“Scare the hell out of your secretary. Get her a computer.”
Very un-PC (no, the other PC) 1960s 1970s ad by San Antonio-based Computer Terminal Corporation. Spotted at the Goodwill Computer Museum in Austin, TX.
Best viewed large.
Monthly Archives: January 2011
The Goodwill Computer Museum
Last week I had a chance to visit the Goodwill Computer Museum, conveniently located (for me) here in Austin, Texas.
The museum is a small part of the Goodwill Computer Works, a computer and electronics recycling center operated by Goodwill. The site accepts donations of both computer and non computer-related items, like clothes and household items. To enter the museum, you first pass through the computer store. Here you can buy used computers as well as cables, wall warts, keyboards, flat panel displays, wireless routers, graphics cards, and even some software. I’ve even seen some small pieces of surplus electronic equipment there, as well as some vintage computers, so I’ll be adding this store to the surplus wiki.
There is a lot of interesting stuff on display. Along one wall, there is an assortment of TRS-80 machines, a Model 100, and some home video game consoles, including an Atari Super Pong and a Magnavox Odyssey.
The luggable TRS-80 PT-210 includes a built-in acoustic coupler!
Apple is well-represented as well. There’s an Apple Lisa 2 on display. Retail price in 1984: $10,000!
Standing tall near the entrance is a Data General Nova system. Flickr user P^2 Paul points out that “Tracy Kidder wrote a great book about DG, the Nova, and the development of the Eclipse. The Soul of a New Machine.”
I love the crinkle finish on this Dynabyte DB8/4. I can’t find much information about this machine online, except this post about a DB8/1 that has a Z-80 CPU and an S-100 bus.
The Osborne 1, released in 1981, was designed by Lee Felsenstein. I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Lee on a couple occasions. He has a lot of interesting stories and is still designing electronics.
What would a computer museum in Austin be without a shrine to Michael Dell? Here’s a PC’s Limited Turbo PC (there’s one of these at the Smithsonian!) PC’s Limited eventually became… you guessed it, Dell.
There’s a painstakingly-restored PDP 8/S (apparently ‘S’ unofficially stands for ‘Slow’) in one corner of the main exhibit area.
I was happy to see this Heathkit oscilloscope. I had a far-uglier Heathkit ‘scope when I was in high school. Mine had tubes inside. I’m guessing this one does, too.
In 2007, Jon Stanley constructed a relay computer named RC-2. It is on display here, and I got to see a preview of RC-3 in the back room!
Computer Terminal Corporation (later Datapoint) was based in San Antonio and made the Datapoint 2200 shown on the desk. I’m pretty sure the rest of this equipment is CTC, but I’m not sure exactly what models are shown.
img class=”alignnone” src=”http://mightyohm.com/files/flickr/5333821885_e9e2bcf0a9.jpg” alt=”Goodwill Computer Museum” width=”500″ height=”375″ />
To see more of the museum, check out the photoset on flickr.
HV Rescue Shield 2.0 status update
Just before the holidays, an issue with the Rescue Shield 2.0 (which I have at times referred to as “2.x”) was identified. The issue involves problems reading/writing to parts that have certain startup timer (SUT) fuse values set.
There is some more information about the issue on the forums and in a previous post here and I created a Known Issues page on the wiki.
While this issue will not affect most users (this is why no one, including me, noticed it until now), I am currently working on a fix. Initially I had hoped that I could fix the problem in software, but after spending far too much time pursuing that approach, I have decided to address it with a hardware change instead. This should make for a much more robust solution. I’m in the process of revising the hardware this week and hope to release a new version of the shield in the near future.
As soon as I heard about the issue in December, I stopped taking orders for Rescue Shield kits. Kits and PCBs will show up as out of stock until I release the new version.
I’ll post another update when I have an estimate of when kits will be available again.
Thanks for your patience!
Ali’s Surplus Stuff
Over the holidays I had a chance to visit Ali’s Surplus Stuff in Sacramento, CA.
This is my kind of place. Surplus electronics piled from floor to ceiling. Lots of oscilloscopes and useful stuff mixed in with bizarre industrial equipment.
Lots of cool rack-mounted equipment here. Lots of push-buttons too.
Need a random computer-related printed circuit board?
My recommendation for places like this is always to come to the counter with the biggest pile of stuff you can carry and haggle on a single price for everything. You’ll end up paying a fair price for one or two big items and getting the rest thrown in “for free”.
Here’s what I went home with: HP chart recorder, some IC sockets, webcam stand, random RF module, and some kind of monitor shutoff device from back when ‘green’ was just a color. This is a remarkably small pile of stuff given what was available, but I knew I would have to pack all this into my checked luggage on the flight home.
This was my first visit to Ali’s, and I came home really impressed. I can’t think of a better place to find surplus electronics junk in the Sacramento area, especially now that HSC Electronics on Auburn Blvd. is gone. I also feel that if you are looking for used industrial and test equipment, Ali’s has a better selection than Bay Area shops like Weird Stuff. I will definitely be visiting Ali’s again the next time I’m Sacramento.
Ali’s Surplus Stuff is listed under Sacramento Area on the resources:surplus page of the MightyOhm Wiki. Whew!