Available: IBM desktop "System/23 Datamaster"

I brought the System/23 in to the house from my truck this evening. Now I'm laying on an ice bag to counteract the inevitable back strain. :) I can type in a "Hello, World!" type program and run it. Naturally, I used my standard test program for old BASIC machines first: 10 print "Butts! "; 20 goto 10 It appears to word-wrap automatically when I used the semicolon. It has a shift lock key rather than a caps lock key, and the shift lock is disengaged by pressing a shift key rather than pressing the shift lock again -- i.e., it works like a typewriter, rather than most common computers do nowadays. That makes sense for a machine's target market, I think. Other than that, I haven't figured out how to do other significant things with it yet. I did dig around inside; there's plenty of dust to clean out, but it seems to be in good shape overall. It's clearly designed with field maintenance in mind. I was surprised to find that its hex-head screws use a 3mm metric hex key instead of an inch one, but that single hex key breaks the unit down into subassemblies pretty easily. There are various annunciators printed along the bottom of the screen; some make sense, and some are cryptic. The green text screen can display at least two levels of brightness. I've been making very frequent use of the error reset key, but I don't know the meanings of the error numbers yet. I have't tried sticking in any blank disks yet, since I figure I should try cleaning the heads first. I haven't examined the drives carefully enough yet to determine whether they're single-sided or double-sided. For that matter, I don't know whether the machine uses soft sectored or hard sectored disks. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/