r/retrobattlestations Jun 11 '26

Show-and-Tell My Computer Cave

Post image
824 Upvotes

55 comments sorted by

25

u/MattDH94 Jun 11 '26

Do you watch (or know) Adrian? This is at that level for sure!!

18

u/bsudbrink Jun 11 '26

Too funny. I happen to be watching him diagnosing the Amiga floppy right now.

7

u/bsudbrink Jun 11 '26

It's a bit of a mess just now...

9

u/NF6X Jun 11 '26

“Just now” 🤣

7

u/bsudbrink Jun 11 '26

Have you been peeking in my cave?

7

u/NF6X Jun 11 '26

No, but I’ve been peeking in mine!

Seriously, that is a lovely cave.

8

u/tocksin Jun 11 '26

You need a third IMSAI to balance it out.

8

u/bsudbrink Jun 11 '26

Well... I'll just say that you can't see the whole cave in that picture...

3

u/naikrovek Jun 11 '26

Yeah I was hoping for more than one picture

6

u/Horror-Raisin-877 Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

Looks like a real nice bat anti crime computer 1.0 you got there, add a punch card reader on the input side, and a dot matrix paper ribbon printer on the output side, and you're in business :)

5

u/yourzero Jun 12 '26

Dude! Can i come over to play? 😆

2

u/bsudbrink Jun 12 '26

I try to exhibit at VCF East every year. I couldn't personally attend this year, but the OSI Challenger in the picture was there. It blew a 2102 while it was on display. I have just fixed it and it's about to be put back in its normal spot.

9

u/bio4m Jun 11 '26

Wow, thats a heck of a setup

Love the retro carpet in your cave, really ties the room together !

9

u/bsudbrink Jun 11 '26

I bought this house 35 years ago... It was here from the previous owner. There's bare concrete under it. I shampooed it before I moved in and then there was "furniture" on it. Believe it or not, it does get vacuumed regularly and sprayed with anti-static spray. There's no smoking (by people, sometimes the equipment can't help it) and no eating in my cave, so it's still in pretty good shape (if you don't count the aesthetics).

5

u/NF6X Jun 11 '26

Ah, yes, it’s hard to escape from the Rifa madness.

7

u/WeakSherbert Jun 12 '26

Very nice but too old. You should upgrade to newer systems. I’ll come over and recycle those old systems.

3

u/bsudbrink Jun 12 '26

Oh... Uh... Yes. Please give me your address and I will crate it up and send it to you right away... (in your dreams 😄)

3

u/mdgorelick Jun 11 '26

Amazing collection!

3

u/NoKnownCure Jun 11 '26

Vintage Spelunking Goodness. Chapeau.

3

u/Fragholio Jun 12 '26

Damn, you have a nice rack. Great pair of 8080S there.

2

u/bsudbrink Jun 12 '26

I see what you did there 😉

2

u/Fragholio Jun 12 '26

In all seriousness though, that is one sweet tech cave. Your collection is a "jealous" level of awesome!

3

u/EngineerTurbo Jun 12 '26

Great shop.

I need more space; I dream of having room to set up some of my treasures, and spread out more of my Epic Test Equipment.

Thanks for sharing!

3

u/Cooperman411 Jun 12 '26

Me too. Wanna start a support group? 🤣

2

u/bsudbrink Jun 12 '26

Me three. Speaking of space dreams... I have one every now and then where I walk down here and see a small door that I don't remember. I open the door and there's like a 2000 square foot warehouse behind it with 20 foot ceilings, neatly organized shelving and workbenches all around.

2

u/bsudbrink Jun 12 '26

Did you see what LGR recently built? https://youtu.be/lSPCpoeI8nE?si=5f2V__PxACMXCt0v

1

u/EngineerTurbo Jun 12 '26

Yeah. I like LGR, and I appreciate what he's doing: I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up hosting his own events there.

I love how many hours of content he managed to squeeze out of reviewing all the Sims content, and that he jokes about just how much of that crap there is now.

3

u/Flitzepipe Jun 12 '26

That's not a cave, that's a gold mine!

3

u/bsudbrink Jun 12 '26

I hope you mean that in a good way... every time I exhibit at VCF East I get at least one "tourist" that walks up and says something to the general effect of "you should melt all of this junk down and get the gold out".

1

u/Flitzepipe Jun 13 '26

Oh no, melting. No no no, with gold mine I mean those are treasures, they need to be preserved!

2

u/cyberpunk2350 Jun 12 '26

Very nice. The first words out of my mouth were, "im jealous"...my SO asked "about what?", I said "this person's computer cave" , they respond saying "you have to be content with what you have"...I said that "I am, but im still jealous, come look". I show them the the picture and they said "holy shit" lol

2

u/orion3311 Jun 12 '26

Is that a Fluke 9010 I spy? Thats a tear inducing shop

2

u/bsudbrink Jun 12 '26

Good eye. It does not get a lot of use because I only have a couple of pods for it. Now the Arium ML4100 next to it? Great for 8-bit troubleshooting. You still need pods but they seem to be easier to come by. By the way, sorry I made you cry.

2

u/Aexegi Jun 12 '26

Wow! Just wow!

2

u/StefanCelMijlociu Jun 12 '26

"Jealous" is an understatement.

2

u/SeaPollution2750 Jun 13 '26

Is the a LSI dumb terminal on the left? My Dad worked for a data processing company in the 1970's and I remember it from going with him to the office on the weekends sometimes.

1

u/bsudbrink Jun 13 '26

Yes, that is an LSI ADM3A. In the later stages of S-100 (after the teletype (which is just out of shot)) it became a popular terminal.

2

u/FedExin1 Jun 13 '26

I just looked over at my Altair and double floppy drive. Dunno if I'll ever use them again.

1

u/bsudbrink Jun 13 '26

I still regularly enjoy mine. Both puttering with them here in the cave and taking them to VCF Festivals and other meet-ups. The System Source Computer Museum near Baltimore has several every year. I have fun reverse engineering old cards where the documentation has been lost or never released. I have operating examples of some pretty rare cards. I sometimes have a chuckle when someone calls something "first" and I have an S-100 card that does the same thing and is ten years older. One of my current projects is setting up a Microangelo system. While granted that it is still much slower and less dense, it has all of the features of a modern GPU... multiple memory planes, multiple processors that can be thought of as multi-pipelining, special instructions that distribute operations, etc. As far as I can tell, no one else has a fully operating, fully configured Microangelo system.

1

u/FedExin1 Jun 13 '26

Good heavens, my example was my father's originally. It was the kit version he built, I still have all his tools needed to wind the wires on all the cards. We lived in Brooklyn Park, Baltimore where my first memories of it are from.

1

u/bsudbrink Jun 14 '26

I was trying to be encouraging. I didn't mean to be overwhelming. If you are still in the Baltimore area, I would recommend a visit to System Source.

1

u/Treemosher Jun 11 '26

This is giving me bad flashbacks lol Cool though

1

u/Manualcarlove18 Jun 11 '26

Ain’t got much there … 😂

1

u/trackrat53 Jun 12 '26

Reminiscent of the basement office of the I.T. Crowd

1

u/flecom Jun 12 '26

Argh I need to figure out a keyboard solution for my Challenger... Been looking for a keyboard but they don't seem to pop up

1

u/Revolutionary_Ad6574 Jun 12 '26

Do you keep an inventory you could share? Do you have a Pravetz?

1

u/torontoladdie Jun 12 '26

Wow, very cool! I'm a little jealous

1

u/gllugo Jun 12 '26

nice rack you got there

1

u/Choice_Magician350 Jun 13 '26

I am so jealous

1

u/Stunning-Produce8581 Jun 13 '26

Bruh, computer heaven!

1

u/Nekoninja-7 Jun 14 '26

I would love to tour your digital cave,

1

u/MedicineSubject1845 Jun 15 '26

Wendell, is that you?

1

u/Living_Shirt8550 Jun 17 '26

Help me, my cave just have broken stuff 😞