Latest vintage computing ebay scores

[Halcyon]

Got myself a brand new Castlewood Orb Drive for AUD$35. While it's not strictly "vintage", it's quite an unusual bit of kit and wasn't overly popular. The company didn't last long.

[djos]

Got myself a brand new Castlewood Orb Drive for AUD$35. While it's not strictly "vintage", it's quite an unusual bit of kit and wasn't overly popular. The company didn't last long.

Nice, I actually saw a few of those in the printing industry back in the 90's when I was servicing Power Computing Mac clones.

Btw, is this topic where we all post our latest vintage eBay purchases?

[Halcyon]

Btw, is this topic where we all post our latest vintage eBay purchases?

Yes please. :-)

[bsudbrink]

Ok, I got this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-64-AMD-AM9050EDC-GOLD-18-PIN-DIP-I-C-VINTAGE-78DC-/172825781594?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=3i69NpAAx9Pw1X4XHf5H8cIYYn4%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

for a song (in my opinion).  A pretty rare and sophisticated S-100 board.  DRAM refresh totally implemented on the card with timed delay line.  Much better description here:

http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Folder/TDL/32K%20RAM/32K%20DRAM.htm

I also recently got this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TB-1-Bob-Mullen-Bus-Extender-Board-USED-Vintage/201956439836?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

for well below the asking price (best offer).  Another fairly rare S-100 test board and pretty useful as well.  Description here:

http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Folder/Mullen/Extender%20Board/Extender%20Board.htm

[dexters_lab]

picked up one of these new-old-stock 8" NEC drives off ebay, so we can experiment with, possibly to create some hardware to read out the data off SMD drives for archiving/recovering data.

they are listed for £50 but the seller accepted £25

[djos]

Btw, is this topic where we all post our latest vintage eBay purchases?

Yes please. :-)

Awesome! 

I bagged a 360k external drive for my Tandy 1000ex for $32. Taken me many months to find one so I'm stoked.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/182727275012

[Halcyon]

I bagged a 360k external drive for my Tandy 1000ex for $32. Taken me many months to find one so I'm stoked.

Nice one, in a box and everything! Looks to be in very good condition.

[djos]

I bagged a 360k external drive for my Tandy 1000ex for $32. Taken me many months to find one so I'm stoked.

Nice one, in a box and everything! Looks to be in very good condition.

Yeah it's been nicely stored and well looked after - the gent who sold it to me is 73 and retired. He had the mother of all 1000 EX's from back in the day, he even had a rare external Hard Drive for it + the 720kb external floppy. I wanted it but couldnt justify a 2nd EX no matter how cool it was!

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Tandy-1000-EX-/182727247733?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=opuH%252B4pk33hInwltydb8FzUWuIA%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

[djos]

This wasnt via eBay but via the annual Melbourne C= & Amiga User Group auction, HP SCSI DVD-ROM drive for $10!  The SCSI cable I needed for to work on my SE cost me double that!   

[bitseeker]

picked up one of these new-old-stock 8" NEC drives off ebay

That's a whopper! Amazing it's still NOS. The biggest drives I have are full-height 5-1/4".

[dexters_lab]

picked up one of these new-old-stock 8" NEC drives off ebay

That's a whopper! Amazing it's still NOS. The biggest drives I have are full-height 5-1/4".

yes, been sat dormant for 31 years, hopefully they have been stored and treated properly! the seller has 'more than 10 available' according to ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/253049784698

[bitseeker]

Being new they're probably fine. A formerly running drive tends to seize when put into storage.

[marcopolo]

picked up one of these new-old-stock 8" NEC drives off ebay, so we can experiment with, possibly to create some hardware to read out the data off SMD drives for archiving/recovering data.
they are listed for £50 but the seller accepted £25

Thank you for pointing that out 
It could be fun for a PDP-11 replica project.
I bought 3 drives at £25.

If one of us finds information about this drive, we could talk about it here

[dexters_lab]

picked up one of these new-old-stock 8" NEC drives off ebay, so we can experiment with, possibly to create some hardware to read out the data off SMD drives for archiving/recovering data.
they are listed for £50 but the seller accepted £25

Thank you for pointing that out 
It could be fun for a PDP-11 replica project.
I bought 3 drives at £25.

If one of us finds information about this drive, we could talk about it here

great, hopefully you can make use of them. we have not tried ours yet.

it arrived with a small dent in the bottom cover that protects the PCB but other than that it looks brand new and the shipping lock was in in the locked position too which is a good sign.

we just need to build a PSU for it, they need a butt load of rails!

[joeqsmith]

picked up one of these new-old-stock 8" NEC drives off ebay, so we can experiment with, possibly to create some hardware to read out the data off SMD drives for archiving/recovering data.

they are listed for £50 but the seller accepted £25

Very cool!  When I bought my first AT style PC (286), I was running some old 8" drives.  I think I still have the manuals for them.   These were 80MB each. 

[bitseeker]

Hey, my 286 is in the same case.

[dexters_lab]

picked up one of these new-old-stock 8" NEC drives off ebay, so we can experiment with, possibly to create some hardware to read out the data off SMD drives for archiving/recovering data.

they are listed for £50 but the seller accepted £25

Very cool!  When I bought my first AT style PC (286), I was running some old 8" drives.  I think I still have the manuals for them.   These were 80MB each.

nice, classic clone case... we had one too, i think it started as a 286 as well. Interesting you were running 8" disks though, i am sure we had a 5.25" HH, but then it was probably only 20mb

see if you can spot the manuals, you never know they might be the ones for the the NEC D2246 we just bought 

[joeqsmith]

I think the two floppy drives in the PC were made by TEAC.  One of these was a quad density.  This drive could store 720K on a low density disk.   One of the two external floppy drives was a HD the other was the new 3.5".  Upper right, you can just see the 20M Irwin tape drive.   

At some point, I bought a 386 accelerator card for the this computer.  I think it plugged into the 286 socket and took one card slot.  There was an article in one of the trade mags back then that had the design for one.

[joeqsmith]

These were Quantum Q2080s.   

Found this test jig for them on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Altos-Computer-based-Quantum-Q2020-Q2040-Q2080-test-system-complete-working-/122667722434?hash=item1c8f90e6c2:g:j5gAAOSwzz1ZoFJY

[dexters_lab]

These were Quantum Q2080s.   

Found this test jig for them on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Altos-Computer-based-Quantum-Q2020-Q2040-Q2080-test-system-complete-working-/122667722434?hash=item1c8f90e6c2:g:j5gAAOSwzz1ZoFJY

Altos... now there is a name i haven't heard in a while!

[djos]

Altos... now there is a name i haven't heard in a while!

If you are interested in Alto's, you've gotta watch this full restoration series, it's pr0n for Electronics & Vintage computing enthusiasts imo. 

https://youtu.be/YupOC_6bfMI

[dexters_lab]

 

by Altos i was meaning Altos Computer Systems

but those videos from Curious Marc are all well worth a watch though if others haven't seen them, it look a lot of effort to get it fully restored

Altos... now there is a name i haven't heard in a while!

If you are interested in Alto's, you've gotta watch this full restoration series, it's pr0n for Electronics & Vintage computing enthusiasts imo. 

https://youtu.be/YupOC_6bfMI

[djos]

Lol, I had to look that system up as i'd never heard of it before. 

That restoration series is great, I love the logic analyzer rig they had setup to trouble shoot it, amazing stuff!

by Altos i was meaning Altos Computer Systems

but those videos from Curious Marc are all well worth a watch though if others haven't seen them, it look a lot of effort to get it fully restored

[TK]

Yes, Curious Marc has some amazing restoration videos.  One of the guys helping in the Altos Restoration is Ken Shirriff who has an interesting blog: http://www.righto.com/

[djos]

Got myself a brand new Castlewood Orb Drive for AUD$35. While it's not strictly "vintage", it's quite an unusual bit of kit and wasn't overly popular. The company didn't last long.

Nice, I actually saw a few of those in the printing industry back in the 90's when I was servicing Power Computing Mac clones.

It came out in 1999... less than a year of the 90s were left when it first came out. I'm confused.

I was a HW tech from '97 to 2001 so  nothing to be confused about.

[djos]

I bagged an Apple 3.5in External Floppy Drive (Model A9M0106) on ebay last night for $51 AUD - it'll make restoring my Mac SE a ton easier as 800k disks are a PITA to use, you can barely fit the System 6 on a single floppy with no room for anything else. This will allow me to put utils onto a second disk and avoid disk swap hell while trying to get my SCSI-SD HDD working.

I kinda feel sorry for the 2 folks I was bidding against, I sniped the hell out of them with a max bid limit of $100 AUD with 2 seconds to go (yeah I really really wanted it). 

[james_s]

For some reason I was thinking the SE had an internal high density floppy drive? Maybe that was a later edition of it? I know my SE/30 has an internal superdrive but that came out a bit later and was a high end machine at the time. That stuff was scary expensive back in the day.

[djos]

For some reason I was thinking the SE had an internal high density floppy drive? Maybe that was a later edition of it? I know my SE/30 has an internal superdrive but that came out a bit later and was a high end machine at the time. That stuff was scary expensive back in the day.

Mine is the 800k 20 MB HD version, I think there was an FDHD version that had the high density drive and there was even an apple upgrade kit which included a new controller chip and HD drive. The upgrade kit is like hens teeth these days.

The 30 definitely had the HD drive standard tho.

[Alex Eisenhut]

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/RARE-Commodore-CBM-2031-IEEE-Drive-TESTED-and-WORKING-With-BOX-Nice/253289213006?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649


sigh.... I've been wanting something huge, ancient, angular, ugly, and slow for a while now. It'll go well with my PET4032 that can't be powered up for more than 10 seconds at a time. 

[james_s]

Ah, yes the FDHD, that's what the one I had was, I sold it a few years ago when I was pruning the collection since I had the SE/30 too.

An interesting tidbit about the SE/30, it broke the previous naming convention for 68030 based Macs, apparently Apple was not keen on selling a computer called the SEx.

[bitseeker]

Heh, doesn't phase Tesla — S3X — with the next model supposedly to be the Y.

[djos]

My "untested as is" 800k external drive arrived yesterday, I gave it a good clean with windex, then ran my floppy head cleaner thru it a few times and then threw a bunch of floppies at it .... it works perfectly so Im a very happy boy right now! Added bonus, this drive looks right with the SE styling despite being designed primarily for the II GS.

[ebastler]

Added bonus, this drive looks right with the SE styling despite being designed primarily for the II GS.

And they have even turned yellow/brown to the same extent! 

Seriously though, you can't bank on that, if one unit has seen a lot of sunlight and the other has been sitting in a shady spot. (Or is the yellowing mainly due to the light conditons in the picture in this case?)

[djos]

Added bonus, this drive looks right with the SE styling despite being designed primarily for the II GS.

And they have even turned yellow/brown to the same extent! 

Seriously though, you can't bank on that, if one unit has seen a lot of sunlight and the other has been sitting in a shady spot. (Or is the yellowing mainly due to the light conditons in the picture in this case?)

It's ultimately heat that brings the fire retardant to the surface, I had 2 Amiga 500's in storage, in  sealed boxes, during a 40c+ heat wave and they both yellowed badly.

[james_s]

Heat or UV will both do it. UV definitely plays a part though because I've had equipment that had a sticker on it that created a very clear shadow in the yellowing.

Fortunately there are ways to reverse this to some extent. Mix some hydrogen peroxide with a bit of Oxy clean in a spray bottle, set the case out in the sun on a clear summer day and spray it down with the mixture. Keep misting it periodically to keep it wet and you'll be able to watch the yellowing vanish right before your eyes. Within about 15 minutes it should be substantially improved, that's what I did with my SE/30. Don't overdo it or the plastic will take on a chalky appearance that you can't fully recover. It will never be quite as light as it was originally but you can make it look WAY better than it was. 

[djos]

Heat or UV will both do it. UV definitely plays a part though because I've had equipment that had a sticker on it that created a very clear shadow in the yellowing.

Fortunately there are ways to reverse this to some extent. Mix some hydrogen peroxide with a bit of Oxy clean in a spray bottle, set the case out in the sun on a clear summer day and spray it down with the mixture. Keep misting it periodically to keep it wet and you'll be able to watch the yellowing vanish right before your eyes. Within about 15 minutes it should be substantially improved, that's what I did with my SE/30. Don't overdo it or the plastic will take on a chalky appearance that you can't fully recover. It will never be quite as light as it was originally but you can make it look WAY better than it was.

UV generates surface heat which causes the fire retardant to rise to the surface.

Retr0brighting is pretty easy, you dont need sun at all, heat is all you need.

for small stuff like keys I now use the stove top method

https://youtu.be/qZYbchvSUDY

and for big stuff I put the items in a clear plastic tub covered with glad wrap - I use the Vanish Napisan Oxi Action for both methods as it's great at dissolving any surface oils or nicotine etc that may be on the plastic and gives a nice splotch free finish. I do dilute it a bit eg 50/50.

[warp_foo]

Kaypro II from 1983

[djos]

Very Nice! I assume it's a CP/M machine?

[milbourne]

Hello. I also have one of these drives and wondered if you had managed to progress with testing it. I would be interested in understanding what you may have done with it - e.g. PSUs, cables, manuals, software, controllers, etc.

Cheers, Ross

[Alex Eisenhut]

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/GOLD-CERAMIC-NEC-D41256D-DRAM-256Kx1-120ns-Memory-USED-PULLS/112836024695?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Let's face it, ceramic/gold ICs scream vintage high end gear. Yeah? I hope so... I'm stuffing these into a Commodore 64 RAM expansion. AFAIK, they actually never used CERDIPs, they were all using plastic packages by then. So I'm not period correct, but it makes me happy!

[djos]

I got a mint condition, brand new, still shrink wrapped DOS 5.0 manual and it arrived today! 

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Microsoft-MS-Dos-Users-Guide-and-Reference-Computing-Book-/332571979659?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=bFv3MYam4O5nZpwgloNPXCzDWXQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

[johnboxall]

Bought a refurbished Tandy Model 4P to add to the museum:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/TRS-80-Model-4P-/332529446405

Works very well.

[warp_foo]

Very Nice! I assume it's a CP/M machine?

Yep, CP/M.