Gallery of obsolete computers
The Obsolete Technology Website has a gallery of 100+ obsolete computers. Lovely.
Welcome to the Obsolete Technology Website (via Beyond the Beyond)
The Obsolete Technology Website has a gallery of 100+ obsolete computers. Lovely.
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Let's see...
Macintosh Portable, with carrying case, check.
Macintosh Plus (souped-up original Mac), with carrying case, check.
Apple //c (and ][e, too), check.
Tandy Model 102 (American version of NEC PC8300), check.
Apple eMate (Newton laptop), check.
Obsolesence is in the eye of the beholder; aside from the Apple II models up there, I use those machines quite often.
There was a whole show over the summer with 100s of old computers -- "the history of the computer" -- at the gallery in the Arche de la Défense in Paris.
The best part, aside from seeing all the old machines, was the "typical California teenager's room in the 80s" display with an early computer -- a French curator's fantasy of what that looked like...
I tried to take pictures with my crappy camera, maybe I will post them somewhere and if I do I will come back here and leave a link. Unfortunately I probably out to go to bed now...
How sad is it that I have at least three of those in bootable condition in my basement?
I also have a GriD laptop with a plasma display.
I just unearthed* a stack of vintage Personal Computer World and Popular Computing Weekly (UK magazines) circa 83-88, covering the golden age of home microcomputers... for so they were called. Every vendor had a unique hardware and often their own OS / runtime system and incompatible software, until the slow onset of "PC Compatible" and the dreaded beige box. So much personality! So many quirks, new design and form factor ideas. Sadly my own collection of dead hardware's a single Amiga, and a Sun E4000 and Sparcstation 2. When I win the lottery I'm going to buy me a warehouse and convert it into a museum of rare old systems.
(*and scanned the covers, but keep not getting round to registering on Flickr or somewhere to host 'em.)
I gave my old BBC Master to my kids' school about 10 years ago.
I'd like to think it inspired another generation, but I suspect not.
I have at least two complete systems in pieces around my flat and in the loft, they were state of the art a few years ago, today they're hardly worth the bother of eBaying.
Sad.
Very, very nice patchwork, and very nice site this "Old Computers" stuff for a retro-maniac like me :P
I seem to remember that these machines were referred to as a microcomputer.
I didn't see any (cassette) tape drives.
For a brief moment, I knew how to code IBM cards.
I also remember a paper roll with hole punches that my father used in a class in the 1970's. I never knew which machine used that format.
oh Tandy 1400, how I loathed thee.
I am surprised at how many of these computers I remember physically using while I was growing up. It seemed like Moore's law was running a bit faster back then, and you really did have good reason to buy a new computer every couple of years, despite the pricetags comparable to used cars. It's somehow sad that today you can buy a $600 Wintel computer that will likely serve all your needs for 4 years.
I still have my working Compaq Portable (the original Model 1), a 32-pound "transportable."
It is loaded with classic accessories including an AST 6-pack Plus, Plus(tm) HardCard 30 (that's 30MB, for the kiddies in the audience), and an 8087 math coprocessor.
I paid $3000 for it in Feb. 1986, after taking out a $2000 personal loan to buy it. That's probably similar to $10-15K in 2008 dollars! Man, what a stupid thing to do!
RE: I still have my working Compaq Portable ...
Correction, I bought my Compaq Portable in Feb. of 1984
I adore my Commodore 64
Ah the BBC Master, eh?
I wrote my first post-grad thesis on one of those (waxes lyrical about 5.25-inch very floppy disks).
And I still have a working Amiga 1200 tucked under the Wintel machine.
Does this make me i) a nerd, ii) a home microcomputer evil-genius, iii) in need of getting out the house, iv) all of these?
Mongo: I'd never heard of the GRiD before. Seems like an amazing machine for its time.. My reaction "Is that.. Bubble memory? OMG it is!!"
I had the Apple IIc, but with a CGA color screen. It was THE computer that spurred my interest in computers and ultimately led me to my current job as a developer.
I remember playing Reader Rabbit, Where in the World in Carmen Santiago and Space Quest I on that computer.
When I wanted to get an IBM Clone like my buddies, my mom asked if we could upgrade the Apple to it. I ROFLD.
IDontWant2Livein... @#8:
The paper tape you refer to was probably used to feed commands to a Teletype machine connected to a mainframe.
There was an attachment that hung off the side of the teletype used to read these tapes. The biggest problem was that the tape was very fragile and prone to tearing easily.
Oh, and the teletype machine itself used vacuum tubes!
While I started on the Apple IIe, and always lusted after a Commodore 64, the first computer I owned was the IIc. Its portability was a huge plus when I was away at college, and could easily throw the whole thing in my car (unlike my stepdad's IBM XT boat anchor!)
What I remember most were long 'study breaks' spent playing Castle Wolfenstein; the latter-day 'Doom' version lacks the retro charm of the green monochrome screen, keyboard control and stick figure graphics!
JSauter
Carmen SanDiego! That was the only game available on our library computers back in the day.
I'm still in two minds over whether I liked it or not :)
Depends what you mean by "obsolete"-- if someone is still using it for some type of computing (and not just as a doorstop or bookend) then it's not really obsolete. Or I guess not completely obsolete; probably no one does their taxes on old Ataris anymore, but they are still used for making music in some circles. And there is still a market for old HP programmable scientific calculators (check ebay).
Still-- nice gallery.
@#8: TTY terminals with punch paper tape were popular in the 70's. I learned basic on a minicomputer in high school back then. I think it was an ASR33 connected to a Data General: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASR33
The tapes were fragile, but we would hand them in for our assignments along with the printer output.
I had a Sinclair ZX81, but the memory extension I got (omg 32K!!) was a bit different that the one portrayed here (it was horizontal, and has a slot in the back, to add more memory I guess)
Does anyone here knows if the alleged rivalry between Atari and Sinclair in the 80's was true?
@Alex M.
Yeah! Bubble memory! I forgot about that. The plasma screen is a cool high contrast yellow and it gets HOT and uses a lot of power!
I bought it for $500, I guess, circa 1988, with an external floppy enclosure and another hard drive docking deal. At some point I took the hard drive thing apart and left it in pieces - but I'm fairly sure I have all of the pieces maybe 12 household moves later. After I moved in the last year I was tempted to toss the hard drive thing. I think I'll just pack up and store the parts as I come across them.
I never used the thing because it ran MS-DOS but doesn't have a PC-compatible BIOS. I always intended to compile MODEM7 or whatever (can't remember what we used later) for it and use it as a terminal.
For the record I also have an Osborne 1, an Osborne Executive, and a Kaypro II, too. Those are as exactly as good as the floppies are readable.
If there's a collectible market for those these days I'll have to look into it.
Wow - I didn't see my Asus A8-V there - damn old-ass AGP...
Hmm missing the ones I started programming on in the early 80's
Sharp MZ80K: looks like a checkout machine, programs like a checkout machine. Used to play Space Invaders on it a lot. Terrible keyboard, not bad BASIC.
Having every graphic shape on every key was kind of cool though.
http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Sharp/mz80k.php
Memotech MTX512 - great computer, best keyboard on a computer ever (yeah I'm looking at you C64 and BBC computer owners! It was FAR better) hypercard and native SPRITE support and no software. Shame. Good version of Frogger - TOADO. I played that a lot.
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=168
@#17: The teletype didn't use vacuum tubes - it was entirely mechanical. Nothing but gears, levers and springs.
I had the joy of working in the local Byte Shop in Tucson in 1978-1979, so I got to personally try out may of these machines including the first TRS80 and the Apple II with floppies. The Apple II was by far the most elegant design - I bought one at a thrift store many years later just to admire the PC board layout.
It's interesting that all the computers in the article were about the same speed, clocking at 2 to 5 MHz. The CPU speed wars didn't happen until the second part of the eighties.
Nixiebunny @26:
Ah, guess I should have been a little more specific. The ones I was working with in the mid to late-70s looked like this guy here .
The front cover of the stand had a hinge on the bottom edge and behind that cover were the vacuum tubes.
The 800 up there is my secondary PC. It's set up on my desk with an Amdek Color I monitor and 2 810 drives. One is even happy.
The article and the comments bring back lots of memories. I bought an Osbourne 1 and used it every day to run my business. Yeah it was expensive, but saved me a lot of money in the long run. It worked fine and had (1) game on it (anybody else remember what it was?), I also had a teletype machine, and it was great! I could type out my message, change it if I made a mistake (the message was coded onto the tape) then use the built in rotary dial to send it to my business contacts.
When I was in university in the seventies we used an IBM 360 for our 'computer science' classes (not a lot of science there - all about programming). We used a machine kind of like a teletype to punch the code onto Hollerith cards (do not fold spindle or bend), one line of instructions per card. The cards went in a stack with everyone else's assignments separated by cards with control cards.
The program would run, our program plus results would be spit out by a monstrous chain printer. One hack I do remember was to type up the control code card which was used to clean out the last few sheets of fanfold paper in the box under the printer. It would spit out all the remaining paper at high speed. If there was half a box of paper it would fountain up over the machine and spray around the area. You took one of these cards and slipped it in the middle of a classmate's program. I never did it, but I did see the results when someone did. The code?
$job eject
Now don't misuse it.
I saw a holiday computer and electronics recycling drive in Park Slope today and was astonished at the amount of e-Waste there. Saw a Kaypro in there and wondered: So in 2008 you decided to get rid of the Kaypro?
Also, the TRS-80 looks ridiculously retro back when it was new as well. That good old Tandy design ethos stuck right in Fall 1974 I believe.
@#22 POSTED BY NAWEL
I was an avid Atari 400/800/800XL gaming guy back then and nobody I knew even considered the Sinclair anything worth talking about. Commodore vs. Atari? Yeah. Sinclair vs. Atari? Errr, that's like Yugo vs. Volkswagon; not really.
Some of those are not obsolete.
Stating the obvious, but the general concept of obsolete is that if something comes along that does the same job—better or equal—for the same cost or less, the older item is obsolete.
If someone chooses to use old technology as a tinkerer/hacker that's fine. But it's still obsolete tech.
I have an old Bell System rotary phone that is obsolete, but I like it because the sound quality is better... But the lack of touch tones makes it obsolete...
I found an old Atari 800 setup tossed on the street in 1998 and instinctively grabbed it and brought it home... Until I realized what a clunky pain-in-the-arse it was to use and then returned it from where it came...
Technically speaking, eye glasses are obsolete from a functional point of view as well.
When I was in second grade, my grandma gave me her Laser 128. It was an Apple IIc clone that was deemed legit by courts because it was reverse engineered with the clean room technique. It also had a (legit) 9" green screen Apple monitor (Monitor //c I believe it was called). I blame my failing eyesight some 16 years later on that tiny monitor. Great times with that machine.
Site seems to not work. :(
I still have my old C-64 and its drives buried under a mountain of clutter in my storage room. Same with my Amiga.
Could be some nice icon-fodder right there.