Re: 286 + below and MFM/ST506

Grant Stockly wrote:

> I'm interested in old computer hardware. I'd like to put together an old
> system, 286 and below. 8088 and 8086 would be fine.

Wow -- I thought I was the only one. :) I've still got a Compaq Deskpro
8088, 640K RAM, 10G Winchester drive, 5 1/4 360K floppy. It's got
Compaq DOS 3.3 on it and was running at last power-up (perhaps a year
ago).

What OS are you going to run on it? I was very interested in ELKS
(http://elks.sourceforge.net/), but it looks like Alan Cox and friends
haven't worked on it since 2003. 0.1.2 booted fine on my Deskpro.
There's also a German Contiki port for x86 at
http://www.mbernstein.de/contiki/ , but I've never tried it.

> I'd also like any old ST506, sometimes called MFM, drives/controllers that
> someone doesn't want.

The Compaq's got one; if you need a system to swap parts to see what's
working, I could hire someone to help me forklift it into my car and
bring it on a Friday. :)

> Anyone have any leads? Someone must have held on to some old stuff to keep
> it out of the crusher!

Your best bet may be to hit the folks who still have them in their
closets and haven't really caught on to just how antiquated they
are -- casual users. You might hit up the Anchorage Freecycle and/or
Craigslist areas -- you'll get a cross-section of people that way,
which might improve your odds.

Sorry I don't have any other leads for you. Let me/us know what you
find out.

-royce

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Royce D. Williams                                  - IP Engineering, ACS
personal: [first]@alaska.net                    - PGP: 3FC087DB/1776A531
work: [first.last]@acsalaska.net           - http://www.tycho.org/royce/
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