followup: Rinky dink hamfest

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sun Mar 28 20:12:15 1999

The Xerox 820 is one I really liked for a while. It only supported
single-sided single density drives, but had on-board terminal-style video
circuitry (24 lines of 80 characters) and used a BIOS which could be banked
in and out, which I don't know for certain even banked in the entire BIOS.
I once concluded that it only banked in the parts it needed at the time,
thereby leaving a larger TPA. I'm probably wrong about this, but I don know
the hardware was present to allow this.

With the addition of a little daughterboard from Denver Business Systems,
which replaced the 1771 FDC on the board, the device was double-density
capable once the BIOS was patched.

I even made and sold a daugherboard which replaced the CPU in order to
interface WD1000-05 and 1002-05 boards (bridge controllers) by Western
Digital. Both this board (the 820) and the TVI 80x seemed to be pretty
solid boards for CP/M.

Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, March 28, 1999 6:46 PM
Subject: followup: Rinky dink hamfest


> Today I went to see a couple of the people that I meet at yesterday's
>hamfest. One of them used to service XEROX computers. He told me that he
>threw out three rooms full of old XEROX computers less than a year ago. :-(
> He gave me part of the stuff that he had left, I have to take a Truck
>(note capital) back to get the rest (estimated at two cubic yards but no
>complete machines). So far I've found lots of docs and 8" flopppy disks
>for the 820 and 16/8. The 16/8 looks pretty interesting, it ran CPM,
>CPM-86 and MS-DOS. Does anyone have one of these? What's your opinion of
>them?
>
> He has a floppy disk drive control box to manual operate 3.5", 5.25" and
>8" drives during alignment. Anyone have an idea of what one of these is
>worth with the alignment disks and manuals?
>
> Alos found a Lisa mouse to go with the Lisa that I got yesterday.
>
> Joe
>
Received on Sun Mar 28 1999 - 20:12:15 BST