What's In The Retro Room and Server Room
What good is having a menagerie of classic and historically relevant computers
(plus some really kick-$#% modern hardware) if you can't brag about it? So
let's brag about it. Some of these machines are very special to me, so I've
tried to talk a little about why I have them in my house and where I got them.
(What was here
in 2016?
2015?
2014?
2012?)
Note to creeps, burglars and freaks: this house is protected by an alarm
system, hidden webcams recording off-site and my laser-sight
.40 Glock pistol (loaded with
hollow point). This is not a joke. I've chosen to show a couple of the
cameras here to let you know I'm not kidding.
If you're more curious about a particular item, feel free to
drop me an E-mail.
This panorama scrolls horizontally
- alex
Beige-box clone AMD Am5x86/133 (P75), 40MB RAM
MS-DOS 6.22
DOS games machine
Gift from a friend
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- spindler
Quadra 800, Motorola 68040 clockchipped to 40MHz, 136MB RAM
Mac OS 7.6.1, Mac OS 8.1, A/UX 3.1.1
Mac 68K workstation
Gift from a friend
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- jonathan
Power Mac 7300, 800MHz PowerPC G4/7455, 1GB RAM
OrangePC 620, K6-II @ 400MHz, 128MB RAM
Mac OS 9.1, Windows 95, Windows 98
Mac games machine, Windows games machine
University surplus
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- indy
Silicon Graphics Indy, 150MHz MIPS R4400SC, 256MB RAM
Irix 6.5.10
Newport XL24 graphics, Indy Presenter board
Low-end SGI workstation, software testing
Private purchase (case is blue bag under far table corner)
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- russell
Macintosh IIci, 50MHz Daystar '030+FPU, 64MB RAM, 8•24•GC
MacIvory III (8MW RAM)
Mac OS 7.1 and Genera 8.3
An incredibly expensive but compact Lisp Machine
Purchased from DKS, but was a piece of crap, and I had to rehabilitate it
at substantial additional expense
Total bill: about US$6000
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- dave
Amiga 4000T (QuikPak), 56MHz Motorola 68060, 2MB fast/128MB chip RAM
Hydra NIC, Picasso IV RTG
AmigaOS 3.9
WHDLoad games and AmigaOS experimentation
Private purchase
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- lucky (the new one)
IBM ThinkPad 860 Power Series, 166MHz PowerPC 603, 96MB RAM
AIX 4.1.5
Portable AIX test rig
Private purchase
The original TP800 lucky had its SCSI fuse opened by a SCSI2SD and
is being repaired
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- scottie
Tadpole-RDI Ultrabook IIi, 400MHz UltraSPARC IIi, 512MB RAM
PGX24 graphics, all three (!) hard disk slots populated
Solaris 10
pkgsrc work, eventually
Private purchase
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- ruby
Tadpole-RDI PrecisionBook, 160MHz PA-7300LC, 256MB RAM
HP/UX 11i
PA-RISC workstation
Private purchase
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- sparky
Sun Ultra-3 laptop (rebadged Tadpole Viper), 1.2GHz UltraSPARC IIIi,
2GB RAM
Solaris 10
Sterilizing crotches and starting fires, Solaris development
Private purchase
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- purplehaze
Silicon Graphics Indigo2, 175MHz MIPS R10000, 256MB RAM
Solid Impact graphics, Irix 6.5.22
Sex appeal
Private purchase
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- scubeydoo
Power Mac G4 Cube, 450MHz PowerPC G4, 512MB RAM
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Looking sexy (still waiting for a CPU upgrade and parts)
Estate sale
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- jean
BeBox, dual PowerPC 603/133 CPU, 256MB RAM
BeOS R5
BeOS workstation
Private purchase
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- reykjavik
Solbourne S3000 "DX", 33MHz KAP SPARC, 56MB RAM (SBus expansion)
Upgraded with S4100 CPU module and L2 cache
OS/MP 4.1C (SunOS 4 based)
SunOS workstation; console for ken
Private purchase
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- ken
DEC VAXStation 3100 M76 SPX, 35.71MHz KA43-A "Rigel", 32MB RAM
OpenVMS 6.2-Y2K
VMS workstation
Private purchase
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- bruiser
SAIC Galaxy 1100 (modified HP 9000/715), 80MHz PA-7100LC, 128MB RAM
NeXTSTEP 3.3 and HP/UX 10.20 with TAC-4 overlay
Portable NeXTSTEP workstation
Private purchase
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- bryce
2007 Mac mini, Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz, 2GB RAM
Mac OS X 10.6.8
Temporarily retired pending repurposing
Bought new
On top on the monitor stand: USRobotics Pilot 1000, before it was
Palm, just 'cuz
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- bil
Commodore 128DCR, 1MHz MOS 8502, 128K RAM
1571 disk drive, RR-Net Ethernet, SD2IEC
Commodore BASIC 2.0/7.0
6502 development workstation
Private purchase
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In The Back Closet
Original OLPC XO-1 (x2; bought new from Give One Get One)
akane: Macintosh Portable (needs a recap)
barkley: Blueberry iBook G3 (WaMCom regression tester)
benji: Macintosh PowerBook 1400 with G3/466 (Classilla tester)
(my first laptop, repaired hand-me-down from bro-in-law)
bigbunny: General Magic DataRover 840 (Magic Cap)
gordon: Toshiba Satellite 486 Laptop (disk image workstation)
nathan: AT&T Globalist 620 P75 (Windows 95)
peanut: IBM PCjr, in case (plays King's Quest)
rintintin: Macintosh PowerBook 540 (68LC040)
spot: Newton eMate 300 (x2)
wally: PowerBook WallStreet G3 (PDQ), 292MHz G3
(Rhapsody test machine)
fiduo: PowerBook Duo 2300c/100 (PowerPC 603e)
with mini-dock and working battery
Various portables: Atari Lynx (full kit), Atari Portfolio, Nintendo GameBoy,
NEC TurboExpress, Treamcast (portable Sega Dreamcast with LCD display),
three Commodore SX-64s
On The Corner
- woz
Apple IIgs ROM 03 in Woz Limited Edition case, Transwarp GS 7MHz 65816, 2MB RAM
GS/OS 6.0.1
Apple II games machine
School surplus
- jef
Canon Cat, 5MHz Motorola 68000, 256K RAM
Forth
Gorgeous museum piece and homage to Jef Raskin
Private purchase
- mystic
Macintosh Colour Classic, LC575 Mystic board, Motorola
68LC040 @ 33MHz, 8MB RAM,
Apple II card
System 7.1
Apple II card testing
Private purchase
- sculley
Newton MessagePad 2100, 162MHz StrongARM SA-110, 4MB RAM
NewtonOS 2.1
Newton experimentation
Private purchase
The Consoles
- stella
Atari 2600 VCS (Darth Vader), 1.19MHz 6507, 128 bytes RAM
Are you kidding?
Way too much Kaboom!
Private purchase
- sadie
Sega Dreamcast, 200MHz Hitachi SH4, 16MB RAM, Broadband Adaptor
Dreamcast OS, Windows CE, Linux, NetBSD
Way too much Crazy Taxi
Bought new
- sylvia
Sylvania GTE Intellivision Master Component, 0.895MHz GI CP1610, 1.4K RAM
Cuttlecart installed
EXEC
Way too much Shark! Shark!
Thrift shop purchase
(The original Tandyvision I had as a kid is around here somewhere too)
- bally (aka, foie zgrass, ha ha ha!)
under the TV cart
Bally Astrocade, 1.789MHz Zilog Z80, 4K RAM
Internal OS, BASIC
Way too much Pinball and Gunfight
Don't use it on the rug
Private purchase
- iris
Pedigree Burmese 2005 model year, 2-bit CPU, selective memory
Internal OS (usually in nanosleep)
Converts cat food to poop and air to purring sounds
Christmas gift when she was four months old
Worst cat ever
(August 25, 2005 - June 16, 2023. We miss her. She wasn't a good
cat, but the best ones never are.)
The Pong Machines (not shown here and not currently hooked up):
Atari Ultra Pong Doubles, Magnavox Odyssey 3000,
Commodore TV Games 2000K and 3000H
Under The Bench
These systems all share a KVM (except the laptop and KIM-1, of course).
- bruce
Power Mac G5 Quad, 2x2.5GHz PowerPC 970MP (dual-core), 16GB RAM,
Nvidia Quadro FX4500
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Mostly for Mac apps that don't work well under KVM in Linux
btw, Intel sucks
Bought new
- atomicdog
15" Titanium PowerBook G4, 867MHz PowerPC G4/7455, 1GB RAM
Mac OS 9.2.2
Portable Mac OS 9 workstation
as seen on the Leo Laporte Show!
Private purchase
- neil
Commodore KIM-1 (revision G),
1MHz MOS 6502, 1K RAM, RS-232 card
KIM monitor
as seen on the Leo Laporte Show!
My Rev A KIM-1 is the oldest item in my collection. This unit was
a weekend project that we
forgot to give back to our high school math teacher. We asked some
years later, but he never requested we return it, so it's still here.
- tim
Raptor Talos II,
8-core SMT-4 (32 threads) 2.1/3.8GHz Sforza POWER9, 32GB RAM, AMD WX7100
Fedora Linux
My daily driver and the machine this was typed on
Bought new (as configured, US$7300)
- harlan
DEC AlphaPC 164LX, 600MHz Alpha 21164, 512MB RAM
Tru64 5.1B, NetBSD v.mumble, OpenGenera 2.0/Genera 8.5
General sexiness, occasional Lisp Machine emulation
Dig the sexy case
Close-up of the custom
case stickers, which I designed off the Alpha logo
Case bought new; board and CPU were private purchase
Did I mention sex?
- bigred
Silicon Graphics Fuel, 900MHz MIPS R16000, 4GB RAM
Irix 6.5.30 with patches
V12 graphics with DCD, M-Audio sound, SCSI, DAT, DVD-ROM
High-end Irix workstation, software development
Private purchase
- bryan
Power Mac G4 MDD, 2x1.8GHz PowerPC G4/7447A, 2GB RAM
Mac OS 9.2.2 (sees only 1.5GB)
Classilla development, OS 9 workstation
Bought new
In The Project Area
- stacy
Atari STacy 2, 2MB RAM, defective 20MB Conner drive
TOS 1.04
Needs a SCSI2SD, and then I'll figure out something to do with it
Private purchase
Now dead because of a power supply accident
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- tomy
Tomy Tutor, 10.7MHz TMS 9995, 16K RAM
Tomy OS
This isn't my original Tomy Tutor I had as a child (though I do still
have it); this particular unit is a "beater" I use for experiments.
A "beater" Pyuuta, the Japanese variant, is in the hard case on
the ground.
Private purchase
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- lightman
IMSAI 8080, 2MHz 8080A, 8K RAM
Being rehabilitated, but does some basic stuff, blinks lights, etc.
Some additional option boards yet to be installed
Does not currently speak or play a nice game of chess
Private purchase
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- tramielski
Commodore PET 2001 (blue badge), 1MHz MOS 6502, 8K RAM
BASIC 2.0
Memorial to Jack Tramiel
Private purchase
Yes, he and his son Leonard autographed the manual
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The Servers and The Network
- thule
Macintosh IIci, 25MHz Motorola 68030, 128MB RAM
NetBSD v.mumble
Internal DNS, DHCP, netboot, powerfail services, AppleShare/AppleTalk
University surplus
On top: GSM terminal for SMS commands and alerts
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- uppsala
This is the system serving you this page
IBM p520 Express, POWER6 4.2GHz (dual-core with SMT), 8GB RAM, SAS 15K RAID 5
AIX 6 TL.mumble
Web, gopher, E-mail, database
Bought refurbished
because IBM won't deign to make end user sales
Yes, I've been an AIX sysadmin since 3.2.5
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- oslo
Power Mac G4, 450MHz PowerPC G4/7400, 2GB RAM
Mac OS X 10.4.11
File server,
radio repeater,
backup server (connected to FW800 RAID 5) and
environmental
monitor
Private purchase
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- Ghetto halon system, security camera,
Philips hue lighting base station,
monitor switchbox, phone autoanswer to GSM terminal and
T1 router (PowerPC-based)
On middle shelf, around oslo's RAID:
dmc-12
TimeMachines TM1000A GPS NTP time server
SiRF GSC3e/LPx SoC (ARM7TDMI)
Bought new
backbay
Apple Mac mini G4, 1.5GHz PowerPC G4 7447A, 1GB RAM
NetBSD v.mumble
Network bridge and management
Dad wasn't using it, so I gave it something to do
oulu
Cobalt RaQ 2, 250MHz MIPS RM5231, 32MB RAM
NetBSD v.mumble
NFS server
Private purchase (replaced RaQ 1 which blew its PSU)
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- stockholm
Apple Network Server
500, 200MHz PowerPC 604e, 512MB RAM
AIX 4.1.5 with patches
The original www.floodgap.com
Now emergency backup for uppsala
University surplus (but barely used when I got it)
Behind stockholm: external 100Mbps
switch, internal secured 100Mbps backbone, internal secured 10Mbps backbone
(with 10b2 segment and LocalTalk segment); DMZ router
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- homer
Hewlett-Packard HP 9000/350, 25MHz Motorola 68020/68881, 16MB RAM
HP-UX 8.0
More HP-UX therapy
Gift from a friend
This is the only room large enough for it
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- debi/sondrestrom
Alpha Micro Eagle 300 (AM-3500-E300), 40MHz Motorola 68EC030, 16MB RAM,
AM-75 console
AMOS 2.3a
Proudly powering
ampm.floodgap.com
Private purchase
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- doug
Alpha Micro Eagle 450 (AM-3500-E450), 33MHz Motorola ColdFire MCF5102,
72MB RAM, AM-65 console
AMOS 2.3a
Show piece and AMOS development
Donated gift from a nice person
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Waiting In The Server Room
You might be able to see some of these if you look carefully.
carl: Power Mac 7100, G3/400, 136MB, AppleShare file server
if thule croaks
(might be replaced by the Performa 6115CD I just got)
holmstock: Apple Network Server 700 (hardware double for
stockholm)
elroy: Hewlett-Packard C8000 (9000/785), 1.1GHz PA-8900 (dual-core),
1GB RAM, HP/UX 11i
brinton: Workgroup Server
9150, System 7.6, 80MHz PowerPC 601, 112MB RAM
jay: Amiga 3000, 25MHz 68030, 2MB chip/8MB fast RAM, AmigaOS 2.0 (with
A3070 tape drive if I ever get around to messing with Amix again)
godthaab: Macintosh Quadra 605 in LC III case, 25MHz 68040 (full),
36MB RAM, NetBSD.mumble (plus an identically configured LC475)
steve: Macintosh SE/30, System 6.0.8, 8MB RAM
andy: Macintosh IIsi, System 7.1, 36MB RAM
Mr. T: Macintosh Plus, System 6.0.8, 4MB RAM
big box o'Tandy Pocket Computers
Elektronica MK-85 (looks like a Soviet Tandy PC-4, programs like a PDP-11)
two Tomy Pyuuta Mk II systems
and a number of Tomy Pyuutas
two Commodore MAX Machines,
a VIC-20, B128
(CBM 610), PC 10-III, Plus/4 and 16
spare IBM PCjr in box
matching IBM HMC for uppsala
unnamed DEC Professional 380 with Venix/PRO (monitor on homer)
unnamed Solbourne S4100s in various states of disrepair
unnamed Alpha Micro 1000 with
sidecar AM-1001 external disk
unnamed Texas Instruments CC-40, with printer, serial and
prototype wafertape drive
unnamed Toshiba Libretto 70CT (Pentium MMX 120MHz, Windows 95)
unnamed Apple Performa 6100CD with Sonnet G3 upgrade
unnamed Power Macintosh 9600
unnamed Tandy Color Computer 3, floppy drive, multi-cart expander
unnamed Atari XEGS, 1050 floppy drive, keyboard, light gun, joysticks
Timex Sinclair 1000 and 2068
unnamed Apple III, may or may not work, may or may not have been dropped
to find out if it works
various spare workstations and computers
Elsewhere In The House
christopher: strawberry iMac G3 with Sonnet HARMONi 600MHz card,
Mac OS 9.2.2 and OS X Jaguar (in the guest/music room)
beethoven: Yamaha CX5M with SFG-05 interface
(in the guest/music room)
dana: AlphaSmart Dana, PalmOS 4.1; note taking,
what else? (in the commons)
luxo: iMac G4, 1GHz 7445 CPU, OS X Tiger;
backup workstation (in the commons)
underdog: 12" iBook G4/1.33, OS X Tiger; DVD player and
presentations
blackbird: Raptor Blackbird,
4-core SMT-4 (16-thread) POWER9, 16GB RAM, Fedora Linux; HTPC (in the
home theatre)
macbook: 11" MacBook Air (2014 i7), 8GB RAM, macOS Mojave; daily
laptop because it's the lightest and longest lasting one I have, not
because I particularly like it
spartacus: Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh with G3 L2 upgrade
(in my bedroom)
(beneath it: Apple Interactive Television Box)
In Storage
tma-01: PDP-11/44, in unknown condition, tape drives, RL02 disk drive
Drean Commodore 64 and 64C
systems
prototype Shiner HE (Apple Network Server): in bad shape, but neat looking
several Amiga 500 systems that also multiply furiously
unnamed Atari Mega ST with hard disk
two boxed Tandy Color Computer 2 systems
unnamed DEC DECmate II (PDP-8)
crapload of dummy terminals, mostly Alpha Micro, DEC and Wyse
more spare systems than I can possibly enumerate
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