24 Mar
1998
24 Mar
'98
12:08 p.m.
Thought someone in the group might be interested. As usual, if you
are discovered, I will deny any knowledge of your existence.
We have an OLD Data General One Laptop from 1983!!!!
We would like to sell it!
It works well, has a modem, and an HP Think Jet Printer!
No reasonable offer will be refused!
-------
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS:
Send all inquires to: mldat(a)the-pentagon.com
Thank you!
-Bill Richman
bill_r(a)inetnebr.com
http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r
(Home of the COSMAC Elf Simulator!)
24 Mar
24 Mar
3:11 p.m.
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, Bill Richman wrote:
Thought someone in the group might be interested. As
usual, if you
are discovered, I will deny any knowledge of your existence.
>We have an OLD Data General One Laptop from 1983!!!!
He wants $500 for it. Such a deal :-)
-- Doug
3:28 p.m.
Doug Yowza wrote:
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, Bill Richman wrote:
He also said at the end, "No reasonable offer refused." Just curious,
what would you consider to be a reasonable offer for one of these. Or
perhaps more to the point, exactly what is one of these? ;)
--
mor(a)crl.com
http://www.crl.com/~mor/
Thought someone in the group might be interested.
As usual, if you
are discovered, I will deny any knowledge of your existence.
>We have an OLD Data General One Laptop from 1983!!!!
He wants $500 for it. Such a deal :-)
3:36 p.m.
On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, Greg Troutman wrote:
He also said at the end, "No reasonable offer refused." Just curious,
what would you consider to be a reasonable offer for one of these. Or
perhaps more to the point, exactly what is one of these? ;)
The DG/One was a fairly non-descript early 8086 laptop. According to DG's
website, it was the "first truly portable" PC and they made 43,000 of
them:
http://www.dg.com/about/html/dg-one.html
I don't know what a reasonable offer would be, but it's apparently more
than the $15 I offered :-)
GRiD's clamshell-style Compass laptop preceded the DG/One by a couple of
years (and the GRiD is *much* cooler, IMHO). Perhaps the DG/One was the
first battery-powered PC-compatible laptop? I can't think of an earlier
one of the top of my head.
-- Doug
>We have an OLD Data General One Laptop from
1983!!!!
He wants $500 for it. Such a deal :-) 
25 Mar
25 Mar
3:34 a.m.
In article <Pine.LNX.3.95.980324232833.32316P-100000(a)behemoth.host4u.net>et>,
yowza(a)yowza.com (Doug Yowza) wrote:
On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, Greg Troutman wrote:
The DG/One was a fairly non-descript early 8086
laptop. According to
DG's
website, it was the "first truly portable" PC and they made 43,000 of
them:
http://www.dg.com/about/html/dg-one.html
Well - it wasn't non-descript at the time! It had a full-size (80x25) LCD
display and WAS the first >truly< portable PC compatible - depending what
you meant by truly of course. Compaq and Olivetti (and Zenith?)
had luggable things compared to which the DG1 was extremely
elegant, especially with the rather smart beige/brown DG trim. At the
time it had "buy me" written all over it.
David
1:33 p.m.
New subject: Ithaca Audio and friends
I picked up some interesting items today, but none of them were complete
enough for me to fire-up immediately.
The one I understand well enough to do something with is the Morrow Pivot.
I simply need a power adapter for this one. A label near the power plug
tells me it wants 15V, a label on the back tells me it wants 3A, but
nothing tells me polarity and I'd rather not guess. Can anybody help?
(BTW, it's a Pivot, not a Pivot II if that matters).
I also found a National Semiconductor Board Level Computer (BLC). It's an
8080A single-board computer from 1977. There's also an unpopulated ROM
board in the small card cage. I know zilch about this one. There are
plenty of unconnected edge-connectors on the CPU board and an on-board
8251, so I assume I can make this one fly if I simply figure out the I/O
connections and power requirements.
Finally, a very nice 1977 wood+aluminum case, S-100 backplane, and PS from
Vector Electronic (who just made chassis AFAIK). There are several cards
I recognize: floppy controller, 64K RAM board, parallel/serial I/O card
w/modem, and then one that appears to be the CPU card: a 1979 Ithaca Audio
IA-1010 card with an NEC D780C (Z80 clone). The 2708 EPROM didn't have
the UV window covered, but it was dark in there, so I'm hopeful.
Unfortunately, I don't have an A/C cord that fits the three-prong (center
round) connector. I hope it's not trying to tell me that it wants a
voltage other than 110V, is it?
-- Doug
3:12 p.m.
New subject: Ithaca Audio and friends
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, Doug Yowza wrote:
The one I understand well enough to do something with
is the Morrow Pivot.
I simply need a power adapter for this one. A label near the power plug
tells me it wants 15V, a label on the back tells me it wants 3A, but
nothing tells me polarity and I'd rather not guess. Can anybody help?
(BTW, it's a Pivot, not a Pivot II if that matters).
Doug, I've got the original Morrow Pivot as well as the OEM'd Zenith
model. Send me a note this Friday night or this weekend to remind me to
go check the power supply I have for mine. It's not the "official" power
supply but it works.
I also found a National Semiconductor Board Level
Computer (BLC). It's an
8080A single-board computer from 1977. There's also an unpopulated ROM
board in the small card cage. I know zilch about this one. There are
plenty of unconnected edge-connectors on the CPU board and an on-board
8251, so I assume I can make this one fly if I simply figure out the I/O
connections and power requirements.
Nice find!
Finally, a very nice 1977 wood+aluminum case, S-100
backplane, and PS from
Vector Electronic (who just made chassis AFAIK). There are several cards
Another nice find!
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
26 Mar
26 Mar
3:23 a.m.
New subject: Ithaca Audio and friends
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27 Mar
27 Mar
3:55 p.m.
New subject: Ithaca Audio and friends
On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
I went to three different places that carried old test equipment before I
finally found one. Ithaca lives! She comes up with a Z80 ROM monitor
that happily talks to me at 1200 baud. I can dump memory and registers,
and best of all, I can boot from the floppy drive. The only disk I have
contains Micropolis BASIC. Now I'm off to the CP/M archives to see if I
can find her a proper O/S.
-- Doug
Unfortunately,
I don't have an A/C cord that fits the three-prong (center
round) connector. I hope it's not trying to tell me that it wants a
voltage other than 110V, is it?
That connector was used on a lot of HP stuff in the 1960's/1970's, on the
Intellec 8i, and probably a lot of other stuff.
25 Mar
25 Mar
7:31 p.m.
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, David Mather wrote:
Well - it wasn't non-descript at the time! It had
a full-size (80x25) LCD
display and WAS the first >truly< portable PC compatible - depending what
you meant by truly of course. Compaq and Olivetti (and Zenith?)
had luggable things compared to which the DG1 was extremely
elegant, especially with the rather smart beige/brown DG trim. At the
time it had "buy me" written all over it.
Both HP and GRiD had similar >truly< portable PC's out before the DG/One.
The HP 110 was battery-powered, so the DG/One doesn't even get the earlier
distinction I gave it of being the first battery-powered clamshell.
However, neither the GRiD nor the HP were 100% IBM compatible, so the
DG/One may be the winner there.
Here's a NEWSBYTE's blurb from the DG/One's intro:
BIG SCREEN PORTABLE:
1984 September 25 (NB) -- Data General unveiled its first
microcomputer to a Lincoln Center, New York audience (9/20). The major
selling point to the 10-pound portable machine, dubbed the Data
General/One, is its liquid crystal display. The LCD is the size of a
standard monitor, displaying 25 lines of text at a time across 12
diagonal inches of monitor space. The second selling point is its
ability to run a variety of operating systems: MS-DOS, UNIX and CP/M.
The basic system, with 128K of RAM, has one disk drive but no built-in
software, making it different from the competing HP Portable. The
machine, with a traditionally power draining built-in drive, actually
runs 8 hours without recharging, according to Data General. Still to
be determined is how the mainframe computer company will retail the
new $2,895 machine and its $525 tiny printer. Data General only has
200 U.S. distributors but has financed the portable computers in
advance for new retailers. A D.G. spokesman says there will be several
major computer store chains carrying the machine by the middle of
1985. One thing in the company's favor: it beat IBM to the punch.
IBM's portable machine code-named "Clamshell" isn't going to be
unveiled until 1985.
-- Doug
7:33 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Doug Yowza once stated:
On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, David Mather wrote:
And it's not quite 100% IBM compatible as the serial ports are different.
But it does support CGA graphics (320x200 4 color, 640x200 2 color) and it
was expandable to 464K (approximately, I don't recall and I'm a bit lazy to
look it up 8-P RAM and two 3.5" disks (internal).
The screen is difficult to read, but for what I paid for mine ($0) it's
been a great deal (and yes, I do use mine at least once a week).
-spc (I just don't have the batteries for it though ... )
Well - it wasn't non-descript at the time!
It had a full-size (80x25) LCD
display and WAS the first >truly< portable PC compatible - depending what
you meant by truly of course. Compaq and Olivetti (and Zenith?)
had luggable things compared to which the DG1 was extremely
elegant, especially with the rather smart beige/brown DG trim. At the
time it had "buy me" written all over it.
Both HP and GRiD had similar >truly< portable PC's out before the DG/One.
The HP 110 was battery-powered, so the DG/One doesn't even get the earlier
distinction I gave it of being the first battery-powered clamshell.
However, neither the GRiD nor the HP were 100% IBM compatible, so the
DG/One may be the winner there.
9772
days inactive
9775
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10 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bill_r＠inetnebr.com -
dastar＠wco.com -
maths＠cix.compulink.co.uk -
mor＠crl.com -
spc＠armigeron.com -
yowza＠yowza.com