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From: Sam Ismail <dastar_at_crl.com>
Date: Sun May 4 18:03:19 1997

Well, here's this weekend's take:

Among several computer's, I also brought in quite a few books. Here are
the titles in case anyone's counting:

PET Personal Computer Guide (1982)
TRS-80 Color Computer and MC-10 Programs (1983)
CP/M Handbook with MP/M (1980)
How to Get Started with CP/M (1981)
Mastering CP/M (1983)
Using CP/M (1980)
Color Computer Basic09 Programming Language Reference (with software)
Osborne CP/M User's Guide [not Osbourne computer] (1981)
The Elementary Commodore 64 (1983)
Programming Techniques for Level II Basic (1980)
Color Computer Playground (1983)
Sams ToolKit Series VIC20 Edition (1984)
Graphics Guide to the Commodore 64 (1984)
TRS-80 Color Computer Programs (1982)

I also got these manuals/software:

TRS-80 Model II Operations Manual
TRS-80 Scripsit Manual
TRS-80 Videotex
Commodore 64 Bonus Cassette Pack (this is 5 cassettes still in the
original shrinkwrap of all things)

I'm finding that I am more interested now in the accessories, like
cables, manuals, modems, datasettes, etc. than in the computers I find
now because I pretty much have all the common systems. What I really
need to get a lot of my systems running are power supplies or, in most
cases, the original video cable. A lot of these lame-o manufacturers of
yester year (namely Commodore) used cables with ridiculous pin-outs for
the video.

Now onto the hardware...first some accessories:

TRS-80 Modem I (very cool)
(2) C64 1541 drives
VIC 1541 drive
Commodore 1531 Datasette

And these systems:

Commodore Plus4
Commodore 64 (for parts to fix my broken one)
Atari 5200 (have 5 of these but none with the funky video/power
 adapter...this one had one so I bought it).
Odyssey 3000 [!] (stand-alone unit with 4 built-in games...Pong-type
 games...by Magnavox)
Laser 50 PC [!] (cool little "portable computer"...has a one-line 20
 character LCD display with built-in BASIC...it is about half the width
 and thickness of a typical laptop...it is not a serious computer, more
 like a toy; manufactured by Vtech, which is the company that makes all
 those kids computer toys; circa 1985)

Between the Odyssey 3000 and the Laser 50, I can't decide what I should
choose as my catch of the weekend. Both are systems I had never even
heard of or seen, so its always a nice surprise to pick up something like
these out of the blue.

Last but not least, I got this luggable that I need some help identifying.
It is a portable that looks very much like an Osbourne (which is what I
thought it was at first but realized it wasn't). It has a built in 7"
screen and two 5.25" floppies. It has one knob on the front for contrast,
and next to that is an RJ-14 (6-conductor) jack for the keyboard. There
is no identifying mark on it anywhere. The front cover pops off revealing
the screen/floppies and contains the keyboard. When it boots up, it just
shows a flashing "K" with an underscore beneath it located at the upper
left-hand corner of the screen. It doesn't do anything beyond that, which
is making the identification process all the more difficult. The back has
two DB25's, one male labelled SERIAL and the other female labelled
PARALLEL. There are also some peripheral card openings. Cracking it opens
reveals that it has what looks to be an XT bus with 4 slots. There are 2
cards and a hard drive inside. One card is labelled "Hyper CLOCK" and is
obviously a clock card. The other is a Racal-Vadic modem. Then the 3rd &
4th slots are taken up by a hard-card (hard drive on a card) which plugs
into one slot. It is manufactured by Tandon. The only chip of
significance inside is a Motorola labelled MC6845P. I'm speculating that
this is the CPU. There is a label on the motherboard (which is huge,
measuring almost 2 feet square) which says "Corona Data Systems" and then
"200290-512" which I am guessing means it has 512K. There are 4 rows of
16 each RAM chips...half are soldered in and half are plugged into
sockets. Lastly, a label on the back of the outside say "Model M18P-2"
and the keyboard is made by Keytronics. I didn't write it down but I
believe I saw a date somewhere of 1981. Any help figuring this behemoth
out would be appreciated. After figuring it wasn't an osbourne 1, I was
going to pass on it but I offered $5 and for the hell of it and got it.
Maybe it'll turn out be something cool.

Oh yeah, total bill was $44.00.

Sam
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Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Received on Sun May 04 1997 - 18:03:19 BST