followup: Rinky dink hamfest - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

28 Mar 1999

The Xerox 820 is one I really liked for a while.  It only supported
single-sided single density drives, but had on-board terminal-style video
circuitry (24 lines of 80 characters) and used a BIOS which could be banked
in and out, which I don't know for certain even banked in the entire BIOS.
I once concluded that it only banked in the parts it needed at the time,
thereby leaving a larger TPA.  I'm probably wrong about this, but I don know
the hardware was present to allow this.

With the addition of a little daughterboard from Denver Business Systems,
which replaced the 1771 FDC on the board, the device was double-density
capable once the BIOS was patched.

I even made and sold a daugherboard which replaced the CPU in order to
interface WD1000-05 and 1002-05 boards (bridge controllers) by Western
Digital.  Both this board (the 820) and the TVI 80x seemed to be pretty
solid boards for CP/M.

Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Joe &lt;rigdonj(a)intellistar.net&gt;
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
&lt;classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu&gt;
Date: Sunday, March 28, 1999 6:46 PM
Subject: followup: Rinky dink hamfest

...
    Today I went to see a couple of the people that I
meet at yesterday's
hamfest. One of them used to service XEROX computers.  He told me that he
threw out three rooms full of old XEROX computers less than a year ago. :-(
 He gave me part of the stuff that he had left, I have to take a Truck
(note capital) back to get the rest (estimated at two cubic yards but no
complete machines).  So far I've found lots of docs and 8" flopppy disks
for the 820 and 16/8.  The 16/8 looks pretty interesting, it ran CPM,
CPM-86 and MS-DOS.   Does anyone have one of these?  What's your opinion of
them?

  He has a floppy disk drive control box to manual operate 3.5", 5.25" and
8" drives during alignment.  Anyone have an idea of what one of these is
worth with the alignment disks and manuals?

  Alos found a Lisa mouse to go with the Lisa that I got yesterday.

   Joe