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What is this? Post Photos of Mystery Items Here (vintage computers only)

Chuck(G) said:
The 4 pin does certainly point to a hookup to a serial terminal. I've not seen a jack with the latch on the side, but perhaps someone recognizes it.
It would be useful to get a high-resolution photo of the whole board to see what's feeding that jack.
Click to expand...

It's a British Telecom socket. Like RJ, but on it's side... You find them also on Sinclair QL and some models of Sinclair Spectrum ( eg, the original 128K model ).

Getting crimpers for them is hard. I have a metal former I can use with pliers, but one day I'll get the proper crimper.

BS 6312 is the number for the specification for the plug.

David
 
Chuck(G) said:
It would be useful to get a high-resolution photo of the whole board to see what's feeding that jack.
Click to expand...

I would bet a shiny new tuppence(*) that both the "serial" and "vdu" jacks are driven by the Z8440 dual-SIO chip directly adjacent to the CPU. There's a very good chance that the pin headers for both jacks have identical, or nearly so, pinouts.

(* Or I could feed the birds. But then what do you have? FAT BIRDS.)
 
Chuck(G) said:
Looks like a counter board (nixies not present) with an unrelated display board. I don't see how these are related to "Computer" or 6800 in any sense.
Click to expand...

I have a galaxy brain theory about why the seller threw that in the listing.

It looks like there was a Peter Stark who was a regular contributor to ‘73 (a HAM radio magazine) and Kilobaud Microcomputing in the 70’s and early 80’s that seemed to have a preference for Motorola products. (He wrote about the SWTP 6800, and later appears to have been a TRS-80 color computer fan.) I would wager if you dug around these sources enough you might find listings for his projects/kits. But, yeah, he was a HAM radio buff in addition to the whole computing thing, so there’s a very good chance these are unrelated.

Appears he passed away in 2022.
 
I used to have a couple different websites that sold weird and esoteric computer stuff. These sites are either long gone or I've forgotten what they are called. I miss being able to casually browse these sites and find things I never knew existed. EBay is a thing but you can't just search "weird surplus computer parts, cheap", you know.
 
Anyone know anything about this Diskwriter by August Systems or Hands-On Terminals? I picked this up on eBay last week because I thought it might be some interesting shoebox CP/M computer, but this seems a bit different. . 8080 Processor, 8K of RAM and a single sided floppy drive with a bank of ROM's. Serial No. is 0001. I assume this might just be some storage mechanism for a terminal session, but I can't find anything on this at all online. I'll dump the ROMS later this week.

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Reminds me of some audo cassette systems that interposed between the host and terminal. Understodd x-on and x-off and functioned as a virtual paper tape unit. Given the limited RAM, I suspect that this might be similar.
Later units used 5.25" floppies and were used extensively with embroidery machines in place of paper tape.
 
It was easier than I expected. I just swapped the vdu cable with the serial cable. I was surprised that the device was in good working condition. I mean no error just boot screen was displayed properly. Despite the motherboard condition ,both floppy disk drives are in very bad shape, capacitors have leaked everywhere.

I guess the hardest part is finding the right operating system for this z80. Unfortunately, the seller did not have the original floppy disks and there is almost no information about the device on the internet.
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Chuck(G) said:
Later units used 5.25" floppies and were used extensively with embroidery machines in place of paper tape.
Click to expand...
I found this small write-up in a 1979 Byte Magazine. It looks like it just gives some intelligent session capability to a dumb terminal session.


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ng80386sx said:
It was easier than I expected. I just swapped the vdu cable with the serial cable. I was surprised that the device was in good working condition. I mean no error just boot screen was displayed properly. Despite the motherboard condition ,both floppy disk drives are in very bad shape, capacitors have leaked everywhere.

I guess the hardest part is finding the right operating system for this z80. Unfortunately, the seller did not have the original floppy disks and there is almost no information about the device on the internet.
Click to expand...

In a search I found Digico did a computer called the Prince and Chuck had a disk for them https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/would-like-to-see-a-digico-prince-again.51664/

Wonder if they have any compatibility.

Digico Limited - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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