"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.
Telecom Sinclair QL Computerphone by ICL.Telecom Computerphone
(based on the Sinclair QL circa1984).
240V-50Hz version, powers up, runs. Weird Australian computer the Telecom Computerphone was designed for Telecom (who, for those of you too young to remember, went on to become Telstra) by ICL / Sinclair. It uses a Sinclair QL with a PABX attached to it. It was not a success. In fact when Australian Personal Computer magazine looked back at the previous 10 years in 1990, they cited the Telecom Computerphone as one of the 10 biggest flops in the previous decade.
Also interesting to note one of the designers commented "This baby was ahead of its time. It's success was spoiled only by Telecom's poor marketing of it"
Includes:
Telecom Computerphone Executive Series (Sinclair QL / ICL) console
Matching monitor
Tandy RLX1000 286 PC but still without Windows.
CPU Speed: 10/5 MHz Switchable
CPU: 286
Memory: 512Kb
Colors: 256
Drives: Hard Drive 40Mb; 3.5" 1.44Mb
Cost: Approximately $1,000
Apple II clone with some minor differences (note the extended keyboard). Not sure the manufacturer. The back has a couple of jacks for cassette I/O and an RCA jack for video out. All the parts seem to be from Taiwan, so I guess it originated there. This is probably rarer than a real Apple II.
Apricot PC Apricot Computers began as Applied Computer Technologies, a mainframe computer service bureau in 1965. During the 1980's, ACT sold several American computers under their badge, and in 1983, introduced the new Apricot PC. In the US, the Apricot, as an IBM compatible, had difficulty establishing a foothold. In Europe, since IBM delayed the introduction of their PC, Apricot became the standard and IBM was reduced to being an Apricot incompatible.
The new machines, offered from June, 1983, with one or two single sided drives were built at a new factory in Glenrothes, Scotland, which became the UK's Silicon Valley. Early on, the drives were upgraded to double sided, and by March 1984, the machines were available with 5 or 10Mb hard drives as well. This is believed to be the first machine built outside of Japan to utilize the new 3.5 inch discs.
This system includes manuals, Friday software, Digital Research DR Graph & Draw and Lotus 123 Release A for Apricot.
