Computer Museum

#1. My first computer, bought at a yard sale for $2, that launched me into computering. It's a GRiD 1660 from 1991, and was top of the line back then. Monochrome screen, i386 CPU, and math coprocessor. I had to hotwire my mother's laptop charger to it's charging port to get it to work, but it worked like a charm after than and I loved it (played Minesweeper, Gorillas, and Nibbles a lot, and didn't have any floppy disks to transfer files to it) for about two weeks, when I got too curious and wired the A/C power to the wrong place on the motherboard entirely. Still seeking a replacement 1660, if anyone ever finds one - they're very rare!

#4. HP Omnibook 2000CS, bought at a thrift store for around $2. It always ran poorly, and died under the blade of a botched BIOS update. Nearly identical to the 5700CTX, they made quite a pair. 32MB RAM (and these models used HP proprietary RAM, so it's gonna be valuable someday). Notice neither laptop's hinges work, so they're leaning on each other. It makes them a little hard to use.

#7. A 2003 thingy. I got it for $10 at a thrift store where I helped sort stuff (got paid in cookies! and opportunities to get stuff). Then I put it's motherboard in the aformentioned eMachines, and for a few days it served as an i486 system (pictured). Later, I was given a Gigabyte motherboard for free from that thrift store, whose case was smashed, and they said they suspected had marijuana stored in it, along with a few other needed pieces, and put them in this case. I added a 10GB 5.24" hard drive from the 90s in it and Windows 2000, and actually used it for a while! It was my #1 computer, but slowly it's components fell apart. PSU blew up, rusty GPU failed eventually, hard drive died, etc. It just sits around under my bed now. It's another of the towers that the Dell made look really cool. This one had 768MB of RAM (3 slots...) and a AMD Athlon XP 2600+ CPU.

#10. A big box of computer parts I swiftly accumulated. I'll call it one computer, since there's more than enough parts for one, including a tower elsewhere. Theres motherboards with AMD K5, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Intel i486. And a lot of assorted cards, largely ISA and PCI audio and video, and a great collection of 5.25" floppy disks! I got a good portion of it from salvaging a dump made of
stuff a landlord pulled out of rentals. A good portion of it was rusty - the computer case I got the components from was especially rusty - but it all worked! I rode my bike there, so I had to ride it back home holding a lot of components in my hands while steering, and in all my pockets... it was a good life back then. :)

#13. 1989 Zeos 386SX. Got this at a thrift store for $10 (funny story about that, the written tag looked like it said "20", but we wanted it to say "10", so when we brought it up that's what we said, and they accepted. My brother and I each paid half, so I only paid $5). Got it cause it looked really cool to me, no other reason. Tested at the store, it worked fine, booting, beeping, and lights, but after trying to use it for a while, it seems to have some sort of RAM issue causing it to operate ultra-slow when doing anything not BIOS-related. And the HDD is slow (somewhere around 30MB too, and huge), and the FDD sometimes fails. If we got it working it'd be a good machine. Has a video card like an aircraft carrier, but it's color. It's currently just something to store in a heap of stuff.

#16. 1990 Zenith Z-Note 325L. This was a good deal - I actually got it on Craigslist for $30! As seen in the picture, there was a lot of two, one mainly working, one not working (found the motherboard, CCFL, and LCD PCB dysfunctional), and it also included two chargers, two batteries, all the manuals, half of which were still sealed, including a copy of Windows, and a copy of Windows 95 on 30 floppy disks. This system was very innovative - sort of like using a Mac might be. There were unusual things all over the system, such as the keys always made a clicking noise through the speaker, or the power button, when pressed, bringing up a menu asking you if you wanted to turn the computer off or not. 80386 CPU, 8MB RAM (2MB on board, 6MB in 3 proprietary expansion chips - it has three slots, I have them all), 120MB HDD, 640x480 VGA LCD.However, this system has an annoying flicker to the screen - the pixel part, not the backlight part, perhaps faulty capacitors.

#19. 1984 IBM PCjr. Its not a device that holds a lot of interest for me, primarily because of the way every single thing about it is proprietary. Keyboard, monitor, connectors. And it boots to IBM basic as if it were a C64 or TI-99. Haven't had a chance to run any software since it only has a 5.25" FDD and I only have 3.5" diskettes. Also it has the venerable but quickly outdated 8088 CPU that would likely only run a fraction of the software that I have, since I'm primarily a 286/386 fan. Sometimes 486 but 386DX is my fav. Still, with the original infrared wireless keyboard, monitor, and power adapter, it made a good lot. This is another one I got from the $5 yard sale - $5 for the computer and another $5 for the monitor, so $10 for the whole lot. Gave this one to a friend.

#22. 1985 Atari 520ST. Got this at the same lot from a yard sale. Monitor was $5, same as anything, but the main unit was free because it was cracked and the owner didn't think it was worth anything. Admittedly it wasn't worth a whole lot but it did work! It came with the mouse and a power supply for the disk drive, but not the drive itself nor the power supply for the computer. Later models had both built into the computer but this is an early model. I got the drive on eBay for about $40, and I hacked together a power supply from one I found at the local junk shop, replacing the end with a DIN-7 connector, then it worked fine. I have the low-res color monitor and the dual-sided diskette drive. The system has TOS 1.00 on ROM - quite old - and 512Kb RAM. I hope to upgrade the RAM to 2Mb and get some kind of hard drive for it. I used hydrogen peroxide to whiten the keyboard keys and mouse, that improved it somewhat too. In the picture it has a monitor stand/keyboard drawer. I like to play games on this one!

#25. Sager 6400AT laptop. A very rare and off-brand laptop. Manufactured by Clevo for Sager - the Sager branding is obviously artificial, its just a sticker, not even the "NOTEBOOK STICKER" on the bottom. It takes an odd power adapter too, but luckily I found a compatible one. nice enough XGA screen, Pentium CPU, easily expandable RAM (because it's a cheap desktop replacement, upgrades and maintenance are simple, and I respect that - for example the keyboard rotated out with a couple buttons), modular removable HDD, and both CD-ROM and FDD. Its an extremely thick laptop, but it's versatile, with several PCMCIA ports, MIDI, VGA, and composite video-out.

#2. My second computer, an old Dell Dimension. I got it from the town dump. They didn't allow anyone to just take them, so I had to ask the manager's permission for it, and he seemed to be a former police officer, and interrogated me about why I wanted it. It even still had the hard drive in it. I sold the computer, but switched hard drives first, and still have that one as of 2014, though it's failing now. It was a very poor computer, but first of all helped launch me into computering, and second - made the next desktop look really good! 384MB RAM, P4-based Celeron CPU.

#5. Toshiba Satellite 225CDS, from around 1997, bought at a yard sale for an amazing $15! It... really was only bought cause it sounded like fun at the time, and came nearly unused from a Target employee with the leather bag and all the trappings. It sort of runs, but the hard drive is failing. Besides the hard drive though, it's a rock-solid machine - especially the sound system was great. When I was roofing once, I sat this laptop on the ridge and it played music for us, it was awesome. Always ran slow - had a 6-minute boot time for 98 - due to bad specs. 16MB RAM, Pentium CPU *without* MMX, 1.33 GB HDD.

#8. Fairly obviously, it's a Commodore Plus/4 (1984). Bought at a thrift store, it cost $20, but happened to be 90% off it's color that day, so it was only $2. Seriously. It worked well and came with it's box and a/c adapter too! The Plus/4 was similar to the C64, but came with 4 built-in utilities, had those weird looking dedicated cursor keys, and had more RAM available for Basic programs. However, since it was not able to run C64 programs, these benefits didn't help it, and it flopped. And I never did anything with it (cause it ran nearly nothing) but write little Basic games that couldn't get saved. It definitely did not come with a monitor, disk drive, or anything like that. Still, it looks cooler than the C64, in my opinion!

#3. My second laptop, given to me by a friend who felt sorry for me that my own was broken, and didn't need it. It's an HP Omnibook 5700CTX from around 1997 - a lot newer than the GRiD, not really vintage, but a definite dinosaur! Pentium MMX processor, 64MB of RAM, 2GB HDD - and CD-ROM, yay! It's the thickest laptop I have at over 2 inches, and it still runs.

#6. 1993 Zeos 486 notebook. Bought this on eBay about a year after the GRiD was gone, to replace it, and while it's not perfect - the top case where the screen hinge puts pressure on it is cracked, it's inferior construction, and not as upgradable - it's actually able to be like it, since it runs DOS, albeit DOS 6, not 5 like the GRiD ran. Ironically it's thinner than most laptops were for 10 years after it was made. 4MB RAM, 170MB HDD.
Now, a nice thing about DOS is - I actually was able to pop the hard drive out of the GRiD and into the Omnibook, which was cool.

#9. 1985 HP 110 Portable Plus. got it from the same thrift store as most of the others (it was within biking distance from my house, I went there every saturday). It cost only $5, but I held off buying it for week cause I figured it was some sort of typewriter or word processor. But I got it's name and wrote it down so I could look it up - kept that model name for those weeks. When I finally got around to looking it up I was like OH I WANT ONE! and was so nervous someone would get it before I could get there. Well, noone else who went to that thrift store had wanted it, and it was half-off day, so I got it for $2.50. It came with a pretty leather case too - but no charger, and since the charger costs at least $35 on eBay, and the disk drive around $250 (it's much more rare than the computer itself), I've never tested it. Good thing too, because I probably would've fried it in curiosity, but I had learned my lesson. It's exactly three inches thick at it's thickest point, and is supposed to have around 512K RAM, an 8086 CPU, and a non-backlit monochrome screen. It's battery could last a week on one charge when new (good thing, since it was needed to keep the RAM loaded, it had no hard drive at all).

#11. 1981 TI-99/4A computer. Bought this specifically on eBay for $36, cause it was *the computer* we wanted! Heh. Before, I saw some "Texas Instruments Command Modules" - cartridges - and just wanted to buy them, they looked cool, and the titles, like "Munch Man" and "Hunt the Wumpus" sounded cool. I was a crazy kid. So we did some research on what the cartridges were for, and this came up, and eventually we bought one. While I don't use it a lot, we invested more into it than the C Plus/4, so it's more useful at least than it. The games are fun (we got a total of about 10), and I bought the tape adapter and tape recorder, so we can save programs if we want (by the way, a computer recording program works well for this). Had an astoundingly poor 16KB of RAM... very little, and wasn't powerful enough to do anything cool. But hey, at '81, it's the oldest computer in my collection, which is awesome.

#12. 2004 Medion m3 Composer 5200. This was my father's computer til about 2007, when it stopped working. I tried replacing the processor, and then the motherboard (which I had to ship from England cause Medion is European and pay $60 for), but neither helped! For years it seemed somehow cursed, just impossible to fix, but then I tried replacing the capacitors (which I had bought long before for it but decided couldn't solve the problem), and it worked great! During the process the ownership sort of transferred to me. After it was working, it was our premier computer, better than the CTL and the HP, but sadly it's reign was very short before the Core 2 Duo came and blew it's performance to pieces. Powerful 3.2GHz P4 CPU, an SD card reader, SATA DVD burner at a time I'd never had one before, 512MB RAM but upgraded to a powerful 2GB (for a P4!), it's 200GB HDD was until very recently the largest in the house, and a 128MB VRAM gfx card. Now it's ailing again, and mostly unneeded, just sometimes used by the little siblings for older computer games. It still runs Windows XP too.

#14. 1986 Toshiba T3100/20. Tried to follow up my success with the T1200 with this luggable - it's bulkier and has no battery - but failed. Also paid $60. It worked somewhat, at first, but had severe issues with it's HDD and CMOS battery, but after I replaced the CMOS battery and installed an OS on the HDD (though the HDD always worked intermittently), the screen abruptly stopped displaying anything at all. It still booted fine, but the LCD never displayed anything - not an OS or HDD issue, the built-in screen acted as if it were not plugged in. 80286 CPU, 1MB RAM, 20MB HDD, 640x400 red gas-plasma screen, 720k 3.5" FDD. Included a very intriguing adapter in the back that turned the proprietary Toshiba connector to 8-bit ISA, then into SCSI. (system was unable to function while the adapter was in, cause it demanded an SCSI HDD). Another thing to note about this system is, the BIOS settings are in a file called TESTCE.EXE on the hard drive, not in the ROM anywhere.

#17. 1986 Toshiba T1200 laptop. Got it on eBay for $60, and it worked really well! So far it's a staple in my vintage computer collection. The screen is 640x200 and CGA compatible; 80C86 CPU, 1MB RAM, a 20MB HDD, DOS 3.3 (I believe in a ROM chip), and a 720k 3.5" FDD. As seen in the picture, the screen is backlit blue-on-green. Amazingly, the battery is capable of holding up to a 10 minute charge, though it's never been recelled or anything.

#20. 1984 Macintosh. This is the original model, M0001, that I picked up WITH keyboard and mouse at the yard sale for $5! What a nice guy the seller was. He was selling off nearly his whole collection (had a Next box but said he was keeping that for himself) for next to nothing. The first day I didn't expect his prices would be so cheap so didn't bother bringing much money, so I missed out on the more valuable systems that someone after me got, but at least I got this that day. The next day I came to see what he had left and picked some more stuff up. Anyway, I found a guy online who I bought a startup disk and a game disk from for $24 - a great deal since I couldn't make those disks, and he printed two lovely original-looking labels for them. Got System 3, it worked excellently. The 128k Mac was a very impressive system for it's time! Mine had been upgraded to 512k of RAM from the original 128k, which is pretty good, and the FDD was upgraded to one capable of reading 800k (double-sided) disks instead of the original 400k disks. I got very lucky and had the opportunity to buy a very rare MacRescue SCSI/RAM upgrade card - one of the only possible upgrades cards for the 128k Macs - so now it has an unbelievable 4MB RAM and an SCSI port! The card works by plugging directly into the M68000 CPU.

#23. 1986 IBM PC Convertible 5140. I got it from the same yard sale, for about $5 as well with the power supply, just so that I could resell it. It's not a system that I'm interested in, I tend to be less interested in the proprietary systems and more interested in the standardized systems, so I like the similar but more featured Toshiba T1200 better. I found the boot disk online, and got it to boot once, but generally I can't get either of the floppy disk drives to work, and I know nothing about them since they're specific to this system. Sold it on eBay for $77.77.. It's a funky design, with the pop-up keyboard and drives! But lacks a backlight and hard drive and any ports at all. 256Kb RAM, 4.77mhz 80c88 CPU, 640x200 CGA LCD, 720k FDD.

#26. 1991 NeXTStation Turbo. I got this in parts with the Macopalypse lot (which by the way I knew was valuable but I over estimated how valuable). I had the base NeXT, and some monitor, and some keyboard, and that was it. The NeXT had no RAM, HDD, or HDD sled inside, and I had no real reason to believe the setup worked. Thankfully for me, I was reasonably close to Black Hole Inc in Ft. Collins, CO, home of the most knowledgeable NeXT repairman with the most tools and parts at his disposal! The monitor was good but I had to pick up the special monitor cable, and the keyboard was the wrong kind and we swapped it out for the right one, and I bought a mouse, hard drive, sled, and NeXTStep install media from him. And it worked great! I also had a SCSI CD-ROM drive that worked great with the system, and I bought the max possible RAM, 128MB, to go in it. So it's a lovely specimen of a NeXT setup now! I gave it to a friend because I personally don't value using NeXTs at all.

#15. 1990 Dell 320n laptop. Still on a vintage computer kick! This one was $50. I really liked all the Dell systems I've had so far, so I thought maybe this one would be good, and it was very interesting, but not all that good. Manufactured by some chinese company and then branded Dell. 80386 CPU with math coprocessor, 8MB RAM, 60MB HDD, tiny 640x480 VGA grayscale screen, 1.44MB 3.5" FDD. In the picture I have the screen off for testing. There's a door on the front for RAM (proprietary shape) and coprocessor upgrades. It worked real nice, but I could not get the screen to work - it always displayed what seemed to be all pixels fully black, and I can't figure out why, and the backlight worked fine. The backlight slider also worked fine, but not the contrast slider (I even opened it all up and tested the potentiometer behind the slider, it was fine). Maybe a bad capacitor. I eventually sold it and got another of the same model.

#18. 1986 Toshiba T3100. Pictured here next to my T3100/20, I bought it cause I really wanted a laptop with a red gas plasma screen and my T3100/20 wasn't working. I got it a long time ago, paid around $60 dollars, it always worked fine except the CMOS battery was dead and the "D" key didn't work. I was able to take apart the keyboard and desolder the key, and found out that there was a diode beneath it that was rusted completely through. (I don't know why as there was no other rust or damage anywhere else on the system.) I actually succeeded in replacing that diode with one from some piece of broken toy and it worked great after that! Also replacing the CMOS battery worked well, so now it's a perfectly functioning 1986 laptop, including it's 10MB HDD. it has a CGA 640x400 two-color screen and an 80286 CPU. No battery and no VGA support. Unlike the T3100/20, the CMOS settings were accessable without testce.exe, which was very handy (it has different BIOS chips, see more at http://forums.bosaik.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=99.

#21. 1983 IBM PC-XT. Picked this one up at the $5 yardsale, for $10. It works and looks amazing! It came with a blank black slot with the half-height 5.25" FDD, so I tracked down and bought a black 3.5" FDD and a perfect 5.25" to 3.5" adapter and made it dual FDD plus the original full-height HDD. I'm extremely pleased with the result. It included the CGA 5153 monitor and XT keyboard. I performed an LLF on the MFM HDD, and was able to install PC-DOS and some programs. but now it has errors - it either needs to be LLFed while hot, or it's just tired of life and needs a XTIDE card. Even if I get that card, I'll keep the original drive in, the sound is super loud and too good to lose. I only use this PC as a display piece.

#24. 1986 Toshiba T5200/100. This one is unusual for me, I splurged on the price and went out on ebay and selected a particular model I liked. I paid $100, and it is a lovely specimen of early Toshiba laptops! As shown in the picture it came with case, manual, and a spare mouse. Considering I bought it in good condition and all, I didn't have to do anything to it, I mainly look at it sometimes. It has some 4MB RAM, 100MB HDD, 4 levels of red gas-plasma VGA screen which is *gorgeous*, and what I find most interesting is it has both an 8-bit ISA slot and a 16-bit ISA slot. That makes it very bulky, I call it the "lapcrusher". I ran Windows 95 on it once, it looked... interesting! I bought a second for $50 but the screen and case were destroyed so I parted it out and finally sold all parts. This model has a combination lock and tragically the second one looked like it was destroyed trying to pry it open, when I found the lock had been set to the factory default...