More new toys!

Hi all, Just for those who are interested, I've recently had my first really good find. Two Acorn A4 laptops, in good working order, complete with three batteries, two power supply modules and a set of manuals (Acorn A4 Welcome Guide, RISC OS 3 manual and Acorn A4 Pocket Reference). One machine seems to suffer from the infamous "slow-down-and-crash" problem. Strangely enough, moving the machine up and down a bit seems to get rid of the problem. Go figure. All three nicad packs are fried and need rebuilding and aside from a bit of cosmetic damage (and a bit of stubborn dirt) both machines are in nearly-new condition. All in, I ended up spending ?80 (including shipping) on the full set. ANC managed to misdeliver them, though - how the heck they managed to deliver my parcel to the wrong person and the wrong _street_ I may never know. For those who are interested, the A4 is (or rather was) one of Acorn's RISC computers. It was the first (and last) laptop Acorn designed, unless you count the "Stork" prototype. The A4 is fitted with 4MB of RAM as standard, runs Acorn RISC OS 3.1 on an ARM CPU (ARM3 IIRC), 60MB 2.5" IDE hard disc, 3.5" 1.6MB high-density floppy drive and a cute little 16-greyscale backlit LCD display. In essence, it's an Acorn A5000 in a laptop case with a battery charger and battery management circuit fitted. A "5th Column" ROM contains a rudimentary battery meter applet that sits in the icon bar. There's also a small LCD battery meter next to the power button on the front of the A4. Both machines are a fairly nice grey colour, the casing appears to be rubberised metal (probably stronger than ABS plastic). None of these machines are for sale, nor is it likely that I ever will sell them - I've been looking for an Acorn A4 for over three years and I don't intend to let these two leave my sight :-) Anyway, I think I've said enough for tonight. We now return you to your regularly scheduled classiccmp-ing and all that :-) Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, Ethernet (Acorn AEH62), http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 8xCD, framegrabber, Teletext ... Acme Corp: Unlimited credit for disadvantaged coyotes.