[Coco] Anyone else collect other old computers/game consoles beside the Coco?

[gene heskett]

On Saturday, August 27, 2011 12:42:39 PM Joel Ewy did opine:

> On 08/27/2011 10:36 AM, gene heskett wrote:
> > On Saturday, August 27, 2011 10:59:30 AM Joel Ewy did opine:
> >> On 08/27/2011 05:16 AM, Mark Marlette wrote:
> >> ...
> >> 
> >>> I met David Graham as well at the fest but never purchased one then.
> >>> Got one at one of the CoCoFest auctions. Carl Kreider was at this
> >>> past years fest, now the AT306/WCP306 was a cool machine. We had
> >>> some great conversations on that machine, Karl is truly at talented
> >>> Engineer, hardware, software, he got it. Sigh....the memories!!!
> >> 
> >> Yeah.  It seemed like there was a real opportunity for a while for
> >> motivated people to develop OS-9 drivers for all kinds of ISA bus
> >> hardware for the AT306 / MM/1b / PT-68K.  But I guess the OS-9/68K
> >> market was too fragmented.
> >> 
> >> JCE
> > 
> > I don't think that was it at all Joel.  The only place to get a legal
> > copy of os9-68k was from Prof. Digby Tarvan, whom I have had
> > correspondence with just in the last 3 or 4 years.  He said he lost
> > his shirt on it at $600+ a copy, and did not really push it since it
> > had no gui at all.  I had at one point, considered putting it on my
> > amiga, but with no gui, and no support for the 68040 card and its 64
> > megs of dram, that was a deal killer for me.
> 
> That may have been true for the Amiga port, but IMS -> Blackhawk
> Enterprises had a license for the MM/1 that must have been significantly
> less per copy, since I don't think I paid more than $250-$300 for my
> MM/1 motherboard, which included OS-9, and all the printed manuals --
> though memory of the dollar amounts is starting to fade.
> 
> David Graham reasoned that since they had a license for OS-9 for the
> MM/1, and nowhere was it spelled out just exactly what comprised an
> MM/1, he could sell the AT306 as the MM/1b, and the license would hold
> for that as well.  I don't remember what those were going for at the
> time, but I bet you could have gotten the whole ball of wax for less
> than what you would have paid for Amiga OS-9.
 
At the time I purchased my dual trace, 100mhz Hitachi oscilloscope, I was 
offered at AT306 board and all the goodies he had to go with it, which did 
not IIRC include a copy of os9-68k, for an extra big buck.  I passed, but 
would have taken it if os9 had come with it.  That scope has turned into a 
quite valuable to me troubleshooting tool and I still have it and use it 
regularly after nearly 25 years.

I have not been without a scope at my place of employment since 1951, 60 
years ago.  That one was a 5mhz Hickok and was hands down the most common 
tool used to fix all those Zenith tv's the dealers couldn't fix, and I have 
insisted on having one anyplace I have been employed since. I have been in 
hog heaven since DC coupling and level triggering were added by Tek just a 
few years after the Hickok.  Because of that, I built, then massively 
improved, a Heathkit OP-1 in about '70, but lost it in a move in '77.

> > The bottom line I think was that Microware saw it as a controller type
> > of program and never put any more effort into it that it took to make
> > it run traffic lights.  Zero interest in attempting to compete with
> > amigados was what killed os9-68k....
> 
> True.  But the great thing about OS-9 was its modularity, and the fact
> that (in theory, anyway) it should have been relatively easy for third
> party developers to come up with drivers for existing commodity ISA bus
> hardware.  But for most of them to put forth the effort they would have
> needed to see a sufficiently large number of potential customers.  OS-9
> drivers for Zorro bus expansion boards on the Amiga would be a whole
> other deal.  But didn't the A2000 have a couple ISA slots?

Only those that also had a 'bridgeboard' IIRC.

> If I recall
> correctly, there were only ever a few ISA devices supported under
> AmigaOS, like some modems, perhaps.  Maybe a few other things could be
> used under DOS running on a Bridgeboard.  There again, memory is fuzzy.

And mine could be said to be fading too unforch.
 
> > ...
> > 
> > As for DW on a 68k board, I have not checked, but since I expect the
> > m68k versions of linux, uclib equipt because most of those machines
> > do not have a memory manager chip at all, might be able to build
> > java, at which point DW4 written in java might accidentally work.  I
> > think it is something that should be investigated, and will if and
> > when I can get an external PSU cobbled up for the A4k/060 machine I
> > brought home from the tv station a year ago.
> 
> Ah, I was talking about a DW client, not the server part.  With SCSI
> hard drives gradually dropping off the face of the earth, it would be
> nice to have a different mass storage option for the OS-9/68K machines,
> as well as some network access.  As for Linux/m68k, I know there is/was
> a version of uCLinux for 68K that needed no MMU, but I would be a little
> surprised if there is a working Java VM for that.  Debian/m68k, which I
> have installed on archaic Macs, just for the perverse thrill, never had
> working Java, that I can recall.

I had an early, m68k debian 3.0 IIRC, installed on the 2000, for about 8 
hours.  On that limited hardware, since it didn't know about the 68040 card 
and its 64 megs of dram, was seemingly unstable as most any memory starved 
os might be, and took something like 15 minutes to boot to a login prompt.  
The install obviously didn't last long.

> But the m68k architecture has been
> dropped as an official Debian port, and from what I can understand of
> the talk on the mail list, the m68k guys are struggling to modernize the
> kernel and the toolchain, and get build machines running (many of which
> have switched to emulation with ARANYM, because it's faster, and the
> virtual hardware is significantly easier to maintain).  Now, if you
> could get your A4k/060 running Debian and get Java running, I'm sure the
> Debian guys would applaud, though there are probably higher priority
> packages.

Absolutely.  There is a certain 'cachete', a BWG factor to being the only 
one to make it work, but that also means if it doesn't work, there likely 
is no one who can help.  Critical mass problem at its finest.
> 
> > Maybe this winter when the garage workshop has been commandeered
> > by Dee&  the Toyota.  Right now its mid-project, making
> > seating/storage benches to go around a neighbors nearly 10 foot long
> > dining room table. ;-)
> 
> But first you need to uncover the lathe and stick a tuit in, right?  :-)

No, the milling machine, and a 1.5" wide stick of 1/16 alu bar will do 
nicely.  I have all that, but haven't managed to find any artwork I can 
feed through potrace in order to actually carve them.  Then of course my 
2500 rpm spindle is about 10x too slow to do it in a reasonable amount of 
runtime.  I added an HF die grinder to it this spring, and when carving the 
mount, made it such that I could bring this die grinder closer to the main 
spindle, and inline with it on the Y axis, so I would probably move it from 
its current position about 4" in front of the Y and 8" left on the X, where 
I can hang a shop jig that holds a stick of wood hanging downward over the 
left front side of the xy table.  I used it to carve all the tenons for the 
joinery in this current furniture project, nearly 200 of them.  The machine 
can do it in about 1:30 per end of the stick clamped in the jig.  I also 
made a vice to hold the matching pieces and dig the matching mortises but 
that was done under protest as the cutter was buried in its own cuttings, 
which dulled the carbide quicker, and also tended to heat it, enough that I 
now have some dull, straw yellow, $22/copy solid carbide tooling in the 
used carbide bucket.

But it got the job done with enough air compressor time, and I am staining 
the panels that will fit in the box frames for the 7nth of the 8 units I 
need to make right now.  Framing and joinery is all done, but finishing 
takes time, about 4 days at 3 or 4 coats a day to seal the panels, then 
gradually bring to color to match the pecan they wanted, and keep the 
finish smooth enough a fly landing on it will skid & fall on his butt.  ;-)
Yeah I know, picky picky.  This is all hand rubbed.  I am using Sam 
Maloof's finish recipe, but adding about 20% Gunstock stain to it for color 
buildup after the first coat seals up what two coats of about 1 lb de-waxed 
shellac misses.  The wood is poplar, and has hugely varying degrees of 
porosity, and if the stain hits a porous part, the poplar turns red very 
quickly.  So all the color buildup must be in the later coats of finish, 
but clear enough to let the grain pattern show well.  A bit of a balancing 
act...

Humm, I think I'm OT now.  The way too many hobbies syndrome. ;)

> JCE
> 
> > Cheers, gene
> 
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Cheers, gene
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