Odd, rare, or just bad computers you've owned?

Lucky Phil · Post by **Lucky Phil** » Wed Feb 24, 2021 1:43 pm

Cyber, these computers are great! I especially love the POISK and its imposing plug-in cartridges (at least, that's what I assume them to be). Ukrainian machines, perhaps...?

Lucky Phil · Post by **Lucky Phil** » Wed Feb 24, 2021 2:07 pm

Strider, I still have a boxed Commodore Plus/4 in storage... perhaps one day I'll fish it out and explore further? It had a really nice form factor and tactile nature, that much I can remember. Despite its shortcomings, I really don't think that the Plus/4 had its day in the sun... probably because of no other reason than it wasn't compatible with its older 64K sibling! Apparently, many of its original developers subsequently worked on the Commodore 128 - so I guess that the Plus/4 project wasn't exactly an unmitigated disaster, after all...?

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Wed Feb 24, 2021 6:20 pm

The word "clone" just isn't used enough anymore, now we just call anything not from a mainstream manufacturer a "knockoff". lol

Back then, while some "clones" were indeed of poor quality, many were not bad, and some were great, just underrated and never hit the mainstream for whatever reason.

Yeah, I used my Plus/4 mainly for productive work at the time, but I did have about a dozen games for it if I recall, most on cassette of course. I actually liked the built in word processor and owned the 1551 drive. I just wish it had done better, but I fully understand why it didn't do well and it was at least much better than the C16.

Though the C64 and Amiga 500 were my favorite all time computers in the Commodore lineup. :)

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Thu Feb 25, 2021 4:51 am

14 hours ago, Lucky Phil said:

Cyber, these computers are great! I especially love the POISK and its imposing plug-in cartridges (at least, that's what I assume them to be). Ukrainian machines, perhaps...?

Yes, Poisk and Robik both are Ukrainian machines (from the times of USSR).

And it's not cartridges, it's cased expansion cards (which they decided to call "adapters"). I had only two of them: one for floppy, other for joystick. But you could also add expansions for HDD, MIDI, printer, plotter, LAN, serial and parallel interfaces. Also you could add expansion for RAM and ROM with BASIC (so yeah, it's a BASIC cartridge after all). I loaded GW BASIC from floppy.

Here is a cute pic of what you could get for your Poisk:

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:06 am

I like how "CENTRONIX" is still in Latin letters, as there is no attempt make it into a Russian word, even phonetically. Even more interesting is that the Centronix parallel port is only used for the plotter and not the printer, which uses some entirely different protocol.

kelli217 · Post by **kelli217** » Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:54 am

20 hours ago, SlithyMatt said:

I like how "CENTRONIX" is still in Latin letters, as there is no attempt make it into a Russian word, even phonetically. Even more interesting is that the Centronix parallel port is only used for the plotter and not the printer, which uses some entirely different protocol.

It looks like the printer is connected to an OZU 512Kbait — sorry, 512Kbyte RAM module. Probably a multifunction card with both memory and the printer connection, as opposed to the adapter interfeisny, interface adapter, which only has the serial and parallel ports. I'm guessing there were constraints that prevented having both interfaces as well as extra memory all on the same card.

Some of these transliterations are mildly amusing: dzhoistiki, for example, and Vinchester.

kelli217 · Post by **kelli217** » Fri Feb 26, 2021 7:12 am

On 2/22/2021 at 5:10 AM, Lucky Phil said:

I still have an Amstrad PPC640 - actually, it's a replacement for an old friend from my vocational study days! Being a modest tertiary student, I could only afford to buy a PPC512 (the slightly lower-spec model of this machine) - but I'm still in awe of what I could achieve with a grey-on-green CGA screen and two floppy drives! The crisp, spritely keyboard was a dream, putting many modern examples to shame. I only traded the PPC512 to upgrade to a 'modern' PC, though I've since consoled myself with a vintage PPC640, complete with manual and custom backpack!

There has recently been a video on YouTube of someone trying to replace the screen on a PPC512, trying several different options.

Wertzui · Post by **Wertzui** » Mon Mar 01, 2021 9:09 pm

I have picked up a VTech IQ Unlimited from a junk shop a few years ago. It was sold as a children's toy laptop in the 90s (at least this model, there are other IQ Unlimited branded machines that look diffenent). It has a dedicated mouse peripherial, a GUI, applications like a Wordpad-like text editor, a drawing program, and among others, even a BASIC interpreter. It can save files to an internal battery powered memory (and the battery is still not dead). From what I gather, on the inside it's an 8-bit microcomputer!

Too bad it has a horrible non-backlit B&W LCD screen, a very awkward-feeling keyboard. And no external storage, which means no software support, and no way to backup the files you created.

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Mon Mar 01, 2021 9:24 pm

12 minutes ago, Wertzui said:

on the inside it's an 8-bit microcomputer

David made a video on it:

It has a Z80, so it should be pretty capable. Maybe even able to run CP/M.

Wertzui · Post by **Wertzui** » Tue Mar 02, 2021 10:11 am

Yeah I know. This is the IQ Unlimited that pops up in searches.

I'm actually not sure if it's the same architecture at all. The UI is more like GEOS with Windows 3.1 styling, all pixel-graphics instead of characters (and pretty slow too). But it's hard to tell by looking at the miserable LCD display that's built into the laptop form factor, and there is no other output. The sound is just a few crunchy, obnoxious cartoon sound effect samples. There's no way to open it up to see the guts (safety measure for children I suppose). Curiously, it has a printer port like on old PCs.