Originally Posted by
crowz
My oldest computer is an altair (original home computer available).
I have fully functional trs 80 model 1's, 2's, 3's and 4's.
The model 2 aka Model II has 4 8inch floppy drives a daisywheel printer. My first hard drive was 5mb.
All of NCR's home/small business machines.
hp kit machines (those were fun back in the day)
Tons of pocket computers from the early 80's. Glorified calculators by todays standards but they do run basic at least.
Im lucky enough to be old enough that I have had and had access to computers since the beginning of it all home computer wise. Pretty decent museum worth of them even today. I get kids today wanting me to "teach" them but I cant explain to them why they cant learn all I did because everything was new as it came out back then. The most they can hope for now is just to learn whats out now. Today's techs know how to fix stuff but they dont know how any of it actually works
James, the older floppy drives all used a drive belt. Have you been able to rat hole some replacement belts for the various drives you have? It is a good thing all the other memory was either chip based (even the HDD's are now 'chip based') or regulated with integrated speed controllers to vary the disk speed in relation to its head(s). BTW, my earliest is a Commodore C128 with the '128K RAM expansion module' including a custom chip configuration manually inserted into the board sockets, a 5 1/4 (or was that a 5 1/2) floppy drive, Star NL-10 dot matrix printer, and of course the Commodore 17" color monitor. All books and such (including the Commodore wired mouse (no such thing as a wireless mouse in the mid 80's). All 'sealed' in an old Gateway 2000 box, possibly waiting to be donated to a museum someday.
If you need a belt or two, I have saved (somewhere) a website that has many different size belts for just about everything (I think they 'make' custom belts as well but not positive). Let me know and I'll look for the site.
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