[ARC5] deathwatch for radio shack?

[Gary Pewitt]

About 15 years ago I was given a number of Chromemco computers, NOS, 
from an out of business store.  There were 3 Z-80 CP/M machines with 
S-100 buss, one Chromix server with an 80 meg hard drive that would have 
  cost $35,000.00 if it had sold, and a a neat little CP/M machine with 
a built in chess program that I can't recall the model.  There were a 
bunch of terminals and drives and all sorts of cables and manuals. 
Probably about 100 grand at retail prices.  I also picked up a 3B2-400 
Unix machine with 4 hard drives, two tape units, and  two floppies in an 
expansion box plus several cartons of 8" floppy programs, operating 
system discs, and cartons of blank 8" floppies.  All that and much more 
I can't remember, all gone now.  As a LAN admin for the Defence 
Logistics Agency I must have sent over 400 computers to DRMO none of 
which were defective in any way.  We upgraded constantly starting with 
286's working our way through 386's, 486's, and pentiums.  I did manage 
to give some to the Army recruiters next door but almost all went to 
DRMO where they were tossed into giant dumpsters and trashed.  What hurt 
me the most was when we replaced our Motorolla Four Phase mini computer. 
  It was built like a Swiss bank vault about 6 feet long and I had to 
tear it down and haul it to the dump.  It had a Winchester 30-30 hard 
drive with two 30" platters in a 200 lb aluminum casting.  I couldn't 
get them to donate it to anyone and I couldn't save it for myself.  I 
almost cried over that one.  All that colossal waste.

On 09/26/2014 10:49 AM, Kenneth G. Gordon wrote:
> On 26 Sep 2014 at 7:27, Mark K3MSB wrote:
>
>>
>> Brings back memories.   I used to have an RX-02 dual 8 inch floppy disk drive
>> from DEC.   Somewhere along my various job moves I gave it to a friend that
>> was into old computers.  I wonder if he has back problems now....
>
> The University of Idaho surplus recently had an old IBM hard drive for sale: it
> has a 1/4 HP motor on it and must have weighed at least 50 lbs. I was very
> tempted to buy it and save it as an historical object.
>
> The very first microcomputer I ever worked on or with was a Southwest
> Technical Products "kit". 1 K (that's K) of RAM for that thing cost $1500.00.
>
> I also remember one of the first microcomputer hard drives: it was a 5 mb
> drive that cost $4995.95. It was sold by Radio Shack as part of their Model 2
> business system.
>
> Gee...
>
> Ken W7EKB
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