test-drb November 2006

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

220 participants
452 discussions

1983 Micro prices

by javickers＠solutionengineers.com

Witchy wrote: > > Hi folks, > > I know this was published in the UK media in 1983 which > doesn't really vouch for its authenticity, but it gives a > good idea of prices for the micros that were available at the time. > > It's the A-Z of Personal Computers published by Video Press > in 1983 and some of its prices are thus: (all UK pounds, > multiply by roughly 2 to get the $) > > Tandy TRS80 M1: 199 > Apple ][ and ][e: 1209/1270 > Osborne 1: 1430 > Commodore 4016: 632 > Apple ///: 2418 > Apple Lisa: 7500 > DEC Rainbow 100: 2300 > HH Tiger: 2700 > IBM PC: 2390 > N* Advantage/Horizon: 2300/2295 > ACT Sirius 1 (Victor 9000): 2754 > Intertec Superbrain II: 2100 Well, I have in front of me here the Winter 1983 edition of Micro Choice (published by Argus), which gives the following prices (all UKP): Apple ][e 845.00 Atari 800 245.00 BBC Model A 299.00 BBC Model B 399.00 Commodore 64 299.00 Dragon 32 199.00 Epson HX-20 499.00 Jupiter Ace 89.95 Lynx 225.00 NASCOM3 376.00 NewBrain 233.00 Osborne 1 (not priced) Research Machines RML 380Z From 500.00 Sharp MZ-80A 549.00 Sord M5 189.95 TI 99/4A 199.00 VIC-20 169.99 Genie I 279.00 Genie II 299.00 ZX81 49.95 ZX Spectrum (16K) 125.00 ZX Spectrum (48K) 165.00 The following machines are all reviewed (some in great depth), with several optional extras priced. Note that many appear in the table above with different prices.... Why? Who knows...: Sharp MZ-80A: 477.00 MZ-80AEU Expansion Unit: 115.00 MX-80FB Dual Disk Unit + Cable: 706.00 (!!!) MZ-8AFI Disk Interface: 115.00 MZ-80P6 Printer + cable: 496.45 MZ-8BP51 Printer Interface: 34.50 MZ-80IO2 Universal Interface: 51.75 MZ-8AP5R Character Generator: 14.95 Disc BASIC: 34.65 Epson HX-20: 411.00 + VAT Microcassette (drive I assume) 75.00 extra 16KB RAM Module 80.00 + VAT 16KB RAM/16KB ROM Module 80.00 + VAT Acoustic Coupler 220.00 + VAT TV Display Adapter 100.00 to 150.00 Laser 200: 69.95 16K RAMpack 29.95 64K RAMpack 59.95 Printer Interface 19.95 Joysticks (price per pair) 19.95 Lightpen 19.95 Colour Genie: 168.00 Pair of Joysticks 49.49 EG 2012 Centronics Printer I/F 30.50 (includes cable) Discs TBA ACT Sirius 1: Single Floppy with 128K RAM 2,195.00 + VAT Dual Floppy with 128K RAM 2,695.00 + VAT Dual Floppy with 256K RAM 2,895.00 + VAT 128K RAM board 395.00 + VAT Sinclair ZX Spectrum: ZX Spectrum 16K 99.95 ZX Spectrum 48K 129.95 ZX Printer 39.95 ZX Microdrive 49.95 RS232 Interface 49.95 (or, if purchased with a m/drv) 29.95 Acorn Electron: 199.00 Sharp MZ-700: 250.00 Modular Printer/Plotter 130.00 Modular Cassette recorder 40.00 Jupiter Ace: 89.95 Oric 1: Oric 1 16K RAM 99.95 Oric 1 48K RAM 139.95 Oric MCP-40 Printer/Plotter 169.95 (40.00 voucher with every Oric 1) Hitachi 3" drive under 200.00 Sharp PC-1251: 79.95 Including CE125 printer/cass 99.95 BBC Micro: Model A 299.00 Model B 399.00 Sord M5: (without joypads) 149.95 Sharp MZ-3541: 000.00 (a typo, presumably) Dragon 32: 175.00 Joystick Unit 10.00 ROM Cartridges 20.00 Cassette software 8.00 5.25" disc drive SSSD 275.00 48k Lynx: 225.00 Commodore 64: 299.00 + VAT Graphics Cartridge 50.00 approx Cheers, Ade. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.13.28/518 - Release Date: 04/11/2006

18 years, 1 month

Discussion of large systems

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Ok so you do know different. Why is there so little discussion of > these on the list? There are VERY VERY few people that have such systems. I only know of at most a dozen in the US, and most of them do not participate in on-line discussions. A few rairly use email. > Is there a more appropriate list? Maybe as we all have different > manufacturer's kit we have little to talk about, but we still face > Similar problems, thing like tracking down media, repairing peripherals, fault > finding logic, keeping the machine clean and stopping them rusting, > keeping the offline support stuff working - keypunches, Flexowriters, > Teletypes etc, though maybe that is not a problem for you as your > machine has a comms controller. The Computer History Museum is formalizing the restoration process, now that several machines have either been restored, or are in the process. Surviving systems from before 1975 are very rare animals, esp mainframes, since so many of them have been scrapped for precious metals. Sadly, there is even less software that has survived. CHM didn't start seriously collecting documentation nor software prior to the move to the West Coast in the 90's. While they have an impressive collection of hardware, and a pretty decent collection of US computer documentation now, the software holdings pre 1975 are minimal. I will be giving a talk at VCF this Saturday on the CHM software collection.

18 years, 1 month

Pascal in production environments (was Re: lisadraw)

by charlesmorris＠hughes.net

----Original Message---- All I remember from Pascal programs I have seen is that every thing is 1 large program. I/O is from the punched card era and every body handles SETS differently. Did any one ever use TINY Pascal? I remember back in '81 writing a lot of 1802 assembly language for a Discrete Fourier Transform processor (TTL and HC chips) in a sonobuoy project (PC boards 20" long and only 3" wide)... now you just throw in a DSP chip that runs on milliwatts... Anyhow I was very happy when "Micro Concurrent Pascal" came out, so I could write the control program and user-interface routines in a high- level language. Of course it didn't have good checking, as I discovered after chasing an intermittent crash for days with only a scope and logic analyzer. A junior programmer had put a subscript value of 60 in the middle of a group of variables, although the array itself was defined as [1..20]. It wasn't easy to spot by eye even once we had found it. So a location 40 bytes away was being overwritten, and sometimes to a value that would kill the program, sometimes not! -Charles

18 years, 1 month

Lisa history

by kossow＠computerhistory.org

> I'm curious why Larry Tesler and his team from Xerox Parc picked Pascal as > the language to build Lisa on...esp. considering the Alto was a BCPL machine > (forerunner of C). > I know Apple was an early adopter of USCD Pascal...I wonder if had any > influences. The original Lisa was going to be a 2901 based machine running a variant of P-Code. This died off pretty quickly once the 68000 was announced. I assume David Craig has this all documented somewhere. I heard the early history from Paul Baker. Lisa had been going for a while before Larry came over from PARC. Just before Larry left Apple, there was an internal talk on Lisa history which gave a chronology of events. Maybe Larry has written this all up somewhere. > Did Apple write their own compiler? See the previous message. It was written by Silicon Valley Software

18 years, 1 month

lisadraw

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

what were these routines writtenw in originally? (C presumably I suppose, though one could only wonder why they werent written in assembly TBW) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Low, Low, Low Rates! Check out Yahoo! Messenger's cheap PC-to-Phone call rates (http://voice.yahoo.com)

18 years, 1 month

Lisa history

by aek＠bitsavers.org

18 years, 1 month

Lisa Pascal

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Lisa Pascal was developed by Silicon Valley Software, who also sold it and a Pascal based operating system to Corvus for the Corvus Concept. SVS also sold a FORTRAN compiler into the early Unisoft Unix market. If you do a hex dump of the Lisa Workshop disc 5, you'll find a 1981 SVS copyright at location 38bb0

18 years, 1 month

Lisa inside Apple

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>> I know there have been people looking for this stuff for a long time.. After >> the Lisa group purge ("A players", etc.) happened, very few people wanted to >> be known as having worked on it. Even on the inside, it was tough to get >> people who worked on Lisa to talk about it. >> >I'd presume that some of that may be NDA's. I was a Senior Engineer at Apple for almost 20 years, first in ATG, then in CPU Engineering, and knew most of the people still there during that time that worked on Lisa. They didn't (and for the most part still) don't want to talk about it. > I don't know why there should be any stigma associated with having > worked on the Lisa project. Don North was there earlier than I was, and worked closely with one of the main hardware guys that didn't leave with Jobs when they formed NeXT. He could probably answer this better than I can, but there was an attitude internally that people who worked on Lisa worked on the 'losing' project. This faded out as time went on, and the Mac II and Laserwriter pushed profits up, but it was clearly still there when I started in 1986.

18 years, 1 month

imaging XENIX disks

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

I cant rightly say cuy I dont rightly know. I suggested he join so maybe well be hearing from him shortly. --- cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote: > > > I've tried > > Winimage and ImageDisk but they didn't work. > > "didn't work" isn't particularly helpful > > HOW didn't ImageDisk work? > > Did he try using a 360K drive? > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsored Link Get an Online or Campus degree Associate's, Bachelor's, or Master's - in less than one year. http://www.findtherightschool.com

18 years, 1 month

imaging XENIX disks

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I've tried > Winimage and ImageDisk but they didn't work. "didn't work" isn't particularly helpful HOW didn't ImageDisk work? Did he try using a 360K drive?

18 years, 1 month

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test-drb November 2006