"Computer Artifacts" - D2CA's Miscellaneous Rare Items



Holerith punch card Hollerith Punch Card
    Found mainly in computer museum displays today, the hollerith card is an artifact whose origin can be traced back to the early 1800's!
    The concept of the punch card was originally invented by silk weaver Joseph-Marie Jacquard in the early 1800's. Herman Hollerith adapted this card in the 1880's to process US Census data on an "automatic machine." It was later adapted for computer mainframe processing and used into the 1980's.
    The hollerith card has 80 rows. In the late 1970's when the first PC operating systems were being developed, their text-based displays also had a default width of 80 characters. CP/M and DOS have 80-character text display.




Fake 3½'' floppy drive covers 3½" Drive Bay Cover -- Fake Floppy Drive
Do you remember seeing one of these on the front of a computer? These fake 3½" floppy drive bay covers were popular in the 1990's.

Rather than just a flat, plain cover, if the computer had a real 3½" floppy drive and one of these covers installed above or below it, from a distance it almost looked like the computer had two floppy drives installed.




3½'' Floppy Drive Adapter for 5¼'' Drive Bay 3½" Floppy Drive Adapter for 5¼" Drive Bay
From the mid-1980's to the late 1990's, many computer desktop and tower cases used "rails" to hold peripherals such as 5¼" floppy drives, 3½" floppy drives, tape drives and even CD-ROM drives.

This adapter, with rails molded into it sides, allowed a 3½" floppy drive to be installed in a 5¼" drive bay.




5¼'' Floppy Drive Bay Rails 5¼" Floppy Drive Bay Rails
And speaking of 5¼" drive bay rails, here's a set of them. This style of rail has a U-shaped piece of hard wire that aligns with a drive's side mounting screw holes. The rails attach to the sides of a 5¼" floppy drive, tape drive, CD-ROM drive, etc. ane then could be slid into a drive bay's guides. The metal wire provides grounding from the computer case to floppy and tape drives of the day which required it to operate.


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Updated last on 01/01/2009.
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