Saturday my wife had chanced upon a Commodore 64 system (computer,
1541 drive, cables, power supply) whith some books & magazines. Since
the flea market was closing there was a final offer of $10.00.
Needless to say I bought it (for $8.36, all the change I had left),
mainly because it was worth $10.00 for the stuff and the disks, books,
and magazines caught my attention. Besides the system I got a users
guide for the computer and drive, a programmer's reference guide, and a
couple software manuals. Many of the disks seem to be copies of stuff,
I'll have to scan them to see if there are any lost treasures... The
Magazines included 6 Commander magazines from 1983/84 (this is the first
time I've had the opportunity to flip though this publication.),
Commodore Power/Play June/July 84, a Popular Computing and a Personal
Computing magazine (the latter two have very little Commodore coverage
and were talking about the Apple II and IBM as on even playing fields.)
Also a Scholastic K-Power Collection of computer programs, "10
awsome/original/unusual/super/fantastic/computer puzzles and games"
The computer seems to be dead ('m glad he didn't sell it to someone
for the $50 he was asking for it), the drive is in great shape (as it
helped copy many disks for me today) and the magazines are facinating.
In the Magazines: I finally saw an ad for the OSCAR bar code reader,
looked good to me, one argument they had in the ad was the unreliability
of tapes, heck, I have tapes older than that ad that still work, but it
would be cool to have a bar code reader for my computer(s). The issue
of Popular Computing had a review on the Jupiter Ace 4000 (looks kinda
like a Sinclair ZX80, but has FORTH as it's built-in language) Pretty
in-depth too, 5 pages long with a screen shot and an overview of the
differences of ACE FORTH to other FORTH standards. The K-power is kinda
a rosetta stone of BASICs with similar programs for Adam, Apple, Atari,
Commodore 64, IBM PC, TI-99/4A, TRS-80 Color Computer/Model III/4, and
VIC-20. Some programs deal with at least low-res graphics and another
with music.
Later on I fondled a Compupro 10 at a thrift shop, like like it was a
multi-user machine with 4 console ports, 3 printer ports, a SCSI/SASI
port and an 8" drive port (to compliment it's two 5.25" drives bays it
already has. Will have to browse the web and see if I can see what it
was about.
Larry Anderson
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Received on Mon May 26 1997 - 01:41:07 BST