I know it may seem weird to be looking for parts for an outdated
monochrome 486 computer in this day and age but there is method to my
madness.
I spend all year gathering bits and pieces to run one annual event.
Operation East Wind www.operationeastwind.com East Wind is set in the
closing days of the Cold war and pits US and NATO allies against
Soviet and East German troops over the course of 9 days and 8 nights
of 24 hour operations. We work tirelessly to get every little detail
we can right for the event to give our participants (Most of whom were
in diapers back then) an environment that matches Cold War Europe as
much as possible.
We have correct radios, (US and Russian), We have correct vehicles
(US, British, and Russian), we serve the correct food from the correct
MKT, we have the correct tents, we have the correct chairs, We have
the correct heaters, all that minutia. We also like to keep track
of the events as they unfold plus of course deal with administrative
tasks (Like holding the VOLUMES of field and tech manuals on all the
gizmos) so computers are a fairly big part of the background
infrastructure.
In years past, this has always involved ruggedised Itronix laptops
since they are fairly capable machines and certainly look clunky and
boxy enough to be from that era but I was never really happy with that
solution (although I do love the Itronix laptops). Recently, I
happened into an old SAIC V2LC and separately a ruggedised lightweight
dot matrix printer for it. I have powered it up and it operates just
fine but I am missing a good bit of the supporting cables and such for
this thing and thought I would pop in here and see if any of you guys
have some leads.
I need:
The 24 volt vehicle cable that goes to the power supply (I do have the
power supply)
The cable that runs from the power supply to the computer itself (10
pin thingy)
The cable that runs from the power supply or the aux power port on the
computer over to the printer (3 pin cable)
Either a replacement ribbon/cartridge for the printer or at the very
least a cross reference or source.
Information about the thin network adaptors in this thing? From what
I see, it has no driver for Win 95 (installed OS) and only runs in
DOS? Anyone ever networked these things? I’d like to get my hands
on a second one at some point and network them.
Any hints, leads, sources or tricks would be much appreciated. I’ll
make sure to post pics of the younger guys (who never got to see how
goofy computers used to be) getting frustrated with this thing for all
of us to enjoy later. While I could obviously wire this thing up with
lamp cords and jumper cables, it would be nice to have the correct
stuff for it.
I didn't see this thread. hehe. I got 6 or 7 of them things sitting here. win95 can be crammed into them, even into the 386 model with 4MB memory and then they work nicely on a network.. Loaded via the scsi CD drive. takes a while. The biggest obstacle I have run into is the cases for the hard drives. Always missing. That and finding 30 pin simms with more than 1MB each.
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FATAL ERROR
Although the partitions were successfully created,
formatting of drive 2 failed
because copying of drive 1 to drive 2 failed
because copying of partition 1 failed
because directory failsafe.drv could not be copied
because directory failsafe could not be copied
because the file user.exe could not be copied
because there was a device error reading drive 1
absolute sector 223095 count 127
Lucky for me I am not really out to do great things with these just have a period correct system for the HQ guys at East Wind to use.
These are the most correct computers for the era and do all of the things that we need to get done like type reports, create SOI/CEOI cards, and keep track of event data. Of course it is also hella funny to watch 18-20 year old guys trying to deal with older systems like these. I grew up with this crap so it’s all old hat to me but watching a guy who was just out of diapers when DOS was replaced try to deal with DOS is quite funny.
Additionally, these are just plain humorous computers on their own. Lots of little beeps and cheeps, little blinky lights etc.
Since these older ISA bus computers I stuffed a Winradio card into one and used the ethernet BNC as the antenna input. I now have a cool looking wide range radio scanner inside. It would be nice to get one with a color display but the mono units work fine.
Got what I had out this weekend and did a dry run with some of this years command staff guys for East Wind III.
We set the command tent and interfaced it to my M35A2 which we then filled with radio for doing some 6 meter yakkity yaking on using both the truck's VRC-12 system and some of our PRC-77s.
Anyhow, here is the promised pic of a young person being foiled by the very computer tech that drove all of us old guys batty for so long:
This is Houli, he's a software engineer for a defense contractor at 22 years old. He's a very sharp young man and managed to work with the thing pretty much all weekend making up forms and spreadsheets without going completely mad. Pretty much only the printer really got under his skin.
Does anybody have the part #'s for the connectors on the power cables? Thanks
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There's a story about the military pilot calling for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked." Air Traffic Control told the fighter jock that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. "Ah," the fighter pilot remarked, "The dreaded seven-engine approach."
SAIC V2 LC computer help needed
