23 Dec
1997
23 Dec
'97
10:22 p.m.
Adam wrote:
Someone near Sydney just offered me a pile of stuff,
mostly old pc/xt bits.
But in amongst it all was a Commodore 8296-d and a Sharp 1700. I imagine
the Sharp is one of the plamtop models they produced, rather than the more
laptop style Sharp PC-5000 - is this the case? And the Commodore I guess
to be an 8286 with a typing mistake, and thus merely a MS-DOS clone. COuld
someone please confirm this for me?
No, 8296 is a very late PET. I have three of them, but one lacks a
keyboard. Good old PET 8000 series architecture, although I'm told some
have a later version of BASIC. 128k of memory, but I think you can only
get at 96k + screen.
The 8296-D was the built in disk drive model. Twin floppies, DSQD, on
the GPIB internally. Uses a later version of the Commodore DOS software
than I have docs for :-( (Commodore disk drives all had a CPU in the
drive unit that ran a system they called DOS and communicated with the
system unit over the GPIB or the later VIC/64 interface)
My advice to you: GRAB IT!!!!!!!
Philip.
PS I once found an 8296D in the skip at work. I asked to buy it and was
told officially no, not safe, PSU is playing up but unofficially I could
grab a few parts if need be. I did and upgraded my (then only) 8296 to
the D spec. It cost me _more_ to do the upgrade than it would have to
repair the original machine. I was not pleased...