Wednesday, 2 April 2008

Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer

Another Relic that cames directly from an Ebay auction (now with the "strong Euro" somethings are quite cheap to buy), this machine was produced in the Early 80 (from 1980 to 1983 by Radio Shark) and has a BASIC interpreter (like most of the home computers at this time), the processor was a Motorola MC6809E and was sold with 4Kb of RAM.




The machine cames with a colored basic manual as it was usual in the early 80 :

With nice illustration showing the fundamentals of BASIC programming, trying to attract young people to the language, and avoiding the "serious and technical documentation" of
the first PC sold.


The computer has connectors for TV, Tape Joystick and serial (for using a modem) or printer, and unfortunately a US connector for 120V electric power, I need to buy a 120V to 220V transformer to test it.



There is a lot of more information in the Wikipedia Page of TSR-80 Color computer that show more information about this machine.

Monday, 17 March 2008

Router Vine200

another machine that was literally going to the trash, I found it in a debris container in the street, a homeless was scavenging copper cables when I saw the four RJ-11 connectors, so I got
it, unfortunately without the power adapter that it seems that have a non-standard connector.

The router was covered with white stucco and after carefully removed most of them (still some in the photos) , I found the name of the vendor.


It seems that this router was used mainly by Jazztel an Spanish ISP, when installing xdsl connection in the professional lines, the ISP don't give the configuration password to the users, but as usual the credentials are easily found in Internet.

The four RJ11 connectors don't provide VoIP connections (at least no real VoIP), only allow to connect normal phones to the line.

Sinclair ZX80


The first computer manufactured by Clive Sinclair, the Sinclair ZX80 used (the zilog Z80 chip), the look of the machine is quite similar to the classic ZX81, but as the pictures shows this is still thinner than the ZX81.

The machines included the BASIC interpreter (with the "clasic" token keys , and has connectors for an external tape drive.

It's quite difficult to find this machines in Europe now, most of the current sellers are from the United States, and sometimes the auction price is more than 400$. This was cheaper but only because there is no power supply (I think that the ZX81 has the same kind of connector).


Sunday, 11 November 2007

Console Intellivision

In the beginning of the 198x, there was some consoles that perhaps weren't as popular as the newest ones., but some of them were quite amazing when you think about them now.

One of them was intellicovision, they use a ROM cartridge that must be plugged in the console to play the games.

The hand-held controllers have not only the "joystick" (round button), but also 12 digits, and other buttons in the sides of the controllers , depending of the game those buttons are used for different purposes.


The games, ....

There were different games, from the typical shot-up (space invaders, space hawk, ...) to some sport games, like soccer or tennis .

This console was donated by Jesus Guillamon, a friend from Murcia, and still works :


The screen seems to be quite snowy , perhaps the video chipset has been damaged after so much time, but still it's possible to play the games.

Sinclair Spectrum +3

Amstrad bought Sinclair Research in 1985, and after that they produced some Spectrum with tape and floppy disk included.

The last one was the Sinclair Spectrum +3 , that had a 3'' floppy disk.


Below there is a detail of the floppy disk unit:


This unit was buy in Ebay from UK, so it have the UK power jack, but works fine in Europe.

The system tries to boot flom the floppy disk before showing the menu, this would allow this spectrum to boot other operating systems (it seems that there was a CPM disk for the Spectrum ;-), before booting from the rom.

Tuesday, 7 August 2007

Commodore Amiga 500

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This is another historical computer , a commodore Amiga 500, this was the FIRST commodore with a 32 bit CPU , with a compact style (keyboard, disk drive (800Mb) and CPU in the same box). as it was usual in the MicroComputer.

This wasn't the FIRST 68000 Micro Computer, Sinclair for example launched the QL (Quantum Lap) before, but this was the first successful one.

This computer was very advanced for its time, it has a 3.5 floppy drive instead of tape, and internally it has a dedicated graphic processor and another coprocessor for the sound.

A lot of people organized championship (demo scene) to program special effects with this machine, the operating system (graphical interface ) was another big point.

The machine is a gift from my friends of "Harry el aleman", one of the best places in Madrid to drink German beer

Friday, 6 July 2007

DEC 4000/600

This machine was part of RedIRIS , the Spanish Academic and Research Network and was used in the late 198x, and first 199x.



The box in the left is the Main CPU, at the RIGHT there is hard disk cabinet.

The machine has 64Mb, of memory and was used mainly to provide Internet/OSI related services to the Spanish Research Community.

The machine was used, for example, to keep the X500 directory (LDAP is based in this protocol), and also to provide email (not only SMPT/TCP services, also X.400 ).

Also it's very likely that the first DNS server for the ".es" Top level domain were running
in this machine.


Opening the door we can see that there are three hard disks (one seems to be broken),
ethernet (RJ-45/BNC) connection, console connection (with the typical DEC connector) and some serial card for consoles and serial connexions to other hosts.