Here Comes the Sun - Sun Ultra 5 & 10 Systems

If you have learned much about the history of computing it's hard to avoid hearing about Sun Microsystems.  They dominated the personal workstation market for pretty much the entire time it existed.  They came out of Stanford and invented or popularized many technologies that ended up being widely adopted around networking and the Internet.  I've had Sun equipment on my wish list for quite a while as I'd never used during the 90s it and wanted to experience it myself.

The first Sun that I acquired was an Ultra 5 desktop.  I had been warned that it was not working and incomplete, a parts machine, but I was happy to have it anyway.  I purchased parts on eBay and tried to get it working spending many hours reading and learning and testing, but the main board on this machine ended up having a bad MMU, so I made a note on my Wish List to get another machine of this type and I moved on.

Shortly after that I acquired a working Sun Ultra 1 machine from my friend Steve Hatle.  He worked on these machines during his career so he's had professional experience with them and he did a nice job restoring the machine that I have now.  It works great, and it's always nice to be able to start out learning about a new type of computer with one known good working machine as a baseline.

But the Sun Ultra 5 project sat for quite a while until last fall.  A generous donor, Peter Manina, gave me another working good Sun Ultra 5 during VCF Midwest 2024 this year, thank you Peter!  He had donated another machine previously, an IBM RS/6000 Machine which I covered here.

This second Ultra 5 machine was also a bit of a project because this lot included a SunPCI card (a PC on a card made by Sun for these machines).  Peter had suggested that the PC Card runs hot, and that it would be better to run it in an Ultra 10 tower which has better cooling.  The Ultra 5 and 10 are sister machines with the same motherboard so the CPUs and peripherals are interchangeable.  I waited for a while and when an Ultra 10 parts machine came up on eBay for a reasonable price I purchased it.  At that point I had three machines. I was hoping for two working machines a 5 and a 10.

The next hurdle for these machines is getting a working NVRAM / Clock Battery.  I tried the battery replacement hack where you use a dremel tool to cut through the side and solder on a CR2032 coin cell holder, but these are not Dallas brand batteries and are much harder to modify in this way.  I tried ordering clock batteries from China, but these parts came with a dead battery, too.  I ordered another pair from an eBay seller.  The project sat for quite a while but eventually I found this video and decided that I should be able to dremel out the epoxy far enough to get too the terminals inside and solder on a battery.  The results were not pretty but I modified three chips and added an easily replaced CR2032.

The Sun Ultra 5 machine came together easily after the clock battery situation was resolved, Peter had already put a modern SSD in it with a StarTech SATA to IDE adapter that is well known in the retro community for providing good compatibility.  I was able to re-install Solaris 9 on that machine and had it back up and running in a short period of time.  It looks a bit yellowed on the front, but overall I'm quite happy with this machine...

The Ultra 10 was more of a challenge.  Peter had warned me that some of the Solaris Install Media, even though it came directly from Sun, might not work.  I had been planning to use Solaris 8 because it is compatible with the PC Compatibility card but neither of the two versions of 8 I had were working for a clean install, but then watching this video from the Phintage Collector he showed that the PC Compatibility Card could be made to work with Solaris 9.  I decided to follow the path of least resistance and go with Solaris 9 on the Ultra 10 system, too.  I setup this machine with another Star Tech IDE to SATA bridge card and a low cost SSD.  I also replaced the non-functional CD-ROM drive in the eBay machine with a working drive.  After I got the machine running with Solaris 9 I started on the SunPCI card configuration.  This article was also extremely helpful for getting the SunPCI Card to work, and here it is running Windows 98...

I'm very happy with how the machine turned out and I wish to thank Peter Manina again since his gift got me restarted on this project.

Do you have any memories of the Sun SPARC or Ultra series workstations?  Let me know in the comments or reach out to my email address shown in my profile.

Wang Professional Computer from 1984

 At the end of last year (Dec 2024) I was browsing Facebook Marketplace and saw a somewhat interesting computer that I had never heard of before, a Wang Professional Computer (Wang PC).   I've been interested in Wang since learning about the history of the company founder, An Wang, and his contributions to the history of computing.  He was involved in the development of Core Memory, and was able to use the funds from the sale of that invention to start his computer company Wang Laboratories.

I was interested in the Wang PC but did some research before buying it.  Because this is not IBM PC compatible, you need the custom Wang Keyboard and a custom monitor to use this machine.  The Facebook listing included a Keyboard but not a Monitor.  I was going to take a pass on the machine, but the seller lowered the price to the point that I could not refuse. 

I took the Wang PC apart and did some light cleaning and dusting inside of the case.  The computer appears to be in good shape.  Then it went up on a shelf in storage waiting for a time when I could find a matching CRT at a reasonable price.

Fast-forward 4 months.  I had a saved search for Wang CRT monitors on eBay, and a compatible monitor appeared.  I got the Wang PC down and tested it out to see if the Power Supply was working and if the computer was showing any signs of life without the monitor.  The computer did appear to be working, at least as well as I could tell without a monitor, and I thought it was even booting from the internal Hard Drive.  So I ordered the specialized CRT from eBay.  I was a bit nervous becuase the screen was not guaranteed to work.  But the seller did a great job of packing it and it arrived intact.

I was super happy when I powered the system up with the monitor for the first time and it worked!  Then only a few seconds later, the CRT's horizontal sweep collapsed to a vertical line, what a bummer...

Thankfully I have been able to fix simple CRT problems in the past so I took the monitor apart and started troubleshooting.  I was not able to find a service manual or a schematic, but the circuit board was well labelled.  That is about the best I can say about the circuit board.  When I started removing components to test out of circuit I damaged several traces as they were not stuck to the board very well.  It took me quite a few hours over a couple of different evenings to get the monitor working again, I never did identify a bad component.  I did reflow most of the solder joints on the monitor board so it was likely a cold solder joint from vibration or old age, or the low quality of the circuit board.  Either way the monitor is working again and the Wang PC is usable!

But, then I encountered the next issue, the keyboard was not working well.  I did get a few key presses to register but most of the keys didn't work at all.  Then the ones that had worked stopped working, too.  This was not a huge surprise as I had already read that this was a "Foam and Foil" type keyboard.  I've restored a couple of other brands of these type using these pads that are sold by TexElec so I got another set of those on order and prepared the keyboard by taking it all apart, removing the old pads and doing a through cleaning.  After replacing all tbe pads I did some testing and then fully re-assembled the keyboard.  All the keys appear to be working and I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Once the keyboard was complete, I was able to explore the computer and see what files were present on the hard drive.  The 10MB hard drive is about 1/2 full.  The drive appears to be working well, it's not making any unusual sounds so that's good.  One interesting feature of the machine is a simple menu that starts up on boot, it allows the user to move around without typing any commands to start programs and move files around...

This machine has the Wang Word Processor installed.  Wang was famous for this.  They had dedicated hardware just for word processing in their previous generation of hardware, which you can see covered on Usagi Electric.  Although my machine is a General Purpose computer, Wang Word Processing is just about the only software installed on this machine.

I tested the Floppy Drive a bit, and it did not seem to be working correctly.  It was functional for a little while, then stopped working.  I took the machine apart and did some cleaning.  I re-seated connectors but there was nothing obvious wrong with the drive.  When I re-assembled in, the drive started working!  I was able to boot the machine from Floppies I had made from Drive Images I found on WinWorld.

And with that repair, the Wang PC is functionally complete!  I'm very happy to have this system.  It will go nicely with my other MS-DOS compatible machine, the Tandy 2000, and maybe this will motivate me to work on another MS-DOS system I've had in storage for a while, a Zenith Z-100 system.

Oops I Did it Again - Another Lot of Computers Needing Repair

Recently I was browsing the retro computer forums and a for sale ad came up in my city.  A fellow Macintosh computer enthusiast had purchased a lot of Macintosh machines to restore and the project sat for a long time.  He decided to shift the project along to someone else.  The listing had a single photo and some text, the photo showed seven machines and one box full of peripherals.  The text described another box of peripherals not shown but included in the sale.  The price was low enough that I could purchase the entire lot and if my repair attempts failed I'd still have gotten some much needed peripherals for my collection.  But as readers of my blog will know, I really enjoy the repair process and so I was hoping that I'd be able to repair much of this lot and sell it on, since these were all machines that I had, and I even had some parts machines of this type.

When I got the lot home this is what I had...

The lot consisted of; 2 512K Macs, 3 Macintosh Plus machines, a Mac SE and a Mac Classic II along with the peripherals, an external 400K floppy, an HD20, and a couple of different keyboards and even a couple of random vintage PC parts.  As usual I began the intake process with some light cleaning.  It was no surprise but the equipment was quite dusty, including inside of the machines, so I think it was likely these machines spent quite a few years in a garage or basement.

On my initial checks (triage), both of the 512K macs booted to a ?.  I'm quite certain the floppy drives will need lubrication and maintenance so I've set those machines aside for now.

For the Mac Plus machines, 2 of the 3 booted right up to the ?.  The third machine was booting, but showing some odd video corruption of a kind I had not seen before.  On further inspection that machine had a 68030 accelerator board inside of it.  It's possible this accelerator board is damaged, but I need to do some research to figure that out, so I've set the accelerator board aside for now.

The Mac SE booted up to a ?.  This was a project I wanted to work on in the short term because I have a couple of other Mac SEs including one mostly good machine with bad Floppy Drives and one parts machine.  I was hoping to get two working Mac SEs out of these three, but more on that later.

The Mac Classic II made a normal good chime on boot up, but the video did not come up.  These machines from the early 1990s are often damaged for two reasons, the first is an exploding clock battery, and the second is the "Capacitor Plague" where Apple unknowingly used sub-standard electrolytic capacitors that slowly leak out onto the circuit board.  Both of these problems can ruin Mac Classic and Mac Classic II machines and so all of these machines should be serviced ASAP.  Fortunately for me, the clock battery had not leaked, so I removed it.  The capacitors had been leaking so I removed them immediately and got to work cleaning the board to prepare it for a recap.

I worked on the Mac SE and the Classic II at the same time.  For me, a big part of the experience with the original style Mac computers is using the Floppy Disk drives.  Servicing them can be tedious and error prone, but there are some great tutorial videos out there, and once you've done each type of drive a couple of times it starts to come easier.  But it can be tedious when there are many drives to service.  I try to keep one or two of each type of drive in my stock because often drives will require spare parts not just lubrication so I got the drives out of the Classic II and the Mac SE along with some of my spares and got started...

Having these drives ready allowed me to start the repairs in earnest.  As I've mentioned, I had a couple of other Mac SE machines and I checked on those floppy drives that were not working, and they had already been serviced.  It turns out that the reason they weren't booting was because I had some bad boot floppies, so that was one mystery solved.

The Mac SE from this lot had badly yellowed in the sun, but my parts machine was still a great looking platinum case, so I did a case swap on the Mac SE and got a lovely looking fully running machine...

I don't need 3 Macintosh SEs so I currently have this machine listed for sale locally here in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area.

The Mac Classic II repair took a bit longer because I had to order capacitors and wait for those to arrive for the recap.  Also it took a while to clean the logic board of this machine using both water and IPA and multiple manual rinse cycles.  I also had a parts machine for this repair, a Classic machine that I'd previously recapped but that machine never worked quite right after the recap it would boot and run just fine but the external SCSI and FDD ports weren't quite right.  It's possible that further board level work could bring this machine back to full function, but I was able to use the Classic to help troubleshoot the Classic II.

It turns out that not only did the Classic II need a recap on the logic board but the analog board was bad as well.  I did another swap on the analog boards and CRT boards to get a good setup into the Classic II case.  After swapping the Analog board the Classic II came back to life, and with the recap and cleaning, I'm hopeful that this machine will have a long and happy future.  Classics and Classic II machines are not my favorite from this time period, so this is another machine that is for sale here in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area...

I'm still actively working on fixing up the Macintosh Plus machines.  I have all three of them running again because I was able to borrow parts off another parts machine that I had, so the next step is servicing another set of Floppy Disk drives, the earlier 800K drives that came in the Mac Plus and Mac SE...

Since I already have a couple of nice Mac Plus machines I plan to offer these machines for sale when the Floppy Servicing is complete.  Hopefully I can complete the Plus repairs this weekend and get back to the other projects I was working on when this lot came up.  It's been alot of fun doing these repairs but I'll also be glad to move back to my "regularly scheduled programing" of Retro Computer projects.

Do you have memories of using these machine?  Let me know if you have stories you'd like to share in the comments, or my email address is in my profile.  Thanks for following along with this repair story.

The Original Slide Rule Replacement - Hewlett Packard Handheld Scientific Calculator

As I have pointed out in a previous post, I am a calculator collector.  As I was doing research about HP Calculators in order to replace the one used during my college years, I learned of the original handheld scientific calculator.  This was invented by HP in the early 70s.  At first the machine didn't even have a model name, it was just the HP Handheld Calculator, but later it was labelled as the HP 35 since it had 35 keys on it.

As of this writing in early 2025 prices for the original HP 35 are rising with good working examples going for several hundred dollars on eBay.  These are much more repairable than modern calculators and there is at least one detailed tutorial video showing the process to take them apart and clean them.  The repairability and information online made me feel comfortable enough to purchase a non-working unit on eBay and attempt a repair myself, but things are often more complicated than initially expected.

The unit arrived and I was able to take it apart as shown in the video.  There were signs that this one had already been taken apart, which was disappointing since that was not shown in the eBay listing.  I should have asked for pictures of the back.  Cleaning the contacts did not resolve the dead keys on this calculator as it did in the YouTube video so it turns out that this calculator had something wrong with the electronics on the main circuit board.  I reflowed the solder joints and poked around on the main board a bit, it isn't very complicated, but I'm guessing one of the custom logic ICs is damaged, so this project went on hold for a few weeks.

Shortly after I got an email from one of my saved searches on eBay.  It was the cheapest HP35 on eBay in. quite a while.  It was a loose calculator without a Power Supply.  I talked to the seller and he had no way to power it up, so it was a gamble, but he also showed the back of the unit and this one had not been opened, so I took the chance and purchased it.

The second calculator was in really rough shape.  When I got it on the workbench it had battery corrosion on the inside of the battery compartment and it wouldn't power up.  I started disassembly, cleaning as I went.  It was obvious that corrosion had gotten inside and affected the power circuits under the battery compartment, however, the design was modular and that was not a part of the main logic board that was bad on the other calculator, so I was still hopeful.

When I swapped the older logic board onto the newer HP35 it fired right up and worked!  I was very happy to have a working calculator after buying two broken ones.  As soon as I got one working I checked for the 2.02 bug.  The working Logic Board is from the first year, 1972, but it does not have the bug, which is OK with me since it would have looked out of place in the newer case with the H P 35 logo on the front.

I also rebuilt the battery pack with 3 NiCd AA cells and it looks quite nice running without being plugged in...

So now that I have the first ever scientific calculator, the HP 35, and my favorite calculator, the HP48G that got me through college.  These are the bookends for my collection and should not really need any more calculators in the collection.  For now.

Another Beige Alpha Joins the Fleet - Compaq Professional Workstation XP1000

In the middle of last year an interesting workstation computer came up for sale on Facebook Marketplace here in my area.  The Compaq Professional Workstation XP1000 is an Alpha based workstation from just after Compaq purchased Digital Equipment Corporation.  The Facebook Markeplace ad stated that it was stopping on a boot screen and that it might not be working, but the price was low enough that I thought it was worth the risk of not being able to repair it.

Once I got the system home I was able to verify that the system was in the condition described and then started to read what I could find about this computer.  I soon discovered that the motherboard had a password installed on it.  In the PC world we would call this a BIOS password, but for an Alpha machine like this, it's the SRM console password.  The SRM console uses a command line but with it locked out even the help command was generating an error "Console is secure.  Please login.".  Because PCs have a jumper to reset this I was quite hopeful that it would just be a matter of time till I figured out how to reset that password but after not finding much documentation online I decided to ask for help on the Vintage Computer Federation Forums.

As usual there were several people who were a big help there, including one gentleman that uploaded some documentation to the thread that I had not been able to find online anywhere else.  Sadly, though, we did NOT discover a backdoor designed by Compaq to reset the console password.  Although I could not find an explicit statement for this motherboard I did learn that were other machines designed by Compaq that did not contain a back door, if the password is lost, the main logic board containing the firmware must be replaced.  So I decided to put the project on hold and keep the machine.  I setup a saved search on eBay since you never know what will pop up there and didn't think much about this project in the second half of last year.

At the end of last year I gave quite a bit of thought to my Vintage Computing hobby.  I purged alot of my project machines, selling, donating to Free Geek, or recycling responsibly.  I also went through my wish lists and eBay saved searches and purged items that were no longer of interest and I discovered that I had setup the wrong search, adding an extra zero.  When I fixed the saved search I was shocked to learn that there was a logic board on eBay for sale!  I watched the item for a while and eventually made an offer that was accepted.

The board shipped from Israel so it took a while to get here but once it arrived I was able to pull my machine completely apart.  I used this as an opportunity to do some much needed dusting inside the case of this machine.  It was a huge relief when the system started back up after re-assembly and an even bigger relief when I was able to use the SRM console and issue commands to boot an Operating System off an Installation Disk!

Once I could start to explore, I learned that this was one of the newer XP1000 machines.  This machine can run the VMS operating systems and Unix like systems, but not Windows NT.  The older, slower machines could boot NT, but I already have one Alpha machine setup that way.  I know at least one DEC hardware enthusiast  who will be glad to see the machine running DEC software and not Microsoft software.

I had some old media for OpenVMS which I had burned while I was a part of the Community Licensing program, but that program has ended now.  I was able to install OpenVMS 8 on the hardware, but without licenses it's not very interesting or useful.  After searching on the Internet and reading for a bit, I learned that the archived version of Tru64 Unix on WinWorld has keys with the archive, so I gave that a try, and it worked well.

Configuring networking was a bit of a challenge, but I ended up getting that working with a Static IP and now the computer can read articles on FrogFind.com and 68k.news just fine.  I'm quite happy with how the machine turned out...

I was disappointed that I couldn't load older software on here.  I have been looking for some VAX hardware since that is what we used back in College, I remember the Motif Window Manager and that was such an interesting look and feel, but I didn't know that Motif was the precursor to the Common Desktop Environment (CDE).  Because of multiple vendors working together on this more open code base this Compaq (Digital Equipment) machine will join several others CDE machines that I have including IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, and SGI Irix.

I am not a calculator collector, I am not a calculator collector.

I am not a calculator collector.  I have to keep saying this to myself because I don't need another genre of items to collect, but I'm quite tempted by this since it is adjacent to retro computing.  I've managed to avoid printers (mostly), typewriters completely, and vintage test equipment, among many other interesting items that I would collect if time money and storage space were not limited.

So I have a few calculators.  I purchased a Radio Shack Pocket Computer 4 off Facebook Marketplace in 2020...

And since then I've been picking up interesting, older calculators from the 70s and 80s at Garage Sales and Thrift Shops when I can find them including a couple of hand held Casio units.  My parents had a Casio on their desk, it had a mesmerizing Nixie tube display and so although it was "portable / battery powered" it stayed plugged in and on the desk.  The Calculator Wars of the 70s were historically significant to the development of home computing as they occurred right before the home computer revolution and included many of the same companies.  Calculators were the "killer app" of Microprocessors before the home computer revolution began, but this is well covered elsewhere.

My personal calculator history started with my first graphing calculator, a TI-81.  My parents bought this for me while I was in high school and I spent quite a bit of time puttering with it and even wrote some simple programs to run on it.  I was recently able to reacquire a TI-81 from Free Geek Twin Cities and add that to my calculator not-a-collection.

My favorite calculator is the HP48G which got me through engineering school.  Back in the day we didn't have laptop computers for every student so pretty much everyone had an HP 48 of some sort.  It was hard to learn how to use it, but once I'd gotten the hang of it I can always come back to an RPN calculator, just like riding a bicycle, you never really forget how.  There's a review video from Calculator Culture on YouTube that I'd recommend, it has helped me understand why this calculator is so unique.

I wore out my initial 48G calculator.  I had tried to repair it at one point, but it was not designed for service and I ended up breaking mine.  I missed having it enough that about ten years ago I had purchased an HP50G calculator hoping that it would replace my worn out calculator, but I didn't like using it as much.  Another Calculator Culture review video explains this calculator well.  I ended up selling my HP50G as it didn't really match my expectations and was different enough from the 48 that is just didn't feel the same.

So after watching a few videos from HPcalc.org's recent conference and the Calculator Culture videos I realized that the best way to "Scratch the Itch" so to speak would be to just go ahead and buy an original HP48G.  With my new knowledge about the hardware revisions and the typical problems, I was hoping I could find a nice one on eBay at a reasonable price, and after waiting and shopping for a couple of weeks, I was able to find this lovely unit here...

I've paired it with the original manual set that I'd kept all these years.  I'm glad I kept the manual since there's alot I've forgotten about how to use the machine (the manual is hundreds of pages long).  As described in the review video above the LCD screen isn't great, the contrast is poor, although not being backlit means that the battery life is quite good.  The keyboard is amazing, the keys are clicky, very tactile and enjoyable to use.

I've enjoyed having this machine back at my desk, and I'm getting back into the habit of using it.  During my research I've also found a much more modern iOS app that emulates the 48.  I've used about a half dozen of these over the years since getting my first Smart Phone and this one is the most useful and stable, it's called iHP48 and it is much better than other iOS Apps that emulate HP 48 which I have used before.  This is the main calculator app on my phone now and I use it almost daily.

Doing the research about HP 48 and being exposed to other calculator collectors has helped me learn about the history and development of the handheld scientific calculator.  I've become aware of the first Handheld Scientific Calculator, the HP 35 from 1972.  But this is a story for another day, so I will wrap up this bLog post by simply stating the obvious, I am a calculator collector.

My Newest, Oldest Apple II Plus (1979)

There were three very important home computers that came out in 1977, the Commodore PET, the Apple II and the Radio Shack TRS-80 Computers.  We retroactively call the Radio Shack the TRS-80 Model 1 but that is not how it was advertised at the time.  Also, the use of the term trinity to describe these three computers is something that appears to have begun in the mid 90s.

One of my goals in the Retro Computing hobby is to own all three of the original premade personal computers that didn't have to be built from kits like the Altair 8800.  So far I have been able to acquire; an Apple II Plus from 1979, a Commodore PET 4016 from 1980, and an original TRS-80 Model 1 computer.

Recently on a trip to Free Geek Twin Cities I was able to acquire another Apple II Plus machine and this turned out to be a machine from 1979.  This got me thinking again about wanting to get as close as possible to an original Apple II experience from 1977 and so I started doing research.  Tech Time Traveller has a really helpful video on this topic here.  He also painnstakingly built up this list of machines have have sold on eBay, since eBay doesn't keep pricing information and old listings around on their site very long  Thanks Tech Time Traveller!  Now that I know an original Apple II from eBay is probably more than I want to spend right now, what are my options?

Going back to the machine from  Free Geek, I learned that the board in my "newest" Apple II Plus is a "Revision 4" logic board.  This is from the period in 1979 was when Apple was making both the II and the II Plus at the same time, and often with the same logic board and only different ROMs and different RAM amounts.

At the same time as this was going on a listing came up on eBay for a computer that was listed as an original Apple II machine, but after inspecting it it seems likely that this machine had been upgraded to II Plus, which I later confirmed was the consensus in one of the Apple II Facebook groups.  I'm still considering the option of building an "Original Apple II" by getting bits and pieces and putting them together, but I think I'd rather hold out and wait till one comes along that is more complete locally, or with a backstory that I can learn about.

In the meantime, I learned about the Apple II ROM card, which was a period correct accessory card from 1979 that folks bought when they were upgrading their Apple IIs to Apple II Plus which allowed them to put the old ROMs onto an expansion board and switch them in at will from a switch on the back of the computer.  I used to have a modern card that did this, but ironically that card failed, so I set out to find a vintage card that still had the correct ROMs on it (Many, perhaps most of the ones on eBay have been stripped).  This article on the VCFed forums explains which ROMs where the period correct ones for an original Apple II (With Woz's Integer basic, and without Applesoft Basic).  I was able to find and acquire one of these period correct cards with the full ROM set, and it works great...

So, as of this writing, my Apple II Plus behaves in exactly the same way as the original machine, so I am now able to explore software from that era.  A good win for a reasonable price with parts that are still relatively inexpensive.

2024 Year End Retrospective - Six Years of Vintage Computing

I made a return to Retro Computing in 2018.  Or it may be more accurate to say that it's something I've always enjoyed doing and never stopped completely but in 2018 I started spending more time on the hobby and became aware that there were others out there who also enjoyed fixing up and using old computers.  This happened primarily through finding YouTube channels like The 8-Bit Guy, LGR, and Adrian Black and connecting locally with folks at Free Geek Twin Cities.  In 2018 and 2019, I acquired just a few machines and authored a few articles on my bLog about my adventures in Retro Computing but things changed in 2020.

Just before the pandemic started in early 2020 I purchased my first compact Mac, a Macintosh Plus from Free Geek.  I ended up buying and repairing alot more machines during and after the lockdown.  Some were machines that I'd used and had nostalgic memories like Apple IIe and Macintosh PowerPC machines but others were older machines like the Bell and Howell Apple II Plus and the Tandy Model 102 that allowed me to learn more about repair, the use of the machines, and the history of the development of the machines.  During 2020 I participated in Vintage Computer Festival Midwest for the first time.  It was an online show and I watched most of the talks, learning about disk imaging with the SuperCard Pro, that some people use their crawlspace for storage of Retro Computers, and many other interesting topics.

In 2021 my acquisitions mostly happened all at once, I bought a large lot of Apple Laptops from my friend John Bumstead.  I spent a good deal of my hobby time during that year processing through that lot of computers.  I kept many of the machines and also sold many of them.  it was an amazing experience that helped me understand which of Apple's portable machines I enjoy repairing and using most.  I still have some PowerBooks from the early 2000's, the "Peak Fastener" era for Apple that I haven't processed yet, this is my least favorite era of Apple Laptops. But during 2021 I was also able to acquire some machines that I'd had little or no exposure too like an IBM 5150 that I purchased from Facebook Marketplace and a Next NextStation computer from VCF Midwest.  I also repaired or built up a handful of beige box PCs.

During 2022 I got on a bit of a Commodore kick.  The VIC-20 was my first computer that we had at home, so re-acquring one of those was quite nostalgic for me, but I also acquired older hardware, like a Commodore PET that needed extensive repair, and newer machines like C64 and Amiga 500.  I also acquired my first Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) hardware including a little know CP/M machine called a DEC Robin, and a more common DEC Alpha computer.  I missed VCF Midwest in 2022, but I continued to buy and build beige box PCs.

2023 was another enjoyable year for me in Vintage Computing.  During the year after searching for several years I was able to acquire a Gateway 2000 486 PC, which was my first PC that I had during college.  I got my first of the Original Home Computers from 1977, a Tandy Radio Shack Model 1, getting it clean was a major chore, but I'm glad to have one.  I also got a Kaypro 1 '86 an 8-bit Atari Computer, and several Unix workstations from the 90s including a Sun and an SGI Indy, so there was a great deal to learn and explore in 2023.  I was also able to attend VCF Midwest once again, this time as an exhibitor.  As an exhibitor I didn't acquire many new machines, but I was able to find many parts to help move projects along or complete systems I'd already built up.

As I think about 2024 the IBM RS/6000 is a highlight.  I had purchased one as a parts machine from Free Geek in 2023 and ended up failing in my repair attempt.  I thought I wouldn't get another chance but in 2024 a generous donor offered one on the forums and I took him up on it.  The machine runs great and joins my collection of Unix Workstations.  Also, it was made in Minnesota.  On the history / nostalgia front I acquired a Kaypro II computer, which was something I'd been looking for for a while as my grandpa used to have one of these.  The Compaq Portable III was a fun and challenging repair, and now I have the first three Compaq Portables.  I also got to go back to VCF Midwest this year, and one of my kids came along, so that was fun.  The Tandy 2000 repair was my largest repair effort of the year but my friend and I both came out of that with two working Tandy 2000 computers, which is a very interesting early MS-DOS machine.

So heading into 2025 what aspects of Vintage Computing will I do more of and what will I do less of?  What do I enjoy doing more and what do I enjoy doing less?

I enjoy learning about computers that are "new to me", and I get just as much (or maybe even more) enjoyment from going back in time as from going forward.  I enjoy repairing computers and learning about alternate operating systems.  I want to understand what it was like for the people using the computers at the time, so the CRTs, the Keyboards, and the Disks are important to me and I like that to be original.  I don't mind at all if we can find a way to replace the hidden hard disk drives with reliable solid state storage because we can't use the computers at all if they won't boot up, but that is my primary exception and I like to keep things period correct as much as possible. 

In general, I'm not a fan of computer gaming.  I know that's unusual since gaming is the "killer app" for most retro computer enthusiasts, but I've just never been a huge fan of computer gaming.  I also don't like overclocking vintage hardware or installing period correct processor upgrades, although more RAM is always nice.  In my mind, if you want a faster retro computer, just buy one from a few years later.

Because they are inexpensive and easy to repair I have gotten quite a few "Beige Box" PCs.  Some of these have historical significance like the IBM PC 5150 and the Compaq Portable I and others have nostalgic significance like my Gateway 2000 486, but I am running out of space for storage and I need to sell many of these PCs and stop collecting more "Beige Box" PCs.

During 2023 and 2024 when I exhibited at VCF, I was able to exhibit computers that tell a story and to sell computers at the same time.  I enjoyed that event alot and I hope to continue to be able to participate in VCF Midwest as well as some of the smaller local meet ups as time and budget allow.

Knowing which computers I'm willing to give away or sell also helps me think about preserving the ones I want to keep.  Several times this year when I got a computer out of storage that I had put away in good working order it came out of storage not working and needing repair.  So I've been on the lookout for spare machines for some of my favorites.  I don't need 3-4 of a kind, for me two seems like the sweet spot for space vs. long term usability, but unfortunately I cannot extend this policy to CRTs they are just too bulky.

Another lesson I've learned is that if I let my project list get too long, or if I am feeling too much pressure about a certain repair then it makes the hobby less fun.  If I have had a project on the list for over a year and I haven't gotten too it, it's OK to let that project go and sell or donate the hardware back to another collector or Free Geek and move on to something that's more exciting.

So what is next for vintage computing in 2025?  I have a stack of three Sun Ultra 5 and 10 workstations out in the garage that are "on deck" for repair, expect a bLog article about that in early 2025.  I have lots of little projects planned, small improvements to computers I already own.  In 2024 I've been posting about these smaller projects on Twitter / X and enjoying the community there, so I plan to continue doing that.

And for sure, I will keep an eye out for interesting projects and try to stay focused on buying computers from my wish list...

Apple II (original, not plus not e)
Apple Macintosh PowerBook 100
Apple PowerMac G5, late 2005, dual 2.3Ghz model A1117 (last air cooled G5)
Apple Macintosh SE/30 or Logic Board

Toshiba Libretto Palmtop PC
Grid Systems Laptop w/ Plasma Display
IBM Thinkpad T30 or A31 (Last model with Serial Ports Built In)

Commodore PET 2001 (chiclet Keyboard and Tape Drive)
Tandy Model 100
Digital VaxStation 3100 (w/ monitor, keyboard and mouse)
DEC PDP-11/03 or similar 11/23, etc.
Digital PDP 11
68k Apollo Workstation
68k Sun Workstation

Thanks for reading this long and rambling article, if you've made it this far I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Tandy 2000 Computer Lot - Repaired in 2024

My most recent project has been too repair a large lot of Tandy 2000 computers.  A friend of mine has been collecting these machines for several years and had parts from nine different machines...

We made an agreement that I would work on repairing these machines and we would split the working computers coming out of the repairs but before discussing the repair let's review a bit of history about this machine.  These machines were designed and built by Tandy in 1984.  They run MS-DOS but they are not compatible with the IBM PC like a Compaq computer from that time period.  Tandy had been successful in the computer business since the beginning of the Home Computer era and compatibility had not been a major concern up till that point so they planned to (and succeeded at) building a more powerful computer.  These Tandy machines are unique because they have an 80186 processor and many other differences from IBM PCs and Compatibles.  Here's an ad from the time showing Bill Gates touting the benefits of this machine...

I'm interested in this period of MS-DOS compatible machines that are NOT IBM PC compatible because I think this is a fascinating period between the end of the 8-Bit CP/M machines and the rise of the PC compatible.

Now onto the repair, as you will see these machines were in rough shape.  It turns out that many of the power supplies are no longer working.  I created the following pinout table for the power supply connector going into the motherboard:

Nominal Voltages of Tandy 2000 Power Supply
Pin            Voltage
Orange      +12 V
Grey          5V
Red            5V
Red            5V
Black         Gnd
Black         Gnd
White        -12 V
Blank

Having the pinout and nominal voltages allowed me to go through and sort out the working power supplies.  I think some recapping will be required in the future but for now I do have enough working power supplies to get 3 working computers.

Next, I tested the motherboards.  Many of the logic boards were showing no signs of life with a known good power supply.  The motherboards have 128K RAM soldered on board (4164 DRAMs), and there was a 128K RAM daughtercard that plugged in on the main board itself.  I went through and separated these and tested and got a known good 128K RAM board and cycled through the motherboards, reseating and swapping chips that were socketed and eventually getting about half of the boards working but without doing any board level repair.

The lot also included expansion cards for High Resolution Color Graphics.  These boards require 256K RAM on the motherboard, and they were needed because the only working monitors we had for this lot were the CM-1 Color Monitor.  A couple of the Graphics boards had corrupt video in the color modes, so those were set aside.

The lot also included memory expansion cards that can hold either 128K or 256K on the board.  In the base configuration these machines could have up to 512K total, although later modifications could take them higher.  Thankfully the RAM chips are socketed on these boards, so I was able to take all the RAM off and cycle the 4164 DRAMs through my RAM tester.  After this there was enough working RAM expansion boards to bring the working computers up to 512K.

Next up for repair was the keyboards.  I had one working keyboard which had gotten damaged and had a couple of the keycaps broken off it turns out that was just mechanical damage and I was able to re-assemble and glue plastic parts back together.  The next repairs required me to take the keyboards apart.  One of the symptoms I noticed was that the lights on the Shift and Num Lock keys would come on, indicating that the keyboard had power but then none of the keypresses would work (indicating maybe a bad matrix).  Other keyboards had no power on them at all (which may indicate a bad cable).  I moved the cables around and I was able to get 3 more working keyboards out of the lot.  If needed, the cables can be transplanted into a Tandy 1000 keyboard, but those are getting hard to find, too.

The next order of business was the Floppy Disk drives.  The non-hard drive machines had two drives each and surprisingly most of the drives were in good working order.  I only had to swap around a couple of the drives and I was able to clean them with a normal floppy cleaning disk.  I didn't need to take them apart and lubricate them, although I should.  I was able to prove that both the A and B drives were working by using the disk duplication program called compdupe to create copies of the MS-DOS boot disk.  This machine can be difficult to create disks for because it's a Double Sided / Quad Density drive that can hold 720K.  It works with normal DS/DD media, which I have plenty of, but I still haven't found a way to create disk images, although I understand there are instructions online.

So, this wraps up the repairs, at least for now.  My friend and I split up the machines and we are both very happy to have Tandy 2000s in our collection, here's mine...

There's still a bit of extra material coming out of the repair, hopefully enough to make another working machine.  This material been offered to another Vintage Computer collector so perhaps the repair project will continue.  In the future, I have a couple of upgrades I'd like to do on the Tandy 2000s.  I'd like to figure out how to get the Hard Drive working again on the Hard Drive machine or get it working with an MFM Emulator.  I'd also like to see if I can replace one of the physical floppy drives with a Go-Tek.  This would make it much easier to work with the odd floppy format as there is quite abit of software avaliable for the machine online.  But for now I'm glad to have the project completed and move on to to the next Vintage Computer project.

Do you have memories of the Tandy 2000?  If so please feel free to reach out in the comments or send me an email, my address is posted in my Blogger profile.