ZX Spectrum T-shirts!
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ZX81 T-shirts!
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Atari joystick T-shirts!
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Vectrex ship T-shirts!
C64 maze generator T-shirts!
Elite spaceship t-shirt T-shirts!
Competition Pro Joystick T-shirts!
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Moon Lander T-shirts!
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BASIC code T-shirts!
Vector ship T-shirts!
Pixel adventure T-shirts!
Breakout T-shirts!
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Welcome to old-computers.com, the most popular website for old computers.
Have a trip down memory lane re-discovering your old computer, console or software you used to have.
There are actually 1253 systems in the museum.
SHOW ME A RANDOM SYSTEM !
 LATEST ADDITIONS
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 TERAK CORPORATION 8510 Data Processor
The Terak 8510 is a complete stand-alone micro-computer based on DEC's LSI-11 chipset (16-bit !), in other words, it si a PDP-11 compatible. It was one of the first high-end microcomputers and among the first desktop personal computers to offer a bitmap graphics display.
It was capable of running a stripped version of UNIX version 6. It was the first personal machine on which the UCSD p-System was widely used. Various universities in the USA used it in the late 1970s through mid-1980s to teac...
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 TOSHIBA Visicom 100
This beautiful but obscure Japanese system was released in january 1978. It's basically a clone of the RCA Studio gaming system, one of the first videogame console of all time (released in january 1977).
Made by Toshiba, this beauty was also based on the RCA 1802 micro-processor, and its video counterpart, the CDP 1861. However the main difference with the Studio II is that the Visicom 100 offers colour display thanks additional hardware.
Another nice difference, is that unlike the Studio ...
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 BIT CORPORATION Dina 2-in1 / Bit 7200 / Chuang Zao Zhe 50
The Dina, also known in Taiwan as the Chuang Zao Zhe 50, is a video game console originally manufactured by Bit Corporation, later sold in the United States by Telegames as the Telegames Personal Arcade.It is a clone of both the ColecoVision and Sega SG-1000 consoles, with one cartridge slot for each platform, and came bundled with the game Meteoric Shower, which was built into the system. Telegames never advertised its compatibility with the SG-1000.
The Dina's controllers are modeled after ...
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 OHIO SCIENTIFIC Challenger
In 1977 computing industry is changing fast. Ohio Scientific Instruments who were making a lot of expansion boards for their 400 single-board computer, called "Superboard", realize that it would be nice to sell all this hardware, all assembled, in a single case, ready to plug and use.
That's what is a Challenger computer, more a concept than a single system. Indeed under the name Challenger came different configurations based around the Superboard system:
- Challenger 65-1k: 6502A CPU, ser...
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 WANG LABORATORIES Wang 2200
The Wang 2200 appeared in May 1973, and was Wang Laboratories' first minicomputer that could perform data processing in a common computer language: BASIC. It had a cathode ray tube (CRT) built-in its case and also an integrated computer-controlled cassette tape storage unit. 65,000 systems were shipped in its lifetime and it found wide use in small and medium-size businesses worldwide.
There has been quite several diffent models of the 2200:
- 2200A : first models released in 1973
- 2200B :...
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 MATTEL ELECTRONICS Keyboard Component
Sometime before the failed Aquarius home computer scheme was hatched by Mattel, the Intellivision team had attempted to expand Intellivision into the growing home computer market by turning it into a full fledged computer dubbed as the "Intellivision Keyboard Component", much in the same way Coleco was soon to do with their Adam computer.
The unit featured a built-in cassette tape drive for loading and saving data. The Keyboard Component would plug into the cartridge slot on the Intellivision...
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 RCA Fred 2
This Fred 2 computer is a prototype designed by Joseph Weisbecker, engineer at RCA. He already imagined several early computer designs before this Fred 2 model, such as the System 00 or the original Fred concept.
Fred is rather a concept imagined by Joseph Weisbecker for educational computer able to play games. This concept emerged in several hardware versions through time. The first models could be dates as early as 1970 or 1971 !
Unlike the System 00 which used only small-scale digital T...
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 BANDAI TV Jack 5000
The TV Jack 5000 from Bandai released in 1978 is one of the first cartridge based system from Japan.
It's the equivalent of european and american systems like the Hanimex SD-050, Acetronic Color TV Game, Prinztronic Micro 5500, SHG Blackpoint, Binatone Cablestar, Radofin telesports, etc. There have been tons of systems like these.
The TV Jack 5000, like all these systems, use cartridges based on General Instruments chipsets which offers different games on each chip. That's why all these sy...
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 OLIVETTI A5
Olivetti introduced a mainframe about 1960 which was called ELEA, then in 1965 the Programma 101 - which was probably the world's first real desktop computer. Then a little later they introduced the Audiotronic range of "office computers". The first was the A770, which was replaced by the A7. The A5 was the desktop version.
The Olivetti Audit 5 or A5 was largely an electro mechanical computer. It printed via a golf ball typewritter mechanism at the astonishing speed of 16 character per second...
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RANDOM SYSTEMS
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 SONY SMC 777 - 777C
This computer is the successor of the SMC 70. It is also capable of superimposition.
The big blue pad on the right hand-side are the cursor keys.
The difference between the SMC-777 and SMC-777c is about color features (hence the "C").
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 TEXET TX 8000
This TX-8000 is exactly identical as the Video Technology Laser 200. It was sold only in the UK where it was, for a short time, the less expensive colour home computer....
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 TRANSAM Tuscan S-100
Transam was based in London and have moved on from their original business as a manufacturer of cheap hobby-type boards to computers design in 1982.
The main unit of the Tuscan computer had a ten-slot S-100 backplane and integral single or dual floppy disk drives. The system came with a CPU board based around the Z80 processor, a video board with composite and UHF TV video outputs, and a memory board holding 8 KB of RAM and 8 KB of Monitor ROM.
Several additional board could expand the sy...
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 FRANKLIN ACE 1000
The Franklin ACE 1000 was launched in 1983. It was the successor of the ACE 100, released in 1981. The ACE 1000 had 48 KB RAM and allowed for a 16 KB Language card. It also supported lower-case letters, had a numeric keypad, and a larger case.
From the factory, the Ace-1000 did not support colours but there was a colour chip that could be added by the dealer for $50 (this dealer add-on was an attempt to protect themselves legally against lawsuits from Apple)...
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 COMMODORE Amiga 600HD
The Amiga 600HD is exactly the same as the standard A600 with the exception of a built-in 2.5" hard drive, hence the HD tag. A number of different packages were available with hard drive sizes ranging from 20 to 80 MB....
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 FORTUNE 32:16
When the 32:16 was launched, Fortune Systems Corp. advertised that it was the first integrated Unix-based system for $5000. Actually, the cheaper version was a single floppy disc, single user system that was never sold. A practical small business multiuser configuation, called System 10, and including a 10 MB hard disk and 512 KB of RAM costed about $9000.
The system could support up to 4 four-port serial terminal controllers and several other peripheral controllers: storage modules, Paralle...
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 SORD M 68 / M 68 MX
The SORD M68 has two buses: a 16-bit bus (with 3 slots) and a 8-bit bus (the S100 bus with two slots). Two models: The M68 Mark IV with two 5.25" floppy disk drives (1.2 Mb each) and the M68 Mark V with 8" floppy disk drives (1.2 Mb). From one to four hard disks can be connected: 8 MB (5.25" disk) or 20 MB (8" disk)....
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 CAMPUTERS LYNX
The Lynx 48 was a competitor of the Sinclair Spectrum and the Oric 1. It was a good machine but its main problem was a lack of software. Several models were available with 48 KB, 96 KB or 128 KB RAM, and it was possible to reach 192 KB with on-board RAM expansions! There is even a monitor in the Lynx's ROM which allowed the user to write and edit programs written in machine code.
The 96 KB and 128 KB versions featured 4 KB of ...
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 MITSUBISHI ML-F48 / ML-F80
This is one more MSX 1 computer with standard MSX features and two cartridge ports.
The ML-F48 had 32 KB of RAM, the ML-F80 had 64 KB....
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 TANDY RADIO SHACK TRS 80 PC-2
After the success of the TRS-80 Pocket Computer (a.k.a. TRS-80 PC-1), Sharp also manufactured their PC-1500 (see there for more technical information) in a version for Tandy Radio Shack.
This machine was marketed as the TRS-80 PC-2 (catalog number 26-3601). Internally, it was exactly the same machine. Only the front face design had been changed: the keyboard layout was different, with an additional enter key, and the dis...
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LATEST COMMENTS
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ABS COMPUTER ORB
"...it was one of the first, if not the first, multi-user user microprocessor systems".
I had an Alpha Micro AM-100 in my living room in 1978. A multi-user system, it was based on the WD16 microprocessor chipset from Western Digital (clone of a PDP-11, IIRC).
But ... wow, I''d love to have an Orb!
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DATAPOINT CORPORATION Datapoint 2200
My dad worked as technician for Datapoint in Germany from 1980 until 1998. He died in 2004. Last winter when I visited my mum I ve found an old 2200 (16k version), 6600 and 6640 in their basement. My plan is to "refurbish" them... Is anybody here who can give me technical advise if I have any questions? That would be great! $)
(in return, i would provide nice photos of the computer''s inner workings)
You can mail contact me by mail: effes@freenet.de
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NCR Decision Mate V
In the early 1980’s, I was an administrator at SOITA at Miami University in Ohio. SOITA was a non-profit, technology service agency to 200 school districts in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. We started offering computer hardware and software discount purchasing to our member schools. We sold an average of about 3 million dollars worth of computer hardware (mostly Apple) annually in the 1980s. NCR, headquartered in Dayton, wanted to explore the school computer market. They contacted us and donated 10 Decision Mate 5 units so we could try them out. They also donated several machines to schools around Dayton. I remember doing a few activities on the machine (I took one home) but found it difficult to operate for someone that had no computer background. In the meantime, we purchased several Apple IIe’s and were able to utilize inexpensive but high quality educational software from the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) and AppleWorks. All of this software was on 5.25 floppy disks. AppleWorks was an easy to learn utility program that gave us word processing, database and spread sheet capabilities. So the easy to use Apple IIe became the machine of choice for our schools driven by high quality and easy to use software. MECC was also a non-profit like SOITA and gave SOITA generous duplication rights to their educational software under a licensing agreement. SOITA duplicated $ distributed tens of thousands of MECC 5.25 disks to our member schools. MECC developed new educational programs every year that kept their products (like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers) very popular. Unfortunately for NCR, they were late to the school computer marketplace. There was no easy way to use high quality educational software for their DM 5. Eventually for schools, NCR ran into the classic situation for their DM 5 “they couldn’t give them away.†IBM, Commodore, Radio Shack and Atari had small footprints in the educational computing marketplace at this time. Their platforms were mostly easy to use and some software did exist (some through MECC). Eventually, after a decade, IBM $ Microsoft became strong rivals to Apple (and the Macintosh Computer) in the school market. MECC dissolved as a state supported non-profit and became a private company. NCR ceased to show interest in the educational marketplace after this failed experience. Their manufacturing and headquarters in Dayton eventually shut down with the HQ moving to Atlanta. SOITA eventually was no longer able to sell discounted hardware or software through group purchasing (Apple and MECC eliminated their volume purchasing structures) and concentrated their activities on teacher training.
I was disappointed after reviewing Steve Jobs’s autobiography that he did not give much (if any) credit to the educational community for the early success of Apple. Once children started learning computer skills on an Apple II or Mac computer at school, they took that knowledge home and drove home purchases to Apple. I am guessing our early computer experiences in Ohio were similar to others throughout the country. So, in my opinion, the education marketplace was primarily responsible for Apple’s success. The software drove the hardware purchasing. This story could have been rewritten for any computer platform (including NCR) had high quality, easy to use software been available.
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NCR Decision Mate V
In the early 1980’s, I was an administrator at SOITA at Miami University in Ohio. SOITA was a non-profit, technology service agency to 200 school districts in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. We started offering computer hardware and software discount purchasing to our member schools. We sold an average of about 3 million dollars worth of computer hardware (mostly Apple) annually in the 1980s. NCR, headquartered in Dayton, wanted to explore the school computer market. They contacted us and donated 10 Decision Mate 5 units so we could try them out. They also donated several machines to schools around Dayton. I remember doing a few activities on the machine (I took one home) but found it difficult to operate for someone that had no computer background. In the meantime, we purchased several Apple IIe’s and were able to utilize inexpensive but high quality educational software from the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) and AppleWorks. All of this software was on 5.25 floppy disks. AppleWorks was an easy to learn utility program that gave us word processing, database and spread sheet capabilities. So the easy to use Apple IIe became the machine of choice for our schools driven by high quality and easy to use software. MECC was also a non-profit like SOITA and gave SOITA generous duplication rights to their educational software under a licensing agreement. SOITA duplicated $ distributed tens of thousands of MECC 5.25 disks to our member schools. MECC developed new educational programs every year that kept their products (like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers) very popular. Unfortunately for NCR, they were late to the school computer marketplace. There was no easy way to use high quality educational software for their DM 5. Eventually for schools, NCR ran into the classic situation for their DM 5 “they couldn’t give them away.†IBM, Commodore, Radio Shack and Atari had small footprints in the educational computing marketplace at this time. Their platforms were mostly easy to use and some software did exist (some through MECC). Eventually, after a decade, IBM $ Microsoft became strong rivals to Apple (and the Macintosh Computer) in the school market. MECC dissolved as a state supported non-profit and became a private company. NCR ceased to show interest in the educational marketplace after this failed experience. Their manufacturing and headquarters in Dayton eventually shut down with the HQ moving to Atlanta. SOITA eventually was no longer able to sell discounted hardware or software through group purchasing (Apple and MECC eliminated their volume purchasing structures) and concentrated their activities on teacher training.
I was disappointed after reviewing Steve Jobs’s autobiography that he did not give much (if any) credit to the educational community for the early success of Apple. Once children started learning computer skills on an Apple II or Mac computer at school, they took that knowledge home and drove home purchases to Apple. I am guessing our early computer experiences in Ohio were similar to others throughout the country. So, in my opinion, the education marketplace was primarily responsible for Apple’s success. The software drove the hardware purchasing. This story could have been rewritten for any computer platform (including NCR) had high quality, easy to use software been available.
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DATAPOINT CORPORATION Datapoint 2200
I worked for Datapoint at two production plans (Waco, TX and Ft. Worth) and the R$D Center in Plano, Texas.
I worked on the 8200 line, Card Test/Repair, 1500 and 1800 lines. I liked the code names for them 8200''s were known as Jalepeño, the 1800''s were Tortilla''s. We also produced a version of the 1500 for Honeywell with their nameplate on it. At the R$D center in Plano, TX I worked on the phone switch. More specifically I worked on the Port Regulator Board. That thing was awesome. The switch didn''t work so good, but the Port Regulator was really good. I worked for Datapoint until they burned me out. When we closed the Waco plant and moved everything to the Ft. Worth plant we got so far behind on production. I would work at the R$D center for 8 hours then go put in another 8 or more hours at the production plant. We worked 7 days a week just trying to keep up with production. I was mistaken for a parts expediter because I didn''t wait for stuff to be delivered to our stations. I knew how to operate a forklift so when we needed additional boards to repair I would mount up on the forklift and go get boards waiting for repair and take them to the repair area. I knew field technicians were needing the boards as soon as possible. We would have to wait four or more hours for the expediters to get stuff to us. I wasn''t waiting for that! Man, It was good finding this. Brings back a lot of memories!
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MEMOTECH MTX 500 /512
The Memotech MTX computer is well known as the computer that featured in the film Weird Science
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DATAPOINT CORPORATION Datapoint 2200
I''e searched many times over the decades for Ventek and similar spellings to try and learn more about a machine I was allowed to try tic-tac-toe on, guessing 1979-1980, located in North West UK. The machine was a sizeable unit built as a desk, keyboard, small B/W screen and twin 8" floppy to to the right at knee height
Does anyone have any clues, photos, manuals they''d care to let me see a scan of?
I was at secondary school and just getting interested, we only had a single RML380Z
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RANDOM SOFTWARE TITLES
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 game - ball and paddle
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game - helicopter - horizontal scrolling - shoot them up
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game - dragon ball - shoot them up - vertical scrolling
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game - shoot them up - space
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game - maze - shoot them up
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game - shoot them up
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game - strategy
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application - basic - programming language
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game -
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game - ball and paddle - sport - tennis
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game - ball and paddle - breakout
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application - music creation/editing
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game - 3d - shoot them up - space - star wars - vector graphics
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game - shoot them up - shooting gallery
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game - platform
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RANDOM ADVERTS
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