As someone who has engaged in a vicious ebay bidding war to win a TAM and occasionally boots up her Color Classic just to watch toasters fly, I can totally sympathize.
I've still got my "Black Mac" MacTV on my desk to catch the local broadcast channels on. I don't think Apple ever offered rabbit ear antennas as an accessory, though... had to go to Radio Shack for those.
About Micro Channel Architecture: IBM wasn't stupid to move to a faster backplane. They were stupid to somehow arrange things such that the rest of the industry couldn't follow their lead, unlike when the PCI bus came out a few years later.
I used to own an IBM MCA system with a 386SX CPU, loaded with Windows 3.1. The backplane was so fast on disk and video card access that in spite of the sucky CPU, the box outperformed most of the early 486 boxes (which still ran a lot of functions through the ISA bus). It was more than good enough for the engineering work I took home back then - although present-day machines make it look like a keyboard controller chip...
Remember the EISA bus, like ISA but with staggered gold fingers to double the bus width?
"You know," my old freshman year college roommate said as we watched Kelly LeBrock step out of a haze of smoke and two teenaged boys' fantasies, "I'm kind of doubting the effacacy of a home computer with a flashing red light on the 'ENTER' key, when it's employed in making a hot woman."
I have three NeXT stations in my attic. There's a good chance they no longer work, but I should drag them out and see, and sell them to someone who might make better use. Two cubes and one slab, I think one might be color too, but I'm not sure.
LOVE it! Never did play with a NEXT, but did fantasize about it...
ReplyDeleteI've still got my "Black Mac" MacTV on my desk to catch the local broadcast channels on. I don't think Apple ever offered rabbit ear antennas as an accessory, though... had to go to Radio Shack for those.
ReplyDeleteYou should try playing with obscure PS/2 machines and trying to find MCA cards and IBM specific RAM...
ReplyDeleteIt's enough to make on beat one's head against the wall.
Micro Channel Architecture: When IBM decided to stop being IBM-compatible and hand over all its market share to Compaq and Dell!
ReplyDeleteHow about an Amiga with a sophisticated 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking operating system -eh ? Graphics, baby - and TV Fonts on disks...
ReplyDeleteAbout Micro Channel Architecture: IBM wasn't stupid to move to a faster backplane. They were stupid to somehow arrange things such that the rest of the industry couldn't follow their lead, unlike when the PCI bus came out a few years later.
ReplyDeleteI used to own an IBM MCA system with a 386SX CPU, loaded with Windows 3.1. The backplane was so fast on disk and video card access that in spite of the sucky CPU, the box outperformed most of the early 486 boxes (which still ran a lot of functions through the ISA bus). It was more than good enough for the engineering work I took home back then - although present-day machines make it look like a keyboard controller chip...
Remember the EISA bus, like ISA but with staggered gold fingers to double the bus width?
"You know," my old freshman year college roommate said as we watched Kelly LeBrock step out of a haze of smoke and two teenaged boys' fantasies, "I'm kind of doubting the effacacy of a home computer with a flashing red light on the 'ENTER' key, when it's employed in making a hot woman."
ReplyDeleteWord.
The year was 1990, and we knew what was up.
I have three NeXT stations in my attic. There's a good chance they no longer work, but I should drag them out and see, and sell them to someone who might make better use. Two cubes and one slab, I think one might be color too, but I'm not sure.
ReplyDelete