---------Original Message:
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2007 21:21:22 -0800 (PST)
From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com>
Subject: Re: "intelligent" disk drives
> >As an aside, IMHO one of the worst mistakes commodore made was that the
> >8050 could not at least read the disks of the earlier drives.
On Sat, 17 Nov 2007, M H Stein wrote:
> Sort of unavoidable because to get the 500MB/side they went to 100TPI drives.
Well, 96tpi drives would give pretty much the same capacity as 100tpi
ones, with only "half" as many incompatabilities.
'course, if they HAD gotten 500MB/side (v 400-500KB), then it would have
been well worth it.
--
Fred Cisin cisin at xenosoft.com
---------Reply:
Someone actually reads my drivel?
Another dent in my forehead ;-) My fingers are typing 500K and the brain,
such as it is, is thinking 1/2MB...
Yeah, tell me about 100TPI; a couple of us with Vector Graphics are cursing
the day Micropolis came up with those; to top it off, they used hard sector
diskettes (Vector - the 8050 didn't care) so the disks are almost as scarce
as the drives...
m
>
>Subject: Micropolis (was: "intelligent" disk drives
> From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com>
> Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:58:13 -0800 (PST)
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Micropolis made excellent floppy drives. It is too bad that their hard
>drives sucked.
>
>
>Did anybody ever use their OS? (bundled with some of their 5.25" floppy
>drives)
>
It was called MDOS. Never got a chance to.
Allison
Chuck wrote:
>Micropolis floppy drives were very well-made. I wish that modern
>drives could be as well-built. All of mine are still operational.
I think that like CDC/Imprimis, Seagate, Shugart, etc., Micropolis
built drives to different price points for different markets.
The ones built for the mini and mainframe market in the late
80's/very early 90's are true tanks and stand up very solidly
here 15 or 20 years later.
But by the mid-late-90's when capacity was the craze I think that
some industrial-duty Micropolis drives were a little too bleeding
edge.
The MFM ones built for PC-clones, however, seem to simply be "above
average", which is pretty good but not stellar.
Tim.
I 'rescued' a unique piece of computer equipment...
Here is the data:
Raytheon
RDS-201E (on badge on front/top)
P/N G246101-3010 (from badge on rear)
Model VT302 (from badge on rear)
This has 2 5.25" full height floppy drives (like the original IBM PC)
likely Tandon mechs ?
Has a 'built in' (more like 'built on') screen.
Has switches for 10 pitch/12 pitch
1/1.5/2 spacing and another I forget
(they are on the monitor piece).
I don't have a floppy. Ports on the back look like possibly a printer port
and the other likes similar like a short printer end centronics interface.
So... internet searches have turned up nada....
So.... what the heck is it ?
Is it a computer ? Is it some sort of terminal ?
I have no media for it... so if it is a computer, I'm doubtful I'll turn
up anything for it. Same goes for the keyboard.
It is a unique looking enclosure though... very very retro
Help me identify what this is, and what I should do with it
(if a computer and I can get media, will probably at least play
with it, then if no interest find a new owner for it... if some sort
of wacked out terminal... if there is no interest, I'm going to
yank the drives and anything else useful and scrap it, or if
feasable... maybe use it as a 'case mod' for a PC (I usually
loath this... but got to admit, this would make a highly unique
PC :-) ).
-- Curt
This cat Michael Posner compiled a book called, "The Apple Lisa Handbook".
He's an attorney by day and a geek by night.
The introduction is amusing:
"In the beginning there was this: 'c:\', and it was hard. But there was an
answer, and it came from.....Xerox, yes Xerox. And one day Steve Jobs came
to Xerox and said, 'This is great'. So Steve went back to Apple and said,
let there be Lisa (allegedly his young daughter out of wedlock). And Apple
labored for three years and then (without Steve, who was now raising a
pirate flag over at the Macintosh Group) there was Lisa. And Lisa was
cool, like no other computer ever made, before or since. But Apple lost
heart and Lisa was discontinued. This hurt many people (especially those
with vision and a wallet $10,000 lighter). But Lisa lives for those
dedicated users. This book is dedicated to them."
It's a compilation of articles and announcements from various sources
including notes from Apple and magazine reviews. It has a History of Lisa
section in chapter one, and includes repair and maintenance tips (towards
the middle).
It also has an interesting note about Lisa 1 upgrades to the Lisa 2, info
I've never seen before:
"Upgrades from Lisa 1.0
*To Lisa 2/5, free until June 1, 1984, $595 thereafter
*To Lisa 2/10, $2495 until June 1, 1984, $2795 thereafter"
The Lisa was announced in January of 1983, so this gives us a small
datapoint as to when the upgrades occured (or didn't).
Here's an interesting bit:
"Sun Remarketing specializes in selling discontinued Apple hardware. It is
the only major provider of systems and support for the installed base of
77,000 Lisas."
So there were 77,000 Lisas out in the wild according to this. If correct
then it was not a very rare machine by any stretch of the imagination (I
literally got like 8 in one haul one time, which was distributed between
several people) but they are certainly less common these days, now that
all the collector's have bought them up.
I wonder how many Lisa 1's sold? And then how many were upgraded to Lisa
2's? I wonder if that data still exists at Apple?
I like the sell Apple in the product discontinuation letter on page 3.
One section has some comments from a CompuServe forum. This one is
interesting:
"Sb: #121368-#Apple Drops Lisa?
05-Nov-84 18:21:55
I got my INFOWORLD last week and indeed there was a random rumor (not
Dvorak) indicating that they heard from a reliable source inside Apple
that Apple will drop the Lisa line in '85. Since I got my Lisa in August
this year I've been very happy, but now I'm worried. I bought an IMSAI a
few months before they dropped their S-100 machine, and she's still
working. But it is annoying! Any info would be greatly appreciated."
Ah, the good old days, when a juxtaposition between an Apple Lisa and an
IMSAI 8080 was normal.
Here's a really interesting tidbit:
"Infocorp's Gilman estimates that the easy to use computer that inspired
Lisa's development--the two year old Xerox 'Star'--has had total sales of
only 2,400 units so far. But the Star has only some of Lisa's features and
initially costs customers $50,000, or five times as much as Lisa, he
points out. Nevertheless, 'because Apple is changing its product and its
customer base with Lisa, I would expect it to get of to a slow start,'
predicts E. David Crockett, a computer industry analyst at Dataquest,
Inc."
Wow, I didn't know the Xerox 8010 cost $50K when new. 2,400 units sold by
1983. I would say there are not that many 8010's out there based on this.
They are more scarce than I thought.
Read Larry Tesler's post-mortem on page 51. Really net.
Anyway, an interesting read. Worth spending a few minutes going through
it.
BTW, check out the author's other interests:
http://www.mjposner.com/
He seems to be a pretty interesting guy.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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>
>Subject: Re: VAXmate for Windows
> From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com>
> Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:54:12 -0800
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>At 9:23 PM -0800 11/18/07, David Griffith wrote:
>>I have seven 5.25" floppies labeled as RX33K which contain:
>>
>>VAXmate MS-Windows v1.03 (two disks)
>>VAXmate Info System v1.1
>>VT240 Emulator Update
>>VAXmate S/A Install v1.1
>>VAXmate MS-DOS v3.10
>>
>>All of these are labeled "For VAXmate operating environment v1.1".
>>
>>I don't remember where it came from, but there's been some recent talk
>>about VAXen. Who wants these?
>
>I assume these will only run on a VAXmate? I've only seen one
>VAXmate and that was nearly 10 years ago. How good was the VT240
>emulation?
VAXmate was a 286 clone, I forget if it was 100% pc or off by a little
>from the PC AT.
VT240 em was decent, I forget if there were any differnces.
Allison
>
>Zane
>
>
>--
>| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
>| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
>| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
>+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
>| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
>| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
>| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
From: postmaster at mail.hotmail.comTo: sachaturgeon at hotmail.comDate: Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:38:30 -0800Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipients failed. bcw at u.washington.edu
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Compaq PLUS Luggable computer...Built-in 9 inch monitor, 5.25 inch floppy, HDD. Very Dirty.
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