"Mark Metzler wrote:
I was in WalMart last night, and I swung by the Electronics area. I was curious as to how much a replacement drive would cost me for my PC at home, which has a 17gb drive in it. They had a 80gig drive sitting on the shelf next to the surge suppressors for $70. Never mind that it comes with the software to copy everything to the new drive. So I stood there trying to do the math on what it would cost to equate that volume of storage with ST506 drives at $1995.00 a pop. My head started hurting, so I rounded the ST506 to $2000.
It would take 16,000 ST506’s to reach the memory of the drive in WalMart (again sitting on the shelf, not behind a locked cabinet).
At $2000.00 a pop, it would cost me $32,000,000.00.
Now that would have been a nice sale, but would have been stolen by Jim Scharffe or Mike Daniel.
Here is another perspective. If stacked on top of one another, they would be as tall as a 667 story building.
If from sea level, they would stack high enough to top the tallest building in Downtown Denver.
If sold with a cabinet and power supply, Josef Rabinowitz would be retired. "
"Ohmigod! I'm reminded of when I worked for Heath Kline at Priority One Electronics in Chatsworth...and before that for Galaxy Computers in Woodland Hills when the Commodore 64 was introduced! We thought it huge compared to the Timex Sinclair...."
"We both have been into computers since 1970's & currently own 6 OSBORNE's in working condition. Although we use DOS now, we miss cpm & how actually FAST it was compared to Windows. We miss dBase. Append as well instead of Access now. We still have data on 5 1/4" discs we need to put into the dos machines we use now.
Sorry to hear you are leaving the business - we certainly hope you find a buyer who will keep the collection intact!
Best to you & your wonderful efforts!"
DONATE YOUR OLD
SYSTEM WE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR VINTAGE COMPUTER SYSTEMS
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DONATE TO
THE FREEMAN PC MUSEUM
Welcome to The Freeman PC Museum collection. The following is a complete list of vintage computer systems in the museum. Feel free to scroll through the list, view details of the system, see related links and advertisements, and join in on the mini forums for each of the systems.
The following list is complete. If you are searching for a particular model, manufacturer, or a list of computers from a particular year, use the "Search" form on the left. Thank you again for visiting The Freeman PC Museum, and enjoy.
Northstar Advantage built in the USA in 1982 as followup to Horizon. No built-in language, keyboard is a full stroke 79 keys with function keys and numeric keypad.
Features:
Z80 or 8088 CPU
Speed 3.5 Mhz (Z80)
Coprocessor 8084 for display and disk management
64Kb RAM expandable to 256Kb
32Kb VRam
2Kb ROM (Boot ROM)
Text Modes 40/80 characters x 25 lines
Graphic Modes 640 x 240 dots
Monochrome colors, Sound beeper, Serial I/O port,
1 or 2 5.25" floppy disk drive
5-20Mb Hard disk drive
CP/M, NDOS operating system
Built in power supply
proprietary peripherals extension cards.
Note: This item is no longer part of our collection as it has been sent to a new PC museum for display.
Smoke Signal Broadcasting Catalog of products dated 1978- still loooking for a system from Smoke Signal to add to our collection. We had a great relationship with them in the late 70 and sold several systems and they were a great company. Actually Smoke Signal was founded in 1973.
