Weird/wired Old Crap

While preparing to move, I had to clean up my storage room in the basement.  I’ve lived in the same place for exactly 9 years (if we don’t count the last month where I couldn’t live in the apartment after the fire), so I’ve managed to accumulate quite a lot of crap.  This is a series of pictures of some of the weirdest crap I found.  Not that the around 20 computers and 10 3D monitors (that’s what I call CRT displays – I should totally be in sales) I discarded are not featured.

5.25" diskette drive cleaner
FORM costume accessories from one of the first TK parties I attended where all of HEST was dressed up as FORM.
OS/2 2.1 and 3.0 Warp as well as a game pack for OS/2. I think 3.0 included over 50 3.5" diskettes.
Old books describing what to do when starting high school and college, i.e., these are from 1996 and 1999 and completely useless.
AUI-TP converter or MAU (media access unit) aka. transducer. A doohickey for converting the old thick ethernet to the modern twisted pair ethernet. I've actually used this in the past, as I could only get a thicknet ethernet adaptor for my IBM PS/2 server (it was using MCA to connect extension boards rather than ISA/VESA/PCI or what have you).
Very old computer and very very old computer. A ICL comet (running CP/M) and an IBM PS/2 server. Both are built like tanks and are totally obsolete. The comet has dual 5.25" DSDD diskette drives and the IBM has a 3.25" 2.88 MB diskette drive AS WELL AS a 200 MB hard disk.
A bunch of keyboards as well as some 386 and 486 mainboards, a bunch of floppy drives and a few hard disks.
A bag full of old 30 pin SIMMs. Each of these bad boys provide your computer with 1 MB of RAM and they have to be installed in quadruples. I even think I see a couple of 4 MB modules in there. Those were rare.
A bunch of old 72 pin SIMMs, each containing 4 MB RAM. These could be installed alone, but many computers preferred they were installed in pairs. I must have lost some along the way, because I definitely remember having 3-5 times as many of these.
Old network adaptor. I think this one is 10 Mbit/s Ethernet from Ericsson (yes, they once made computers). It supports BOTH thicknet and thinnet.

I also decided to clean up my office – I basically had to – and found this gem there as well:

5.25" DSDD (double side, double density for a whopping 354 KiB – typically advertised as 360 kb – of storage) diskette drive. I "modded" to instead work as a work-o-meter. Simply spin the round thingamajig and if the green arrow points into the black "Work" area at the top, you have to work. Otherwise it's ok to procrastinate.

15 thoughts on “Weird/wired Old Crap

  1. Are those old type of diskette cleaners still for sale anywhere? I’ve recently been forced to use an old computer because of some old information stored on diskettes. However the the diskette reading doesnt function all properly. So basicaly im having a problem.

    1. I have no idea… A tip may be getting an LS-120 drive if the data is important. They use much more advanced technology and can often read (3.5″) diskettes that are unreadable by real diskette drives. The information does deteriorate on diskettes, so after 10-15 years the chance of recovering data gets slim (unless you use dedicated data recovery serves, but they are very expensive; I think one is called IBAS).

  2. Hej,

    Er ICL Komet’en til salg? Jeg havde en, engang i begyndelsen af 80’erne som vi brugte til at styre et teleskop med.

    Jesper

    1. Hej Jesper,

      Den er desværre havnet på lossepladsen. Siden jeg tog billedet er jeg flyttet ud af landet, og selvom det var en sjov maskine, var den alt for tung til at jeg vurderede det var værd at tage den med. Også PS/2 serveren, en af Commodores få PCere og mange andre sjove maskiner måtte lade livet i den omgang.

      1. Hvad ved du om den Comet? Det var den første computer jeg nogensinde brugte, og har siden forsøgt at finde nogle specs på den…uden held…

        1. Ikke det store – dansk produceret, brugte CP/M som styresystem. Jeg mener den brugte en Intel 8080 som CPU. Den havde en masse plads til udviddelseskort.

          1. den brugte en z80 cpu.

            Jeg havde 2 komplette orange comet maskiner, den ene tyk som på billedet og den anden mere slim.. men mistede begge engang hor min far mod min vilje valgte at de skulle på lossepladsen en dag jeg ikke var hjemme.

            det er 25 år siden nu og jeg tilgav ham aldrig, selv om han har været død i 4 år nu

  3. Hey Du vil ikke sælge den ICL Comet? Mvh Jan

    Jeg har en som ikke giver billede, ved ikke om du kender noget til dem ellers.

    1. Jeg er lige snublet over en ICL Comet 1400 hvis det har interesse? Jeg har kun et moderne samsung tv til at teste med og det kan kun lige akkurat finde en flimret firkant, men med den rette skærm tror jeg det giver billede.

        1. Super. Skriv evt. lige en mail på safe snabela haumovie punkt dk
          Så sender jeg lidt billeder og noget. Bemærk at der desværre ikke er diskette drev med til.

  4. Har du stadig de der 386/486 bundkort? Eller røg de på losseren?
    De kunne måske passe fint i min samling.

      1. Arh…. Nedtur.
        Samler på gammelt udstyr fra 90’erne og er midt i processen med at bygge mig en 486 computer.

        Målet er at have en stak 90’er maskiner, der afspejler 90’ernes omvæltning fra nørdmaskinen “på værelset” og frem til “familliens it-værktøj” omkring 1999/01.

        Bare min lille hobby at fokusere på denne æra indenfor it-udstyr i danskernes liv. Sådan en lille tidslomme så at sige. 😉

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