Look! It's me ole 'puter!

[jbeckva]

Seriously... this is the computer that drove the automated test station I used to work on!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-VARIAN-DATA-MACHINES-620-L-100-COMPUTER-/220737926675

What's real funny is there are actually 14 offers on it.. hmmmm...

 

[Web Police]

Seriously... this is the computer that drove the automated test station I used to work on!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-VARIAN-DATA-MACHINES-620-L-100-COMPUTER-/220737926675

What's real funny is there are actually 14 offers on it.. hmmmm...

No wonder the forum is slow to load pages.

 

[jbeckva]

Hah.. if that was the case, a page may load in .. errr.. two WEEKS maybe? A whole whoppin' 360KHz (that's K.. not M.. not G, "K") CPU with 8K of RAM (expandable to 32K with a whole other chassis that the main one here sat on).

 

[Pure_Brew]

Could you explain the pricing? Collectors?

 

[Gepetto]

If an application was built around this machine and you needed a parts machine. That is where it derives its value from. Not from the compute power perspective.

 

[Web Police]

The guy may be asking $10,000, but I bet the 14 offers were closer to $10.

 

[jbeckva]

Joe has it dead on correct. The computer supported the S3 Viking, but it is also similar to the computer that ran automated test platforms on the F14 Tomcat, which is still in use in other countries. Those countries would pay anything for spare parts out of it.

Rumor was too that a variant of it was in use for postal service processing. Probably not here in the US anymore (gawd - no wonder why they're going broke), but perhaps elsewhere.

 

[orange]

Hah.. if that was the case, a page may load in .. errr.. two WEEKS maybe? A whole whoppin' 360KHz (that's K.. not M.. not G, "K") CPU with 8K of RAM (expandable to 32K with a whole other chassis that the main one here sat on).

I'll bet a Franklin Ace could tell you that you meant to spell 'fick' faster.

 

[Gepetto]

So did you put a bid in on it Jer?

 

[jbeckva]

So did you put a bid in on it Jer?

I was tempted, but it didn't have the big nasty 3 phase-fed power supply they don't tell you that is missing..........

 

[mlucitt]

Don't laugh at those old military computers. They would run 24/7 for years without a reboot. They performed repetitive operations faster than a Intel i5-2500K processor can do today because the code was optimized for the process and not for a generic operating system or color graphics. They ran cooler, without a fan, and when all you need is to check a missile release command from the cockpit to the wing with 100% reliability, it fit the bill.

 

[jbeckva]

Don't laugh at those old military computers. They would run 24/7 for years without a reboot. They performed repetitive operations faster than a Intel i5-2500K processor can do today because the code was optimized for the process and not for a generic operating system or color graphics. They ran cooler, without a fan, and when all you need is to check a missile release command from the cockpit to the wing with 100% reliability, it fit the bill.

True. But just don't do what I remember one "motivated AT3" did one day - Take compressed shop air and blow the dust out of the card cage. That was one we had to ship off to "depot"... never worked again.

It was a good learning tool for computers in general tho. Being able to see a computer work on such a "macro scale" was priceless. Entering the actual machine code to "bootstrap" it - that kind of experience you can't get anymore.

 

[mlucitt]

Just thinking about those machine language codes brings back memories. I remember looking at the ads in Popular Science for the Altair 8080/8088 computers. My dad would ask me, "But what would you DO with it?" My answer was, "I don't know." He said when I figured out a use for it, I could buy it; I never did.

 

[Skywavebe]

Well I did figure out what to do with mine and it was a Commodore 64 and I did papers on it for college. I figured that after a while I should start to learn about these new devices called computers. Then later on I spend a larger near $4000 for a Swan PC that was a 386/25MHz. Keep in mind this was even more powerful than what they landed on the moon with.
Well as you come up through life having been in the pre-computer day existence, one comes to know about Pet computers, Commodore, TSR80 and my good old assembly language computer the PDP8- you aren't going to take that on the train with you. I think it took 55 Amps to run it in a 60 Amp service house. Well we can all marvel at what they have today but how reliable are they and what good do they do?