Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

On 4/30/18 10:20 AM, Eric Christopherson via cctalk wrote: On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 5:40 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: I keep them all. Not counting the bad ones in the SS1 and 2, I have 7. I can send them to you. I don't mind pick up the shipping costs for

Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 5:40 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > I keep them all. Not counting the bad ones in the SS1 and 2, I have 7. > > I can send them to you. I don't mind pick up the shipping costs for > something small like that. But the $70 that is it going to cost

Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

I keep them all. Not counting the bad ones in the SS1 and 2, I have 7. I can send them to you. I don't mind pick up the shipping costs for something small like that. But the $70 that is it going to cost to ship the SS20 to its new home is another matter. alan On 4/27/18 3:33 PM,

Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

On 4/27/18 3:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote: On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote: - SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from that it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a 3.5" floppy

Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

You can always send me the dead modules and I'll rebuild them (GlitchWorks == me, my wife sometimes helps with assembly). Whatever you do, don't throw out the dead NVRAMs -- I'll buy them or pay for you to ship them or whatever, they're not making more and they're the only solution that's 100%

Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

The ones from Mouser work well enough in every system that I have used them in. I still get the IDPROM corrupt message on boot on some systems, but it holds the MAC and the systems boot without intervention. I tried to repair a few and botched most of them. I know that I should be using the

Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

Tip on replacement hard drives: you can use a SCA drive with an adapter inside some Sun boxes, or my personal favorite, a Sun "UniDisk" enclosure with a SCA drive inside. SCA drives are really cheap, even for big ones (they go up to 300 GB), and you can still get some of the later production

Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

Don't get the new MK48T02/MK48T08s from Mouser et al, they're not fully compatible. They will retain NVRAM but the clock part is different and you'll get an error on that (system won't autoboot). Rebuild your old NVRAM! I made up some little boards to make the repair cleaner and faster to do (I

Re: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote: > > - SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from that > it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a 3.5" > floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the

SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))

I wrote: >... yesterday I managed to take the two SPARCstation 20s that I gotfrom >Pete's and make one working dual-processor SS20. I alsopassed on one of >the SS5s to its new owner. The person who originally spoke up for the >SS20 has not responded to subsequent e-mail, so it may be available.

Re: Early Honda cars - was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

- Original Message - From: "Fred Cisin via cctalk" Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 6:48 PM > The Honda 600 was NOT a bike. Well, mostly not. After demise of the mid > 1960s Honda S600/S800 ("poor-man's-Ferrari" design exercise that got out > of hand and went

Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP)

On 4/26/18 11:52 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 at 00:48, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: The Honda 600 was NOT a bike. Well, mostly not. After demise of the mid 1960s Honda S600/S800 ("poor-man's-Ferrari" design exercise that got out of hand and

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 at 00:48, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > The Honda 600 was NOT a bike. Well, mostly not. After demise of the mid > 1960s Honda S600/S800 ("poor-man's-Ferrari" design exercise that got out > of hand and went into production), Honda engineers took a

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

I had to choose between buying not skimping on groceries V a Mini-Cooper-S (needed a little work) V Honda 600 V TRS80. Did I make the right choice? On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Liam Proven wrote: I'd go for a bike over a car any day. Well, when I was young, anyway. Now, I'm getting kinda stiff and

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 23:30, Geoffrey Oltmans wrote: > I don't know what it's like around your home, but most places in the US aren't terribly bike friendly. Since the advent of texting and smart phones even less so. Still, I keep thinking I should trade my one way 4 mile

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 19:54, Geoff Oltmans wrote: > I think you'd find a few people this side of the pond whose first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (our equivalent of the ZX81). I know that was true in our household... My dad purchased one brand-new at Albertson's (a

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 16:55, Zane Healy wrote: > My first computer was supposed to be a ZX81. I worked all Summer painting the house to earn it. As it happens, my payment was a VIC-20 with a tape recorder. I guess the VIC had colour and sound, but that 22-column screen

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 4:15 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 23:04, Fred Cisin via cctalk > > wrote: > > I'd go for a bike over a car any day. Well, when I was young, anyway. Now, > I'm getting kinda stiff and creaky...

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

> On 26 Apr 2018, at 22:13, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote: > > On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 3:11 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > >> On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote: >> >>> Those Microdrives were such a Cheese design. >>> >> >>

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 23:04, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > Neither "first", nor "sub-$1000" > Apple][ was $1298, and discounts were very rare. > TRS-80 at $599 was less than half the price. > Pet at $795 was barely more than half the price. The TRS-80 line barely sold

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 3:11 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote: > >> Those Microdrives were such a Cheese design. >> > > The American Cheese Society (industry association) would probably resent > that comparison I was

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 3:03 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Apple][ was $1298, and discounts were very rare. > TRS-80 at $599 was less than half the price. > Pet at $795 was barely more than half the price. > By connecting a CCTV monitor, I got my TRS80 new for $399.

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote: Those Microdrives were such a Cheese design. The American Cheese Society (industry association) would probably resent that comparison.

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 22:41, TeoZ via cctalk wrote: > My first computer was a Timex 2068 just before Timex got out of computers. I > had seen advertisements for the 1000 model but it looked like junk at the > time (no real keyboard, you needed to have the 16K RAM cart to

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 2:37 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > The QL was a weird machine. It predated the Mac by a matter of weeks and in > crude spec terms was comparable -- 128 kB RAM, 68008 vs 68000, 2 x 100 kB > Microdrives versus 1 x 400 kB floppy. The QL did

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: A lengthy interview with the later great Rick Dickinson, product designer of basically every Sinclair computer, who sadly died of cancer on Tuesday. https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/an-interview-with-rick-dickinson-3fea60537338 He not only did the

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

model which must have sold quite a few units before being discontinued compared to my 2068. -Original Message- From: Mark J. Blair via cctalk Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 3:33 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 21:33, Mark J. Blair via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Over here in the US, I remember seeing the Sinclair QL in a magazine (probably Byte?) and thinking it looked exotic and interesting. I thought the little tape drives looked neat, and didn’t know enough to

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

Over here in the US, I remember seeing the Sinclair QL in a magazine (probably Byte?) and thinking it looked exotic and interesting. I thought the little tape drives looked neat, and didn’t know enough to appreciate how much better a floppy drive would have made the system. I have no regrets

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 19:26, Adrian Graham via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > My first was a ZX80 which my Dad borrowed from my physics teacher at school. That spurred me on to get my own ZX81 which had just come out, then the Research Machines 380Z at later school, then the 48K

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 19:17, j...@cimmeri.com wrote: > Very interesting to see this perspective from the UK! Oh good. :-) > Located in the U.S. (Washington, D.C), I started with an Apple II+ in 1979 as a 12 year old. This confirms the sort of thing I read. US users had

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

> On Apr 26, 2018, at 7:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk > wrote: > > I know this is a rather USA-centric list, so probably most of you started > off with things like the Apple II, the first sub-$1000 home computer. But > in Britain and Europe back then, we were a lot

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

> On 26 Apr 2018, at 13:47, Liam Proven via cctalk > wrote: > > I think if you ask virtually any British person in their late 30s, 40s or > 50s, in anything connected with IT, what their first computer was, the > answer would be a ZX 81 or a ZX Spectrum. It was the

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

There was a very large Timex 1000 / ZX81 user base in the US. I have quite a lot of newsletters and documents from these groups. I even did an exhibit on the subject of SIGs for the Timex 1000 ZX81 at VCF MW a few years ago. You can see stacks of newsletters in stands flanking the machines and

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

> On Apr 26, 2018, at 5:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk > wrote: > > He not only did the ZX 80, ZX 81, ZX Spectrum and the QL, but also the Z88, > the Spectrum Next and others -- along with a lot of other stuff. > > I know this is a rather USA-centric list, so probably

Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

Just to add some info to the excellent Liam's post, it was a revolution in south america too. The first computers in Brazil were ZX80 clones (TK82C is a ZX80 clone, not a ZX81...ZX81 were cloned just in the TK85 computer) and it was a revolution! I was a very poor guy, my father was a Militar

Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP

A lengthy interview with the later great Rick Dickinson, product designer of basically every Sinclair computer, who sadly died of cancer on Tuesday. https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/an-interview-with-rick-dickinson-3fea60537338 He not only did the ZX 80, ZX 81, ZX Spectrum and the QL, but also the