Ah, BBM memories... My first paying programmer/operator job was on a B260 in the late 60s, the first Burroughs minicomputer in Canada IIRC. Many years later, after trying a few other careers including managing a large motorcycle dealership, I wound up back with Burroughs doing contract programming for series L machines, B1800s and B80 & 90s, cross-compiling on a B2700 at night when I had it all to myself. I too had lots of disk cartridges, cassettes, mag tapes and even punched cards and tapes, many pretty rare today, that I threw out before I realized that there were actually folks interested in that old 'junk'.
Still have the operator console from that B2700 though... On Sat, Aug 5, 2023 at 8:04 PM Alan Perry via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > My holy grail is a Burroughs B1965. I was one of the last people at > Burroughs (Unisys at that point) fixing bugs in the system software on > B1000 (the only one in the Lake Forest, CA office; all of the sys admins > knew of the B1965 there as "my" machine.). My office was filled with > B1000 removable disk packs (different versions of the OS and release > management of the software packages I owned). I loved working with that > machine. > > I have boot and maintenance cassettes and a disk pack that I picked up > on eBay. I should have taken and preserved more stuff before I left. > > On 8/5/23 4:30 PM, John Herron via cctalk wrote: > > For no personally good reason other than the stigma (and technically > > incorrect) being the first PC, the Altair 8800 is my holy Grail. Some > day > > I'd like to have a real one but they increase in value at the same rate > as > > my income lol so not likely going to happen. It's a neat system though > and > > like a lot of people I like blinken lights and flip switches. Still feels > > science fantasy to me. > > > > Less systems being around makes all of these popular systems go up in > price > > with supply and demand. Not sure what would make the market go down > unless > > hundreds were found somewhere and flooded the market. But it's > interesting > > as less kids would have heard of any of these systems so maybe history > > becomes less interesting and valuable at some point? > > > > On Sat, Aug 5, 2023, 6:21 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> > > wrote: > > > >> On 8/5/23 15:58, b...@techtimetraveller.com wrote: > >>> Do you have an emotional attachment to it? I just saw one sell on ebay > >> yesterday for $6100. An e-recycler will have a nice payday on your > >> Altair. > >> No real attachment; it was a useful tool for a time. It took an entire > >> weekend with coffee and little sleep to assemble it. And those really > >> awful cheap white wires... > >> > >> I'd have to pull it off the shelf, clean it up and get it working again. > >> That's not trivial and I have better uses for my time. > >> > >> --Chuck > >> > >> > >> >
