Old Grey Geek From Albany NY

[Valmet]

Hi all,
Old timer here who started using pc's back in 1981. From a CoCo to a Trash 80 Model 4, Apricot, Northgate, Packard Bell, Epson, Dell, HP. I remember using the basic c load command, have used 180K 5 1/4" floppy disks and wondered how in the world I would ever use up all of that room, soldered my way through a 32k ram upgrade to a 64k ram bank switching scheme that never worked - aggghhh!

Now I sit with Gigahertz and Terabytes. MIPS have been replaced with TIPS (well, maybe not - but close to it). And I look in wonder at the stuff in this candy store! All of you sound enthusiastic and fresh and, well, Geeky!

Love the enthusiasm! Happy to be aboard with my recent auction find of 120 IBM model M's,F's, SSK,00's, and other off brand collectibles. All are dirty and dusty and will keep me busy cleaning for quite awhile. Have succeeded in getting 10 of them up and running so far

Looking forward to this board and any friendships garnered.

[depletedvespene]

Hi, cool to have you he... 120 Model F/Ḿ keyboards?!?!?! Let's see some pictures!

[Rob27shred]

Welcome, welcome man! Wow 120 Model M/Fs!? What horde! Like depletedvespene pics if you get a chance please. Anyways hope to see you around the community, there are a few of us old timers out there (well I'm not as old school as you, but have been around to see most of those PCs!)!

[Maledicted]

Welcome to Geekhack, Valmet.

I believe we've already conversed about about converting one of those beauties. Where the heck did you find 120 of them in an auction? How much did it set you back? What variants did you get? Those pictures are making my mouth water.

Does your username have anything to do with a certain Finnish rifle?

[Valmet]

Hi Maledicted,
Lucked into it - I think the owner was a collector that kept them in a barn cause they're very dirty and dusty. Some have light mold on them (have them separated - will hit them with UVC and ozone before cleaning). 122 all total, with 77 IBM's and the rest old Data General, Wyse,Microsoft,Compac,Telex, BTC, etc.

Have gone through and cleaned up around 10 of the IBM's so far - all are working and not too bad inside at all (just dust and old cheese curls lol). And they clean up nicely.

Not going to say publicly what the final price was- that would rub it in even more. But I was real quick loading up the keyboards and 30 brand new in box IBM infoprint printer trays and getting the hell out of there with my well under a grand purchase before someone wised up.

And yes to the Finnish rifle - an M62/s with cheese grater and tube. Course, I can't legally own it here thanks to Mario, so I have to go to a relatives house in Vermont to enjoy it along with the Stag 8L.
Do you foray into the second amendment zone?

Thanks again for the converter help!

[jamster]

And with that opening post, you have probably won the envy of a huge percentage of existing users

Welcome! If you're old and grey, I'm not sure what that makes us members who can (barely) remember the days of minicomputer terminals that wrote output direct to dot matrix printers rather than LCDs. I remember playing some rogue analogue on those when waiting for my parents to get off work. Every single move of the cursor printed out a new map.

[Valmet]

Fun times, those. That's why I liked "Halt and Catch Fire". Brought back a lot of wonder and excitement from my fun work times times (late 70's - early 80's. Wish I still had all of the PCMag, Computer Shopper, PC World and other mags my house was full of (sh#t - is that a dangling participle?)

Not quite grey enough for experiences with straight printing to DMP, so I bow my head and lower my sword to you. Although, I do remember visiting the corporate office in 89' and watching in wonder at a high speed some kind of monstrous printer spit out forms faster then you could read. IBM 3090 "big iron" shop.

I'm actually pondering whether or not I should share the wealth  and sell the keyboards uncleaned at a discount on this board (actually cleaning is a royal pain in the arse and is getting old after doing 10 of them).

I'll talk to the admin on how this could be set up.

[Maledicted]

Hi Maledicted,
Lucked into it - I think the owner was a collector that kept them in a barn cause they're very dirty and dusty. Some have light mold on them (have them separated - will hit them with UVC and ozone before cleaning). 122 all total, with 77 IBM's and the rest old Data General, Wyse,Microsoft,Compac,Telex, BTC, etc.

Have gone through and cleaned up around 10 of the IBM's so far - all are working and not too bad inside at all (just dust and old cheese curls lol). And they clean up nicely.

Not going to say publicly what the final price was- that would rub it in even more. But I was real quick loading up the keyboards and 30 brand new in box IBM infoprint printer trays and getting the hell out of there with my well under a grand purchase before someone wised up.

And yes to the Finnish rifle - an M62/s with cheese grater and tube. Course, I can't legally own it here thanks to Mario, so I have to go to a relatives house in Vermont to enjoy it along with the Stag 8L.
Do you foray into the second amendment zone?

Thanks again for the converter help!

Wow. that's some fantastic luck. nice score.  I can't say I have ever really heard of a keyboard barn find. lol

You know how old IBM boards go, I'm pretty sure the Fs in particular will keep on trucking until rust literally compromises the electrical conductivity of the pins.

That's unfortunate to hear about that beauty, and the unconstitutional laws enacted in your state. They're quite rare and valuable in the states, are they not? I live in Wisconsin, so we've got very little that presses beyond the limits of federal law in that regard. I imagine you already know, and are just looking for confirmation, when you ask whether or not someone is into firearms when they immediately recognized the name Valmet. I most certainly do. Maybe we can talk about it over private messages, though I have been thinking about an off topic thread as well.

[depletedvespene]

…
Not going to say publicly what the final price was- that would rub it in even more. But I was real quick loading up the keyboards and 30 brand new in box IBM infoprint printer trays and getting the hell out of there with my well under a grand purchase before someone wised up.

ENVY!!!!

(of the healthy kind)

[depletedvespene]

Fun times, those. That's why I liked "Halt and Catch Fire". Brought back a lot of wonder and excitement from my fun work times times (late 70's - early 80's. Wish I still had all of the PCMag, Computer Shopper, PC World and other mags my house was full of (sh#t - is that a dangling participle?)

Not quite grey enough for experiences with straight printing to DMP, so I bow my head and lower my sword to you. Although, I do remember visiting the corporate office in 89' and watching in wonder at a high speed some kind of monstrous printer spit out forms faster then you could read. IBM 3090 "big iron" shop.

I'm actually pondering whether or not I should share the wealth  and sell the keyboards uncleaned at a discount on this board (actually cleaning is a royal pain in the arse and is getting old after doing 10 of them).

I'll talk to the admin on how this could be set up.

That is SERIOUSLY going to depend on which exact models you actually have. I would suspect most are regular Model M keyboards (common and plentiful), but... what if they're all Unsavers? I would NOT feel tired after cleaning ten or twenty of those!!!

[depletedvespene]

I post joke about Unsavers. Come back to the thread, Valment has edited his initial post with pictures of an Unsaver.

(Envious) Jaw dropped.