>Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 23:47:56 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Sam Ismail <dastar(a)crl.com>
>Subject: C64 thingy
>I picked up a Commodore 64 a while ago that had this special board
>inside. It was inserted between the keyboard and the motherboard. IE.
>it had a connector that plugged into the keyboard rolex connector on the
>motherboard and then the keyboard ribbon cable plugged into it. Then it
>had a 9-pin male D-type connector than came out the back of the C64. My
>guess is that it was for a numeric keypad or something. I forgot what
>was stamped on the circuit board. Any ideas?
Sounds like a keypad connector to me, I think it may be a Cardco
keypad (there I think was an option to plug it into the joystick port
and interface it via software.
I have some other brand which uses a DIP connector (like old apple
paddle/joysticks), unfortunately I do not have the 64 with the interface
board though.
Larry Anderson
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> The smaller is the TRS80 color computer with real keys on the keyboard.
> I have two of these one the case was wiped out, board is ok.
>
>Lacking docs I presume these have rom Basic. What expansion is possible
>(there is a port) and how hard. Do they run any real OSs or some TRShack?
RS sold OS/9 for the color computer. I don't know what models are required
to run it.
>What's the odds of finding DOCS especially schematics?
RS published a technical manual for the color computer; I have a copy of it
somewhere. HOWEVER I found there's an app note from Motorola with schematics
that almost exactly match those in the RS technical manual. I don't recall
whether it was a 6809 app note or a 6847 app note though. If you can find a
set of old Motorola data books you may be able to find it.
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu
Please have a look at my collection at:
<http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~e.tedeschi/homecomp.htm>
I am looking for a 4004 microprocessor. Also for an 8008. Does anybody
know of one going for sale? I will pay cash or have many British
computers for trade/swap.
Thanks
enrico
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tel/fax +(0)1273 701650 (24 hours) or 0850 104725 mobile
website <http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~e.tedeschi>
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visit Brighton: <http://www.brighton.co.uk/tourist/welcome.htm>
HI,
In my non-op list of equipment I have three cocos apparently operational.
They are of two different styles.
The smaller is the TRS80 color computer with real keys on the keyboard.
I have two of these one the case was wiped out, board is ok.
The larger is TDP-100 personal color computer with chiclet keys.
Lacking docs I presume these have rom Basic. What expansion is possible
(there is a port) and how hard. Do they run any real OSs or some TRShack?
What's the odds of finding DOCS especially schematics?
I have a xt class machine with an Intel Inboard386...(works too!) what's the
odds of finding schemtics or expansion ram for it? The 1meg of ram is tight
for somne stuff. Currently I use it as a 10x faster xt.
Allison
>>DigCam: + Easy to use, convenient
>> - Expensive to buy, somewhat limited capacity,
>> no hard copy of images (except printer output)
>
>>Photo/Scanner: + Hard Copy, can be used for other stuff too
>> - Film and Developing can be expensive, takes time
>
>>Camcorder: + Easy to use, Allows for selecting the right image
>> from several views
>> - Video capture hardware/software isn't cheap
>
Well, I guess it's time to put my two cents in. I own a Kodak DC20 digital
camera, and a handheld color scanner.
The digital camera is the basic model, no frills. It holds 8 hi res
pics, and 16 low res pics. As far as quality goes, it really depends on the
lighting conditions and the distance that you are going to be shooting at.
It can get some incredible pictures, but it does have it share of bad ones.
As far as taking pictures of our computers, it is great for taking good
desriptive pictures (here's my pdp 11...) If you wanted to take a picture of
a circuit board and be able to make out the chip numbers and wiring, forget
it. It has decent resolution, but nothing like a scanner and a 35mm photo,
and the light has to be right with this camera, since there is no flash
(yet). I usually save the pictures in jpeg format, and each hi-res picture
is about 25-35k. Not too bad on the storage side.
My handheld color scanner is absolutely great. Unfortunately, I am
always wanting to scan something in 1" wider than the scanner, which makes
it a real pain even with great picture editing software. I would really
recommend a flatbed scanner, but you might as well grab another hard drive
while you are at it. Those color hi-res pictures take up more space than it
took to put a man on the moon. Also, as a side note, it takes about 55
seconds to warm up the bulb on the color scanner. It's not a major gripe,
just an inconvenience.
Bottom line: My suggestion is - If you are looking to take pictures
of your collection (for personal or insurance reasons) and store them in a
safe, and take a buch of cheap pictures of your kids, go with the digital
camera. If you are looking to scan in boards and pieces of equipment, and
are looking for extreme detail, I would go with the scanner. I find that
having both is really convenient, and I can pretty much get the results that
I am looking for and not be dissappointed with either. If I only owned one
of them, I could definitely see times when I would not be happy with the
results. As for the Camcorder products, those are next on my list.
Isaac Davis
idavis(a)comland.com
indavis(a)juno.com
> Color Computer 2: White, 4K-64K
One is definatly a coco2 with 64k. no question.
> Color Computer 3: White, 64K-128K
I suspect the board I have is one of these with 128k (four 41464s) and
a lot of the logic is on an ASIC.
> I've never heard of a TDP-100. The Color Computers had ROM BASIC and
TDP is TANDY DATA PRODUCTS when tandy was trying to seperate from the
Radiocrap idea in the early 80s.
TDP-100 It's coco 6809, cart port and configureable for 16 or 64k. This one
has 64k I suspect it's the COCO-1 but case color is white and black and
keyboard is chicklet style. Has all the joystick connectors and the like.
It's design is lots of chips compared to the other two I suspect early
design. Also it's serial number 0000038! It also has lots of mods.
The inboard386/pc and inboard386/at are similar save for one is designed to
replace the 8088 and is 8-bit ISA and the other the 286 with 16bit ISA.
The /PC version has 1mb of ram but with more (4mb) I could use it as a slow
(it's 16mhz) linux box. A schematic of the connector for the ram expansion
would be useful, I can hack my own board. The PC version cannot use the
motherboard ram as far as I can see in the book and even if it could I need
more.
Allison
To clarify some statements that have already been made on the TI-99/4A, I'd
like to comment:
<< True, that's bizarre... they appear to be especially common in the
northwest. But just try to find a PEB! >>
There were approximately 1+ million consoles manufactured by Texas
Instruments from 1981 through early 1984. There were also approximately
250,000 Peripheral Expansion Systems also manufactured. So, while it's true
there were more consoles, PEB's are not hard to find.
<< What I need is the Speech Editor cartridge! >>
To Jeff Hellige - these are little rare to find, but are still available. I
got mine for around $20 from someone in California. But, you can call up any
vendor and get them from around $25-30, due to their rarity.
<< Personally, my opinion of the TI-99/4a varies from stupid piece of shit
to semi-decent machine. Today I feel like stupid piece of shit. It was
almost completely closed, it's BASIC sucked and was slow, it's keyboard
sucked, and if it wasn't for the hordes of TI-99 faithfuls it would've
been just a footnote. I don't understand what the big attraction was,
but then, I came from the world of Apple ][, to which nothing could
compare (uh oh, here come the holy wars). >>
To Sam -- The TI-99/4A, in my opinion, is at the very least a semi-decent
machine. The BASIC interpreter is what slowed things down a bit, but you
have to look at it from a different perspective - no PEEKs or POKEs just to
program graphics and/or sound, like some other machines (no, I'm good enough
not to mention any names). The keyboard did "suck" compared to that of a PC,
but it was very simple - especially suited towards children. From my own
experience, I found the keyboard easy to use compared to a Commodore 64 - the
touch response was better. The big attraction came from the fact that it was
16-bit, had full color, sprites (smoothly-moving objects), excellent speech
synthesis, easy to use cartridges, and expandability. Some of the games were
amazing (like Parsec and Alpiner) - way ahead of its time. And you can do
word processing and spreadsheets with it as well.
<< Even the original PC was really bad, mostly closed design. They
were all noteable as it told marketers what would fly and what had to be
there. Amusingly the ti has what every P5 box has today, graphics, sound,
games so they weren't that far off <in a perverse sort of way>. >>
Allison -- I couldn't agree with you more. The TI-99/4A was an amazing
machine when you look back at all the components and features it had. It's
still easier than my P120 I'm using to type this message - as there's no
icons to click, no finagling around to get where you need to go or to do
this. Just press 2 keys and you're in the program with the TI. Now that I
call ease-of-use!
<< EVERYONE knows that MY COMMODORE 64 is WAY better than YOUR APPLE! >>
To Les -- Yes, the Commodore 64 IS better than the Apple - I must admit!
---------------------
And to Bill and others -- So you can begin to see with all these replies that
people at least knew about the TI-99/4A and its positives/negatives. But
that's to go with any machine. It's about what you learned on, and what you
grew up with. In my case, this is the computer I learned on, and I'll stick
with it forever because once you get used to one thing, it's hard to change
sometimes. Same goes I'm sure for everyone else on this list server.
The TI-99/4A was one of the most popular computers ever made back in the
early 80's. Again, 1 million consoles gives you a hint. And, I'll tell you
why they're like roaches sitting around -- most people bought them for around
$50-100 when TI was going out of business (late 1983 into early 1984), played
a few games on them, and then said, "I'm done!". Instead of throwing them in
the garbage, they thought they were worth something, and now you see them all
around in thrift stores. I even went to a local fair around town last year
and picked one up for $5! But remember, for these people, that's all they
wanted to do with this computer. But for those that were serious, you could
do much, much more with it!
Bryan Nicalek
bnicalek(a)aol.com
jpero(a)mail.cgo.wave.ca writes:
> Hi, The grey/beige HP terminal with heavy keyboard that have
> black and white "squashed" monitor shaped does have this 8008 chip
> in one of its "card". Accessible by tripping two catches between the
> shells to hinge up the monitor to reveal the cards in bottom case
> part.
What you're writing about is the HP 264X line of terminals. They
don't all use 8008 CPUs. The 2640s do, but I'm sure the 2645s use
8080s (and think the 2641, 2644, 2648A do too), and the 2647F uses some
proprietary HP CPU. Not sure about 2642, 2647A, or the 2649s which
are customized for specific applications, e.g. there was a flavor of
2649 used as the system console for HP 3000/33 minis.
Fun terminals. I could go on for a while about them.
The 2640s and 2641/4/5s have a facility allowing the downloading of
code from the host. Somewhere around here I have a Space Invaders
game and a Pac-Man game that run in the 2645s, and have heard of a
driving game. Also have heard that some folks in the Gaithersburg, MD
area turned a 2645 into some sort of BBS some years ago.
The "two catches" are hidden. Look on the case left and right sides,
you will see horizontal slots between the base and the CRT housing.
Inside those horizontal slots, a couple of inches back from the front,
are vertical slots. The object is to stick a "terminal key"
(basically a thin flat piece of metal, but a stiff paperclip can be
made to serve) into those slots to push open the catches that are at
the top of the slots. While pushing, lift the CRT housing. If like
most of us you have no more than two hands (and only one key) you may
find it convenient to do one side at a time, which is OK.
-Frank McConnell
I want your old microcomputers from the 70s and 80s. I do NOT want any
common PC clone. I am looking mainly for stuff that doesn't exist in
any way shape or form today. I am looking for rarer models, as I already
own most of the more common micros of the early micro-revolution.
Please e-mail me at dastar(a)crl.com with what you got and we can work out
a deal. Thanks.
---END USENET MESSAGE---
So this guy, Gary, responds and tells me he has an IMSAI 8080 and a Victor
9000 he wouldn't mind getting rid of. SCORE! So anyway, he used to be an
attendee of the Homebrew Computer Club, which if you don't know was a
bunch of hackers and geeks (including of course Jobs and Wozniak) who got
together every week or month in (I believe) either Mountain View or
Sunnyvale, to show off the computers they were building. Read Steven
Levy's _Hackers_ for the complete (and very entertaining) story. He was
telling me all these cool stories. One was about how a Lawrence Livermore
National Lab employee made a bunch of paper-tape copies of Gates' BASIC
when it first came out and brought them to a meeting of the HCC, claiming
that on his way over, a box of stuff dropped from a bus, and when he went
to go check it out he found all these weird paper tapes in it (40 or so)
and that everyone was welcome to have them, whereby he began tossing them
out into the audience. Gary of course got one of them, and invited me to
look at and touch it under the condition that I didn't drool on it and
muss it up. It was in perfect condition! The neatest thing about it is
that it had "Z80 BASIC COPYRIGHT MICROSOFT" punched into it (that isn't
the actual message, I've forgotten what it said already). He said the
week after, Bill himself showed up and whined to the crowd, asking "How
am I supposed to make any money off this if you guys are pirating my
stuff?" I'm sure, in hindsight, Bill certainly doesn't mind the fact
that the Microsoft BASIC standard created by the piracy of his original
BASIC has made him a $32 billion man today.
He went on to tell me the stories about how he built his IMSAI and applied
fixes and patches for flaws in the design, and showed me the schematics
and took me through some of the documentation. He's a really neat guy.
We're going to be staying in touch. He's moving soon and he says when he
cleans his garage out and figures what else he has he will probably let me
have some of it, including his full run of Byte magazine starting from
issue 4. He also has a CompuPro 8/16 that he wanted to hang onto, as well
as a Heathkit H19 terminal that he built from the kit, but he says he
might not want to take them with him.
So anyway, that's what a day of tooling around the bay area got me. I also
met Paul Coad at a parking lot sale and we ran into Doug Coward (you may
have checked out his Web museum page, I forget the URL).
It was a good day.
Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Another one, hope someone gets lucky.
Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Z100 free
Conditions:
YOU PICK UP.
YOU TAKE ALL SOFTWARE AND MANUALS
I live in Northeastern Maryland. Close to an I95 exit. If interested
email me at ltelets(a)tec1.apg.army.mil
It has two 5 and a quarter floppies amd a detached monochrome monitor.
It runs but could make a fine boat anchor *8^)
--
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
