For so long on this list, I have been reading about peoples "good days",
"lucky days" and so on. Now at last, I can talk about my "real beaut"
day!
A local collector, not known previously to me, put a post on one of the
"aus.forsale" newsgroups saying he wanted to thin out his collection, and he
preferred a person take the "off-load" as one lot. Thanks to a
"heads-up"
from Andrew Davie, I got in first (as it turns out, no
one else offered to
take the lot) and the previous owner even volunteered to bring
it all around
in his van. The delivery consisted of:
EACA Genie III, an all-in-one 2x5.25" and monitor (TRS-80 compatible and
CP/M)
CPT 8525, an all-in-one 2x8" drive and page-view monitor
Spectravideo 328 with 605 Expander containing 2x5.25" drives and 80 column
card
Hitachi MB6890K ("Peach") with Hitachi MP-3550 dual floppy and Hitachi
monitor
Hitachi MB6890K (another) with 3rd party dual floppy unit and two other
expansion cards
IBM 5150, made in the Wangaratta plant in Australia that IBM ran for a few
years, with a 64K-256K board and cassette connector
IBM DisplayWriter (Model 6580) with 2 x 2 x 8" drive units (ie 2 lots of
double 8" drive modules)
Digital Professional 350 but without its hard drive (but a double floppy)
and 2 x VR201 monitors
TRS-80 MC-10 with 16K expansion
TRS-80 Model III 16K with no drives
TRS-80 Model III 48K with 2x5.25" drives
TRS-80 Model 4 64K with 2x5.25" drives
TRS-80 Color Computer 1
TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with NEC PC-8032B dual 5.25" disc unit and TRS-80
Line Printer VIII
VIC-20
Dick Smith System 80 cassette system
Microbee Series 2 Colour
Microbee Series 3 128K with Microbee Disc System (5.25" in large shoebox)
And all the previous owner wanted ... a swap for my Apple ][+ which he
needed for a project he was working on now. Thanks Chris, if you are reading
this, much appreciated and valued. Shouldn't be too hard to find
another ][+.
Of these computers, the CPT is the least known (to me). I can find only one
mention of it on the Web and that guy didn't even have a boot disk for it.
At least I have some 8" disks (don't know if it works yet, still got to do
the preliminary check-out before applying power). One of the floppies says
"Tandon CPT" on it (hand-written) and a sticker somewhere suggests it was
built in Ireland. I'd appreciate some more info on it.
Hardly anything on the net about this chunky IBM Display Writer either, its
not even on the Comprehensive Computer Catalog as far as I can see ...
Anyone got a spare monitor cable for the Hitachi Peach's? (Luckily, they
also have B&W monochrome output so I can see that this system works).
Now, I've got plenty to do for a while ...
Phil Guerney
in Brisbane, Australia