Post by abob on Feb 13, 2019 18:09:27 GMT -7
Most of my vintage computer stuff is Commodore, but I have a few other machines. With most vintage machines it is reasonably easy to get software for them. The NorthStar Advantage was a two year project for me to get software and physically make hard sector disks.
The Advantage was an expensive and well made business machine (1983). 4Mhz Z80, 64k RAM and 640x240 graphics, 8088 co-processor board.
What killed this company was their insistence on using hard sector floppies. Hard sector is a mostly standard 5.25" floppy, but it has 11 index holes not 1. It really bit them in the ass when their system even had MS DOS but the disks the rest of the world was using would not work in their drives.
I got the machine with no software for $60. I found out the hard way there are essentially no hard sector 5.25" floppies for sale anywhere in the world. One guy in New York felt bad for me and sold me a couple for a template. So, I had to buy NOS 5.25" soft sector floppies (one hole), take them apart and cut 10 more holes in them with a CNC machine. Then I had to literally search the world for the few owners of these machines and ask them to copy me what software they had.
Now I have most of the software. Everything from MS DOS, BASIC, FORTRAN, Cobalt to factory demo disks and graphics programs.
I am slowing writing a game for it. Probably the first game ever written for this business machine. When the game is done I will share it with the other 3 people who own one..
The one picture below of the Advantage beside a laptop is loading that picture up the serial port to screen memory after entering a small machine language program to copy it from the serial port directly to screen memory.
I think my two years of work on this machine has increased its value from $60 to $75!
The Advantage was an expensive and well made business machine (1983). 4Mhz Z80, 64k RAM and 640x240 graphics, 8088 co-processor board.
What killed this company was their insistence on using hard sector floppies. Hard sector is a mostly standard 5.25" floppy, but it has 11 index holes not 1. It really bit them in the ass when their system even had MS DOS but the disks the rest of the world was using would not work in their drives.
I got the machine with no software for $60. I found out the hard way there are essentially no hard sector 5.25" floppies for sale anywhere in the world. One guy in New York felt bad for me and sold me a couple for a template. So, I had to buy NOS 5.25" soft sector floppies (one hole), take them apart and cut 10 more holes in them with a CNC machine. Then I had to literally search the world for the few owners of these machines and ask them to copy me what software they had.
Now I have most of the software. Everything from MS DOS, BASIC, FORTRAN, Cobalt to factory demo disks and graphics programs.
I am slowing writing a game for it. Probably the first game ever written for this business machine. When the game is done I will share it with the other 3 people who own one..
The one picture below of the Advantage beside a laptop is loading that picture up the serial port to screen memory after entering a small machine language program to copy it from the serial port directly to screen memory.
I think my two years of work on this machine has increased its value from $60 to $75!
