Hello from eastern NC!

[Aeroraptor]

Hi all!
I've lurked on this forum for a while now, hardly posting at all if ever, though I quite like the content and atmosphere, very comfortable. I'm 16 and will be 17 in July, I'm mostly home/self schooled from the 7th grade and currently take some classes at the local community college to build up college credits to get the busywork classes out of the way. One of the classes is CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) and I'm about halfway done with that, so I'm pretty well taught when it comes to networks and routing. :)

My first ever computer experience was in 1995, when my father bought a Power Mac 6115CD, around 1997 he bought my sister and I both state surplussed Mac SEs, because he didn't want me to dabble in the 6115's system folder too much and he didn't want my sister to be jealous. After the experience of having my own computer, I was hooked. My parents went to their friends and asked around to see if they had any old clunkers in the attic, so I was given several old PCs; the one I remember best was an old tandy that had a blue floppy drive button just like a PS/2, and a blue and yellow file system and applications manager running on top of DOS.

Since then I've probably cycled through 50 or more old computers, and learned tons of things from and about them, and there is still more to go! Right now my "collection" is pretty slim because I don't like having things I don't use. Not all of it is super old, but I enjoy it anyways.

As for macs I have a Quadra 700, spent a while working on this one, it has 68MB RAM (woo hoo four 16MB SIMMs!) a 4GB HDD, an ethernet card, and a very nice external CD-ROM. This is my main old mac, it runs 7.6.1, 7.5.3, and 7.1.1pro. I also have a powerbook 145 who's adapter likes to hide from me, and an SE that needs either new RAM or a new logicboard.

I have a sparcstation10 and two sparcstation5s, one of the 5s and the 10 run netbsd and they're loads of fun to fiddle with. No keyboards or mice so I play the serial terminal game. I also have an SGI Indigo2, not really old but lots of fun. Not really computers, but my two practice routers (c2501 and 2503) sport 68k processors, and take a good three/four minutes to start up, which is lots of fun.

Unfortunately in the PC side of things it's pretty limited, a toshiba something or other laptop that needs a better hard drive, it's sounding really clunky, and I should be getting an IBM PS/2 Model 25 fairly soon.

Of course, that is all I have now. Over the years I've had things like the Hammerhead P233, a GRiD 1755, a PS/2 m30, PS/2 p70 portable, 8088 epson luggable, many 68k and early ppc macs, 486 thinkpads, etc. My main workhorse is an IBM/Lenovo R61i thinkpad. An incredibly sturdy and well built laptop, takes all the abuse I can throw at it. I also have a powermac G4 for when I have to use OSX, but this is uncommon.

Uhmmmm what else, I suppose that pretty much covers it...

I have a blog that I update as much as I can located here - http://aeroraptor.blogspot.com

Anyways, I look forward to discussing vintage computing with everyone here!

[tezza]

Gee...looks like your childhood was spent surrounded by these old systems!

Welcome to the forums.

[Erik]

Welcome aboard! I'm sure you'll enjoy the forums at least as much now that lurk mode is turned off! :)

Cheers!

[Aeroraptor]

Thanks for the welcomes! :D

tezza - Yep, even more so outside of home because I remember when my Dad still worked at the local state water quality office and when they were upgrading all the PS/2 55s and server 95s and I could do all the poking around I wanted in the "old junk" room. Unfortunately since it was all state owned none could be snagged, but it was nice anyway.

[Yzzerdd]

Welcome! Sounds like an interesting past. Full of Macintoshes at that. My childhoom years of 1994-2002 were filled with older systems all the way back to a 1984 AT&T. No macs though, I had to buy those myself.

--Ryan

[Terry Yager]

Self-schooled...I like that attitude. Never let anyone tell you you're uneducated!

--T

[Bungo Pony]

Excellent, someone who knows about old macs! I've been meaning to dabble with some old macs, but I'm a bit intimidated.

I've got a question... Do you need to have a Mac keyboard and a Mac mouse, or can you use keyboards and mice from PCs? There's an old Mac sitting at a thrift store that I was tempted to pick up, but it doesn't have a keyboard nor mouse.

[Druid6900]

The ports on Macs are not compatible with PC input devices, they aren't PS/2 they are ABD type.

[Aeroraptor]

Quite right. Macs need keyboards and mice with ADB connectors, except for those from 2001 or newer, they have ADB. They can use the same HD and DSDD floppies though, and most use standard 50pin SCSI hard drives, some lower end performa models use IDE. They also need mac/mac compatible monitors, but mac-vga adapters can be had for about $5 shipped off ebay.

I'd be happy to help you if you need a hand finding anything. :)

[Bungo Pony]

Yeah, that's what I figured. Thanks for the info!

It was tempting to pick up the Mac from the thrift store since it had a bunch of audio jacks on the back of it (and I love playing with audio), but it's gone now. That's allright, I'd rather find a complete system.

I'm aware of the monitor adapter as I was able to play with a Mac in the late '90s that my (ex)-father-in-law found in the trash. Me and him worked together to change the language from French to English, as he was the only one who spoke French :D

I'll eventually pick one up to toy with. They seem to be more common in the thrift stores these days.

[Druid6900]

Ok, well, since it's gone, there is probably no sense in mentioning that I have a few spare mouses and keyboards for the Mac, right? :)

[Bungo Pony]

It's good to know, since the place that was selling them usually seperates as much as they can. For example, you can buy a Sony Playstation One but it won't have any controllers, the power adapter, TV connection, etc. You will likely find them elsewhere in the store unless they weren't included or they've already been purchased.

It's pretty likely I'll find another Mac there.

[Unknown_K]

Well well looks whos here, hi.

[Aeroraptor]

Hey look, another 68kMLAer on VCF, woo!