Category Archives: Old Things

Find of the day – Castelli DSC 106

Posted on by
5

Picked up this sweet old Castelli DSC 106 chair for $30 from City Liquidators today! It was part of a pair but the  other one was missing some of the feet, and I’m pretty sure they are made of unobtanium.

2012-02-27_17-57-17_593sm

It’s apparently a 1965 design, by the Castelli company. It’s a pretty handsome, and cleverly engineered. Only four  screws are used in the entire thing. The chairs consist of cast aluminum side brackets, with tube steel legs and  under-seat crossbars clad in grey plastic. Small nylon stops set into the bottom of the side brackets keep them  from clanking when stacked up. The seat and back are molded plywood, and can be found upholstered in vinyl, cloth,  or bare with a varnished finish.

2012-02-27_17-57-31_940sm

They’re still made today, sold as the Haworth DSC Axis 106, and retail between $570 and $787 depending on finish.  More info from the company here.

2012-02-27_17-57-46_192sm

Not sure how you can date one of these chairs accurately. One of the differentiating characteristics seems to be a  number cast above the logo on the inside of the side brackets. My chair’s logo has an 8, and I’ve found examples of  the logo with castings of 22, 73/7, and 69/6. I think it’s safe to say that the latter two are year/month combos,  but I’m not so sure about the single and double digit ones. Maybe month of production since launch?

2012-02-27_17-58-03_114sm

Some purpose, and the GRiD 1139

Posted on by
Reply

One of the things I’d like to do now that I have some real hosting for this domain is get some old content online that I’ve been intending to put up somewhere for years.

First thing to get the honor is a set of photos I took of a GRiD 1139 portable computer I owned until last year. I first got my hands on it back in… I think the late 90s? It was mixed in with a lot of surplus equipment my dad bought from the municipality at auction. It wasn’t of much interest to me at the time, but it was unusual enough that I kept it rather than let it be sent to the landfill (yeah, I know) with the other too old to be useful stuff that had accompanied the gear that my dad had actually been after.

dsc_2949sm

It languished on a shelf for a long, long time in my room at my parents house. I briefly used the built in spreadsheet app on it to keep inventory for the student store at my high school. Then it went back into hibernation for a few more years. I dug it out again last year while I was cleaning out a bunch of my old stuff I’d left at my parent’s place when I left Anchorage to go to school in Portland. I was somewhat astonished to find it still worked. After messing around with it a bit I got to researching what exactly I had on my hands, and most importantly if it was actually worth anything.

dsc_2950sm

Turns out, it was worth a lot. The 1139 has a number of characteristics that make it pretty collectible. It has unusual hardware (non-volatile bubble memory, an amber plasma display) wrapped in one of the first clamshell type portable cases (made of magnesium!) It also has some historical relevance, 1139s having been used on the space shuttles (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/doc.asp?c=900), and some pop culture exposure via the movie Aliens (http://forum.alienslegacy.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5410).

dsc_2959sm

I put it, and some other less interesting GRiD machines, on eBay, and was pleasantly surprised to receive a high bid for the 1139 of around $400 from a collector in Austria. Prior to making the sale though, I indulged my curiosity and took the machine down to its bones to see what the guts looked like. The rest of the pictures from this exercise are below: