Date   : Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:20:22 +0100
From   : Philip Pemberton <philpem@...>
Subject: Re: Car boot finds!

Jules Richardson wrote:
 > I've always found that it depends on location - for instance Kent boot
 
sales always seemed very good for any electronics stuff (although you had
 to 
be there very early!) whereas the ones up around Cambridge were typically
 
hopeless and consisted mainly of people selling clothes or dodgy DVDs/vid
eos.

Leeds car boot sales (or at least the Cross Green car boot) are pretty mu
ch 
the same. If you want a pirated (yarr!) copy of the latest Hollywood 
blockbuster, that's easy enough to find. If you want something genuinely 
useful, well.. you're stuffed.

And there's always the bloke near the gates shouting selling out-of-date 
Duracell knockoffs for stupid(ly high) prices... Six quid for ten isn't a
 good 
deal while ever I can still get new ones from Farnell for a fiver per box
 of 
ten :)

 > (I did once see an 8 bitter at a Cambridge boot fair - memory says it
was a 
Spectrum, although I could be misremembering - but oddly enough the 50 po
und 
asking price put me off!)

Hahaha.. I saw a "Sinclair" +2A for £100 last year. No power brick, no
cables, 
no box, not even any games - just the machine. I think the seller must ha
ve 
been experimenting with hallucinogenic substances to come up with that pr
ice...

My Master 128 came from "a friend who knew a friend". The story is, the 
Hertfordshire College of Higher Education's Wall Hall campus were getting
 rid 
of their BBC Micros. Said friend knew a friend in Watford (IIRC) who went
 to 
raid the skips and filled a VW camper van with Cub monitors and BBC Micro
s. I 
spent a day with him fixing them up and getting them running, and in retu
rn I got:
   - a Master 128
   - a Viglen 80/40 switchable floppy drive - the two-drive double-sided 
version too
   - a Microvitec Cub 653 (plastic case) 14" CRT monitor. The 
contrast/brightness control is FUBAR though - I suspect it's been jumpere
d 
wrong, but I don't have any details on the jumper settings and I don't fe
el 
like pulling it to bits either.
   - an Epson LX-80 printer (dry ribbon, but that was easily sorted with
a can 
of WD40)
   - a box of ROM cartridges, some broken, some working. I think I've got
 
about half a dozen in decent shape, and a few that need new sockets.

Over the years I've also accumulated:
   - An AMX Mouse - the black one with the metal ball-bearing.
   - A lightpen
   - One of JGH's 8-bit IDE interfaces, bought at the 2005 Wakefield show
   - A 3.5" floppy drive, scavenged from a PC. It's a HP rebranded Sony M
PF520 
if anyone really cares.
   - Some other stuff that's slipped my mind at the moment.

On the non-Beeb side of things I've got a Sinclair (actually Amstrad-made
) 
+2A, but the light gun and game tapes got broken and lost ages ago :(
I'm not too fussed about that though - I've never held Sinclair kit in ve
ry 
high regard.

 > It's worth asking on your local freecycle list occasionally, plus if y
our 
local uni has a bunch of student for sale / giveaway groups I expect stuf
f 
will turn up there from time to time.

The University of Huddersfield tend to have a few Sun workstations and 
monitors for disposal during the year, but very little else. I might ask
on 
the Leeds Freecycle list in the near future, but I suspect my mother migh
t be 
a little cross if I come home with any more 'junk'...

Now what I really want is a MOS KIM-1, Synertek SYM-1 (aka SY-VIM-1) and/
or a 
Rockwell AIM-65. A Commodore 64 (or even just a 1541 or 1571 disc drive)
might 
be nice to play with too -- I'm still kicking myself for not buying the o
ne I 
saw at a hamfest a few years back for a fiver on the grounds that I had n
o 
room for the box full of discs that were bundled with it :(

My pride-and-joy (a Jupiter Ace) is still out of action due to the lack o
f a 
motherboard... I've pretty much given up hope of ever getting that back :
(

 > Dunno. I'd pay a fiver tops for a stock beeb if it was in really good 
condition (I'm not interested in collecting packaging) given that the wor
king 
condition would be unknown.

I'd be inclined to agree with that estimate. If it could be seen working,
 
maybe a tenner. £20 if it had disc drives and a Cub monitor with it.

 > My Master 512 cost me 50 pounds back in the early 90s (with monitor an
d 
dual 40/80 drives + stand). I think I sold a PC that I had to pay for it.

A Master 512... Lucky sod.

 > Anyway, it was those three that really got me started in collecting Ac
orn 
stuff; prior to that I was a Sinclair person. I'm glad I changed though a
s 
there are so many more interesting things around in the Acorn world!

Ain't that the truth! From the System-series Eurocard systems through the
 ACW, 
Model B, Master series, B+ and Archimedes, ending with the ARM-based Risc
PC 
systems.

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