Golan Klinger wrote: Maybe it's full of cocaine or something? 8-) Peace... Sridhar

MARCH has a duo drive. All yours for the bargain price of $1,000. :) -----Original Message----- From: Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. [mailto:rescue at hawkmountain.net] Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 10:04 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Craziest ebay price EVER Golan Klinger wrote: indeed... for that price it ought to be delivered by Woz, and autographed by him too ! :-) And a lot of nerve... you don't even get a color monitor for that price !? I can put together the same setup (possibly minus the duo drive), including the same exact monochrome monitor... and I'd be happy to let it go for a penny on that seller's dollar :-) -- Curt

HEY. FREE SHIPPING. :)

Yeah, but clearly he didn't pay -- in fact, top two bidders, one looks like a shill and another looks like some guy just screwing around. Mike Maginnis wrote: -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

Mike Maginnis wrote: Perhaps the earlier auction explains the current one. The current seller saw that auction price when searching for a value for his Apple IIe and thought that $4700 was a fair price. Sure, it's high, but if you don't know what older computers are going for you might be inclined to believe your 'antique' is worth a great deal. Is that a plausible explanation? I still don't know why anyone would make a ridiculous bid as it as a (somewhat) legally binding contract. One might find themselves being sued, even if only in small claims court, and end up with a serious problem. -- Golan Klinger <gklinger at gmail.com> Dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.

Warren Wolfe wrote: I agree, which is why I find myself gravitating toward 8088 assembler, trying to master it. At least that's a stationary target! -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

On Wed, 2006-10-25 at 23:49 -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote: (EEK! Looks like I hit a nerve with my first post. Oh, well, start out with a religious argument, that's MY theory.) Oh, come on... who goes by looks? If looks is the criterion, nothing beats the sexy flashing lights of the Imsai 8080... The Monroe had, far and away, the best BIOS that was ever part of a commercial computer. It is typical that Monroe downplayed the CP/M aspect of the machine, in favor of the Monroe O/S, which, as we all know, conquered the world. Ahem. Anyway, the Monroe would run through the media, seeing if there was a disk from which it could boot, and when it found one, it booted, and made the drive in which the boot disk resided drive A: unless the user switched them. It had 128K of paging memory, and 128K RAM disk. I could load all of CP/M, a few cherished public domain utilities, and Turbo Pascal into the RAM disk, and that baby FLEW! Disk access was highly optimized, too. I had a disk that loaded the "choice" stuff into RAM disk, and one that loaded the basics and dBase, if I was working with data. Then, take out the boot disk, and both disk drives could be used for data with the RAM disk as the default drive. ZOOM! Well, don't expect ME to argue with you about your machine. I learned long ago never to tell a proud parent their baby looks like a chimp on dope. (Not that there's any comparison to the present situation...) Oh, yeah, the GPIB reference reminds me... I've got an HP CP/M machine, too, that looks like their old brown monitors, with a standalone dual diskette drive that connects via HPIB. I forget the model number... Cripes, I've got old computers stashed all over the place. Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

Welcome to the list... How familier this sounds (my two favorite CPUs). Has this software been imaged/archived/preserved? If not, it really should be - If you are interested in doing this, I would be happy to provide assistance, and also to host the images on my site. Regards, -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html

Subject was: Re: Craziest ebay price EVER On Fri, 2006-10-27 at 00:19 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: What I mean by "one package" is that the machine is a complete computer -- monitor and keyboard built in. One plug, one diskette, and you're off... My personal preference is for separates, in computers, hi-fi, video, and most other things where there is a choice. That allows one to get the best of <insert category here> and replace any item if a superior type shows up. The Monroe, however, had a screen of similar quality and "feel" to that of the Amdek 310-A. Very easy on the eyes. The keyboard was also of high quality, and the whole machine was ergonomically efficient for a built-together. Also, as in stereo equipment, MOST of the "one package" systems were substandard for their time, in my opinion. Not all, but most. Perhaps... But CP/M was a hobbyist O/S that sort of became the industry standard. Cool, in a way. The closest thing to THAT today is Linux, and that's a tad bit complicated (and too good) for hacking it to be much use. Thanks for the welcome, and thanks for the advice. I know my limits. At one time (but no longer, I just checked) I had ALL the CP/M BDOS calls memorized, I used them so much. I'll grant you CP/M was a rather little pool, but I was a big fish in that pool. I'm adrift when it comes to Windows calls... and, I ended up USING quite a few O/S platforms over time, but never gained the skill in any of them I had in CP/M. Now it sounds like I should tell the kids to keep off my lawn after I talk about it. <Grin> It WAS nice to be the master of the world for a while... I try to avoid flame wars. I'm not always successful. They're pointless for the most part. I've heard it said that winning a flame war on the 'Net is like getting the Gold Medal in the Special Olympics. When all is said and done, it would be better to not be retarded in the first place. There's at least some truth to that. And, truth be told, it's clear that a lot of the people I've seen post in the last 24 hours obviously know a lot more than I do about quite a few things. That is as it should be. Normally, I'm the alpha geek wherever I am, so it's refreshing to think I'll be LEARNING things for a change. So far, it reminds me of the Aloha Computer Club back in the 70s... Everybody is knowledgeable, and some VERY much so, but all experienced in somewhat different areas. Seems like a friendly group, too. I'm a painfully honest person (I know, I know, liars say that, too) so I'll let people know when I don't know something. But, I have picked up quite a bit of knowledge since 1971, when I started out with computers by dialing in to an HP 2000B timeshare BASIC machine. It's odd, spotty knowledge, but, one never knows WHAT issue is coming up next... Can I claim laziness as an excuse? I know what you mean, a friend of mine used to make repair manuals for obsolete, orphan, test equipment. I do recall how he used to smoke a cigarette, drink his coffee, and stare at circuit boards for hours on end, and how, occasionally, he would set down the coffee, stub out the cigarette, walk calmly outside, close the door, and primal scream into the night. He would then come back in, sigh, light another cigarette, take a sip of coffee, and go back to staring. I have reached a point in my life where I value my time and blood pressure more than the $50 bucks or so for an old manual. Symptom is no video. I don't have access to a 'scope any more, since the ex left mine out in the rain for me to pick up a couple years back. I'm not really desperate to get the Monroe running again, but I'd enjoy having a schematic and seeing if I can think my way through it... I hear you, brother. I know my IMSAI that way... but no other. I didn't put the Monroe together, and that's a handicap to understanding. I'm an NIST certified calibration technician, so I'm not intimidated by attacking a problem with only a 'scope and a schematic, but I don't have the familiarity with the Monroe I would with the IMSAI. There's something cool about that all-encompassing knowledge. Oh, no, not at all. When I whipped up a computer, though, when I got done I had something better than most people owned. I can't do that now, unless you call buying a motherboard off the shelf, dropping a CPU into it, and plugging in the various cards "building a computer." I suppose it IS, technically, but not the way *I* mean it. Anything I could build now would draw comments like "Oh, isn't that cute" rather than "Oh, my God, that thing's a demon!" Not the same. Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

Subject formerly: Re: Yet Another Old Cyber-Coot On Sat, 2006-10-28 at 00:08 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: [In the interests of avoiding problems, the following is a composite of several coherent and consistent stories I got from several people who were involved. This is how I understand events to have taken place, and, therefore, constitutes my singular opinion of events as they occurred. No claim of ultimate accuracy should be implied or assumed. That should keep the wolves at bay...] It's not at ALL surprising that MSDOS resembled CP/M. The first version of MSDOS, called simply DOS, was actually a hot copy of CP/M for 8080 that had been run through a program, XLAT, (often called X-LAX by those who had to clean up its output) that translated it from 8080 to 8086 mnemonics. It was produced by Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for its combo 8080/8086 CPU board, from a commercial program of questionable legality which "disassembled" the CP/M code running in your machine when you ran it. (I forget the name. Anybody remember this?) It took the crappy code (in this case code generated by the PL/M compiler, and made commented assembly language source. The folks at Seattle Computer Products got this disassembler, ran it, took the output of that, and ran it into XLAT, and voila! CP/M for the 8086. It was changed so that one could take the various three-letter CP/M commands, and spell them out, and they would work. Also, in an apparent attempt to avoid being sued by Digital Research, they kept "ERASE" as an expanded command, but it only worked, in abbreviated form, as "DEL". Apparently that was sufficient, as nobody got sued. Bill Gates then bought out SCP -- I'm unclear if it was the whole company or just the O/S product, and a legend was born. They went to work, and started cleaning up their copy, and DOS for PC was born. And, if not for a significant error by Gary Kildall, creator of CP/M, it might well have been Digital Research Inc, in the place of MicroSoft. What a different world we would live in, eh? Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

OK, where did TRSDOS fit in? It was before MSDOS as far as sale to the public. On 10/27/06, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: -- Jim Isbell "If you are not living on the edge, well then, you are just taking up too much space."

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, Warren Wolfe wrote: There WERE several imitators of TRS-DOS (although still for TRS-80), including NEWDOS, DOSPLUS, and the semi-legitimate offspring LDOS. Rasio Shack AVOIDED expanding TRS-DOS into other semi-related hardware platforms. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

How big was the TRS-80 Market to support all thoses DOSes? I remember when NewDOS/80 and I just remember it being fast. Any idea who wrote that? -Chandra -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred Cisin Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 10:24 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: The Origins of DOS On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, Warren Wolfe wrote: There WERE several imitators of TRS-DOS (although still for TRS-80), including NEWDOS, DOSPLUS, and the semi-legitimate offspring LDOS. Rasio Shack AVOIDED expanding TRS-DOS into other semi-related hardware platforms. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

I was in love with TRSDOS and also felt betrayed when MSDOS muscled its way in with a big pocket full of dollars and, as far as I was concerned at the time, an inferior product. I dont know if TRSDOS could have evolved to meet the competition or not, but it never had the chance to try because Uncle Bill had too much clout through IBM. Teaming up with IBM is what made MSDOS. It gave them the money to force their monopoly on everyone. I now use Unix and have forsaken the whole world of MSDOS. My wife wont let go though because she doesnt want to learn a new thing and that is what makes Uncle Bill safe in his position a worlds richest man. I think it is something like the US being the only superpower. It cant be dismantled now because the clout is there to always be ahead of ALL competitors. Once a certain size is exceeded, its like a black hole, its all over for the rest of the competition, they just get swallowed. Of course...the dinosaurs were once kings of the world too. But it took a meteor the size of Manhattan to change it. That could happen to the USA and Uncle Bill as well, I guess. On 10/27/06, Warren Wolfe <wizard at voyager.net> wrote: -- Jim Isbell "If you are not living on the edge, well then, you are just taking up too much space."

"VTOS"

Fred Cisin wrote: Although both TRS-DOS and Apple-DOS were pretty much insignificant outside of the US, I would have thought. I don't think RS or Apple ever could have developed a world market the way the CP/M guys did.

On Sat, 2006-10-28 at 19:00 +0100, Stan Barr wrote: Indeed! My first professional consulting was with a physician in Hawaii, where I lived at the time. I would go over to his house on his days off (always weekdays) and swim in his pool and discuss computers. He picked my brain quite a bit, but it was far and away the most pleasant working conditions I've EVER had. Oddly enough, he got all my input on the subject, and totally ignored it, after paying me about a grand, total. (This was pre-Carter, so a grand was REAL money.) He skipped CP/M, (which I was backing) and got a Radio Shack, with optional diskette drives. He also got one of those weird printers that burnt a silver layer off of black paper to make a mark. By the time he paid for that he had paid more than a CP/M system would have cost, and did not have the expandability. I asked him, as diplomatically as possible, why he had bought a system that would do less, for more money, from RS. His response was that he was greatly comforted by the superior warranty that the RS had. That was a good point... except that he, on the same day, gave me a kit he had purchased, which included a ROM and some support chips, to hack onto his motherboard so that he could have lower case letters. I pointed out that doing that would void his warranty, and was told to go ahead anyway. *SIGH* After about a year, he totaled up what he had spent on his computer, and pointed out to me that he had spent about twice what a CP/M system would have cost him for the same functionality. He also asked me if there was a way to run CP/M on his RS machine, as all the business software he saw was written for CP/M, and most of it did not have RS versions. I bit my tongue until it bled, literally. I just thought I'd pass this on, as it combines your comments on hand-holding with the recent RS thread... </ramble mode> Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

Stan Barr wrote: That's interesting, because I don't know where they've all gone! We see far more surviving CP/M machines and things like Nascoms and equivalents than we do Apple and RS systems in the UK. That would suggest that people tossed out the Apple and RS stuff, but held on to other machines for some reason. Later on of course UK people seem to have largely made do with the same 8 bit machines that the games / education market used - I get the impression that the acceptance of IBM PCs and compatibles happened *much* sooner in the US than it did elsewhere.

Stan Barr wrote: Sure, I know they're still about in the UK - just in far fewer numbers than similar machines from the same timeframe. Maybe people were just subconsciously more likely to hang on to their CP/M system (because it was expensive) or their 8 bitter which didn't really have an OS (because they'd invested so much time in getting it to do what they wanted). In the business world, the UK people seemed to 'make do' with what they already had to a far greater extent though; or rather that's the impression I've got. The home market was somewhat similar on both sides of the pond though, I believe... Hmm, I have two, an original PC and an XT. *one* of those cost around 4000 pounds circa 1984, but unfortunately I don't know which. (I got them around 1992 from an old school; it took a while to organise as they were still down on the books as being worth the same money for which they'd been bought 8 years earlier :-) cheers Jules

On 30 Oct 2006 at 20:53, Stan Barr wrote: Aroiund 1983, my business partner and I were setting up an operation in India (outsourcing of programming isn't that new!) and wanted to get a few PCs for use over there. So we went to the IBM sales office (on Arques in Sunnyvale, IIRC) and asked about getting some 220v/50Hz "export" machines. We were told that they were on a rather long backorder and we'd just have to wait our turn. And, yes, the price differential was pretty staggering, especially when compared to similarly-equipped domestic models. We asked if the domestic models would run on 50Hz if a suitable transformer was supplied to drop the line voltage to 120vac. We were informed rather curtly that doing so would be viewed as a violation of the warranty. We considered getting an MG set, but eventually decided to push our luck (the only mains-connected component other than the PSU itself that I could find was the PSU fan) and ran the domestic PCs off of a stepdown transformer. They worked just fine until they were retired. Cheers, Chuck

On 31 Oct 2006 at 12:34, Fred Cisin wrote: But it was IBM's picing and packaging of options that engendered the third-party add-on board makers, like Quadram and Everex. What made them really attractive was packing more than a single function on a board (remember that the original 5150 had only 5 expansion slots) So, for example, a board that gave you RAM, a parallel port two serial ports, as well as a clock was very attractive if the alternative was purchasing an expansion box ($$$) for the extra single-function cards that you'd need from IBM. Cheers, Chuck

Adrian Graham wrote: You know, I never would have guessed that the Apple /// cost more than an IBM PC! I would have thought it was fairly close, but still a couple of hundred or so less.

On 31/10/06 17:52, "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: What can I say, it's what was published at the time! -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

On 31/10/06 22:04, "Chris M" <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: I wish I could easily scan this glued-spine A3 magazine I've got in front of me, perhaps I'll precis it instead :) The IBM PC was launched in 01/83 at ukp2390 and has captured 20% of the US market. The System unit includes an enhanced version of Microsoft BASIC-80 Interpreter without diskette functions. 'The IBM PC is a rather conservative design and is 2 or 3 years out of date. However, it's also true that any design flaws will have been ironed out since it has been available in the US for so long' OS support is interesting: MS DOS, CP/M86, UCSD-P Expansion: Provision for 1x160k Floppy, cassette -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Adrian Graham wrote: WHAT magazine? The IBM PC (5150) was launched in the USA in AUGUST 1981. By '83, the XT had taken over, and the AT was being almost ready to release. What this implies is that the PC was several years delayed in UK. number of years is quite subjective -3 < N < 5 hardly. The PC (5150) ALWAYS had space for TWO floppy drives. The XT had space for one, with the other bay occupied by a 10M drive.

I've heard stuph to the effect that there wasn't alot of Big Blue stuph in the UK, at least not in the early days. Research Machines was a big name though, and common. I still want the blooming Nimbus, but chances are if I'm offered one I'll be too cheap to pay the freight. By all means give it a go though if you find one surplus to your needs. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Check out the New Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster. (http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta)

Chris M wrote: Not on the desktop - I think there were a fair few 'server' class systems around though. But yes, my understanding is that the PC just didn't take off in the UK like it did in the USA (and elsewhere?). Remember that the UK had a massive amount of choice when it came to general desktop machines - quite probably more so than the USA did. UK society at the time was very much "squeeze every last possible drop out of what you had", whilst the impression I've got of the US was that people were far more willing to upgrade systems reasonably frequently to whatever the latest thing available was. In education, yes. Not so much for home or business use, though. What timeframe are we talking - say 1982 to 1985 or so? The education market was split primarily between Research Machines and Acorn, with a few others picking up the scraps. The home computer market was amazingly diverse, but frequent names were Sinclair, Acorn and Commodore. The corporate world of desktops was similarly diverse (with the likes of CP/M crates, Commodore, Apple, and IBM all featuring) - but there were also a huge number of business people making use of the same machines that were found in the home. Often these people were talented enough to write their own bespoke software to manage their business, but there was a healthy market in 'business' software written for these machines too. A while back I came up with a list of early-80s UK computer manufacturers (in order to see how much space we'd need for a UK-specific room at the museum). It ended up being pretty massive... Good grief, why? They're pretty nasty. If you want something from RML, go for a 380Z or a 480Z - those are 'real' computers; the 380Z has that lovely rugged 'military' feel to it with all the fun of a modular system (albeit without a rigid backplane :-) whilst the 480Z is a great example of good design, both hardware and packaging. cheers Jules

Chris M wrote: Yep. I certainly get the impression that there was a lot more fault-finding and fixing going on the the UK than the US, though. People were far more reluctant to invest money in a machine in the UK unless they could mess around with it at the hardware level and stand a chance of fixing any problems themselves (which is probably a reflection on UK society as a whole back then, rather than being limited to computing) The other products were far nicer :-) (By calling the Nimbus 'nasty' in my other post I meant simply to imply that it was rather uninteresting, not that there was anything particularly horrible about it) Yes, they're one of the few surviving UK computer companies from the 80s. Quite possibly the *only* one, although I'm sure someone can come up with other examples (there are a few brand-names still about, but they've been through all sorts of takeovers and buy-outs that mean they really don't count :-)

It was possible to get the XT with 2 floppy drives (and no hard drive). My XT came like that, and AFAIK both drives are original (they are both IBM-badged). -tony

On 1/11/06 09:00, "Stan Barr" <stanb at dial.pipex.com> wrote: Well, like I've already said I was quoting from a magazine myself, but further reading on its IBM PC page reveals this (again, correctness may be or may be not present): "So here it is at last, the system from the world's largest computer manufacturer. Not surprisingly, their PC has already spawned a host of look-alikes. At ?2390 it isn't quite the most expensive PC around but it isn't that far off either. Anyway, it is probably the most prestigious in many people's eyes. Officially, the IBM PC was launched in January 1983 but, as many of you will know, several 60hz 110v versions have been supplied via the 'back door' for at least the last 12 months." Caveat emptor :) -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

In article <20061031220433.45356.qmail at web61022.mail.yahoo.com>, Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> writes: The 5150 came with a monochrome adapter, IIRC, not CGA. CGA was later! -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Richard wrote: ONLY IN CERTAIN SUB-MARKETS. CGA and MDP were available at the same time. MDP had much nicer text display; CGA color monitors were very expensive. Therefore, it didin't make much sense to go CGA. UNLESS, . . . you have the extreme level of technical expertise to make or buy a cable to connect a composite video monitor (often with UHF connectors) to the composite RCA jack (or to the 4 pin Berg that was supplied for connecting SUP'RMOD2 RF modulator), and the willingness to accept video quality that was about the same as other current micros, just to save $700.

On 31 Oct 2006 at 15:08, Fred Cisin wrote: ...or unless you needed graphics. :) Cheers, Chuck

On 31/10/06 23:52, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: According to this magazine here next to me, yes. I need to dig out my copy of 'Personal Computer News' that had the Tiger on the cover plus in-depth review to be sure. Presumably you know the Tiger was a Tangerine design that had been bought by H|H, a company still known for its guitar amplifier units? Why H|H decided to try to break into the PC market is anyone's guess. -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

For comparison, I bought an Osborne 1 in the US in the Fall of '82. I bought with it an Epson MX-80 Graftrax, and a 300 baud Hayes Smartmodem. I didn't pay anywhere near USD2800 for the whole setup; if memory serves, it was much closer to USD1800. The point of my comment is that these US-made machines seem to have been more expensive in the UK than the US -- hardly surprising. Figuring out what UK prices were in equivalent USD is fairly simple, but figuring out US prices from that list isn't trivial. De

On 1/11/06 02:06, "Dennis Boone" <drb at msu.edu> wrote: We don't call this place 'rip-off Britain' for nothing - for as long as I can remember when things have come from the US the price here has been the same in ukPounds as it was in dollars no matter what the exchange rate was....the natural reaction was to do your own imports but unless you were canny with shipping invoices etc you got (and still get) clobbered for tax and VAT. -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

Chris M wrote: I had one from Ferranti like that. It was a real oddball - huge case, two power supplies (+5V from one, other voltages from the other), and two main PCBs (one housing the backplane and a bunch of logic, the other for the CPU and built-in ports). It had at least memory, serial, keyboard and parallel built in - and I'm fairly sure it had MDA graphics and a FDC too. I believe it had something like 4 8-bit ISA slots, plus a much larger custom slot for unknown usage. Unfortunately I never had original software for it and never got it to boot with any of the versions of either IBM or MS DOS that I tried. In terms of IBM compatibility, I'm leaning toward 'not very'. Sadly it went to landfill about 5 years ago (although I did try to get rid of it on here first!). On a brighter note I've since stumbled across an identical machine at Bletchley though - although I've not yet seen any software or manuals for that one either! cheers Jules

Adrian Graham wrote: heh heh :) I thought it funny that you mentioned Ferranti too. But no, this was a much larger machine in a white metal case - it's not one I've ever seen mentioned in any text about Ferranti before. I'd wondered if the white machine was some weird forerunner, but if the text on www.old-computers.com is right then the Advance 86 developed out of a much smaller home machine and retained the original board alongside a newer expansion board - the white-cased Ferranti's innards look much more as though they were designed for the purpose. Anyone got images of the Advance 86's internals just so I can be sure? I'd probably remember enough to know if there was shared circuitry if I saw some photos. cheers Jules

Adrian Graham wrote: Hmm, it used to be in the same room as the A86 - but it may depend on when you took the pictures as Ben and I had a good sort-out in that room. "PC clones" tended to end up in the room up the top of D Block (the one with the Xerox kit and micro trainers in it) Aha - worth a look, then. I suspect we've got the same issue at Bletchley, but that doesn't help me much right now :-) Hmm, personally I'd say no - we've got a couple of nice Alphas already; if it was anything other than DEC I'd still be tempted if it was one we didn't have - but space is limited and we're swamped with DEC items as it is; I'd rather save the room for something from a different manufacturer. You may want to prod the BP mailing list about it though just to be sure. cheers J.

(not UK101, All Perhaps the (1982?) Husky Hunter John

--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: Sorry, I did mean IBM compatibles. Anyone familiar with the innards of the Nimbus? I imagine there's some uncommon stuph in it, but I was of the persuasion that there wasn't "alot". ____________________________________________________________________________________ Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com)

--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: They made loads of Intel based computers. Doesn't necessarily positively have to be a Nimbus I don't think... Well maybe it is a Nimbus then, being there's only 1 ULA...whatever a ULA is LOL ____________________________________________________________________________________ Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail (http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/)

On Fri, November 3, 2006 11:47 am, Jules Richardson said: I've got half a dozen RM boxen from the period and only one is called 'nimbus' - the PC1, the others are labelled as AX and VX machines though that doesn't mean they weren't Nimbii internally :) (nimbuses?) -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection?

On Fri, 2006-10-27 at 18:44 -0700, Fred Cisin wrote: Indeed! Ah, thanks. Oh, thanks! This is a much more comforting reason why I remember BOTH Microsoft buying the O/S AND the company. Previously, I was going with some form of dementia. I like the idea of two separate purchases (and memories) MUCH better. Probably the LONG term outlook would have been separate, but IBM wasn't expecting the success they had with the PC, so I think they would have gone with DRI alone, without Gary's literally flying off. Gary could be annoying to deal with. I'm given to understand that he also did some touch-and-go landings for practice on the way back, and met the IBM v.i.p.s at the airport without knowing who they were. Ouch. That was when they decided to go with that "snot-nosed kid up near Seattle." Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

On Sat, 28 Oct 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote: A pretty good description (one of the very few that doesn't try to coverup Gary's final incident), but, with a few flaws: some say that it USED TO be "Control Program and Monitor", and was changed to "Control Program for Microcomputers" later Due to the popularity of the Microsoft "Softcard" (Z80 board with CP/M for Apple) That WAS the previously expected price, and there are some sources that say that Kildall SET that price. Many/most "experts" originally EXPECTED CP/M-86 (at $240) to win out over PC-DOS. But, when CP/M-86 finalloy came out, the "placeholder" was too solidly established, and the "benefits" of the "standard" were not clearly visible. And, in terms of the basic premise of the article (that Kildall and Gates would be interchangable), Gary Kildall lacked the greed and competitive drive that it would take to become what billg became. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

In article <m1GdaoJ-000IyUC at p850ug1>, ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes: Speaking of Ramtek, what sort of Ramtek gear does anyone/everyone have? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>