It is pretty large. When we bought the house they called it a detached 5 car garage/workshop. It has it's own electric meter and now part of it has a raised floor. I have created an "office" on the raised floor and installed one of those 4 cubical plus-sign units like I used to work in 25+ years ago at IBM. It's like walking into a computer center out of the 70's or 80's, except that the only things actually running are a couple of PC's, some printers and network hardware. I was thinking about trying to find some of the hanging panel ceiling fixtures to create that nice claustrophobic computer center feel, but the space is too big to do it cheaply and my wife won't approve the expenditures. :(
I didn't start out to collect them though. All of them (except the system/3, which was a present from my father) are from contracts that I was on where we replaced the hardware with a new boxes. Many of them couldn't get bids under thousands of dollars to pay to have them taken away. I almost never had to pay more than the cost of the truck to take them away. Some of the hardware, (the 3081, multiple 3330 and 3350 drives and NAS box) were in back rooms of the computer centers and were not discovered until we went into the storage areas to inventory any replacement hardware that they had on site to go away with units they were getting rid of. The 360 is the one I like the best. It and the NAS box are the only ones with cool lights. :) The 9672 was the most expensive piece of hardware I acquired. It was sold for $500 by the university that I did a contract to convert them from OS/390 to Z/OS.e to a local county office, and when they found out what the cost was to get it put under a maintenance contract and what the software cost was going to be, (they had a 4381 at the time and were STILL running a copy of MVS/ESA under VM), they had a fit. I was able to convince them that they would save money by buying a z/800 and running z/OS.e. They were so pleased with the results (and the total costs) of the conversion that they "sold" me both the 4381 and the 9672 (and a string of 3380's) for $50. We had a going away party there for the hardware that I still don't remember very much of. ;) I have hundreds of little odds and ends that I have been given over the years as well, buttons from old 360 and 370 CPU panels, the keys from teletypewriters, lots of model ID plates, etc. I even have a DisplayWrite remote telephone/terminal, with a pull-out keyboard (with a built-in 300 baud modem) that was/is still in it's original packaging. I was thinking about unwrapping the stuff and letting local school kids have field trips, but then I found out that I would have to get special insurance to cover in case one of them got hurt and it didn't seem worth the cost. Most of them think old technology means anything before a PS3, X-Box or a Wii anyway. When my son was in high school, he used one of the HDA's from an old 3330 and mounted it beside a HDA from a 3.5" 80 GB hard drive with a graph of the difference in capacities. I still have that on my wall as well. Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
