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

On 25 Oct 2006 at 21:01, Golan Klinger wrote: The local public schools (and probably schools everywhere) have truckloads of these things stashed away. I've seen pallets of these things loaded up and ready to go to the recycler. No, if this thing sells, I suspect that there's some money-laundering or other hanky-panky going on. Hmmm, maybe I can get $2500 for the Atari 520ST that I'm about to list..... Cheers, Chuck

Evan Koblentz wrote: Topped only by this one: 140043231485 - Mike

Mike Maginnis wrote: run up to $6100 by a bunch of 1 and 6 feedback bidders. I noticed that the winner of this auction for the Apple is also the winning bidder, and presumed proud owner of a Vic 20 No idea what was going on, but I figure that someone saw daddy bid on something and doesn't grok the concept of having to pay $6100 for something. jim

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 26 Oct 2006 at 1:36, Warren Wolfe wrote: I dunno--I might disagree with that one. :) The 8820 looks big and boxy. I'll have to post some photos of my 1979 Durango 900--a little bigger than a DECwriter, with two 980K floppies; or one floppy and a 40MB hard disk, multipass dot matrix printer with downloadable fonts (tractor or friction feed), 4 async serial ports, 1 sync port and optional GPIB--all in the same box. Up to 256KB memory, switchable in 1K pages. Ran CP/M, MP/M and its own MT OS. Ran the complete set of MCBA business apps. Cheers, Chuck

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

HEY. FREE SHIPPING. :)

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

Everybody who was around had hold of different pieces of that elephant. On Fri, 27 Oct 2006, Warren Wolfe wrote: QDOS, followed by 86-DOS and SCP-DOS Tim Patterson never denied that QDOS ("Quick and Dirty OS") was based closely on CP/M. Most structures were deliberately kept compatible. However, he liked the idea of a linked list of blocks, as used at that time in the Microsoft "Stand-Alone BASIC" used on some NEC machines, and quite similar to the OS MS wrote for the RS Coco. just the OS. and both Tim Patterson ("Falcon Tech"?) and SCP retained rights to use and market the OS! Much later (1987?) when SCP was on the rocks, a number of biggies, reputedly including AT&T were very interested in the asset of a royalty free license. MS sued, but then they settled out of court by MS buying SCP. (MUCH cheaper than the lawsuit would have been!) If not for the SPECIFIC incident, (Gary flying up to Oakland for the day when IBM was scheduled to meet), DRI (once "Intergalctic Digital Research"!) would still have lost it - there was an extreme level of culture clash. IBM, with their dress code, etc.) was SHOCKED at what they saw in Pacific Grove. And (UNCOFIRMED), when the staff at DRI first saw the IBM people arriving, they thought it was a drug raid. After his death, friends of Gary claimed that the flight to Oakland was essential and necessary! (Nobody else in the company could have handled delivering some manuals to Godbout at the Oakland airport.) It would, indeed, have been a different world! Although the PC 5150 was released with MS-DOS (8/1981), IBM agreed to also sell CP/M-86, as a concession to DRI's objections to copyright violations. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com PO Box 1236 (510) 558-9366 Berkeley, CA 94701-1236

On Fri, 2006-10-27 at 20:57 -0500, Jim Isbell, W5JAI wrote: It was its own universe, Jim. The links and questionable parentage of the original version of DOS are tied directly to CP/M, which was the first O/S for personal computers that any significant number of businesses embraced. And, Windows came out of the DOS world, and now dominates as few products have dominated before. (Note: I am NOT claiming this is a GOOD thing.) From what I can tell, TRSDOS was not a rip-off of anyone's software, and nobody bothered to rip it off, so it's pretty much out of the world of O/S scandal. It actually was pretty decent, and had a few ideas of merit that didn't make it into the mainstream world for a while. It was just totally tied to Radio Shack computing, and suffered a mortal wound when IBM came out with their PC. No fault of its own. Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

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

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

Although I'm not a TRS-DOS person, this stuff is truly impressive. Can one of you update a wikipedia entry or put this on a TRS web page so it does not get lost? Jim

On 27 Oct 2006 at 18:44, Fred Cisin wrote: I don't know about that last part. From everyone I've talked to (including some of his poker-playing buddies) the following is about the closest to the actual way that events unfolded. (Apparently, the IBM delegation was taken a bit back by Dorothy's attitude. No one ever says "no" to IBM.): http://www.freeenterpriseland.com/BOOK/KILDALL.html Cheers, Chuck

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

Hi, Jules Richardson said: Both Apple and RS were big enough in the uk circa 1978/9 on to support a number of dedicated hardware and software suppliers. Both were used quite a bit by small businesses* that couldn't afford cp/m kit, as well as hobbyists like me. (I got a TRS-80 Model 1 around the beginning of '78 - still got it...) The Apple II was also rebadged and marketed by ITT, in a silver case IIRC. * I wrote and maintained some small business software for the TRS-80 in the early days. Computers were very new to most people at that time and users required a lot of (profitable) hand-holding! -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com The future was never like this!

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

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

Well, I had similar experience with a doctor that I consulted for, not about RS vs CPM, but just in general in that doctors will not take direction. They have been trained that they are Gods and therefore must make all their own decisions. I consulted with this guy for years on how to implement software to do all his billing and financial work. What ever software I wrote for him he would take home and rewrite it, thought he was a programmer also, then complain to me that it didnt work right. On 10/28/06, 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."

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

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 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

From memory (of the ad I read in BYTE within the last 6 months) there was this secretary looking lady proclaiming she could have one on her desk for ~$1700. I don't mean to be contentious (not right now anyway LOL), it's just what I seem to remember the blooming the ultra bare-bones price being. In ultra-bare bones read cassette storage only. But perhaps that included some sort of display adapter (CGA->TV?)...it would have to otherwise it would be essentially an expensive paper weight. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates (http://voice.yahoo.com)

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, 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.

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.

Every composite monitor I've ever seen had an RCA. Needless to say though, I haven't seen it all... I think the idea was that you could get by with less expenditure. The majority of peecees I've seen had the mono monitor plopped atop though. I got to dig out that ad. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates (http://voice.yahoo.com)

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

On 31/10/06 23:26, "Chris M" <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: At last count I had 3 base units, one for the museum and the others for whoever wants one. I don't mind shipping over the pond as long as you don't mind waiting until I get home to do so! I live 250 miles away from home during the week so this is a weekend only thing..........also my RM stuff is buried in our garage..... -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

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

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: 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

--- Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: I think the problem with endlessly upgrading an older machine was getting support somewhere down that road. Software issues come to mind. Older hardware can get goofy too, so unless you have an ee degree, it's probably often more cost effective to toss the old system (for businesses at least). I think the disposable pc is alot more of a reality today then in the 80's though. The Nimbus probably came out in o about '85. I don't know alot about any of their other products, just that they're still around. And that cerulean blue and red logo looks positively lovely against a creme background ;) Yes, and there were quite a few small business run with a Commie 64. Generally though programming was not that much delved into. I've often felt *ducking* that some of the niftier pd warez (i.e. those concocted by amateurs) came out of Europe. Nasty in what way? Incompatible (largely my understanding) - I know ;). I place in somewhere between a Tandy 2000 and a Mindset (both used the same 80186). There is talk of "improved sound and graphics" which could mean asics, or possibly just something like a 7220 and an actual dedicated sound chip (which the 5150 didn't have). It appears to use the same Mistubishi made monitor as the Tandy 2000 (640 x 400 x 8), so I'm wondering if the data on old-computers.com is accurate. "That" monitor was also available for the Leading Edge Model M/Sperry PC, but it was only capable of CGA resolution, and had the most awful dot pitch. So there were variations. I do have a few z80 based machines, but I concentrate on Intel based stuph. ____________________________________________________________________________________ We have the perfect Group for you. Check out the handy changes to Yahoo! Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com)

actually this reply belongs to the parent thread, but I did a search of "Seattle Gazelle" in the archives, and there weren't any hits. I've heard rumors to the effect that Seattle generated their code on this very machine, but I myself am curious about the accuracy. Was it Digibarn who had one, and also a fellow named Jim Scheef in CT, though I'm sure it's down at the InfoAge museum thing by now. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail (http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/)

Indeed I do. I'ev seen it refered to as the 'Oric 0', the Oric being another Tangerine design of course. -tony

On 1/11/06 17:54, "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: Hahahaha, would that be the Advance86 I've just posted about? :D -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

--- 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)

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 :-)

I have a Nimbus somewhere, I think (well, it's a later RML machine with an Intel processor, is there anything else it could be?). I do remember at least one chip inside that seemed to be a ULA, probably in the video circuitry. -tony

Chris M wrote: Hmm, I thought there were a handful of Intel-based RML machines, but they were all called 'Nimbus'. There was the laptop too, and I have a feeling that one perhaps didn't carry the Nimbus name (I've got one, but unfortunately on the other side of the pond and I've got no images of it here with me to check)

--- Witchy <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> wrote: The first unit to be called a Nimbus had an 80186. It's been said recently that a 186 put to "full use" will have port assignments that differ from IBM's standard. I doubt that any later models were "Nimbus'", being that people generally learn from their mistakes (i.e wouldn't produce a second computer that had compatibility issues). A notable exception would be the Texas Instruments Professional, which apparently was "upgraded" with an 80286, and was available in both desktop and portable versions. I don't know if he enhancement simply an add-on card, for these were available from 3rd parties. I want one :( Of course a designer could ignore the on chip integrated peripheralsof the 186, which I believe was largely the case with the Tandy 2000 (from memory it has nearly every peripheral chip a 5150 had) - which would make you wonder why they used it to begin with. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Check out the New Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster. (http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta)

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.