During my 2014-15ish yardsale adventures in the small town I use to live, I happened upon a really strange computer and monitor.
It was at a church, and the lady who was operating the sale just gave it to me for free, which was really nice of her.
This computer was a typical late 80's early 90's Baby AT computer, which isn't anything too wild, but its case and monitor brandished brands I have never seen before.
The case was branded "TDC" and the monitor branded "XIONICS". It also included something my mother identified as a "DD tag", which is apparently some kind of military cataloging thing. She had been in the navy when she was younger.
So after I headed home with it, my friends and I spent the night trying to find out about the companies these.
Surprisingly, we were not able to find anything at all about the make of these things, except a small and cryptic listing on an airforce website using the information on the DD tag.
Shortly later I ended up giving it to a friend of mine because I didn't have the space for it. He tooks some better pictures of it and made a 4chan thread trying to see if anyone had any idea about the companies the monitor and case were from. We left the thread empty handed.
My friend held on to the PC for a few years, and his bastard cat got inside of the case and pissed, unfortunately..
Here are some pics of the damage (sorry, its kinda gross).
BEFORE:
AFTER:
He ended up giving the PC back to me and I did my best and spent a whole day scrubbing the poor thing out. I scrubbed all the rust out that I could and clear coated over the leftover rust spots. Unfortunately, in the process of cleaning it, I wiped most of the logo off of the case, which I really really regret. You can kinda still see it, but it's mostly gone.
Let it be a lesson, never use isopropyl alcohol on anything unless you are absolutely sure the paint wont come off (or there isn't paint)"
Attempting to boot it (in my mom's living room lmao):
After all the cleaning I tried to boot it again, and it worked for a little bit, but then it would eventually intermittently shut off, until it didn't turn on again. I bought a replacement mobo, which sucked, but it wasnt any weird make or anything. Just a normal baby AT motherboard.
So it works and looks fine now, but I still haven't had a lot of leads on it's production.
When I had gone back to college, I met someone that knew a bit about military surplus stuff, and he told me that it was likely to be some local US company like IBM, re-branded and produced for the military. Apparently when stuff becomes obsoleted, the military donates it to places like churches and charity efforts.
This is the best lead I have about it so far, but if anyone reading this has any idea about it, contact me at SlimeSoft@cock.li
I'd Really appreciate it
So it looks like we've mostly come to a conclusion on the production and purpose of this PC.
My mil-surp friend had gotten back to me again about it, and here's what he had said:
Mentioned links:
https://www.usamma.amedd.army.mil/Pages/M3D_TMDE.aspx
https://www.aflcmc.af.mil/AFMETCAL/
I've also uploaded an image of the original HDD, if you feel like poking through it. Here's the MEGA link.
It looks like either me or my one friend had installed some games on that drive at some point, so just ignore those. Those were not there originally.
