Old man's man-cave = treasure trove!!

daz.rathbone

daz.rathbone

daz.rathbone

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Hello all. My old man sadly passed away at the end of last year. He's the reason my life has been dominated by computers since I was 4/5yrs old (late 70s).
He lived out in Bulgaria, and computing/electronics was his career and passion.

Anyway just wanted to share a picture, as we were over there last week starting to sort through his man-cave. What a treasure trove!!
This picture is the first haul of computers we removed from it. On top of this I have boxes full of every original manual you can think of for these computers and more, as well as thousands (THOUSANDS, not an exaggeration) of disks/tapes/cartridges (at least half originals with boxes!!), and accessories. Even found things like the BBC Teletext Adapter for the BBC B.

Yes there was some teary nostalgia. I brought a few things home, a bunch of old spectrums, and 600/1200 Amigas - the Amigas are all working much to my surprise. The rest will get shipped back to the UK on my next trip.



IMG-0530.jpg
 
Inventory of (some of) the main units:

2x Amiga A500
2x Amiga A1200
3x Amiga A600
1x Amiga B2000
5x BBC B
3x BBC Master
1x Acorn A3000
1x Acorn A5000
1x Acorn A7000
3x Atari 520ST
1x Atari 1040ST
3x Dragon32
4x Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
2x Sinclair QL
3x Spectrum+2
3x Spectrum+
1x Spectrum 48K
1x ZX81
1x Atari 800XL
2x Atari 400
3x Cambridge Computer Z88
2x TRS-80 Model III
....I've probably missed loads off as well hahah

Going to be a long long process sorting and testing it all.
 
daz.rathbone said:
(THOUSANDS, not an exaggeration)
Click to expand...

I can believe it - I turned out what was left of my old Acorn setup a few months back and was around 300 FDDs to sort through, surprisingly a good number still had 100% data integrity despite a fair few that were completely corrupt.

daz.rathbone said:
1x Acorn A5000
1x Acorn A7000
Click to expand...

Sadly never had one, but they have a special place in my heart, always wanted an A5000 as a kid but had a A3010. The A5000 and newer were so forward thinking for the time.
 
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Sorry for your loss @daz.rathbone :( That is quite the haul and deserves to be preserved

My first experience of computing was in primary school on a BBC (B I think, with green screen) in the mid 80s. Many fond memories of playing Speedball 2 with friends at every opportunity
 
Cheers @d_brennen. My very first computer was a UK-101 - a kit that my dad built. Then onto the ZX80 and 81. When the BBC Bs first arrived at school I'd had one at home for over a year (learning how to use an EEPROM blower on it hah), so I had the joy of teaching the school "IT" teachers how to use them :D
 
Oh man, I'm so sorry for your loss. I know that won't help with the grief, but my thoughts are with you and your family anyway.

Those are some beautiful computers and I'm very glad that you are saving them and not adding them to a tip somewhere like happens too often.

Be careful with the Amigas as they have some tendency for the caps to leak, so if they haven't already been you will want to look at replacing them.
 
jcb33 said:
Oh man, I'm so sorry for your loss. I know that won't help with the grief, but my thoughts are with you and your family anyway.

Those are some beautiful computers and I'm very glad that you are saving them and not adding them to a tip somewhere like happens too often.

Be careful with the Amigas as they have some tendency for the caps to leak, so if they haven't already been you will want to look at replacing them.
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Thanks mate, really appreciate it.
Yeah I think the old man likely did cap changes on the Amigas - I found a bunch of empty RetroBench cap kits, and also an unused one too :D
Most of them were modded to hell as well. They Amiga's had dual CF, some had USB ports added into them, and of course all the Beeb's has custom eeproms attached and god knows what else :cry:
 
Excellent collection, as jcb33 said, the caps do need replacing but, more importantly, if any have batteries in there, such as the Amiga 2000, it's best to remove them as if they leak they can cause serious damage.

Enjoy using the collection, I'm off to hunt for a A600 :D



M.
 
jcb33 said:
Those are some beautiful computers and I'm very glad that you are saving them and not adding them to a tip somewhere like happens too often.
Click to expand...
Tip?!? There's money in that treasure trove!

@daz.rathbone , sorry to hear about your dad.

I wish mine had held on to our Model B, even just seeing that reminded me of my childhood so you finding all those, well, I bet it was a lovely surprise. Heart string pulling but lovely.

My dad had a tendancy to have a random mad clear out every now and then, you had to hold things down for them not to disappear. I'm lucky to be here :cry:
 
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Definitely money in it. I brought home a couple of Amigas (600/1200) and some spectrums, and sold them on. I've got too many projects on the go right now so don't have the time or space to keep and enjoy any of them. The Spectrums and the Cambridge Z88 I didn't have the time to setup and test so they were sold as seen for spares/repairs, and I was pleasantly surprised at the interest / price they fetched.
Plan is to get back out there in a few months and ship everything back, then spend every other weekend sorting / testing, and selling it on. Anything that doesn't go will be offered up to one of the many computing / gaming museums around. It'll be all the games and books that take the longest to sort though, there's just boxes and boxes of the stuff (I've already had a few people reach out looking for specific things for their collections).

I will keep a BBC B though - that machine has far too many memories, and I remember the old man spending so many hours on them, coding and tinkering building boards and things for them. Not my first computer by far, but as a young kid it was the one that sent me down the rabbit hole (until I got my very own A500). I learned both 6502 and fig forth on those machines....

Unfortunately my dad was very much a (functioning maybe) alcoholic, and after we lost my mum a couple of years back he spiralled down fast. One of the nicest moments out there was going into his man-cave for the first time with one of his friends out in Bulgaria - they knew this doddering old drunken man as he'd been the last 10+ yrs - I got to recount stories of the smartest man I knew, and get all nostalgic about what he used to do / build / develop. Showing them some of the soldering work he did - so intricate and precise, amazing quality. And finding things they'd never heard of - the fact I could explain what an eeprom blower was, and talk about what some of the boards were that he'd built onto these machines..... just a really nice moment to share the man he was, and actually it helped me remember what he was rather than what he became. So even at the end it was computers again that gave me and the old man a proper connection.
 
Rroff said:
I can believe it - I turned out what was left of my old Acorn setup a few months back and was around 300 FDDs to sort through, surprisingly a good number still had 100% data integrity despite a fair few that were completely corrupt.



Sadly never had one, but they have a special place in my heart, always wanted an A5000 as a kid but had a A3010. The A5000 and newer were so forward thinking for the time.
Click to expand...
The Amiga will always be my overall favourite system but I still have a soft spot for the Acorn :) Unfortunately the closest I've got to owning one is using RISC OS open on the Raspberry Pi!
 
adidan said:
Tip?!? There's money in that treasure trove!

@daz.rathbone , sorry to hear about your dad.

I wish mine had held on to our Model B, even just seeing that reminded me of my childhood so you finding all those, well, I bet it was a lovely surprise. Heart string pulling but lovely.

My dad had a tendancy to have a random mad clear out every now and then, you had to hold things down for them not to disappear. I'm lucky to be here :cry:
Click to expand...
There is a lot of money in that treasure trove, but sadly so many of these beauties end up in the hands of people that think they are junk.

It hurts to think how much treasure has been lost to time that way.
 
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