Inventory of my Computer Collection


I'm going to list this alphabetically, by manufacturer (mostly), rather than attempt to list chronologically.
Where a page already exists on Obsolyte for the machine, the name of the machine will link to that page.
Pictures to come, I still trying to get everything shot!

Apple Computer


Apple //e
My Apple //e features a 2400baud modem, a dual floppy drive, and a SCSI card connecting it to a 30MB HD, which provides lightning fast performance for this old 8-bit wonder. Runs Appleworks pretty darn fast. I run it under PRODOS mostly, which allows me to organize my applications into subdirectories on the HD.
Apple // GS
The GS is actually a recent addition to my collection. Featuring both 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives, I can run a variety of software on this. I may eventually move the SCSI card from my //e into this and make this the main Apple // I use. This has a color screen as well.
Apple Macintosh SI
This is the oldest Mac I still keep (though I should start getting my hands on a Mac 128, just for historical purposes), because I always use Macs, and I need them to be fast enough to be usable. A 20Mhz 68030 with 9MB RAM and a 200MB HD, this just barely makes it.
Apple Macintosh Quadra 700
When I gave my old Mac CX to my sister, I held on to this Quadra 700 with 68MB RAM and a 2GB HD as one of my Macs. With a 25Mhz 68040, it's still fairly powerful and useable as a machine and currently is part of my home network, acting as a firewall between my network and the cable modem my network is attached to.
Apple Macintosh Quadra 800
The case is actually marked "Workgroup Server 80", but it's essentially the exact same machine. I found this one in a dumpster and rebuilt it. It currently has 36MB of RAM and a 500MB HD, running a 33Mhz 68040. I'm currently building it into a fileserver, so, I removed the barely-working floppy drive to gain another HD bay, hence the entirely closed front face. It will eventually have over 8GB of storage.
Apple/Motorola StarMax 4000
This is really a Motorola machine, but it's a Macintosh clone. It's also one of my main machines at home for doing work and surfing the internet. It's originally powered by a 200Mhz PPC 604, but I've added a Sonnet G3 accelerator to it, making it a G3 running about 320Mhz. It has 128MB of RAM and about 6GB of storage. Many people didn't like the mac clones, but this turned out to be a fine machine. I also found this in a dumpster - oddly enough, with the RAM in it.

Motorola made these machines a little different from regular Macs, for one thing, they use very standard PC parts like the powersupply and the case dimensions. Also, while it has the ADB for Mac keyboards and mice, is also has ports for PC keyboards and mice. Cool, eh? And speaking of cool, note the addition of the 5.25 "fan bay" in the center, keeping the machine cool, as it runs all the time, calculating SETI@home work units, when I'm not using it.

Commodore Business Machines

link to CBM's obituary in BYTE Magazine, 1994
Commodore PET, Model 4032
32k of RAM, BASIC 4.0.

I also recently obtained this, but damn this is a fun machine. I've been working on converting most of my old BASIC programs on tape from my VIC-20 over to the PET. I have a 4040 floppy drive "on the way" for this thing, and I hope to eventually be able to make it a nice working system. The keyboard has a few sticky keys, but eventually, I'll get that cleaned up. Overall, it's in fine condition for a machine built in 1980. The machine used to be in a school, and they inscribed the school name into it. Eventually it was about to be dumped when a friend asked if I wanted it. I didn't even hesitate to grab this relic.
Commodore C=128D
After having gone through a beat-up Vic-20 and three Commodore 64's, I very methodically searched out and obtained the "rare" C=128D, which has a built-in 1571 floppy drive and a detachable keyboard, and looks similar to the Amiga 1000. The more common C=128's look more like glorified C=64's and I wanted something with a little more style. This machine represents the pinnacle of the 8-bit computers -- it is in fact, 3 computers in one, being able to run in 128 Mode (with a choice of 40 or 80 columns), C=64 mode which gives enhanced compatibility with the 1000's of C=64 programs out there and it also has a Z-80 CPU for running CP/M.

In addition, I've outfitted the machine with a custom Ram Expansion Unit of an additional 512k (which acts as a large RAMDISK for fast access to programs) as well as a 1581 3.5" floppy. I often run GEOS as my primary OS, but I also enjoy running CP/M and playing C=64 games. The 128D is simply the finest 8-bit machine ever built, and it's probably also the last 8-bit ever manufactured. By the time of its manufacture, most people were buying 16-bit Amigas, Macs, or Atari STs.
Commodore Amiga 1000
My favorite Amiga variant, and the "original" variant. The 1000 had a variety of features not seen on any other model Amiga, including a color composite video-out port, and a 5pin DIN port for an RF modulator so that you could run it from a TV set. It also had, in my opinion, the nicest keyboard of any of the Amiga models.

For those of you keeping count of exactly how many computers I own, please note that I have THREE of this style machine, including one that has rarely come out of it's original box. The Amiga 1000 was the first computer that I started "collecting" in an effort to maintain my own supply of spare parts for it.

I will eventually cover the Amiga series more in depth on Obsolyte - because the Amiga was a system far ahead of it's time, and had features that even now are not yet available on current systems.
Commodore Amiga 2000
I originally bought the Amiga 2000 because I wanted to take advantage of the newer technologies available for it -- faster processor cards, more RAM, a hard drive and a device called the VIDEO TOASTER. I ended up doing quite a bit of 3-D animation on it for a variety of professional projects, including an animation for McDonnell Douglass for their DC-X "single stage to orbit" concept vehicle, and animation that appeared as a part of the MTV "Liquid Television" show.

This Amiga currently has 19MB of RAM, a couple hundred MB of storage, a 50Mhz 68040 CPU card, a Video Toaster setup, and a "doubletalk" card, which allows it to "speak" to a Macintosh Appletalk network (allowing file transfers between platforms).

Digital Equipment Corp.


DEC MicroVax 2000 / VaxStation 2000

DEC Multia / UDB

VT-320 Terminal
Okay, it's technically not a computer, but terminals are cool too! While I was trying to get an original VT-100, I settled for a VT-320 which can certainly emulate a VT-100 for most purposes.
DEC Celebris 6200
DEC also made "Intel" PC's and this is a decent example because it uses a PENTIUM PRO - which is now a rarity, having been replaced by the PII and PIII. These machines are pretty nice because DEC built in a lot of workstation features, like making ethernet standard.

International Business Machines


IBM 5322

IBM PS/2 Model 8525
This is a dumb and simple 8086 PC with ISA slots. It's a compact all-in-one unit that I use for running some simple DOS programs. It has two 3.5" 720k floppy drives. There is supposedly a way to add a 20MB HD to the machine, replacing a floppy, but I'm unfamiliar with the internal connector for this (it's not IDE).

Note that both floppy drive covers are missing so the unit is pretty crummy looking. I'm looking for pastic bezels of the right type, but for a machine like this, I hardly bother. The machine has a color screen, and according to it's test program, is capable of producing higher resolutions than 320 by 240 - but, without a HD, it's unlikely I'll be able to load in software that can access those higher resolutions.
IBM PS/2 Model 8565
This is my sole remaining "Microchannel" machine. It's a 16Mhz 386 PC running DOS. However, I've also at various points run Windows 3.1, OS/2, and breifly, Linux on it (2 bogomips). The Microchannel Architecture was way ahead of its time, and personally I think it's still superior to PCI. NCR also produced "MCA" machines, and IBM kept the architecture running into the 486's (update: Carl Drougge has provided me with info that some early Pentium machines from IBM were also Microchannel (And of course, I neglected to mention IBM's higher range machines that ran Unix)). I had an NCR machine with the 486 CPU on a card and built-in SCSI. My nephews currently use it to run Win'95 software and games.

NeXT


NeXT Monochrome Slab

NeXT Color Slab

Silicon Graphics Inc.


SGI Personal Iris 4D/20

SGI Iris Indigo Elan

Sinclair


Sinclair ZX/81 & Timex Sinclair 2000
Originally I had a ZX80. That was my first computer when I was in high school. I built it from a $99 kit after saving money from my newspaper delivery job. However, Sinclair offered an "upgrade" to the ZX81 and I took it, sending them back my old ZX80. Now I wish I still had the more rare ZX80, but either way, this is both the ZX81 and the TS2000 - though the TS2000 has 1 whole kilobyte of RAM more than the ZX81, which has only 1k RAM.

I used the ZX81 for quite some time until I eventually got myself a Vic-20, and the TS2000 came to me from a friend who was using it as a paperweight and just gave it to me. Both machines are in working condition.

Stanford University Network Microsystems


Sun 3/160
See the 3/160 section of Obsolyte for more on this monster machine.
Sun 3/60

Sun 3/80

Sun IPC

Sun IPX

Sun Sparcstation 2

Sun LX

Sun Sparcstation 5
The Sparc 5 isn't yet covered from the main menu of Obsolyte -- I'm getting to that. Sorry for the delays.

Toshiba


Toshiba T-1000 SE
Toshiba was pretty much the first company I know of to build decent PC-DOS Laptops. And I mean decent. This sucker is well-built, having survived quite a few bangs, drops, and generally having been tossed all over. Of course, this machine is pretty old - it doesn't even have a hard drive. However, there's a 2MB RAM card that acts as 'D:', while a ROM containing DOS 3.30 is configured as drive C:. Drive A: is a 1.44MB floppy on the side. The screen is monochrome of course. There's a 2400baud modem also built in. Between the ROM, the RAM card, and the floppy, I manage to keep enough on it to make it very useful while on a long flight. The battery gives about 2 hrs of life to the machine before requiring a recharge - and yes, this is the second battery I've had on this machine, the original died years ago - and just would not accept another recharge.

The one problem with the RAM card is that if the battery dies completely for any reason, the contents of the RAM card are lost - which is annoying when you're on a trip and haven't backed up the card to a floppy. However, I'm aware of it, and take the appropriate precautions whenever possible.

Generic PC's Running Linux


AMD K6-233 PC
Two machines I forgot to mention were my two "generic boxes", built out of whatever components I had laying around. The first one is a real frankenstein machine, with bits and pieces pulled from everywhere, even the case and floppy drive are from different machines, and the steel cover for the case is the wrong type and doesn't fit properly. It's a 233Mhz Machine using a damaged K-6 Processor. The K-6 was rated for 333Mhz, but it was run overclocked (at 450Mhz) in a different machine until one day it cooked, crashed and burned. I was going to throw it out until I discovered, quite by accident, that it ran reliably at a lower speed than what it was rated for. Besides, the motherboard only goes up to 233Mhz anyhow. This machine has 32MB of ram, and runs SETI@home under the intel-linux client.
AMD Athlon 750Mhz
I keep meaning to finish this machine and have never found the time to do it. This was supposed to have become my new "main machine" at home, but right now, it's running Linux and is processing SETI@home under the intel-linux client. It doesn't even have a floppy drive, and I loaded Linux onto it from a CDROM and then removed the CD drive from the machine. It only has 32MB of RAM, I'm supposed to buy more for it -- and a big HD, and a good video card and a few other things to build this into a nice machine. One day I'll get to it, but by the time I start to fix it up, it'll be "obsolyte"....