The posting
consists of a somewhat blurry but decent photo of the
unit from about 2 feet away, from an angle a bit behind where a
person would actually sit. The only odd thing in the photo is that there
are three non-standard toggle switches mounted on top (which I've
Are those present on the machine you received? If so, it would probably
indicate that what you have is not an adversting mock-up....
I'd go with that!
There is one possibility that's not been mentioned
yet. You might have an
Exidy product, but not from a sorcerer system. Some manufacturers used
cases/keyboards of their smaller machines as keyboards on larger machines
-- Acorn did for one. The Acorn System keyboard is mounted in the same
case (or at least a very similar case) to the Acorn Atom home computer.
Did Exidy ever make anything other than the Sorcerer?
They made video games, as far as I know (of the self contained, arcade sort, I
mean). I once saw one called "Targ" in (I think) a cheap restaurant in
Bristol.
I can imagine that these would definitely _not_ want a keyboard installed during
normal use, but might want one plugged in during maintenance or factory testing.
The custom switches would then do things like toggling between
run-as-arcade-game and service mode.
Just a thought.
Alternatively, if somebody working at Exidy needed a
keyboard for a
development system, or similar, it would be likely they'd use parts of a
Sorcerer. They'd be easy to get, and known.
I thinki it's more likely, though, that either this is a deliberate scam
(not necessarily started by the person who offered this for sale) or that
some hacker years ago needed a keyboard and used parts from a Sorcerer.
The piece of plywood inside the case may have been to weight it down so
it could be _used_ as a keyboard.
Also possibilities.
[...]
I have had another exchange with the seller
enumerating the reasons
why I feel ripped off and prodding him to share the pain with me.
His reply was, more or less, too bad. I'm sending a slightly more
Ouch!. This is, alas, looking ever more like a deliberate scam. A
reasonable seller would admit he made a mistake and offer to put things
right IMHO.
My guess is that the guy who sold it had no idea what it was, but has spent the
money, and so is just going to be bloody-minded about giving it back.
Not that it really affects getting the money back, of course :-(
I'd tell him that if he doesn't cough up at least some (Say, $50) of your $200
within a week, you will be filing a case against him in the small claims court
for $400 - the increase being to cover fees and expenses. After which you will
still expect to receive your fees from him even if he settles out of court.
That might hurry him up a bit...
pointed reply
at this moment. He even suggested that I try to sell
it to the 2nd highest bidder. Sheesh. I suspect I won't make any more
Oh, I see. He misrepresents a product to you and the cure is for you to
misrepresent it to somebody else???
Quite.
Philip.
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