Cory5412 Posted November 23, 2020 Report Share Posted November 23, 2020 @JDW - this line of inquiry is inappropriate and I will put a warning on your account if you continue it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JDW Posted November 23, 2020 Report Share Posted November 23, 2020 1 hour ago, Cory5412 said: @JDW - this line of inquiry is inappropriate and I will put a warning on your account if you continue it. Cory, Thank you for your message. I apologize for any offense. It was not my intent to cause a problem. I am actually bewildered by all the negative responses. With the aim of avoiding similar trouble in the future, I would greatly appreciate knowing why my simply asking about the source of vintage computing equipment sold on EBAY and announced in our forum, originally having been owned by a famous person who attended my university alma mater, is deemed “inappropriate”? Had the question been asked of me, I would have answered it, even if I had to say, “I am not at liberty to divulge that information.” Thank you, James Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JDW Posted November 23, 2020 Report Share Posted November 23, 2020 On 9/9/2020 at 8:51 PM, pinto_guy said: Yes olePigeon, it was on Craigslist. I'm making progress reviving it. I'll update soon. I sincerely apologize for my own foolishness. I reread this entire thread and saw that olePigeon asked the same question I did and got the answer! That’s all I was wondering. Thanks, and sorry for the confusion. I’ll try harder to read all the Q&A before posting in the future! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Jinnai Posted November 23, 2020 Report Share Posted November 23, 2020 I think the reaction against JDW is a little bit strong. While it is inappropriate to ask, he was just curious and asked a blunt question, so the response I see here was not in kind. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
CC_333 Posted November 24, 2020 Report Share Posted November 24, 2020 I agree with @Jinnai. It was perhaps a bit too blunt and personal to be appropriate for the open forum, but it was nevertheless an innocent, perfectly legitimate question, although if it were I who was asking, I probably would've done so privately to altogether avoid the risk of what happened here today. Hopefully all who were involved learned something and can better handle this kind of situation in the future.... c Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pinto_guy Posted November 24, 2020 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2020 How many years does it take to NOT be a newbie on this forum ? I've been posting here since 2014 Anyway, many thanks to everyone for their support. @JDW, I did feel that you were a bit forward and inquisitive and I much appreciate your apology. But to be fair, the drama that ensued bothered me more than your initial post. This was never my intention to hide how I got involved in this. A few months back, I did inquire about a sale of 400 boxes from the Colby estate, from a Craigslist ad. I met with the owner who was a friend of Chuck's, and who purchased his home on Alexis drive in Palo Alto. These boxes were found in a container at the house. Two more vintage computing enthusiasts were there, and the three of us offered to help the owner (who is not a techie) sort through all the boxes. I further offered to help clean, fix and sell some of it for him. In the process, we found hundreds of documents pertaining to Colby's businesses (he had several throughout his life), and even personal items. Our goal now is to preserve his legacy, and give him the recognition that he deserves. I'd be happy to discuss some more privately, so please PM if you want more details. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pinto_guy Posted December 19, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2020 Well, the "Apple Muzeum" in Poland did not waste any time after they received the Walkmac that they bought off our eBay auction. See their blog here Good to see that Chuck Colby's legacy is expanding overseas Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JDW Posted December 19, 2020 Report Share Posted December 19, 2020 4 hours ago, pinto_guy said: Well, the "Apple Muzeum" in Poland did not waste any time after they received the Walkmac that they bought off our eBay auction. See their blog here Wow. A great write-up and set of photos on their website. Thanks for sharing! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pinto_guy Posted January 12 Author Report Share Posted January 12 @JDW, as we discussed privately, I have been in touch with Karen Colby, Chuck Colby's widow. She is a great woman, and she has been very supportive of our effort to rehabilitate these rare pieces of hardware. She actually was very much hands on in the business, quite a change from her original education as a medical nurse. She confirmed the date when Chuck passed away, on Sep 22, 2018. She also indicated that he had requested privacy, which explains why the vintage computing community at large did not know that he had passed. The last piece of Colby's hardware that was left for me to restore was a MacColby. This one took a while but I got it done (see photo). Karen actually mentioned that this very piece was her's and Chuck Colby's personal system, and this makes it very precious to us. I took some video snippets of this system, which I will put on youtube at some point. Happy New Year to all who have been commenting on this thread. It's great to communicate with such a nice group of people who share the same passion. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
JDW Posted January 12 Report Share Posted January 12 @pinto_guy I certainly appreciated our private conversations, and I must say that I am also very appreciative of your willingness to share further insights publicly in your latest post today. That MacColby makes me think of the Lisa, only portable. "Portable" back in those days being more of a "luggable" than anything else. With a metal case, that thing must weight a ton! I look forward to seeing your YouTube presentation. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Jinnai Posted January 12 Report Share Posted January 12 Wow, that's a very impressive unit. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
olePigeon Posted January 12 Report Share Posted January 12 It's kinda like the PC portables back in the day. I doubt the dimensions are much bigger because it appears that the 3.5" drives allowed for the larger screen. I remember my dad's old portable with a tiny green CRT, but it had 2x 5.25" drives. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Kai Robinson Posted January 14 Report Share Posted January 14 @pinto_guy do you have any information on the screens used, or the interface that connected to the LB in these machines? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pinto_guy Posted January 15 Author Report Share Posted January 15 @Kai Robinson, this MacColby is simply a Macintosh 512k refurbished into a bigger box that can be transported. So the CRT, LB, AB, floppy, mouse and keyboard are all stock Macintosh parts. Colby mostly (only ?) sold a kit that allowed people to assemble Mac components into the Colby box. In Colby's estate, one of us found an old betamax video tape that describes how to do the assembly. He was able to read that tape and upload the content to the Internet Archive, for computing history's sake. It's a 1h:30mn of lengthy assembly instructions, but you could get the jist of it by skipping at will. In later models such as the WalkMac, Colby went one step further and developed a power supply and an interface between a Mac Plus LB and a flat plasma screen. I hope this answers your question. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pinto_guy Posted January 25 Author Report Share Posted January 25 I uploaded this youtube video with footages of the system in operation, FYI Quote Link to post Share on other sites
olePigeon Posted January 25 Report Share Posted January 25 Considering we had the Mac tote bags with pockets to carry your keyboard and extra floppy drive, the bigger Colby seemed a bit odd to me, unlike the laptops which were more portable than the Macintosh Portable. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
pinto_guy Posted January 25 Author Report Share Posted January 25 Very much agree. This could explain was this product was not a commercial success Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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