One old Sol, Two old names...

[William Sudbrink]

I've just had the pleasure of taking a new machine into my collection, a Sol
20.

It's particularly interesting for several reasons.  First, it was once in
the possession

of Jim Willing (zoom into the label next to the control key):

 

http://wsudbrink.dyndns.org:8080/images/fixed_sol/20191125_195224.jpg

 

For those that don't know, Jim was a very early collector of vintage
computers

and one of the first collectors to put up a web site with pictures of his
collection,

scans of documents and the like.  Also, he was one of the first posters to
the

original classic computer mailing list:

 

http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/cctalk/

 

That's the first old name.

 

Other interesting things about the Sol include that it has an 80/64 video
modification

(with patches all over):

 

http://wsudbrink.dyndns.org:8080/images/fixed_sol/20191125_202606.jpg

 

and a patched personality module socket with a custom ROM:

 

http://wsudbrink.dyndns.org:8080/images/fixed_sol/20191125_195249.jpg

 

which leads to the second old name.  One that I don't know:

 

http://wsudbrink.dyndns.org:8080/images/fixed_sol/20191125_211019.jpg

 

Every time that the machine boots it displays that banner:

 

*** DAN CETRONE ***

 

I've done some googling but I can't find out anything about him.  I've
started

to disassemble the contents of the ROM.  There are some blocks that look
like

the Micro Complex ROM, but other sections don't match.  I'll publish it when

I'm done.  Anyway, I don't know if Dan was the author or just wanted to
uniquely

identify his Sol.  If anyone knows, knew, knew about, Dan, I'd love to hear
about

it.

 

Thanks,

Bill Sudbrink