Forgotten PC History

[Jim Battle]

Göran Axelsson wrote:
> I'm surprised... well, not that much, I have lurked on this list for a 
> while now.
> 
> When I first read this article and saw how many responses it got I 
> thought that now I would finally learn some more about my old DP2200. 
> But the discussion immediately changed into a discussion about various 
> chip carriers.
> 
> In a vane attempt to steer the discussion back into the original topic, 
> the Datapoint 2200, I wonder if there is anyone else that is restoring 
> these machines and if there are any schematics out there.
> 
> I added a small teaser with some pictures of a 4 kbyte memory card, the 
> only thing I have of it in my apartment.
> 
> http://www.home.neab.net/DP2200/

Neat!

I had a Datapoint 2200 for a while.  It didn't work either.  I see yours 
is a first generation (bit serial).  Mine was the 2nd generation CPU 
which was still discreet TTL, but was data parallel.

Eventually I sold my 2200 due to (1) lack of time and (2) lack of any 
documents.  I had contacted a couple people who had schematics and such, 
but neither was willing to make copies or loan their docs to me so I 
could copy them.

I even went to a reunion of datapoint employees and found one guy who 
had just about all datapoint internal engineering documents and change 
notices in his barn.  However, 6 months prior he moved to a smaller 
place, so he incinerated everything!

The person I sold my machine to, David Monroe, was one of the engineers 
who originally designed the machine.  He has schematics too.  I never 
found out if he got it working again.