Anyone else with an interest in Fortune Systems ?

From: Rob Kapteyn <kapteynr_at_cboe.com>
Date: Thu Dec 14 19:23:56 2000

Hi:

I retired mine when the Miniscribe 10MB hard drive gave too many errors to be useful.
But otherwise, I have everything complete with manuals and disks.
The only "extras" I ever got were some extra Unix utilities and a Fortran compiler.

The "special terminal" is actually just a low-resolution monochrome monitor connected with an RJ-45 type connector.
(Character based, no graphics)
The keyboard plugs into a similar connector on the front.
Later models had a keyswitch, mine does not.

Fortune made very nice stuff at an acceptable price for their day, but they crippled everything
by making it non-standard to try to control their market.
If you wanted a cheap computer to do Fortran programming, like I did, the only competition
was the original IBM PC, which was brand new back then.
The fact that the Fortune ran Unix made me choose the Fortune.

I have no time for my collection either, but with an economic recession on the way, I might soon
find myself with lots of spare time :-)

In your "parts" machine, you wouldn't happen to have an ethernet card, would you ?
I know that they sold them, but they were too expensive for me back then.

-Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: David Williams [SMTP:dlw_at_trailingedge.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 4:55 PM
To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Anyone else with an interest in Fortune Systems ?

Hi,

I've always been interested in them. I was hired back in the early
80s to pick a multi-user system for a business and that was one of
the boxs we looked at. I have 2 of them and a third in parts along
with some doc but don't have the special terminal to work with it.
Thus I have never been able to bring them up. They seem to need
some special key when trying to access these and I have no idea
what sequence it sends so I could mimic it on another terminal.
One day I plan on scanning the doc but haven't had the time. But
since I've dropped one side job recently maybe now I'll have more
time for my collection.

David


-----
David Williams - Computer Packrat
   You can learn to like the life you live
   or live the life you like.
dlw_at_trailingedge.com
http://www.trailingedge.com
Received on Thu Dec 14 2000 - 19:23:56 GMT

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