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My Collection

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irishmike

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2006
Messages
331
Location
Overland Park, KS USA
Hi All:

Have been a member of this community for quite some time and my vintage collection is ever growing. I would love to find other members and perhaps form a sort of User Group in Kansas City where we vintage computer enthusiasts could get together and discuss our machines and trade, etc. Kind of a permanent "club" and swap meet that perhaps meets monthly. Any takers? Go ahead and PM me.

My Collection currently includes:

An Amiga 1200 (needs some work, but works great)
My crowned jewel, A TRS-80 Model 4 in EXCELLENT CONDITION
A PowerMac 3400C (power PC, circa 1994)
Commodore 64 with 1541 and 1581 (3.5 floppy drive *rare*)

various parts for things as well!

I am seeking:

A Tandy Color Computer (COCO) 3 with expansion bay, floppy controller cartridge, RS232 cartridge
A ZX Spectrum
DEC Rainbow
PDP 10 (will be hard to find in my budget I am sure)
IMSAI 8080 (again budget, last one I saw was going for like $3000, so it will be quite a while)

If anyone has what I looking for, I intend to sell my C64 set and would trade for like the COCO if someone is interested.

Hope everyone is having a great hobby. Lately I added 'Amatuer Radio' to my list of hobbies and so I am highly involved in "Electronics" as a hobby. It seems that there is little call for the skill-set these days as most jobs have been automated in this area... but hopefully I can do repairs on machines and some other applications or just continue to be a UNIX system admin.

I do kind of miss the BBS days from the standpoint of having run a BBS and been involved in computer networking for well over 22 years now. Don't get me wrong, the Internet is great, but it lacks the feeling of small community that BBS systems had. Granted, communities like this are still kind of in that vain.

Let me know via PM if you can help on the machines I am seeking and I will be glad to do the same.
 
I haven't tried and don't have a license but one fantasy project I was thinking about was whether or not a bbs could be set up via ham/packet radio. Seems like something that would be semi-practical in the community or at least possible vintage fun.
 
barythrin said:
I haven't tried and don't have a license but one fantasy project I was thinking about was whether or not a bbs could be set up via ham/packet radio. Seems like something that would be semi-practical in the community or at least possible vintage fun.
Click to expand...

Hey: Yep the license is a cool thing... and wasn't real hard to get as far as Technician Class was concerned, a lot of questions pertaining to general electronics like Ohm's law and the like. There are a few rules questions, but most of the guides are complete enough if you are interested in obtaining the license.

As far as BBS over Packet Radio is concerned, that should actually not be a hard thing to accomplish. The radio modem connects to modem so that link is analogous to POTS in the old days. The other end is a standard RS-232 serial connection to your computer. My PackRat modem used a basic terminal to communicate so it may not work "out of the box" with vintage BBS software, on the other hand, if the software can be made to think it talking to a standard Hayes compatible modem, it should work as it did in the old days.

The main hurdles I see are that radio modems communicate much faster than old modems did (that is good), and generally the fact whether or not you can transmit ANSI graphics or are you just limited to text and ASCII? I don't know about these items personally because while I bought the radio modem at a Hamfest last year, I have never played with it at all yet.

Theoretically speaking: I think it would be very possible to do.
 
BBSes over packet radio were definitely used, or at least thought about, back in the 80's and 90's -- I have a bunch of 8" floppies from an old ham operator's collection that contain messages about setting up an east coast packet radio link. Seems like a lot of stuff was being used with the Xerox 820 and 820-II at the time, as that's what the software contained on the disks was written for. Among the various CP/M-80 applications are BBS and electronic mail programs (not e-mail proper, but not UUCP either, from what I can tell).

From what I've read off the floppies, it seems that packet radio was being used for 9600 bps links between machines, which presumably had local callers connecting to them.
 
Yeah the idea was low baud bbs but I mean I played some of the simpler non-graphic doors even on 2400 baud but 9600 would be pretty sweet. I ended up with a packet radio a few years ago but "because I don't have a license" never got around to using it. ;-) Actually a friend and I were never able to get any of my ham gear to really work here in town (at least not at the arae where we thought there were some repeaters that were supposed to be available). Not sure if my Yaesu doesn't work or if it's maybe a bad antenna or something or if I'm just never in the right place at the right time.
 
irishmike said:
I do kind of miss the BBS days from the standpoint of having run a BBS and been involved in computer networking for well over 22 years now. Don't get me wrong, the Internet is great, but it lacks the feeling of small community that BBS systems had. Granted, communities like this are still kind of in that vain.
Click to expand...

Yes. Mind you there is nothing to stop anyone using Internet forums for vintage/classic computing that are targetted towards a local membership. For example I have one for New Zealand collectors at
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/forums/index.php

While the membership is at about 126 the ACTIVE membership is only a dozen if that. Nevertheless, it does serve a purpose in that being a local board there is a chance we might occasionally meet face to face. In fact a number of us have. The other big advantage of a local forum is when it comes to trading and swapping as we can do it internally hence no international shipping costs.


Would a "local" Internet forum just for Kansas City focussing on local trades/swaps and meets be an option?
 
@rick: Yeah, I have a Model 4 as well... mine is in great shape. In my collection I have been concentrating on Tandy at this time and I am kind of getting out of Amiga -- I have a nice A1200 that I am actually in a position to sell in the near future.
 
I am probably logged into a packet radio BBS in my avatar photo. In the UK most folks used 1200 baud packet radio, but because there is no collision detect the performance can be really really really slow. You could make it even slower by running TCP/IP rather than AX25. You can still download the KA9Q NOS software from here:-

http://www.ka9q.net/code/ka9qnos/

and it will provide complex TCP/IP support on a bare DOS machine. There are versions for many classic machines including Atari-ST and Amiga. Getting a licence in the UK is now simple. You can get a few watts of transmit power very simply on a Foundation licence. As you can see from the RA archives:-

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/ra/publication/ra_info/br68f/br68f.htm

this included BBS access from its inspection. These days with fast cheap Internet access few people use packet radio. Even the DX Clusters used to report rare and interesting stations on the air tend to be accessed over the Internet. About the only activity on Ham Packet is APRS which is a kind of text and location messaging service.

Hope that isn't too boring
 
irishmike said:
@rick: Yeah, I have a Model 4 as well... mine is in great shape. In my collection I have been concentrating on Tandy at this time and I am kind of getting out of Amiga -- I have a nice A1200 that I am actually in a position to sell in the near future.
Click to expand...

And in the near future I would be in the position to buy it :)
 
Well this is definitely an update. My Collection has changed and what I am looking for has also changed.

I have the following:

Apple PowerBook 3400C
Tandy TRS-80 Model 4
Tandy Color Computer 3 (parts)
Gateway 2k 4DX2-66 (not really at vintage status yet, but 486DX/2 66's seem to be gaining in popularity)

expecting this week: Tandy Color Computer 2 (just traded for)

What I am still seeking:

Tandy CM-8 monitor
Tandy 1000TX system
DEC Rainbow
TI-99

I am always on the lookout for additions to my collection and in fairness, I am thinking of parting with some parts of it. However, I am finally getting to where I want to be for the collection ;-) Though as most of us know, it is an ever evolving entity when you get into the old stuff.

My dream is to find a IMSAI 8080 in good shape for a price I can justify... FYI, I am not able to buy one at the going rate :-D
 
Ahh...an IMSAI or an Altair...I would love to add either to my collection - and don't get me started on a PDP-10...I remember a few years ago almost buying a complete working unit with software and spare drives, but it was over $1500.00, and there was no way I could justify (or honestly come up with that to spare) it.

As people mentioned, the Ham operator tests aren't too difficult - if you have some familiarity with electricity and electronics you are halfway there, and if not, some focused study and an interest in it will carry you through nicely. My main hurdle is convincing my wife that a tower in the back yard is a good idea...

Another related protocol being used by some hams these days is PSK31, kindof like instant messenger chat via radio - very cool stuff, very efficient in its use of bandwidth. I would like to give that a go sometime.
 
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