Recent content by MrImprovement

Funny enough the "truly personal computer" was popular at the NSA and related agencies, since the rapid application development enabled by Interface Builder and later, the database connection tools, allowed them to quickly build apps (since some apps simply can't be bought off the shelf for...

The original NeXT systems shipped with an MO drive and not necessarily a hard drive. The MO drives are read/write but make a lot of noise while reading or writing.

Yes you can boot from CDROM and they hook up like "regular" SCSI.

If you want to know what the CPU was truly clocked at, have you been able to determine how the PPC core was set to run at a set clocked speed in the first place? If there is an external oscillator that the PPC chip uses, you might be able to determine the setting by examining the oscillators on...

There are emulators for the Symbolics 36xx series, for the TI Explorer and the MIT / LMI based machines as well. They should run well on anything PC/Mac desktop or laptop, made in the last 12 years at the least, and on the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 also.

For me the interest would be in installing a multi-tasking OS that ran "smoother" or "better" in some way than on ISA/VLB/AGP hardware. I would expect that fileserving over a 10/100 ethernet MCA card would be better and not bog down the system, for instance. Whether that would be enough for me...

I really do appreciate the in-depth response! Thank you!

Well I would like to know if there are differences in build quality; however it is very good to know that made some design choices in the II for better quality/speed.

Well is it sturdier, is it more robustly made? I have a Model III , is it just mostly the same parts in a different case with a detachable keyboard? Is the keyboard design and manufacture of better quality (Asimov supposedly used a Model II to type out over 9 million words, which is at least...

Is there a difference in the build quality between different TRS-80 models? Is the Model II "sturdier" for instance than the Model III?

Welcome to the forum! You will want to check the power supply and look for any capacitors that are out of spec. This includes replacing any of the "RIFA" capacitors which when old, can explode and take out other parts with it, and the regular tin can capacitors, which can be tested relatively...

You can load CPM on it. There is a guy that put up the code on GitHub and I think he also did a video on YouTube about it.

I have the Redragon tenkeyless version, very similar to the above but with normal square-ish keycaps. It has lasted longer than any other keyboard I have used in the last 30 years, I think. I have used it daily for 4 years and only now does it feel a bit different, stiff in the wronge places and...

Reading about the Corona PPC-400 it is said that the fonts were 16x16 and very very sharp. Does anyone have a literal "screenshot" showing these different fonts in terms of how they looked on screen?

Can you comment on the quality of the plastics and the switches? They look to be high quality in the pictures.