2,200 Forgotten Vintage Computers Are Being Liberated From a Barn In Massachusetts
Published on June 29, 2023 at 01:43AM
A collection of over 2,200 new old stock computers from the 1980s, manufactured by a company called NABU and featuring a groundbreaking pre-internet network, are being liberated from a barn in Massachusetts. "In a way, this is two stories: The first, of a breakthrough network from Canada, a consumer-friendly 1983 version of the internet decades ahead of its time," writes Ernie Smith via Motherboard. "The other story, of the man who got a hold of these machines, held onto them for 33 years, and mysteriously allowed them to flood the used market one day. One day, thanks to a confluence of the right people noticing the right eBay listings, these two stories merged and created a third story -- the tale of a computer network, brought back to life." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: For more than two decades, the biggest retro computing story in recent memory sat like a sleeper cell in a Massachusetts barn. The barn was in danger of collapse. It could no longer protect the fleet of identical devices hiding inside. A story like this doesn't need the flash of a keynote or a high-profile marketing campaign. It really just needs someone to notice. And the reason anyone did notice was because this barn could no longer support the roughly 2,200 machines that hid on its second floor. These computers, with a weight equivalent to roughly 11 full-size vehicles, were basically new, other than the fact that they had sat unopened and unused for nearly four decades, roughly half that time inside this barn. Every box was "new old stock," essentially a manufactured time capsule, waiting to be found by somebody. These machines, featuring the label of a forgotten brand built around an idea that was tragically too early to succeed, could have disappeared, anonymously, into the junkyard of history, as so many others like them have. Instead, they ended up on eBay, at a bargain-basement price of $59.99 each. And when the modern retro computing community turned them on, what they found was something worth bringing back to life. It took a while for anyone to notice these stylish metal-and-plastic machines from 1983. First, information spread like whispers in the community of tech forums, Discord servers, and Patreon channels where retro tech collectors hid. But then, a well-known tech YouTuber, Adrian Black, did a video about them, and these eBay machines, slapped with the logo of a company called NABU, were anonymous no more. [...] Black was impressed. These devices, which utilized the landmark Z80 processor -- a chip common in embedded systems, arcade machines like Pac-Man, and home consoles like the Colecovision -- had an architecture very similar to the widely used MSX platform, making them a great choice for device hackers. (Well, minus the fact that they didn't have floppy drives.) Plus, they were essentially new. "It's new old stock, but it is tested," he says at the beginning of the clip. "I think the seller actually peeled the original tape off, tested it, and then taped it back up again." Essentially, this was the retro-computing version of a unicorn: An extremely obscure platform, being sold at a scale wide enough that basically anyone who wanted one could have it. And on top of all that, NABU -- an acronym standing for Natural Access to Bi-directional Utilities -- was essentially the 1983 version of AOL, except built around proprietary hardware. The flood of interest was so significant that it knocked the seller's eBay account offline for months while the company verified that the units were actually his. (They were.) For people who love tinkering with devices, there was a lot to work with here, especially in 2023. There was a real chance that this relic of the past could live again, with its network available to anyone who took a chance on buying one of these devices. "The kind of hardware and software hacking that people are doing with those wouldn't have been possible 10 or even 5 years ago," says Sean Malseed, host of the popular YouTube channel Action Retro and one of the many people who bought a NABU from the mysterious eBay listing. "These machines were once considered basically e-waste, but instead they're seeing a very unlikely renaissance." So where did this computer come from? Why did this seller have so many? And why didn't you know about the NABU until now? [...]
Published on June 29, 2023 at 01:43AM
A collection of over 2,200 new old stock computers from the 1980s, manufactured by a company called NABU and featuring a groundbreaking pre-internet network, are being liberated from a barn in Massachusetts. "In a way, this is two stories: The first, of a breakthrough network from Canada, a consumer-friendly 1983 version of the internet decades ahead of its time," writes Ernie Smith via Motherboard. "The other story, of the man who got a hold of these machines, held onto them for 33 years, and mysteriously allowed them to flood the used market one day. One day, thanks to a confluence of the right people noticing the right eBay listings, these two stories merged and created a third story -- the tale of a computer network, brought back to life." An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: For more than two decades, the biggest retro computing story in recent memory sat like a sleeper cell in a Massachusetts barn. The barn was in danger of collapse. It could no longer protect the fleet of identical devices hiding inside. A story like this doesn't need the flash of a keynote or a high-profile marketing campaign. It really just needs someone to notice. And the reason anyone did notice was because this barn could no longer support the roughly 2,200 machines that hid on its second floor. These computers, with a weight equivalent to roughly 11 full-size vehicles, were basically new, other than the fact that they had sat unopened and unused for nearly four decades, roughly half that time inside this barn. Every box was "new old stock," essentially a manufactured time capsule, waiting to be found by somebody. These machines, featuring the label of a forgotten brand built around an idea that was tragically too early to succeed, could have disappeared, anonymously, into the junkyard of history, as so many others like them have. Instead, they ended up on eBay, at a bargain-basement price of $59.99 each. And when the modern retro computing community turned them on, what they found was something worth bringing back to life. It took a while for anyone to notice these stylish metal-and-plastic machines from 1983. First, information spread like whispers in the community of tech forums, Discord servers, and Patreon channels where retro tech collectors hid. But then, a well-known tech YouTuber, Adrian Black, did a video about them, and these eBay machines, slapped with the logo of a company called NABU, were anonymous no more. [...] Black was impressed. These devices, which utilized the landmark Z80 processor -- a chip common in embedded systems, arcade machines like Pac-Man, and home consoles like the Colecovision -- had an architecture very similar to the widely used MSX platform, making them a great choice for device hackers. (Well, minus the fact that they didn't have floppy drives.) Plus, they were essentially new. "It's new old stock, but it is tested," he says at the beginning of the clip. "I think the seller actually peeled the original tape off, tested it, and then taped it back up again." Essentially, this was the retro-computing version of a unicorn: An extremely obscure platform, being sold at a scale wide enough that basically anyone who wanted one could have it. And on top of all that, NABU -- an acronym standing for Natural Access to Bi-directional Utilities -- was essentially the 1983 version of AOL, except built around proprietary hardware. The flood of interest was so significant that it knocked the seller's eBay account offline for months while the company verified that the units were actually his. (They were.) For people who love tinkering with devices, there was a lot to work with here, especially in 2023. There was a real chance that this relic of the past could live again, with its network available to anyone who took a chance on buying one of these devices. "The kind of hardware and software hacking that people are doing with those wouldn't have been possible 10 or even 5 years ago," says Sean Malseed, host of the popular YouTube channel Action Retro and one of the many people who bought a NABU from the mysterious eBay listing. "These machines were once considered basically e-waste, but instead they're seeing a very unlikely renaissance." So where did this computer come from? Why did this seller have so many? And why didn't you know about the NABU until now? [...]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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