followup: Rinky dink hamfest

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Mon Mar 29 00:15:29 1999

  Merle,

At 10:24 PM 3/28/99 -0500, Merle wrote:
>The 16/8 is an interesting machine. It came in 2 versions, the earliest
>with 8" Shugart drives, a later with a DEM-II expansion case housing
>5-1/4 inch drives. The CP/M-86 is not bad, but the MS-DOS is...well
>MS-DOS.

   Not surprising considering it's only ver 2.0 . At least that's what I
got in this load.

> Incredibly primitive compared to CP/M 2.2.

  I don't know that much about CPM but this machine only has CPM-80 and
CPM-86. How do they compare to CP/M 2.2?

 One problem is that
>many were shipped with 128K memory. With the dinky drives, the machines
>are disappointing. The old 8" 820-II is a far better and more usable
>machine.

   Better than the 16/8? I thought it was newer. How much memory did the
820-II have?

   Thanks for the info.
   Joe

>
>On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, Joe wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>
>M. K. Peirce
>Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
>215 Shady Lea Road,
>North Kingstown, RI 02852
>
>"Casta est qui nemo rogavit."
>
> - Ovid
>
>
Received on Mon Mar 29 1999 - 00:15:29 BST