Which parts do I need for a computer museum?

[Maheriano]

I've always wanted to display computers through the ages with all their relative hardware and today my work is throwing out a goldmine of old computer parts. I just found a monitor that is pre-VGA, a one-port switch, 8 inch floppies and an 8 meg stick of RAM.

So to start with Windows 3.1 and go up to Windows 98 or so, can you outline all the hardware I would need to steal from the pile to get my museum going?

[Yvan300]

Well the 10 GB hard drive, the 400mhz processor, the 1mb video card and maybe the mother board with only one PCI socet. Take all the parts that really show how computers used to suck 15 years ago:)

[bostonaholic]

What about an old dial-up modem? V.90/V.92 maybe?

[koleoptero]

You also need a Commodore64 with the tape drive. :popcorn:

[Tristam Green]

Man up and get some old computer gear. Windows 3.1 was still in use in 1994, and even Average Joes were able to purchase machines well before that.

Get a Commodore 64, an Intel 8080, an Apple Lisa (tbh, an Apple II will suffice), an acoustic coupler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler), and that's just a start.

[Ra-Hoor-Khuit]

Hollerith punch-cards.

OH! Aaaand it's cohort in crime: the CRPI (Card Reader, Punch, Interpreter).

Technological work's of Satan himself? Yes, I believe so...

[Maheriano]

Well the 10 GB hard drive, the 400mhz processor, the 1mb video card and maybe the mother board with only one PCI socet. Take all the parts that really show how computers used to suck 15 years ago:)
I believe this is more Windows 98, I'm looking to go back to Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 as well. I want to avoid mistakes like putting USB ports on a Windows 95 machine.


What about an old dial-up modem? V.90/V.92 maybe?
That's there, I'll get one, thanks!


You also need a Commodore64 with the tape drive. :popcorn:
I still have my Commodore64 so that's covered. I'm going from 3.1 forward.

I still have all the 3.1 install disks and also a 200 meg hard drive at my parents' place so I can use that. I guess I would need a 2 meg stick of RAM and one of those 2 bit video cards, what were they called? Began with an S. What else do I need?

[armandh]

that first intel inside 4 bit IC [TI?] calculator

and a marchant if you can find it
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28153783@N08/3255161066/

http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/time.htm
.

[LowSky]

Try to find a mint condition NIB copy of DOS and/or Windows

[blur xc]

Man, how I wish I still had my Amiga 500....


I thought that thing was screaming fast...

BM

[MikeTheC]

The older and more obscure, the better, IMHO.

Speaking of old and obscure, here's a photo I found of the first modem I ever owned:

http://i18.ebayimg.com/04/i/001/30/46/c44c_1.JPG

It's an Everex EMAC MD2400. Believe it or not it has a speakerphone built into it, and while the photo may not make it seem like it, that thing on my desk looked like the deck of an aircraft carrier.

I have *very* fond memories of that modem.

[Chilli Bob]

8 inch floppy?? They predate the PC, don't they. I've never seen on in real life.

You need some noisy dot matrix printers (preferably a colour 24-pin one), a nice CGA card, a 10MB Hard Drive, a PC with NO hard Drive, one of those "Hard Cards" a hard drive mounted on an ISA card that required you to load drivers via a Dos Boot Disk. Get as many software boxes as you can. Get FreeDos and run ols softwarfe like the DOS versions of Lotus 1-2-3, Wordstar, X-Tree Gold, the Original Corel Draw etc etc. An acoustic coupler is a must. One of those early CD-Roms that were in a huge case and plugged into your RS232 port.

Ahhh... the memories...

[Sealbhach]

A friend of mine recently accquired an Olivetti M15 (http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Efjkraan/comp/m15/index.html). He contacted the UK National Museum of Computing based in Bletchley Park (where Turing worked on the Enigma code) and they said "yes please, we want it".

.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I was curious after reading the post by the OP so I looked in my computer junk room.

I found some old 5 1/4" disks. A few games, "After Burner", "Out Run", "Alien Syndrome", "Thunder Blade", and "Shinobi". These are DOS games. Compatible with IBM PC/Tandy, 640k memory, and CGA, EGA, or VGA video cards.

I also found a 240 baud dial up modem. I know some people that can type text faster than that!

I really need to clean that room. :lolflag:

[MaxIBoy]

Get a computer with one of these: https://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/g/grindcrank.html

[Maheriano]

8 inch floppy?? They predate the PC, don't they. I've never seen on in real life.
I'm holding a box of Dysan 8 inch floppies with hand written dates on them of 1988 and 1989. They store 44 kilobytes each and are single sided, double density.

I just hooked up the dot matrix printer to an enormous power bar (more like a power table) and plugged it into the wall for fun. It moved the tape around but between the SET, ROW, COLUMN and FUNCTION buttons on the front, I can't figure out how to get it to do any sort of test print. It keeps complaining there's no paper in it even though I filtered some loose leaf through it.

And at the end of the day yesterday I got handed a 1.2 megapixel Kodak camera with docking station and 512 meg flash card. It was accompanied by a laptop PCI ethernet card which is WIRED....yes, WIRED! You put this thin in the card port in your laptop, then plug an ethernet cable into it. And he gave me an internal wireless B card for a laptop.

It's all going home with me tonight to play with the weekend.

[Sealbhach]

What you absolutely must have is an Altair 8800

http://www.geocities.com/compcloset/MITS_Altair_8800_FullView.jpg


There seems to be lots of them on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ALTAIR-8800-COMPUTER-NR_W0QQitemZ310154376779QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_Defa ultDomain_0?hash=item4836a4364b&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1240|293%3A1| 294%3A50

[Chilli Bob]

It was accompanied by a laptop PCI ethernet card which is WIRED....yes, WIRED! You put this thin in the card port in your laptop, then plug an ethernet cable into it. And he gave me an internal wireless B card for a laptop.

At work there is an ancient Toshiba laptop with one of those, I still use it with Puppy for diagnostics when the network goes down. Puppy seems to just work where the new Windows laptops just give up.

Something else for the museum--- an early digital camera where the photos are stored on a 1.4MB floppy disk. I used one of those way back in university to photograph plant growth experiments. I can't remember how many photos fitted on each floppy, but they were really low resolution, and the colours were way off, the plants looked blue, not green.

[Bungo Pony]

I kid you not, I own a punched tape reader. It's sitting in my garage.

My workplace was going to throw it out when they were doing some house cleaning. I was the one who was given the task to lift it into the dumpster. I didn't have the heart to do it, so I put it in my truck and took it home.

I honestly don't know what to do with it - keep it or sell it. I'm not very inclined to build a crate to ship it. However, I'll offer it up for free for anybody who wants to come pick it up.

[Bungo Pony]

I just hooked up the dot matrix printer to an enormous power bar (more like a power table) and plugged it into the wall for fun. It moved the tape around but between the SET, ROW, COLUMN and FUNCTION buttons on the front, I can't figure out how to get it to do any sort of test print. It keeps complaining there's no paper in it even though I filtered some loose leaf through it.

Do you have it set for tractor feed, or friction feed? There should be a switch to change between the two.

[linuxguymarshall]

I am suprised noone has mention the Apple II