[PLUG-TALK] Retro computing

[Russell Senior]

I mentioned at the Advanced Topics talk that I had an old computer, my
first, actually, an AT&T PC6300 purchased in 1986, with a 20MB
hardcard, and that the hardcard had a stiction problem.  I dug it out
of the attic tonight and plugged it in for the first time in, oh,
close to 20 years.  Damn if it didn't boot up!  And yes, the harddisk
is still a little balky, but a few power cycles and a warm reset or
two, and it seems to run fine.  There is an old thin-net ethernet card
inside, but I'm not sure that ever worked.  I might need to copy stuff
off over serial (I have ProComm Plus installed), or maybe on
double-density (360KB, iirc) floppy disks.

In case the harddisk fails, I just ordered parts for one of these:

  https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/XT-CF-lite_rev.2

... which if I'm lucky will let me join the 21st century with
non-spinning rust storage (on a 16-bit 8086!)  I'll be able to run all
my old turbo pascal programs at their intended speed.

What a hoot!


-- 
Russell Senior
russell at personaltelco.net