Dream Retro Setup

I once had my dream setup - an Apple//c+ with 1 meg memory card, an Apple color monitor, mouse, Imagewriter // color printer, a 40 meg hard drive, and GEOS to be installed on the hard drive. I’m not sure if I had a no slot clock, I think maybe I did and couldn’t get it to fit. When I moved out of my mother’s house I stored it at her place. Her health deteriorated, and my brother sold off my “junk” (his word, not mine) and gave the money to my Mom. I cringe at how much he got for the hard drive, most likely nowhere near what it was worth. Anyone else have a similar story to mine?

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Ouch! I’ve never had quite such a setback, although the CPU upgrade in my Amiga 1200 has gone missing - the machine was with my Dad for many years, but I can’t imagine he would have fiddled with the trapdoor (which is also missing.)

Over on Stardot it’s a relatively common story that someone sold their own gear, and then later realised how much they’d rather have kept it.

I made a big move some 30 years ago (Scotland to England), and had to leave behind 2 x PDP8’s and a Northstar Horizon, along with a couple of calculators and slide rules and few other bits and pieces. I did keep my BBC Micro (complete with 4Mhz CPU, big case, dual drives, etc. which was stolen in a burglary a few years later )-:

Subsequently “re-stocked” to a degree and emulators are nice, but when I think back and cringe…

Ah well.

-Gordon

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My only horror story was coming into possession of an Altair 8800 some years ago. Sadly, the previous owner had hacked the front panel to the point of destruction, and ‘lost’ all the innards. When we moved it was just too much to move an empty case so I donated it.

Sorry, one more… in the same move - far enough that I could not take a ton of stuff - I had to give up a perfectly running HP9000 full rack machine with disk drive. (no tape). Also donated an IBM RS6000 and an Apple LISA (that was a bit of a boat anchor as no software).

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When my father passed, and I was cleaning out his house, I had to sell a lot of things of great personal value, but simply unable to keep.

Of note was that when he moved out to the east coast, he took with him his TRS-80. This was THE TRS-80 that I cut my teeth on back in the day. The school at PETs, and he had bought me a KIM-1, but when I was with him in the summers, it was on the TRS-80.

I was amazed he still had it (I thought it was the companies).

I tried to power it up, but nothing happened. I didn’t explore it too much.

But in the end, here was a TRS-80 Model 1 w/Expansion and disk drives – 3000 miles from home. And I have enough “stuff” at my house that I wouldn’t really have much time do get it up and running anyway. And even if I did…then what? Going to do much with a TRS-80? Unlikely. It would have just collected more dust.

So, it was better to just take the memories with me and ship it off to auction.

The other thing that went was my grandfathers metal shop. My father took it with him when my grandfather passed. It was essentially a metal lathe, a drill press, and a shaper. Plus a workbench, a gazillion bits and parts for the tools.

Again, another legacy of my childhood. Something I don’t know anything about (I’m not a machinist). But, if I wasn’t going to be able to ship home 30lbs of ancient computer equipment that I at least was marginally skilled and knowledgable about, what would I do with 500lbs of metalworking machinery.

That lathe was in perfect condition (needed some belts), but at least 60 years old. Before computer control, honestly, lathes were lathes. And it was a shame to let that go to, but it is what it is.

I took home some small stuff that I could easily transport. Including a signed poster of the team that my father was on that put an EVA experiment on Apollo 15. Also signed by Scott, Worden, and Irwin.

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I recently had an experience quite to the reverse: I once had a Macintosh 660av, nothing that noteworthy as compared to a PDP-8 or the like, but still an interesting and quite unique little machine, which I happened to give away as Apple and consequently myself transitioned to the PPC platform. The thing is, I eventually became convinced that this machine could have run A/UX (Apple’s rather unique mix of AT&T Unix and classic Mac OS), since it ticks all marks regarding components and period. Ever since, I longed to get my old Centris back to give it a try. For sure, the Centris 660av with all its speed-up features would be a potent little machine to show off the virtues of A/UX in its later iterations!
Eventually (a couple of decades of longing later), I managed to regain it and started to restore it (some bits about this are in the forum), just to discover that the Centris 660av is excluded from the A/UX compatibility list (because of its rather special ROM). So not much gained in that department…

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