someguynamedross.com
Various ramblings - Electronics, radio, old computers, cars & other junk...
Computers
What sort of geek would I be if I didn't collect old computers?? Here are a few of the machines in my collection.
If you have any information about these machines (or would like to pick my brain about what I know), feel free to contact me
Hammerhead 586
Ruggedised slate PC - AMD "586" @ 133MHz, 32MB RAM, 1GB CF boot drive
Picked this computer up off eBay for $26.
This beast is machined from a single block of aluminium (years before Apple!!).
It's a bit of a slug, especially running Windows 98, but it's more than capable of running solitaire which is great with the touch screen.
Because it's a magnetic touchscreen it only works with the stylus, I've been spoilt by capacitive touchscreens and I still get caught out trying ot use it with fingers...
Not long after I got it up and running the hard drive died. This was a big deal, as I hadn't yet coppied the contents of the drive and also hadn't found any mention of it on the web (no replacement drivers).
Luckily I managed to revive the drive for long enough to copy the contents using the old freezer trick.
I replaced the drive with a 1gb compact flsh card, as a bonus it runs faster and the battery lasts a bit longer
Sharp PC-7100
Portable/luggable PC - Sharp 8088 @ 10MHz(??), 640kB RAM, 20MB hard drive, 360kB floppy drive
I found this machine years and years ago while walking home from school (around 1998-1999 as a rough guess).
Sitting in the hard rubbish, covered in dust and looking very sad, I picked it up and took the poor little guy home.
After a quick clean I powered it up, and up came a long forgotten DOS 3.3 install, along with all sorts of documents and programs.
Today it's looking a little bit tired, it could do with a clean and perhaps a few sessions of retr0bright.
Sadly I think the hard drive has died in it, last time I powered it up it hung on the BIOS splash for a long time and eventually showed a hard drive error.
A few times it did boot, but trying to run a program or do any file manipulation resulted in an error.
The floppy drive also seems to be playing up a bit (hopefully only requiring a clean?).
Micro-Professor MPF-1P
Z80 practice board - Z80 @ 3.8MHz, 4kB RAM, 20 character VFD display
My brother saved this computer from the bin at work.
It's a small "practice board" for learning Z80 assembler.
Not terribly useful to me but it is an interesting addition to the collection.
This computer was made by a company called Multitech Industrial Corporation, in 1987 they changed their name to Acer.
After some digging around on the internet I managed to dig up a copy of the instruction manual.
Even after flicking through it for 30 minutes it's tricky to use, it has multiple modes and the 20 character display is very cramped.
The manual also mentions a bunch of accessories that I don't have (a printer, an EEPROM programer board and an I/O board).
Another key part of this computer I am missing is the plastic shell that keeps it all together.
When folded away in this vacuum formed case it looked like a thick book.
This "book" held the main board, one addon board and the instruction manual.
I made my own box out of MDF to keep the board safe, much better than the cardboard box it was found in.
