On Wednesday 15 March 2006 01:55 am, woodelf wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 3/14/2006 at 6:34 PM woodelf wrote:
The Z-100/H-100? That wasn't much of a "clone", was it? So many
differences from the original!
Well I did get one for a song as Z-100 seems to ring a bell,about 10 years
ago but I had to toss it since it came with no DOS with it. It was a
nice machine, but with no Internet to get a OS booted for it was useless.
The PC clone was a much later product I was thinking about.
The -100 was an S-100 bus machine, with some small number of slots. The -150s
were closer to PC clones, but instead of a MB they had a backplane, and
some of the plug-in cards were taller than the standard cards, so what you
could or couldn't do was limited. (I have a couple of power supplies for
these if anybody can use them, the machines themselves are long gone). Then
they came out with stuff like the -160, a luggable, and the 148, etc.
which was a low-profile box. Later -150/-160 series stuff was a bit more
tightly integrated, with the whole machine on two boards instead of three,
if I'm remembering right.
Their -2xx machines were what they called their 286 and later boxes. At
around that time Zenith (?) decided that service was not going to be handled
through the local wholesaler (which had been the case for training and parts
and such) and was instead going to require no less than four separate trips
to Chicago, was going to cost some nontrivial money, and they also
complicated the handling of warranty claims, using NARDA forms (with six or
seven parts instead of the 2- or 3-part form we'd been using) and Batch
Tickets required, even if the "batch" consisted of a single claim. Couple
that with their responsiveness going into the toilet, an order for five
power supplies coming in so late and in two separate shipments that we lost
the customer, and we decided that it was time for us to stop being a ZDS
service center. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
I may still have manuals for a bunch of that older stuff, and think I also
have an early Zenith monitor, condition unknown, sitting in storage --
it's the one that used a DB25 for an input connector, if anybody's
interested.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin