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General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc.

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Old 23rd Sep 2017, 2:31 pm   #81
greenstar
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

In my brief spell as a technician at Leicester Polytechnic (reincarnated as DeMontfort University) everyone did jobs for themselves in slack time. Several technicians studied for OU degrees in their work time too. But they did their jobs and were often sitting about on call. There was a place called 'the warren', a series of corridors between floors, filled with old stuff that might come in. At one point it was cleared out - strictly speaking we could not divert items, but lecturers did, so we also squirreled things away. Wish I could go back for another go.
But clearing out stuff to make space is a wrench - currently a radiogram cabinet nobody wants!
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Old 27th Sep 2017, 10:46 pm   #82
WaveyDipole
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

One thing I haven't thrown away is the Lloytron Accumatic 320 calculator that I had acquired while still at school in the mid to late 1970s. When I 'upgraded' to a Casio fx-39 scientific calculator a couple of years later because I was doing my O and A levels, my dad kept the Lloytron but when he passed away I found it in one of his drawers and kept it. Both are still working and although the Casio has a missing function selector knob I still use it despite it now being close to 40yrs old.

Last edited by WaveyDipole; 27th Sep 2017 at 10:51 pm.
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Old 27th Sep 2017, 11:48 pm   #83
Refugee
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I have still got my old Commodore SR4190 calculator from when I did college in the 1970s.
Is has now sadly lost a couple of digits from the display.
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Old 28th Sep 2017, 12:51 am   #84
JohnBHanson
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I have my first Commodore Minuteman III calculator. Had 4 functions and a memory and cost 40 pounds. Dad bought it for me on a trip to London from Laskys.

My Maths teacher bought a similar model but it had a square root function. We were comparing and he said it was more useful than the memory. His had squareroot and square, mine had memory and percent.

So I got out my soldering iron and swapped my percent function for a square root function - keeping the memory function so getting the best of both worlds. I think that the Maths teacher was impressed. The only problem was that using the square root function also stored the answer in memory.

At University I bought a new calculator in the first year and another in the second year. I bought a new one in the first year because it could do standard deviations and that was a lot easier than using a slide rule. The second year one was a programmable one for matrix operations. Technology was advancing so quickly at the time.

Latter I bought a Sinclair MK14 and an Oric Atmos - I wrote a cross assembler for the MK14 and a Cross Assembler and loader from my matmos PC to my oric atmos. Gave both of the MK14 and Oric Atmos away.

I also had a teletype and programmed that. Interesting at 10cps - that was given away when I moved house - would love to try and program at that (slow) speed again!

Just recently I have restored and upgraded the Matmos PC - Added 80 track 5 inch and 3 inch drives - so still some fun to be had with that. I have also written an emulator for the Matmos PC which runs on Linux (gnome) - hence I have a real machine to compare it with.

Still having fun! Shame I gave away some of the other stuff though - I regret it and have become much more sentimental about giving things away.
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Old 28th Sep 2017, 6:47 pm   #85
Jon_G4MDC
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

Maybe enough calculators as they deserve a thread of their own.
I will put in Tools, made of proper stuff, not monkey metal.
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Old 28th Sep 2017, 11:32 pm   #86
Biggles
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I still have the Commodore calculator that I got probably about 1980. It has a long tubular glass VFD with a row of green digits. I think my Dad bought it from his work at the time as he was based in a large company office. He also used to borrow a reel to reel tape recorder from work occasionally for us to play around with. Absolute magic at the time.
Alan.
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Old 29th Sep 2017, 11:17 am   #87
QQVO6/40
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

Greetings all.
I have a very strong attachment to a speaker.
A different sort of speaker as it saved my life so long ago.
This speaker is a military type of speaker. An LS-166 speaker used as an extension for a lot of army radios of American origin.
I am ex-army from so many years ago.
I was in a South Eastern Asian country and it was getting quite exciting on this particular occasion.
Full on contact with enemy mortar rounds lobbing all around us.
I was in an M-113 armoured personal carrier monitoring the radio nets when with all the banging going on the clamp on top of this paticular speaker slipped and the speaker fell to the floor face down.
I needed to hear what was going on so I bent over to pick up the speaker with the intention of re-attaching it to the shelf near my head.
As I bent down to retrieve the speaker an enemy RPG-7 (rocket propelled grenade) hit the side of the carrier I was in and penetrated the armour spitting molten metal inside.
If I had not bent down to retrieve the errant item I would have had a 25mm hole through my head.
I would certainly not be here now.
I nicked said speaker with quiet approval from my boss at the time.
I still have it to this day as I do have a soft spot for it's welfare. We are old friends.

Last edited by QQVO6/40; 29th Sep 2017 at 11:21 am. Reason: Small spelling error.
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Old 29th Sep 2017, 9:25 pm   #88
Anthony Thomas
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

Any and all of my Practical Wireless Magazines from when I had a newspaper delivery round in the early 1960s.

Nuts, bolts, screws and sundry parts are sorted into thread types / diameters / brass, steel, stainless. Like others have mentioned earlier, they will cause trouble when my time is in and I am no more.
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