I Bought a Minicomputer from 1980 – Part 1

If you like this kind of stuff I highly recommend CuriousMarc on YouTube - excellent humor, guest appearances from Ken Shiriff (his silicon-die reverse engineering posts are frequently on the front page here) and other smart folks, a fleet of logic analyzers and high tech diagnostic equipment, etc. Much fun while repairing vintage computers.

The restoration on the Apollo guidance computer is a classic.

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1HwuYBuss&list=PLnw98JPyOb...

A guy I knew decided he would take a mini computer his employer was throwing out. He ran it for a while in his home and played with it but he couldn't do much more than batches of data processing. It sucked up a lot of energy and he got bored with it. He was enamored with the idea that he was running a machined that once cost about $500k but it was mostly a waste of time, energy and space. Last I heard he wanted to get rid of it. I bet he had to finally pay someone to take it away.

I was given a micro vax my employer was getting rid of. It was kinda neat but not super useful. I really couldn’t justify keeping it for the space it took.

The RI computer museum has a warehouse full of old machines. It can be a fun visit, even if they’re not in a operational state.

https://www.ricomputermuseum.org/collections-gallery/equipme...

Not my work but I came across this on Youtube. There are a ton of follow-up episodes about this process of reviving an old minicomputer, very interesting.