Strangest computer you have had?

[Refugee]

For a few weeks i had an Amstrad with a mono LCD display. Sadly it was not complete.
It had a nice heatsink on the back that i saved for an amplifier. The keyboard had a hard wired cable that was optical and batteries in the keyboard itself so not worth the trouble. I put the case back together. As i lived above a shop at the time i placed it on the street and it was soon gone to a new home
I did it with an old VCR once. I put it out with the remote poking out of the cassette hatch and it was gone in minutes. It was ex rental and had been used for time shifting for over 10 years. A hard life.

[GMB]

The most unusual computer I ever owned was a Cossor-Raytheon PTS-100 stand-alone display system.

This was a mini-computer system that was designed to be able to simulate being a cluster of IBM-3270 compatible displays. It was actually a really good 16-bit mini computer. The processor was in a 2-foot cube and weighed a ton, mainly because of the huge linear PSU. The displays were memory mapped and driven by boards in the processor unit. All the peripherals were driven very directly like that, which is why it was fairly small given its age. All built from 74-series TTL.

I still have some bits of it, like its unusual contactless keyboards, and the little high-speed cassette tape drives that worked with standard cassette tapes.

[arjoll]

Originally Posted by soundhog

my favourite is probably the Epson HX20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epson_HX-20

I'm pretty sure that's the machine used by Stewart Island identity Sam Sampson - he was featured in an 80's article in (I think) Bits & Bytes (a NZ computer magazine of the era) called "Computing by Candlelight" - at the time the Island had no reticulated power, and using your generator at night was generally frowned upon. I may still have a copy buried somewhere.

There seem to be varying definitions of a 'strange' computer, with uncommon being a theme. The first computer we had at home - a Sord M23 (1982) - wasn't actually that uncommon here at the time, but never achieved the status of the likes of the Apple II, C64 etc. It was a Japanese-designed Z80-based business machine 128k of memory, running a proprietary DOS initially on single-sided 100tpi disks (DSQD, but DSDD disks worked fine), and later an option for DSHD disks. There were 8" (shown in the link) and 3.5" (one of the first) options, but I never saw those. Dad developed a Survey calculation package on the M23 in a compiled structured BASIC, the platform being ideal because there was a math co-processor option.

This was followed by a Sord M68 in 1986 which had two CPUs - in 8 bit mode it ran a Z80 and was basically the same as the M23, with only 128k of it's 1M memory available. In 16 bit mode it ran a 68000, using the Z80 for I/O operations, and used CP/M-68k. Dad started developing his Survey package in C, but the bundled DR C was pre-ANSI and didn't have good floating point support, so he moved to developing in MS C on a PC (a 286/10) in 1988, which he gave me at the end of 1989 - my first PC - when he upgraded.

Sord seems known over there for the M5 home computer, but they were primary a business computer company and had some quite nice gear for the time. Unfortunately the Japanese culture doesn't always reward entrepreneurs and the company apparently got on the wrong side of one of the large keiretsus. Eventually they were bought out by Toshiba and became part of the business computing division - hence the links I've given to the Toshiba site for Sord hardware!

[paul.brett]

Originally Posted by dominicbeesley

Other favourite odd ball is one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100 with a disk video interface (metal box with 2 x 5 1/4" disk drives and a video interface).

I've got one of those, in working order I believe.

[dominicbeesley]

If I ever get mine up and running I might have to pester you for a copy of the system disks!

[Refugee]

I have got some manuals and software for TRS80.
I will have to make a list and post it.

[llama]

I've got Tonto in the loft...
Graham

[SiriusHardware]

Science Of Cambridge MK14 - described as a 'Microcomputer' when sold in 1977, but strictly speaking a bare bones educational development system. I still have it here in working order, although sadly minus its original terrible keypad.

[duncanlowe]

There was an early Amstrad portable with an LCD. Quite a weighty device running early DOS. The odd thing, it would run off C cell batteries with the battery holder being part of the main body.

I still have a Wren. Odd that it was considered portable, but with two 5.25 drives and a CRT your arm ached quite quickly. Never found out what the Winchester interface was. I know its another name for an HDD, but what protocol?

Edit: The Amstrad was a PPC512. Odd looking beast but usable for word processing.

[Radio Wrangler]

I wire-wrapped up a breadboard version of the Wireless World 6809 Forth Computer, but had to muck around with the software because the terminal I'd got from the skip was EBCDIC not ASCII. An old Atlair board. There was a donated ZX81 somewhere along the line, then another 6809 in a Dragon 64. The most exotic-sounding has to be the Ferrari laptop!

David

[paulsherwin]

Originally Posted by duncanlowe

There was an early Amstrad portable with an LCD. Quite a weighty device running early DOS. The odd thing, it would run off C cell batteries with the battery holder being part of the main body.

I have one of those in the loft. It uses 8 D cells which didn't last that long, and an alkaline set cost a fortune and weighed a ton. They sold quite well for a year or two as they were much cheaper than other portable offerings and perfectly usable for DOS.

[electronicskip]

I had a Jupiter Ace a few years back, it was a lookalike ZX81 style but was programmed in forth .

[grampy2]

Here's my list,Speccy with soft keys then a Speccy plus,IBM XT from a skip very good PCall the same,Packard Bell 286,second hand Dell (my first internet connection),locally built celeron,present PC built by my grandson two years ago specs uncertain but works very well,also had in fact still have secondhand Psion Organiser which I still boot up sometimes,have had great fun in past trying to write programs in their particular language.my present favourite is an iPad.

[julie_m]

I once had a strange Epson 8088 PC. The RAM (384 KB of it, anyway) was on an ISA card; graphics were CGA, courtesy of an ATI "Small Wonder" card, which produced a mono (so probably NTSC) output that my Amiga monitor could display. No HDD, just a single 5.25 inch floppy. It was sufficiently PC-compatible to run MS-DOS and GWBASIC, and I only paid a fiver for it.

It was linked up to a (skip find!) Apple Imagewriter Mk I dot-matrix printer with a serial interface, and also to a homebrew disco lighting controller using the Centronics interface.

Lasted until about 1999, when it developed a RAM fault and was disposed of.

[Zelandeth]

While they were in architecture terms not all that unusual, probably the strangest machines I've ever had to work on were the old Toshiba T5200 "portables" that I seem to have a soft spot for. Definitely one of the most densely packed machines of its time (though nothing compared to modern laptops!), fantastic bit of 3D system design - but an absolute nightmare from a service perspective, especially the first time you come to take one to bits.

Everything has to be done in a very specific order, which in several cases is counterintuitive, and I don't think I've ever had one to bits and reassembled without at least one or two screws left over...That's the only reason my main one still has a dead battery so throws up the "Error in CMOS, press F1 to continue..." every time I power it up. I'll get around to it one day...Luckily they're lithium primary cells and not prone to leaking and dissolving motherboard traces like NiCd ones are.

Biggest grumble about them though has to be the fact that while their floppy drives are functionally ordinary 1.44Mb 3.5" drives, that they have proprietary connectors so you can't use any old drive when they fail, and they seem to do that for a passtime. Thankfully I do have a few spares from scrap machines. One day I really need to do a bit of reverse engineering and figure out if it would be viable to make an adaptor.

Had a Toshiba T1200 as well which seemed quite odd to me - but that's probably because it was simply so old at the time I was using it (2002-ish, as a basis text-editor for school!). Reversed mono LCD screen, 80C86 processor, 720kb 3.5" floppy drive and a 20Mb hard drive which made a noise like the starship Enterprise powering up when it spun up. Was running DOS 3.0 if I remember right.

Sadly it developed a power supply fault after a year or so, and I dismantled it with a view to hopefully repairing it, but it was a bit beyond me at the time so was put on one side. During a clear out unfortunately several bits of it were thrown out by my parents while I was directing operations up in the loft, only to be noticed a year or so later when I decided to have another crack at sorting it. I still have the motherboard, display, hard drive (which has a proprietary connector...grrr...still have data on there I'd like to recover!), lower case and keyboard I think, but the upper case, floppy drive and power supply board are long gone.

Surprised me for a machine of the time that provided you didn't use the hard drive unless you were actively saving/loading things (it had a power switch!) and kept the display brightness down, the battery lasted for a good couple of hours. Definitely a machine I need to replace in the collection one day.

[raditechman]

I also has an Amstrad PC1640, although fitted a hard disk 20M?!.
I seem to recall the PSU for the computer was built into the monitor.

For a short time I did use an Osborne computer, one of the worlds first portable PC's. It used CP/M.

John

[Mike Phelan]

I used a DEC Rainbow at work, ran CP/M and DOS. Used dBaseII for CP/M and Basic for DOS.

At home I had an Oric-1 - remember them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric#Oric-1
Then various Amstrads - CPC464, 664 and 6128.

[TonyDuell]

Am I allowed to mention strange (old) computers that I still own and run? I assume so.

Many of the machine mentioned earlier in the thread I know well... The Rainbow -- only DEC could make a machine with a monochrome display and call it the Rainbow -- for example. Although to be fair there was a very nice colour option board with a upC7220
chip on it, the same logic turned up in the VT240 terminal.

I tried to avoid Amstrads, but I do have that PPC portable mentioned. Use it as a floppy drive tester mostly. Never tried to run it off batteries, it needs about 12V and looks like it could take 8 D cells. But there were 2 plastic tubes in the battery compartment which looks as they would hold 5 C cells each. Perhaps 8 D-size 1.5V primary cells or 10 C-size 1.2V NiCds?

The problem with the others is knowing where to begin. So I will mention a few of them :

HP9100 : OK, a programmable calculator. But to make a programmable calculator in a few hundred transistors with no logic ICs (the only ICs are 8 op-amps on the magnetic card reader PCB) is an amazing piece of design. The microcode ROM is 'core on a rope' (29 cores, one for each bit, with a sense coil wound on each, then 64 address wires which loop those cores which are a '1' in that word) The main ROM, 512*64 bits is a 14 layer (some say 16 layer, it may depend on whether you count the screening planes on the outside), the ROM is stored by how tracks loop inside and whether they are inductively coupled or not. The user interface is a 3 level stack but I feel it is not true RPN is that that there is not autmatic push and pop.

HP9810. This is an HP9100 (same user interface) built in TTL. A bit-serial 16 bit processor. One of the first commerical applications of the 1103 1kbit DRAM chip.

And it let to the HP9830 (in 1973). A computer at last. Same processor boards as the HP9810, but the internal firmware makes it run BASIC. Possibly the first machine you took out the box, turned on, and started typing BASIC.

Philips P800 series. Their version of a 16 bit minicomputer. 16 CPU registers. I've got versions in TTL, Philips custom bitslice and AM2900 bitslice

ICL/3 Rivers PERQ. Possibly the first commercial graphcs workstation. 256 20 bit CPU registers, CPU microcode (defining the instruction set) is loaded from disk at power-on so you can change it (and are encouraged to change it!). A graphics accelerator so that text is displayed 'at least as fast a normal text terminal' Z80 as an I/O processor. Possibly one of the nicest machinest I have ever worked on.

Obviously all the 'normal' minis, PDP8, PDP11, VAX11, etc

I'll finish with a micro. The ACW (Acorn Cambidge Workstation). Take a Microvitec Cub monitor chassis and a BBC B+ mainboard (with slightly changed ROMs). Put them in a box
with a floppy drive, hard drive _and a 32016 coprocessor with 4MBytes of RAM_. There's a switch on the keyboard. One way it's a normal BBC B+ The other way it runs PANOS on the 32016.

There are many, many more. I can go on at length if anyone is interested.

[emeritus]

In the late 1980's I was working in the Civil Service, and we did have the use of what I think was one of the first portable word processors, the "Liberator". I never used one myself, and the only time I saw one being used was when the guy I was sharing my room with, used it to type up his CV. A decade ago I could find nothing about them on the internet, but a search will now produce several hits.

[TonyDuell]

Another one I hace (and must get round to sorting out). There was a terminal emulator ROM cartridge for it too, which makes it moderately more useful to me.

IIRC the Liberator firmware ROM has 'Copyright Digital Research' type notices in it, suggesting it runs a modified CP/M internally.