The Great Z80 Purge of 2009
A lot has been going on of late, but I've not kept up with it all on LiveJournal. I haven't done much more with the family tree and the trade directories of Colchester, although I did take another look at FreeBMD. FreeBMD is a volunteer effort to transcribe all the historical Births, Marriages and Deaths records of the UK, right back to the earliest centrally-kept records of 1837. They have now got as far as the early 1930s and are carrying on. But to find some types of family connection, I will need to look in the UK Census records, which are not free.
Just yesterday I received an Apple PowerMac 5500/275, in black (which means that it has a TV tuner and video-in card). A fine machine, which was running Mac Sentry password-based security at startup. I booted with SHIFT held down to disable extensions, and switched off the password check from the Extension Manager (it's MacOS 8.6), then rebooted normally. It's running a nice planetarium app, Starry Night Backyard, which shows the night sky in real time with stars and planets identified. Looks like there's 64M of memory and a 4Gb hard disk.
But junk build-up in the house has reached a level where Something Must Be Done. I've run out of flat surfaces to put things on, and large areas of floor have vanished under a tidal wave of laser printers, Sinclair Spectrums, microscopes, video games, PC monitors and even a couple of Compukit UK101s. Some of it is stuff that I've brought down from the loft for Tech Adventure and the Maker Faire, and haven't taken back up again. But more of it is just surplus stuff that I never use and really have neither time nor inclination to fix up. The plan, then, is to move it out of the house. Yes, to get rid of stuff! Pass it on to a new home where maybe it'll be more appreciated. The first wave has begun: The Great Z80 Purge of 2009. I tend to divide computers into two classes, Eights and Sixes. Sixes are the 6502, 6809 and 68000 machines, and are keepers (the Atmel AVR is an honourary Six). The Eights are the 8080, Z80, 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486 and so on, and are the subject of the current purge (PIC chips are honourary Eights).
So far, I have disposed of a TRS-80 Model 4 to a gentleman of the Linux User Group. The Sun SparcStation LX and SparcClassic also left the house today. An Epson HX-20 (claimed by Wikipedia to be the first laptop) is lined up in the departure lounge ready to go -- any takers? Next up will be the Sharp MZ-80A, the Video Genie and the Amstrad PCW8256. But what to do about the unusual/rare/significant/interesting designs? The Osborne One? The H&H Tiger (has a 6809 and a Z80)? The IBM 3270 PC? The relatively modern Toshiba laptops?
Just yesterday I received an Apple PowerMac 5500/275, in black (which means that it has a TV tuner and video-in card). A fine machine, which was running Mac Sentry password-based security at startup. I booted with SHIFT held down to disable extensions, and switched off the password check from the Extension Manager (it's MacOS 8.6), then rebooted normally. It's running a nice planetarium app, Starry Night Backyard, which shows the night sky in real time with stars and planets identified. Looks like there's 64M of memory and a 4Gb hard disk.
But junk build-up in the house has reached a level where Something Must Be Done. I've run out of flat surfaces to put things on, and large areas of floor have vanished under a tidal wave of laser printers, Sinclair Spectrums, microscopes, video games, PC monitors and even a couple of Compukit UK101s. Some of it is stuff that I've brought down from the loft for Tech Adventure and the Maker Faire, and haven't taken back up again. But more of it is just surplus stuff that I never use and really have neither time nor inclination to fix up. The plan, then, is to move it out of the house. Yes, to get rid of stuff! Pass it on to a new home where maybe it'll be more appreciated. The first wave has begun: The Great Z80 Purge of 2009. I tend to divide computers into two classes, Eights and Sixes. Sixes are the 6502, 6809 and 68000 machines, and are keepers (the Atmel AVR is an honourary Six). The Eights are the 8080, Z80, 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486 and so on, and are the subject of the current purge (PIC chips are honourary Eights).
So far, I have disposed of a TRS-80 Model 4 to a gentleman of the Linux User Group. The Sun SparcStation LX and SparcClassic also left the house today. An Epson HX-20 (claimed by Wikipedia to be the first laptop) is lined up in the departure lounge ready to go -- any takers? Next up will be the Sharp MZ-80A, the Video Genie and the Amstrad PCW8256. But what to do about the unusual/rare/significant/interesting designs? The Osborne One? The H&H Tiger (has a 6809 and a Z80)? The IBM 3270 PC? The relatively modern Toshiba laptops?