Hello vintage microcomputer fans.
I recently bought an Interact Model One computer on ebay
(#150208636366). It was in good shape and it went relatively cheaply.
This beastie is 8080 based, and has very coarse color graphics. Mine is
unusual in that it has a white housing and a real keyboard, not the ash
gray case and tiny rubber keys of all the other interacts I've seen. It
has an integrated cassette deck, and no ROM BASIC -- that has to be
loaded from tape. By all measures is was really a miserable little
runt. :-)
Well, the seller put it in a box that was exactly as wide as the
computer, such that there was no padding in that axis, other than the
cardboard of the box. The rest was just stuffed with foam peanuts, and
a small sheet of bubble wrap that was floating in the box.
As you might guess, it didn't fare well. The space bar popped off and
peanuts got jammed inside the machine. Luckily, it was easy to put
back. Three of the five buttons of the integrated cassette deck broke
off. The plastic buttons are OK; it was just the glue that broke, and
the keys can be glued back on. Worst, a corner of the case shattered
into pieces, and left a large crack along the top rear. Being out $68
isn't so painful as the idea that this thing found its way through the
world for 30 years in decent condition and then got ravaged due to
simple carelessness.
Still, I crossed my fingers and plugged it in. At first I thought it
was dead, but then realized it is putting out modulated video. After
swapping my in nice Sony color monitor for a TV and tuning in channel 3,
I get a "DEPRESS L TO LOAD TAPE" message. Hooray for that. All isn't
well, though, as pressing the "READ" button doesn't cause the tape
mechanism to turn, even after pressing L. It is kind of moot, though,
as the plastic cover doesn't pop up when I press eject.
A web search hasn't turned up any useful information on the machine --
scans of manuals, in particular. A short time ago, a much more
complete system, including manuals, sold on ebay (#220191106456), to
"hokinfan". I attempted to contact the buyer to see if he could help me
out, but ebay rejected my attempts because they didn't see any trading
history between us. (please, no ebay rants)
So, does anybody on the list happen to have any form of technical
documents that I might be able to use to help troubleshoot this? Beside
wanting the information just to have it in case, I do have an immediate
need to figure out the tape deck, and to rig up some replacement
joysticks, since the machine didn't come with them.
Thanks