[golfbravobravo]

I mostly worked with home computers from the early days of the Commodore Vic 20 that was replaced by the C64. Early on there were TRS 80's etc. IBM XT's, AT's (? it's been a while)

IBM and Apple did not give out schematics and oftentimes made monitors difficult to get into. One IBM manual I recall said the way you fix the monitor is take it off the desk and put another in its place. I knew right away there was money to be made. It was not hard to bill out $10k a week just repairing and refurbishing the monitors. Since the old CRT's contained lead, a lot of companies were happy for folks to haul away defective monitors and not have the liability themselves. Companies like Sony were making high end video and computer monitors that always brought big bucks. They made a 26" wide screen CRT monitor that sold for $2500 new, the local University would have skids of them that could be had for $200 per pallet and many worked. Refurbished I could get $800 each without trying very hard. Electronics changes and devices now become throw away items or quickly outdated but I made a good living doing this for about 12 years.

A really good book about the early computers, video games, movies and music of the 80's is Ready Player One, the book, not so much the movie. The Audible version is read by Wil Wheaton.

I started with the original Commodore PET, and then through one of those odd quirks ended up working for Tandy in the UK - supposedly as a temporary fill in job. As I know how to turn on a TRS-80 (seriously!) I was the 'expert'. It happened that I also sold a lot of them and ended up within a few months running (via stores in Bury and opening one in Burnley) the Manchester Computer Centre (yes, Centre) in Manchester. We received the first Winchester drives (on a Model 16 running Xenix (Tandy was then the second largest shipper (after AT&T) of UNIX-style systems). The drive was 5 MEGAbytes, and cost UK#9,999!

We seemed to have more time in those days, one of our entertainments was to wrote a small program that appeard to format each sector and track in turn when the system was turned on. Many delights from that one! That was really the geneis of my foray into computers, not the systems analysis course that I had panned. Turned out that I ended up at ICL (where I would have done the systems analysis training) a few years later when they formed their UNIX systems division. Happy days. Which brings me to my point - yes there is sometimes a point - one of the best descriptions of working in IT around that time is Tracy Kidder's 'Sould of a new Machine'. It reflects very well the project we ran in the mid-80s to build a SPARC-based mid-range running SVR4 (the port of which was done by ICL in Bracknell, not, as is always assumed, by Sun).

For anyone who is near the computer museums in Mountain View or Bletchley (a short commeute between them ), I cannot over stress how great they are - for me it's like 'All Our Yesterdays'.

Cheers

 

[Ableza]

I used to really be into DIY and have in fact designed quite a few DIY kit projects for people - loudspeakers mostly, as deigning passive Xovers has been my thing in audio since 1973. I use a DIY amplifier of my own design (with a PassDIY preamp) in my office and my HT loudspeaker system is all my own DIY design. Please don't any one take offense at this but in my not so humble opinion there is DIY and then there is kit building. Building a kit designed by someone else is a type of DIY but really it's about assembly skills. Nothing wrong with that, and it can be fun, but it's really not the same as doing it yourself from scratch. Designing something from the grounds up because you have an idea or you want to create your version of someone else's idea is what I consider genuine DIY.

I'm all for people slinging soldering irons and stuffing PCBs and creating something from a box of parts, especially as it can be an important part of the learning process. But unless you design it yourself it's really just sort of a paint-by-numbers exercise, isn't it?

Here's a photo of one of my HT DIY open-baffle mains. Just because I like it.

 

[winders]

I used to really be into DIY and have in fact designed quite a few DIY kit projects for people - loudspeakers mostly, as deigning passive Xovers has been my thing in audio since 1973. I use a DIY amplifier of my own design (with a PassDIY preamp) in my office and my HT loudspeaker system is all my own DIY design. Please don't any one take offense at this but in my not so humble opinion there is DIY and then there is kit building. Building a kit designed by someone else is a type of DIY but really it's about assembly skills. Nothing wrong with that, and it can be fun, but it's really not the same as doing it yourself from scratch. Designing something from the grounds up because you have an idea or you want to create your version of someone else's idea is what I consider genuine DIY.

I'm all for people slinging soldering irons and stuffing PCBs and creating something from a box of parts, especially as it can be an important part of the learning process. But unless you design it yourself it's really just sort of a paint-by-numbers exercise, isn't it?

Here's a photo of one of my HT DIY open-baffle mains. Just because I like it.

Elitism at its best......

I guess if you built your own home from plans from an architect that would not count as "DIY"....jeez.

 

[Ableza]

Someone told me I've been accused of "elitism" by some jerk on my ignore list. You bet I consider myself elite. And I've damn well earned the right to do so. How about you?

 

[artur9]

I liked the paint-by-numbers analogy. My Elvis cried!

Spoiler

not really, I don't have any

 

[Ableza]

I liked the paint-by-numbers analogy. My Elvis cried!

Spoiler

not really, I don't have any

If it's on velvet it has the means to dry its own tears!

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

Building a kit designed by someone else is a type of DIY but really it's about assembly skills. Nothing wrong with that, and it can be fun, but it's really not the same as doing it yourself from scratch. Designing something from the grounds up because you have an idea or you want to create your version of someone else's idea is what I consider genuine DIY.

Well there's D(o) It Yourself and D(esign) It Yourself.

 

[riffrafff]

Early on there were TRS 80's etc. IBM XT's, AT's (? it's been a while)

Cool. I used to sell TRS-80s during my college years. Complete with cassette tape players as storage.

 

[Ableza]

Well there's D(o) It Yourself and D(esign) It Yourself.

And like I said, D(o) can be fun and a very valuable exercise.

 

[Paladin79]

Elitism at its best......

I guess if you built your own home from plans from an architect that would not count as "DIY"....jeez.[/QUOTE

I have the utmost admiration for anyone who takes time to take the time to use their hands to make anything, period. Everyone has to start somewhere and I make an effort to help where I can, I started in electronics in the early seventies and I still learn on a daily basis. I do believe Jason started the discussion of DIY and listed many such companies who support it. The rest is just semantics. I believe Jason mentioned the Coaster is for skilled builders. For someone to make it their first project and get it going took some effort.

 

[Paladin79]

Cool. I used to sell TRS-80s during my college years. Complete with cassette tape players as storage.

Fun times, my Vic 20 had cassette tapes and probably launched my son's career in computer science. Through high school and college I always made sure he had newer equipment than I bought for myself. I was mainly using computers for data storage and test devices. Somewhere I still have an old Atari system.

 

[riffrafff]

Fun times, my Vic 20 had cassette tapes and probably launched my son's career in computer science. Through high school and college I always made sure he had newer equipment than I bought for myself. I was mainly using computers for data storage and test devices. Somewhere I still have an old Atari system.

I still have my Amiga A500, A1000, and A2500 (sold the A2000).

And, I remembered I had this in my "save for later" youtube queue:



Figured it would apropos at this time.

 

[Ripper2860]

I used to sell TI 99/4A with cassette or the new-fangled single-sided floppy drive. IBM PCjr, PC, XT, AT, and finally the hated PS/2. Throw in the Compaq PC, Portable, SystemPro servers, AT&T 6300, and Alex PC's -- just to name a few. Those were days when dot matrix, plotters, and Bernoulli disk drives ruled the roost.

Networking consisted of Corvus Omninet, Novell Netware 1.0, and the new kid on the block, IBM PC Network (pre Lan Manager). We used to run an entire retail system on an Apple II with an 80 column mono screen, 16K of RAM, 2 floppy drives, and a 300 baud modem. Talk about tight code writing!! An entire freakin' retail sales and inventory management system that ran on a 16kb computer!!!

I miss those days. Computers have become throw-away commodities today.

 

[riffrafff]

Computers have become throw-away commodities today.

Until about two years ago, I worked as a contractor in enterprise IT, so this youtube vid is quite familiar. Towards the end he speaks about cost; he has a cart with five decomm'd servers on it, worth more than $100K when new. Now, 5-7 years later, maybe worth $2K.

 

[johnjen]

Very interesting. I'd like to know more. I wish I knew enough to design or modify a design like that 45 amp.

If I could afford a Yggy (or even a Ragnarok); I don't think I could bring myself to modifying it.

This design started out as a very simple circuit.
And what we did was to 'embellish' the power supply to extend the power bandwidth, which also necessitated a bit of added complexity to the analog circuitry.
Which in turn made the layout MUCH bigger with plenty of BIG iiiiiirrrrrrnnnnn.

JJ
ps and my tag line is "I've never met a warranty I haven't violated".
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha