cj7hawk
Veteran Member
So there's this weird thing the government(s) do in Australia. They send someone around prior to clean-up day cutting the power cables and any other cables they can find on any old computers or electrical items you might be discarding...
And that's how I got my latest machine... One of the ones I swore never to buy again in my new years resolutions... In fairness, it did take a week for me to break my resolution, it's not like I ordered it Jan1.
That aside, it was clear someone just left this out on the verge to be smashed into landfill, and a junk collector picked it up, and somewhere it changed hands a few times and then I payed a kings ransome for it on Ebay. Around USD$300 before shipping.
And all the cables were cut... So I just rewired the thing, tried out my new Greaseweasel setup with a 1.2Mb drive strapped down to pretend it's a very narrow track 360K and....
The screen came up and the image booted! I was very surprised. I had to disassemble the whole thing to check it was set to 240v and the capacitors all looked very nice, but still I want to get back to the wires... Is there any parallel anywhere in the world where local government hires agents to go around sabotaging electrical equipment for the sole purpose of harming second hand computer collectors ( and electrical items second hand sales? )
I know this sounds a bit weird, but it's actually extremely common here in Australia.
The backstory is some local government ( like a county ) got upset that some bloke gives this old block an empty bottle from the boot of his car at the rubbish tip. So they record his rego, chase him down, arrest him and charge this bloke with theft for asking some other guy if he could have the empty bottle in the boot of his car. Yeah, we get assholes like that in Australia who have nothing better to do than prosecute pensioners so they can justify letting criminals loose in our community... I wish I was just making this stuff up.
Anyway, old bloke has never had as much as a traffic fine in his life... And now he's a convicted criminal... But he's old and cashed up, so he appeals, loses, appeals again, loses, then takes it to the high court ( like the main US court ) appeals, wins, and we get one of the few rights we have in Australia - the right to collect stuff that people chuck out for the councils to pick up... And the councils lost big time, because they used to prosecute people for this act.
So anyway, now the councils can't prosecute people for junk collecting anymore, so we get computers that people throw out can be legally picked up off the side of the road and resold. Except for these asshole rangers who go around cutting the power cords and any other cord they can find, for the sole reason of sabotaging stuff. In an effort to punish junk collectors.
Does that happen in the US too? Or is it just an Australian thing? There's literally an army of saboteurs employed in local governments across the entire country. It just seems like one of those bizarre things we accept as normal and most people who don't collect old stuff might not even notice the rangers going door to door cutting cords.
Anyway, I had a power socket for a c13 plug with all the wires, so stuck it in place of the mangled wires... And after checking everything was OK, was really surprised that it actually booted right up - even my blind disk burning went well... Which does bring me to a second question. Should the Kaypro disk light stay on after the prompt comes up?
Sorry for the long post... Here's an ASCII potato....[[POTATO]]
And that's how I got my latest machine... One of the ones I swore never to buy again in my new years resolutions... In fairness, it did take a week for me to break my resolution, it's not like I ordered it Jan1.
That aside, it was clear someone just left this out on the verge to be smashed into landfill, and a junk collector picked it up, and somewhere it changed hands a few times and then I payed a kings ransome for it on Ebay. Around USD$300 before shipping.
And all the cables were cut... So I just rewired the thing, tried out my new Greaseweasel setup with a 1.2Mb drive strapped down to pretend it's a very narrow track 360K and....
The screen came up and the image booted! I was very surprised. I had to disassemble the whole thing to check it was set to 240v and the capacitors all looked very nice, but still I want to get back to the wires... Is there any parallel anywhere in the world where local government hires agents to go around sabotaging electrical equipment for the sole purpose of harming second hand computer collectors ( and electrical items second hand sales? )
I know this sounds a bit weird, but it's actually extremely common here in Australia.
The backstory is some local government ( like a county ) got upset that some bloke gives this old block an empty bottle from the boot of his car at the rubbish tip. So they record his rego, chase him down, arrest him and charge this bloke with theft for asking some other guy if he could have the empty bottle in the boot of his car. Yeah, we get assholes like that in Australia who have nothing better to do than prosecute pensioners so they can justify letting criminals loose in our community... I wish I was just making this stuff up.
Anyway, old bloke has never had as much as a traffic fine in his life... And now he's a convicted criminal... But he's old and cashed up, so he appeals, loses, appeals again, loses, then takes it to the high court ( like the main US court ) appeals, wins, and we get one of the few rights we have in Australia - the right to collect stuff that people chuck out for the councils to pick up... And the councils lost big time, because they used to prosecute people for this act.
So anyway, now the councils can't prosecute people for junk collecting anymore, so we get computers that people throw out can be legally picked up off the side of the road and resold. Except for these asshole rangers who go around cutting the power cords and any other cord they can find, for the sole reason of sabotaging stuff. In an effort to punish junk collectors.
Does that happen in the US too? Or is it just an Australian thing? There's literally an army of saboteurs employed in local governments across the entire country. It just seems like one of those bizarre things we accept as normal and most people who don't collect old stuff might not even notice the rangers going door to door cutting cords.
Anyway, I had a power socket for a c13 plug with all the wires, so stuck it in place of the mangled wires... And after checking everything was OK, was really surprised that it actually booted right up - even my blind disk burning went well... Which does bring me to a second question. Should the Kaypro disk light stay on after the prompt comes up?
Sorry for the long post... Here's an ASCII potato....[[POTATO]]