[HN Gopher] 2,200 forgotten vintage computers from a barn in Mas...
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2,200 forgotten vintage computers from a barn in Massachusetts
Author : zhte415
Score : 135 points
Date : 2023-06-28 14:58 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| frozenport wrote:
| In context Mintel would launch at the same time with much more
| success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| The interesting NABU was IMHO not these, but the NABU 1200. An
| early 8086 Unix machine. I got one at a garage sale in 1993 or
| so. It worked, and the Microsoft Xenix 1.0 was a direct port of
| V7 Unix from Bell Labs and quite educational in this respect
| precisely because it was still simple and understandable,
| compared to to the work station OS's of the time.
|
| Proprietary no-source OS's were still common then, so binary
| patching the kernel to put in a different hard disk parameter
| table (to use a luxuriously large 20MB drive in place of the
| ST412 the machine came with - precious! Must not mess with the
| irreplaceable original OS image) was undaunting, especially with
| a .h file handy that gave the structure. Compiling "elvis" to get
| vi in the absolutely stripped down Minix mode, that used 63Kbytes
| of the maximum 64K of code space that executables could use...
| fun times. Of course back then you still had a hope of compiling
| current C with ancient pre-ANSI K&R C compiler. Most stuff that I
| ran on the machine didn't need much porting.
| randombits0 wrote:
| What a sad, desperate post, trying to steal the lime light of a
| long forgotten Z80 1980s box. We Nabuers enjoy our new/old
| vintage computer! It's just a bit of neoretro fun and here you
| have to squeeze what little joy we have into your glass.
| Shameful.
|
| /s
| samstave wrote:
| You know what I would truly love out of an AI/LLM ==
|
| A crawler across everything tech which takes a comment such as
| yours, and then parses out all the
| systems/people/code/languages/companies/timeframe and builds a
| really good history of computing.
|
| That would be absolutely beautiful.
|
| AI Keeping its own evolutionary tree documented... and turned
| into a teaching platform.
| htk wrote:
| A brand new keyboard from the early 80's. Curious to type on
| that.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Leo Binkowski (developer for NABU and quoted in the article) gave
| a nice talk at VCF East earlier this year:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=IhPsNQBCKfM
| [deleted]
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Isn't this post from 4 days ago? Reinvited when it had a bunch of
| upvotes already?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| That's weird, I see the same (and I read that thread a few days
| ago). I see the top comment as from 4 hours ago but then in the
| user's history it's from 4 days ago.
|
| I'm confused.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I've seen this with other posts in the past. I'm glad
| somebody else is acknowledging it. I was having a major
| "Mandela effect" feeling when I noticed it.
| detaro wrote:
| the HN mods "re-upped" this submission, which works by
| pretending that it was submitted later (and hence the ranking
| calculation treats it as new etc). It also fudges how the
| timestamps appear on the page. (presumably because otherwise
| people would be confused why a post from an hour ago has
| comments made 4 days ago)
|
| On the user pages this doesn't happen and it shows the
| original time.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > It also fudges how the timestamps appear on the page.
|
| Oh that's interesting, thanks for the explanation! (and a
| bit weird too but not in a bad way)
| kristopolous wrote:
| It's a large quantity but it looks like the going price is about
| $120. I presume these were going out untested. So really, $60
| sounds a bit cheap but really not unusual. The 2,000+ of them is
| the real crazy part.
|
| Sadly, just because something is 40 years old doesn't mean it
| will fetch a high price. Especially microcomputers. There's a
| bunch of rare and also cheap ones.
|
| Rare because almost nobody wants them and cheap for the same
| reason.
|
| For an equivalent today, think about some low end random model
| android phone from the early 2010s. Both cheap and rare
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I mean you can write Z80 assembler on one. Who cares if it was
| popular in the 80s?
| ChickeNES wrote:
| I think I was one of the last to score it at $100 a few days
| ago. It's been relisted at $120 and $180 and is now gone again.
| I assume this article will result in the full stock being sold
| shortly
| jsnell wrote:
| The article says they were tested.
|
| > Plus, they were essentially new. "It's new old stock, but it
| is tested," he says at the beginning of the clip. "I think the
| seller actually peeled the original tape off, tested it, and
| then taped it back up again."
| kristopolous wrote:
| Oh I didn't read closely. In that case, good deal
| qup wrote:
| When I see things I like this, I immediately want them. But then
| I realize I would probably boot it a few times and put it to
| rest. I have many computing devices I don't use.
|
| If we were to gift this in the most optimum way for a person who
| would actually put this machine into service...who would that be?
| What criteria make this the correct solution?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Great story! Vintage computers will always hold some value,
| however a vintage network resurrection is priceless.
| em-bee wrote:
| i am most fascinated by the bidirectional cable connection that
| his device was using. it shows that with more investment we could
| have had something like the internet 15-20 years earlier.
|
| so the primary roadblock for development at the time was cost,
| not capacity.
|
| i believe today most development happens at max capacity, because
| cost is no longer much of an issue.
| [deleted]
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