dumpsterpc

I've been inspecting the contents of dumpsters for many years, and my finds have been many. From the bike I ride to the table I put things on, the diving has paid off. I won't even list all of the things I've found (TVs, toys, copier, etc - ok, I'll list a few.) But one of the biggies was a recent find. An IBM PS/2 Personal Computer.

There's this salvage-type place on a certain side of town, and a few times they've had a dumpster full of old computer equipment. Mostly terminals, and some dot matrix printers, but this time, I found a few actual working machines in the thing. I managed to get: 2 PS/2 computers, a working VGA monitor, a keyboard (missing some keys) an old Hayes 2400 baud modem (no power supply or cables) and plenty more non-working parts.

Figure 1. The PC

I actually got the monitor and PS/2 at the same time, and could never get it to boot. Until a week or two later when I got a keyboard. That did it! And I was a proud user of 'that other OS'! (Well, I'm really a Mac user, and plan to stay that way!) I did add a second floppy from the second machine I got. So it now had like 4 mb of RAM, a 30 mb hard drive, 2 floppy drives, a keyboard, and a 12"(?) VGA monitor! I didn't have room on my desk for it, so I loaned it to my dad, he uses 'that other OS' at work. He had to get a mouse, but it seemed to work ok. He did complain that it corrupted most files and floppies he put in it. I always thought that was a feature of 'that other OS'

Anyway, at some point, if I get it back, or find/build another one, I'd like to load an old version of Navigator onto it, and use it to test out how web pages look under that enviroment. Other than that, it's a great piece of history, right along side my TRS-80...

Figure 2. Closeup of the PC