14 Feb
2013
14 Feb
'13
11:39 a.m.
So, who WERE the worst EARLY clones?
There WERE much worse machines than Sanyo. (which suffered more from
incompatability than quality).
Hyundai were also too late I assume. Tandy was questionable, but in reality not as bad as
their rep. Cordat, Corona? Can't say. There were gujillions of Taiwanese boxes in
those days. There were kit computers. I know I'll get egged for.this, but personally I
think people were stupid to not build a clone from parts they mail ordered from the back
of BYTE. I was in fact too stupid. Heard all the bed rap about evil vicious clones and
their problems. I did return my Tandy 1000 once I found out I could get top of the line
graphics and screen for the same price. But I waited over a year to buy a Multisync II
then some months later a pernicious Tandy 2000. It would have held up longer if I
wasn't constantly tearing it apart. Then I bought an Itt Xtra XP 286 hybrid.
Wasn't bad at all, but once again I conxtantly twiddled with it's innards.
Terry Yaeger once had a Hacker XT luggable. Maybe you should talk to him about it. And
I'm telling you right now one of the rarest things in the universe are the later vga
luggables that seemingly were churned out in the trillions.
14 Feb
14 Feb
12:18 p.m.
>So, who WERE the worst EARLY clones?
>There WERE much worse machines than Sanyo. (which suffered more from
>incompatability than quality).
On Thu, 14 Feb 2013, Chris Tofu wrote:
Hyundai were
also too late I assume. Tandy was questionable, but in
reality not as bad as their
rep. CordatA, Corona? Can't say.
Mediocre, not bad. Trivial incompatabilities, such as difference in what
the BRIGHT bit did in video attributes when in reverse video (0Fh) (should
it then affect foreground or background?)
But, I did love their laser printer. CX engine, with controller/rasterizer
card in the PC (software limited to refuse to work with 286). "Poems"
made a very easy to use font editor that supported it, as well as HP.
I made 7 x 9 pixel "Fiche" fonts so that I could carry hundreds of
"pages"
of source code on a few sheets of paper in my shirt pocket. But,
presbyopia hit me very hard, and I can no longer read any of my old stuff.
There were gujillions of Taiwanese boxes in those
days. There were kit
computers. I know I'll get egged for.this, but personally I think people
were stupid to not build a clone from parts they mail ordered from the
back of BYTE.
There was a local surplus dealer who had Augat sockets cheap! At local
swaps, I was able to buy bare imitation 5160 motherboards. I learned to
solder, often while watching TV. The third one that I assembled worked!
By then, I was also no longer putting in sockets for DIP Switches and
resistor packs :-)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
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