[Boatanchors] Vintage Radios--LOTS

[Don Merz via Boatanchors]

Well, I once showed up at an estate that had been advertised on Craigslist. There was a large, walk-in dumpster in the driveway, about half-full, neatly packed--not just a jumble. I bought a bunch of stuff they were selling and on my way out noticed that on top of the dumpster pile was a nice wooden Guild "telephone" radio--a radio made to look like an old wall phone. I plucked that off the top of the dumpster and asked if I could go through what they had in the dumpster. But they were so proud of their neat packing job that they said no! Lord and the dump only know what was in there.

Two years ago, I walked into another one and a metal scrapper was busy dismantling a 1960-vintage 32-track (?) Potter computer tape drive in a 19 inch rack. It was connected to a 1964-vintage Univac mainframe computer the the deceased had somehow re-assembled in his house! 15 feet long, 7 feet high and 2500 pounds. He had to shore up the beams in his basement to support it!

I told the scrapper to cease and desist, paid him off and bought the machine for its scrap value--$600. It took a professional rigger with a full crew and ramps, blocks and ground-level dollies to extract the machine without destroying the house. We moved it to Hunt Valley, Maryland (suburb of Baltimore) where it is now on display at System Source. The extraction and move cost almost $5,000.

Turns out it is the only surviving example of the civilian version of the Univac U490 Real-Time System, which hosted the first computerized airline reservation systems, was featured in the 1964 World's Fair, and managed the Houston controller's screens during the Apollo program! My best rescue ever. Later found out the deceased had bought it at a 1970's Westinghouse surplus sale.....for $25! We put up a link about the machine in Wikipedia: UNIVAC 490 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  
             
UNIVAC 490 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The UNIVAC 490 was a 30-bit word core memory machine with 16K or 32K words; 4.8 microsecond cycle time made by UNIVAC. It was a commercial derivative of a...  
View on en.wikipedia.org Preview by Yahoo  
  

Now THAT is a boatanchor....

73 de N3RHT



On Wednesday, September 17, 2014 5:10 PM, Rob Atkinson <ranchorobbo at gmail.com> wrote:
 


That's the corporate mentality version of the flea market idiot who
sees hams pulling his for-sale items out of a dumpster, so next time
he takes anything no one buys, and smashes all of it with a sledge
hammer before throwing it away.

73

Rob
K5UJ


On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 11:59 AM, Mr Bill Mellema via Boatanchors
<boatanchors at mailman.qth.net> wrote:
> I worked at the Motorola Service Center in Baltimore most of the 70's. We destroyed many good two way radio's that were taken in  for trade-ins. That would have made nice rigs for repeater or simplex operations. We were required to list model and serial number on a company official document. You would lose your job if one of those radios turned up somewhere.
>
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