I picked up a load of assorted S-100 gear from a local fellow
today. One of the items in the pile is a Software Publishers ATR-8000.
In searching for exactly what I had acquired, I came across this
paragraph at
http://www.atarimagazines.com/v2n4/productreviews.html:
"CP/M is much more versatile than the ATARI, but also much more
difficult to use. Most people who buy CP/M computers either get it from
a system house and have the programs configured to their needs, or are
programmers. I cannot imagine how a beginner, as I was when I first
bought my ATARI, could get their new Osborne or KayPro to run! The
ATR8000 with CP/M is a good buy for someone who wants to use the
excellent software available for CP/M as well as have an ATARI for games
and use the same disk drives, printers and other peripherals. The basic
unit for only $350 is an even better buy if you have no need for CP/M."
Much more difficult to use? Yea, that DIR command is *complicated*.
Also acquired was a Northstar Horizon chassis w/ 5 or 6 cards but
sans wooden lid (sigh...), an IMSAI-sized system with no label (at least
6 cards in the chassis), an Atari 400, Cromeco Dazzler, a couple of
S-100 sound cards, about 10 Godbought Ecoconram cards, 8 or so misc
S-100 cards, a pair of 8" floppies (brand as yet unknown), a 500VA SOLA,
Gould 8 channel logic analyzer, 50Khz spectrum analyzer (can't remember
the model number), Microfazer, MP/M and CP/M manuals, lotsa chips in
tubes (un-inventoried, although I did come across apparently unused
ceramic 8080A. Time for some L_at__at_K RARE! on eBay :) ), handful of power
supplies, modem BERT set w/ nixie display, several 2MB PC memory
expansion cards for XTs, an OP-80 paper tape reader (spoken for!)
The rest of the load to pickup includes 5 or so TVI-920 terminals
(or 920 lookalikes, might be 915's, whatever), a Zenith Data Systems
box, MX-100 printer, and several Qume daisy wheel printers, Altair kit
(sans case), and an unspecified handful of other S-100 cards.
If only there had been a PDP-11/73...
--jc
Received on Tue Jan 20 2004 - 20:15:05 GMT