O YEAH! What a deal!!!

Eh? Out of the HP150, Sirius and Rainbow, the last was the only one to have colour graphics, I think. I usspect one of the best 'IBM Incomatibles' for colour graphics was the Sharp MZ5600 (I think that's the number). It has a couple of ASICs on the videao board and according to the manual it has hardware support for 4 windows. Yes, but most of the 'IBM incompatibles' had 1 bit per pixel, just on/off monochrome grpahics. The 'Bow had a CLUT and up to 4 bits per pixel I think. For a suitable definition of 'nice'. Actually I don't much care for it, as it's can't read or write a 'standard' (FM or MFM) disk. The ability to exchange disks with the rest of the world is something I put very high up my list of desirable features. As yuo doubtless know the data encoder/decoder is a similar circuit to that in, say, a CBM8050. The drive spindle motor is controlled by a microcontroller, etc, on the controller card and the disk spins at different speeds dependin on which cylinder the head is on (the CBM drives kept the spindle speed constant and varied the data clock rate, which is roughly equivalent, both methods maintain a more even linear bit density on different cylinders). I have one. I also have a home-made schemaitc of the machine, keyboard and monitor. Let me know which section seems to be emiting magic smoke (PSU, monitor, CPU board, disk controlelr board) and I'll see if I can figure it out. For the record, I have the official techref for the HP150 and 150-II (including schematics) and a homemade schematic for the 'bow. -tony