Practically Classics Forum

You have more patience than me!

Dick wrote: Wed Apr 26, 2023 9:52 pm You have more patience than me!

Well I've got to find something to keep me out of trouble!

Made a mistake today. One I keep making. I went upstairs at my local photography shop over in Bicester. It's become basically tradition now that every time I do that I wind up coming out with another camera.

I nearly made it today, until a friend I was showing the place (which is why we were there in the first place) picked up this a lovely little Kodak Retina Model B to compare to the A he owns. Not a camera I'd ever looked at before, and I was quite taken with how nicely engineered a little camera it looked to be.

Tag price was £20 (including a 6 month warranty!) - and I couldn't say no.



The case is very tired, but it's done a good job, the camera inside it is really tidy. Few signs of wear - but after nearly 70 years we aren't going to complain.





I never realised before quite how tiny a camera these are.





Really is a nicely engineered little thing.



All of the controls are on the ring around the lens so it's quite busy, but it's pretty intuitive.



Aperture runs f/4.5-16 and it has shutter speeds from B through to 1/300s, so should absolutely be usable in the real world. The viewfinder is a little hazy but the lens itself looks nice and clear.

Realised after getting home that I don't actually have any non-oddball 35mm film in stock just now that isn't actually in a camera...IR yes, ISO3200, yes, quite expensive Lomography colour modified stuff I'm looking forward to playing with, yes... anything well suited to a first test of an unknown to me camera...not so much! Guess I'll need to make another trip over there at the weekend then...they do have a camera fair running on Saturday morning after all...

So apart from collecting cars, computers and old calculators, you also collect old cameras! Where do you keep it all? Is there anything else you collect you haven't told us about?

Zelandeth wrote: Thu Apr 27, 2023 10:34 pmI nearly made it today, until a friend I was showing the place (which is why we were there in the first place) picked up this a lovely little Kodak Retina Model B to compare to the A he owns. Not a camera I'd ever looked at before, and I was quite taken with how nicely engineered a little camera it looked to be.

Next time I'm in the loft I'll have to get a pic of my Dad's old camera, which is very similar, and I managed to save from the siblings who would have binned it when he passed away.

And I'm in the loft fairly regularly at the moment as we've got the plumbers in re-fitting out the bathroom and I'm adding a lot of new insulation materials which a couple of studwalls are being replaced.

Dick wrote: Fri Apr 28, 2023 11:53 pm So apart from collecting cars, computers and old calculators, you also collect old cameras! Where do you keep it all? Is there anything else you collect you haven't told us about?

Photography is probably the oldest of my hobbies, though has kind of merged into the "old tech" side of things in my mind as time moved on. Just isn't something I'd been doing much with lately - until I wound up loving 30 minutes from a really good camera shop!

As far as where do I put it all? At the moment "anywhere I can, including duct taping it to the ceiling" is a pretty valid answer. We have nowhere near enough room really. There's a reason that most of the computers I collect are portables!

On that note...

"Congratulations you won...."



Oops.

Completely, totally forgot I'd bid on that.

Definitely a restoration project this one...but given what they seem to go for in good shape it's definitely the only way I was going to get my hands on one.

Given my penchant for portable computers and having wanted a bit of classic IBM gear for a while now this seemed a good way to combine both of those things. At least IBM technical documentation is generally pretty good, which I get the feeling I may well be needing given this one is a bit of a shed...

So this is the camera my Dad used for all our photos when growing up and he developed and printed them himself .. he made a frame that sat over our bath and that became the dark-room. Woe betide anyone wanting a "tinkle" when he was in full flow though!!

And I though my SLR was complicated!

gazza82 wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 5:49 pm So this is the camera my Dad used for all our photos when growing up and he developed and printed them himself .. he made a frame that sat over our bath and that became the dark-room. Woe betide anyone wanting a "tinkle" when he was in full flow though!!


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And I though my SLR was complicated!

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That's a nice looking little camera, at a glance definitely looks to be a direct competitor to the Kodak Retina, I'm guessing from the name having come from Agfa.

-- -- --

Been a little while since I had time to do a proper update.

First up is a techy update. I launched a collection mission which started at stupid o'clock a few days ago heading over to Cambridge to pick this thing up.



The lesser spotted IBM sewing machine as one of my family commented.





Which for those not in the know, no is not a sewing machine. This is an IBM PS/2 P70. Which is basically a PS/2 Model 70 crammed into a portable form factor. A machine which usually sits well, well out of my price range - with working examples going for north of £500. So I did the obvious thing and found a non working one locally for £125 instead. Which I figured was effectively £100 as I was saving about £30 on shipping.

This is otherwise known as "it was 4am, I couldn't sleep so wound up browsing eBay."

While it's externally complete and surprisingly free of physical damage, it was filthy. How can people use keyboards in this state? These keys should be bright white.





Needless to say that will be getting a good old scrub. As will the whole machine.

It never really instills confidence when you can see rust before you even take any covers off.



With the rear cover removed there was very clear evidence of this having been stored somewhere really damp for a long while. Plus lots of grime.

The immediate impression I got at this point was "Mmm...genuine barn find."





The motherboard actually looks fine. Grubby but there's no corrosion of any note actually on the motherboard I can see. Unlike many 386 era machines thankfully the CMOS battery is external and a primary lithium rather than Nicad actually on the board which usually leak. It's also just a standard type commonly used in cameras so I even have one in stock!

While the motherboard has seemingly escaped the corrosion, not everything else has been so lucky. Especially this poor hard drive.



That white gunk that looks kind of like mould? That's aluminium oxide. I have serious doubts about this drive coming back around. Which is something of a headache.



These drives are kind of an oddball. For a start, they're natively ESDI rather than anything commonplace like IDE or SCSI. However it's actually even worse than that - as the controller is physically attached to the drive, and it hooks directly up to the MCA bus on the motherboard. A system that IBM called Direct Bus Attachment (DBA). Which means finding a replacement will not be a five minute on eBay job. The most practical solution most likely would be to get a SCSI expansion card for one of the MCA slots and fit a SCSI drive.

That's getting a bit ahead of ourselves though - no point in worrying about a replacement hard drive if the rest of the system is a doorstop.

The seller had apparently tried to power it up, and had no life aside from the power supply fan.

Before I did anything I had to take it outside and attack it with the air line. The amount of finely atomised rust that I'm still brushing off my desk defies belief. It's not clean, but is a lot better.



Given I couldn't see any obvious issues and as I knew it had been powered up recently I figured that just plugging it in and checking our voltages was a good start.

Passed the first test: Didn't trip the RCD. Also the second test: Didn't blow up.

We had a working power supply fan, sensible voltages, the keyboard lights blinked when powered up, a working power light, and the hard disk did actually spin up. It also made some somewhat peculiar noises...but I don't know these drives well enough to have any idea what noises are normal. However nothing really useful. Zip on the display, either internal or external.

After a significant period of well...vaguely systematically poking, prodding, wiggling and cleaning connections we had progress, in the form of a beep code. Long, short, short. Which decodes to the primary display adapter being unable to start - which would indeed explain why we had nothing on the screen, assuming the plasma even worked - though I know the panel well enough to know it won't power up unless it sees a video signal. Helpfully it's exactly the same panel as Toshiba used on the T5200.

Some further fiddling around happened, then I noticed a lack of beeping, so looked at the screen.



Which on a reboot progressed to a memory test, showing 8 meg present - the maximum this could be specified with.



Then a 163 and 164 error listed (configuration options not set - expected with a 30+ year old battery). Then it did something I didn't expect - rather than complaining about a missing operating system, it booted into a BASIC prompt.



I'd forgotten some IBM machines had this built into ROM.



If these systems loose their BIOS configuration settings, they need to be booted from a disk with the configuration utility on - which IBM call the Reference Disk. Which brings us to the first thing I've found which definitely isn't working - the floppy drive. It seeks fine, but doesn't seem to be interested in actually reading data. It hunts a couple of times before just failing.

The drives in these things are reputed to be hugely unreliable - aside from being mounted vertically and having no slot door so they fill up with crud, they also have capacitor leakage issues. Of *course* these drives are non standard, because IBM. They have a combined power and data connection so I can't just drop another one in. Well until the adapter I've ordered arrives from the US arrives anyway.

I can't really do much else until that arrives and I can get the reference disk read, and find out if the hard drive has survived...I'm not giving it great odds, but I've been surprised before.

The keyboard however has been given a good clean so I no longer feel like I'm going to catch something just by looking at it.



Yes, that does look rather better.



This does use Alps key switches I can now confirm.



Which is quite interesting, as they feel very, very like the action of the buckling spring setup of the Model M, albeit with a slightly lighter action.

The display has now been removed from the machine so the driver board can be recapped.



Though I paused here because I discovered that IBM used security Torx screws to hold the cage on. I have a set of bits for them, but they're all the way down in the garage and I didn't have patience to go dig them out today. I'll need to track down where the 205V supply for the panel is generated in the machine as that will probably want similar treatment.

In terms of actual fleet news, things are afoot.

The decision has been made to move the camper on. It's barely moved in the last two years, and we really need something a bit bigger for our needs. I've pondered this a few times, but the decision has now been made.

Especially as I've just agreed to buy something else...and need to make space.

Easily the oldest car I've ever bought. Sort of thing I'd probably have walked past without a second thought ten years or so back, but have now really started to appreciate. This is all you're getting for now.



Should be interesting...and I'm really quite excited.

Sadly likely to be a couple of weeks before we have any movement on this as on Monday I'll be having to dash off to the US for a week to handle some family matters following a relation passing away a couple of weeks back. Why do these things always pop up at the most awkward times?

Zelandeth wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 9:39 am

gazza82 wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 5:49 pm So this is the camera my Dad used for all our photos when growing up and he developed and printed them himself .. he made a frame that sat over our bath and that became the dark-room. Woe betide anyone wanting a "tinkle" when he was in full flow though!!

That's a nice looking little camera, at a glance definitely looks to be a direct competitor to the Kodak Retina, I'm guessing from the name having come from Agfa.

There is an exposed 120 film in the camera so that will be interesting to see what he last used it for .. just need to find someone to try to develop it. Went to local SnappySnaps last time ..

Just need to work out how to use it! Found a couple of online instruction manuals! Then to get a couple of 120s and have a play!

My 3 year old grandson is going to be very amused .. "Why are you not using your phone Papa?" ... and my kids (and wife!) are going to think I've really lost it! They thought I was bonkers when I took my Canon AV1 SLR to Australia with a pocket full of film .. but took the Kodak digital as a main camera. Now upgraded the digital to a Canon eOS Digital.

gazza82 wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 11:57 am

Zelandeth wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 9:39 am

gazza82 wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 5:49 pm So this is the camera my Dad used for all our photos when growing up and he developed and printed them himself .. he made a frame that sat over our bath and that became the dark-room. Woe betide anyone wanting a "tinkle" when he was in full flow though!!

That's a nice looking little camera, at a glance definitely looks to be a direct competitor to the Kodak Retina, I'm guessing from the name having come from Agfa.

There is an exposed 120 film in the camera so that will be interesting to see what he last used it for .. just need to find someone to try to develop it. Went to local SnappySnaps last time ..

Just need to work out how to use it! Found a couple of online instruction manuals! Then to get a couple of 120s and have a play!

My 3 year old grandson is going to be very amused .. "Why are you not using your phone Papa?" ... and my kids (and wife!) are going to think I've really lost it! They thought I was bonkers when I took my Canon AV1 SLR to Australia with a pocket full of film .. but took the Kodak digital as a main camera. Now upgraded the digital to a Canon eOS Digital.

I was using these guys pretty regularly until I found a good independent locally, they should be able to process that for you.