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Anyone here collects old computers?

Telecolor 3007 said:
I mean if I want to play with the internet (just for curiosity) on my 286 computer.
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Oh. For that, the older browser version, like quneur said. Just be aware that the web has moved on, and there's lots of stuff now that won't work, or will work very slowly. Other sites will be fine.

You can telnet all day on a 286 computer. Sitck to text and you'll be great.
 
The 386DX didn't have math. I bot a 20mhz tower and then they brought out the 33 - was there a 40 ? The 486 I liked !! Pushing 100mHz.
 
garww said:
The 386DX didn't have math. I bot a 20mhz tower and then they brought out the 33 - was there a 40 ? The 486 I liked !! Pushing 100mHz.
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I had an AMD 386 DX-40 with a Cyrix math co-processor, made it pretty fast for its day.
 
I remember when some of our engineers/designers got their new 486-66 computers. Woulda thought we were NASA or something...
 
I've got a Cray, just need a building the size of Kmart to set it up. "Do you want to play a game?"
 
I started with really old computer hardware when I was very young.

In the early 90's I had an 8088 with just the base 640k ram, a 10mb hard drive, hooked up to an old NASA printer that printed like an old typewriter (it would actually "type" each letter/number as it printed and had a head for each character just like a typewriter). All of the hardware was already a dozen years old at that point, at least.

In 1995 (i was in 5th grade) I upgraded to a 286 and swapped out the monochrome videocard with an ISA CGA Videocard I bought at a garage sale for $5 so I could play Megaman 2 (game) on 5.25" floppy discs.

It wasn't until 1997 or so that I finally got a PC that was new rather than 10+ years old, but to be honest, all of those years having to dig around in DOS on those old computers gave me an advantage when it came to understanding the foundation of how the newer computers worked. It resulted in me becoming a PC tech which is my job to this day.
 
Chris Brown said:
......hooked up to an old NASA printer that printed like an old typewriter (it would actually "type" each letter/number as it printed and had a head for each character just like a typewriter).
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Yep, those were know as daisy wheel printers (if they had a flat wheel with letters/numbers). The one I used was a NEC spinwriter that had a circular "crown" of numbers/letters.

I still have my last one and I had both feed options for it. Dual bin sheet feeder and tractor feeder. It has been put away for so long that I doubt I could even find it now. It was the last model NEC made and had both a serial and parallel interface.

It was so slow that I had to get an inline 512k buffer in order to do any work while it was printing. Ah... the fond memories.... clack-a-ta-clack
 
I've heard about Daisy Wheel printers but I never seen one. In stead, I've seen an East-German made printer - it was a V.E.B. "Robotron"; I think it was a matricial one. "Robtron" also produced computers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEB_Robotron
I got my hands on 2 color C.R.T. V.G.A. monitors. I got them for free. It's intresting to see the programs from a 286 in colors, but to be frankly, the old black and white color monitors are more friendly to your eyes then the color ones.
 
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i have too many to count and i am in the process of restoreing most of them i would make a list but i don't feel like it but ill buy / get any computer i can and use it till it can't be used anymore
 
Some one camed to me today and tryed to put a hard disk on my 386... unfourtenley both of the hards where broken, so I can't still make it work.
 
Telecolor 3007 said:
Some one camed to me today and tryed to put a hard disk on my 386... unfourtenley both of the hards where broken, so I can't still make it work.
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RLL or MFM encoding? You have to match encoding formats with the computer. Or if the harddrives were broken, shake each one and listen if there is something loose. It usually means the heads are broke and boncing on the platter.
 
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