Why yes, that *is* a big piece of plywood with a 1A2 key system and a bunch of 66 blocks on it. Another trip to a local treasure horde. Amongst the haul: DEC VT05 terminal, a couple Columbia portable PCs with no drives, a very minty first edition, possible first printing of Ted Nelson’s “Computer Lib” (1974,) some interesting old DEC sales lit and programming guides, and no small number of splinters in my hand from carrying the above board.

Now that it’s in the car (I had help,) I’m not sure how to get it out.

SGI Personal Iris 4/25 and about a ton of cables, docs and media. 

Good morning.

Sunburned neck, aching feet, another fine Spring morning spent outdoors. Getting up earlier than I do most work days, I traveled 60+ miles each way to Sandwich, IL for another round of the junk-hunt. Today’s haul:

– Kaypro 1 computer (actually their last machine, not their first)
– Informer terminal
– 1940s-era Western Electric 302 no-dial phone in (an) original box (not sure it belongs to this phone)
– Rotary Princess phone in *black*
– A bunch of XLR cables
– A bunch of random Mac and phone cables and parts
– A couple handy parts boxes with a lot of unknown stuff in them
– Western Digital WDXT-GEN2 Plus ISA MFM hard drive controller in-box
– Radio Shack CPA-1000 dialed number recorder
– Three new Black and Decker tool batteries that I’ll take apart for some project
– I’m sure there was some other stuff, but my feet hurt and I can’t see the rest of the pile from here

The fairgrounds at Sandwich, IL

Nearly everything acquired over the weekend at VCF Midwest 4.0:

– Commodore Pet 4016 Computer
– Commodore Model 8050 Dual Drive Floppy Disk
– Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 Computer and Realistic cassette drive w/cables in “serious business” travel case.
– Matching Radio Shack TRS-80 Video Display also in travel case (from a different vendor than the CPU.)
– TRS-80 Mini Disk 5.25″ external floppy (with dust cover!)
– TRS-80 Line Printer II (not really a line printer 🙁 )
– Wang 360 Calculator central processor
– 3 Wang 360KT Calculator terminals (to go with a 300 terminal I already had)
– An Anderson Jacobsen acoustic modem!
– Not pictured: a big ol’ tub of MFM hard drives and Hard Cards, an HP plotter transparency kit, some HP plotter paper (shrinkwrapped,) a bunch of RS/Tandy catalogs and other TRS-80 literature

All in all an excellent haul, though the Wang setup stands out as a “never thought I’d find one” piece. I will update if/when I get it working!

Here’s a link to a short video I made of Pat’s Vax 11/780.
And here’s one to a Flickr photoset.

Oh, and there’s this, too:

The reloading of mostly Mike's stuff.

VMS process monitor on the Vax 11/780.

Sellam Ismail’s head appears virtually before us for a Sunday morning talk.

IBM 3420 drives