30 Aug
2012
30 Aug
'12
6:36 a.m.
On 08/29/2012 02:10 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
There were also later Torch machines that were stnadalone units without a
BBC micro board. They ere not Z80 based (68K machines IIRC). But you
mentioend hte Graduate which wasn't a Z80 machine either (8088 MS-DOS
coprocessor of the beeb) so I guess you're conisdering all their products.
Yeah, I kind of strayed into non-Z80 territory :-) It was more a case of
pointing out that Torch made quite a vast range of stuff, but often the
Communicator and the twin-floppy units are the only things that people have
seen.
Well, I really meant just their beeb-related stuff, but I do have a Quad-X.
I actually had two, but one's at Bletchley these days. I never did have a
TPW or a Quad-Y though, so the collection never was complete :-)
Nice machines, from what I recall - it's a shame they didn't catch on, but
I suppose they were just too late into the game.
cheers
Jules
There were, it seems, various Torch Z80 addons for the
BBC Micro.
Yes, quite a few - plus various self-contained machines which used the BBC
board as an I/O processor. Most of them vanished to landfill years ago, it seems, and are
quite rare these days (mainly because they didn't have any
particular following back in the day, so nobody kept hold of them).
I've still got examples of all their boards, and a Graduate, and I think I
kept a 725 - but I got shot of my disc packs[1] and C-series machine.
_All_ their boards? I am impressed. A quad-X is not at all easy to find... Yes, no
experience there myself... I think I've only ever used an Einstein
for about 5 minutes :)
I've got an Eitstein, but I've never done much XtalDos hackeing. It does
feel a lot like CP/M and from what I recall when a friend ported Fig
Forth and Argon chess to the Eintein there were not problems at all.