watch ELO music videos and play Pong!...

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TLmpL2AzLs"]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=8TLmpL2AzLs[/url]

K

[Bill]

Party at Kiroks, who wants to chip in and charter our own TU jet?

[shinkai]

I thought this might be relevant: http://www.decadecou...ta/tubelist.php
Enjoy

[Kirok]

shinkai, on 10 April 2010 - 03:45 PM, said:

I thought this might be relevant: http://www.decadecou...ta/tubelist.php
Enjoy

Interesting. I didn't realise there had been so many ways of displaying numerical output! The nixietubes worked last time I checked a couple of years ago but as I think about it, I should bring it down from the roof and give it a safer home - an Australian corrugated iron roof gets about the same range of temperatures as the Hubble Space Telescope!

National Science Week comes up in August and I've always said that I'd like to show my old 'putas at my son's high school as a display. Sadly, Science is not a high priority there although their computer and technology faculty is soldiering on.

K

[Beast Boy]

I in 2001 year have computer compaq with system windows 3.11,after buy modern computer in 2006 year,old computer was gift my friend,because on old computer can not was watch movies on DVD,play in computer games,created site.This old computer have 3.5 discet drive,8*color lct monitor and processor with operative memory ~ 150 kb,and this computer can not use for work with modern programm and i gift this computer.

This post has been edited by Martok: 27 May 2011 - 05:51 AM