There's a good chance I'll make it to the upcoming VCF SoCal coming up on
Sat. the 17th.
Some things I'm looking for:
- recently an associate of mine gifted me their original 1978 TRS-80 (Model
1). But not much in accessories. I have a suitable tape deck, but other
accessories might be nice. His father used this particular unit while he
worked in the Tandy Towers in downtown FW (that's all I know about it so
far).
- any IBM 5100/5110 parts (including 8" disks); an associate here in Texas
has gotten their IBM 5114 disk drive unit working, so we'd be interested in
maybe copying disk files over to QIC tapes, and then somehow off-system to
archive.And I'm still looking for a copy of "PC51" (a 5110 BASIC
emulator that ran under MS-DOS 2.0), it was by CORE NET. Probably at most
only a few hundred customers bought it (at its $3000 price tag) around 1983.
- any parts for a Sharp PC-5000. Mine works, but I've been looking for a
Sharp CE-510F floppy disk drive (that has a "special" 37-pin connector that
makes it only work with some of the Sharp models - and I've verified it is
not the same as the 37-pin connector used on the IBM PC 5150 controller
card).
- anyone who can replace the screen on an Atari Lynx. I have the parts,
just don't have the talent :)
- a ThinkPad 385CD. I have one and it's in really decent condition, but
thinking I'd like to have a spare. Nice thing about the 385CD is it has
both 3.5" floppy and CD-ROM. [ I'm specifically looking for 486DX or
Pentium, so mid-1990s, not late 1990s - I have plenty of Pentium 3's and
onward; going for a "period correct" OS/2 Warp setup, even though I do
have ArcaOS on some 2001-era systems ]
- I guess while I'm at it, I've also been seeking for a working Datapoint
2200 (or equivalent variant, any 1974 or earlier) or Wang 2200. Even just
seeing either of those in working condition would be neat (working in terms
of still booting to BASIC). I was surprised I didn't see one at VCF in
Dallas last year (but they did have a HP9830 and Tek4051, those were neat
to see and still working).. The Wang systems have some decent emulators,
but I don't recall emulators for the early Datapoints.- so I've been
curious about their font and if it was as good at the brochures show.
I've read that the thing that really got Datapoint some money (initially)
was they pulled off crisp 80-column early on (and from the IBM SCAMP
journals, I read that even IBM struggled to do 80 cols - part of why the
IBM 5100 was only 64-column).
I just happen to be near LA that weekend, so hopefully it works out that I
can get to this VCF event. Is it the first time being held in that area?
Cheers, hope weather all works out for this event!
-Steve
