"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.
Heathkit H19 Video Terminal in excellent condition. Powers up. Includes manuals: H19 Video Terminal Assembly Manual and H19 Video Terminal Operation Manual
Apple III system complete with Profile hard drive. Profile "ready" light lights up. The Apple III machine has a Parallel Card, Serial Card and (2) Profile Cards. It has external and internal floppy drives, Apple Personal Modem with box and manual, Joystick with box, 80 column card, Apple III clock calender up grade kit and a ton of software and manuals. Software includes MicroCourier, SOS, Apple III Basic, Apple III Diskware Program, Lazarus, Edit III, Mail List Manager, Haba Merge, MultiPlan, Quick File, EZ Pieces, Three Works, Business Graphics, Quark Catalyst ("Hard Disk Boot for Apple III) with Manual and more. Manuals include Visicalc Book, Using Apple Business Computers, Mastering Apple Works, Apple Works Tips and Techniques, MicroComm, III EZ Pieces, HabaMerge, Mail List Manager, ON III, Apple Writer III, Meet Your Apple Speller, Discourse for Apple III and Apple III Business Graphics.
Black Bell & Howell version of the Apple II+. A limited number were manufactured by Apple and marketed by Bell & Howell, primarily for schools. This unit was individually owned and not used in a school, therefore the case and keyboard are in near mint condition. The motherboard is dated 1979 and this system has the original Apple Disk Interface card dated 1978 and a 16Kb RAM card which increases the RAM to 64Kb! A matching B&H drive is included that works flawlessly. The computer powers up instantly with the beep, power light on, drive light on, and drive reads from the disk as it all should. The inside of this machine is spotless! Clean and dust free, looks new inside. The case is mint, no cracks, scratches, dents, or anything. These are rare and especially hard to find in this clean condition, since most of these were in the educational market and got hammered on by school kids... not this one though. Has a Zenith Data Systems monochrome green phosphor screen monitor.
Apple III computer, serial #A3S2-109479, with 128Kb RAM. Apple /// profile card installed. Some software disks also included. Very nice computer in excellent condition.
Exidy Sorcerer new in box with Basic cartridge.
EXIDY SORCERER COMPUTER
The Exidy Sorcerer Computer made its’ debut at the Long Beach Computer Show in April of 1978. It was the result of collaboration by Paul Terrell founder of Byte Shop computer stores, Howell Ivy, and Pete Kauffman of Exidy, Inc.
Pete Kauffman and Howell Ivy owned one of the leading coin operated video game companies at the time and as Paul Terrell would put it “Their graphic designs with a computer were so good they would take quarters out of my pocket.” The Personal Computer Marketplace was in dire need of a PC that exhibited good graphics capabilities and no one knew that better than Paul Terrell who had just sold his chain of 58 Byte Shop Computer Stores to John Peers of Logical Machine Corporation.
Paul convinced his friends Pete and Howell to design and build “The Computer of his dreams”, The Exidy Sorcerer. “Computers are like Magic to people”, says Paul, “So lets give them Computer Magic with the Sorcerer Computer” and hence the name. Paul also wanted a “Consumer Computer” that was user friendly beyond anything currently in the marketplace. Early Home Computers, Hobby Computers, Personal Computers were designed and manufactured for the technically savvy. Consumer Electronics had not yet recognized Home Computing as a viable market and were only offering Calculators and Video game console to its marketplace.
And Magic is what Howell Ivy came up with in the design of the Sorcerer. As the VP of Engineering and partner in Exidy Inc. Howell was a natural computer enthusiast with a wealth of knowledge in computer graphic design and what excited consumers in computer graphics. He was also astute enough to realize that the current marketplace was principally made up of technical engineers, programmers and technicians that wanted more than just a video game in their home computer. With that Howell set out to design the Exidy Sorcerer to be the most innovative Personal Computer in the marketplace. At the time Exidy would be competing with the Apple II, Commodore Pet, and Tandy TRS 80 computers already in the marketplace.
The wish list of design improvements over the existing designs in the marketplace went like this:
1. A keyboard computer that could plug into a Television Set like the Apple II and TRS 80 but also plug into a computer monitor to display high resolution graphics.
2. An easily programmable graphics character set like the Commodore Pet so a novice programmer want-a-be could write Basic Language Programs that would dazzle their friends. The Sorcerer design was eloquent with the highest resolution in the marketplace and innovative because the graphic characters could be reprogrammed to represent any kind of 8x8 character the programmer wanted and wasn’t fixed like the graphic characters on the Commodore Pet. Howell did such a good job in this area of the design that it was to achieve a “Most Innovative” award at the Consumer Electronics Show after its introduction.
3. The fastest micro computer chip with the most software compatibility in the marketplace. The Exidy Sorcerer used the Z 80 Processor from Zilog Corp. ( the same as the TRS 80 from Tandy but the Apple II and Commodore Pet used the slower 6502 Processor from MOS Technology) which allowed it to run the same Basic Language Software that was becoming one of the first standards in the personal computer industry, Microsoft Basic.
Exidy was one of the first companies to license software from Microsoft after they parted ways from MITS, Inc. and before they moved from New Mexico to Seattle.
4. Plug-In Software Cartridges so the Computer User could immediately begin using the computer at power-on. The user would not have to load a program from tape or disk to start operating the computer. Exidy would provide three program cartridges that they would provide under license, Microsoft 8 K Basic, Word Processor Cartridge (which was the “Killer AP’ for PCs at the time), and an Assembler Cartridge (for programmers to write their own custom software for proprietary applications). Blank cartridges were provided for custom applications and the most popular application was customer generated foreign language character sets, which made the Exidy Sorcerer the most popular International PC .
5. An expansion unit deigned to the Industry Standard S-100 Bus so that all of the low cost peripheral products presently in the marketplace could be attached to configure a computer system.
The standard plug in attachments to the keyboard case and included in the base price of the unit were a printer port for hard copy devices, cassette port for mass storage, and serial port for communications. Some of these were included with the competing products and some were add-on.
The Exidy Sorcerer was a total solution home computer that was competitively priced at $895 and went to market in Long Beach California in April of 1978 and generated a 4,000 unit back-log on introduction.
Packard Bell Legend 68CD in great condition with the restore disks, and a Certificate of Authenticity still sealed in the factory shrink wrap. The Factory seal intact on the back of the case. Includes the user's manuals, Packard Bell Multimedia Master CD, Packard Bell Library disk, Packard Bell Microsoft Multimedia pack for windows CD, and U.S. Atlas CD. Has a 540 Mb hard drive, 8MB RAM and a 60 MHz Pentium processor. The exterior of this unit is clean with no scratches. Nice 1412SL color monitor with speakers
