Hi, Got an email today from a friend who was going through some old photographs. He found one of his grandfather using a PC. He thinks it was taken in around 1985, but the computer could be older than that. He's interested to find some info on it, just out of curiosity. No badges or branding visible that I can see. Seems to be using dBASEII program according to that grey folder on the desk. Any Ideas? Thanks.
Dammit, been checking every model made on these four already: http://www.old-computers.com http://www.vintage-computer.com http://oldcomputers.net http://www.oldcomputermuseum.com Could'nt find the exact model, a lot of look-alikes though.
Well that's some interesting sites to start at. Thanks Shinebi. I can see now its not from the mid 80's with that design. Late 70's to 83 at most.
the colour-coding on the keyboard instantly reminded me of a Bloomberg Terminal, but I suppose that's not it.
lots of machines from that time had keyboards that fold down from the unit for "portability". I bet the keyboard is blocking the logo in the pic. It may just stay a mystery
The grey folder on the left is clearly dBASE II and given that AntiPasta's theory of bloomberg terminal seems to hold some weight with regards to specific colours I'd wager it was accounting related - though the keyboard could have been third party supplied separately from the machine itself.
DBase II ran on CP/M 2.2 as well as MS-DOS based machines. The machine is very likely to be one of the Cifer Systems CP/M machines from around 1982, they made various models depending on the main function of the machine, hence all the coloured function keys. Cifer were a UK based company.
Thanks Jamtex Looks like a close match http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=1061 Down the page it says: BUILT IN MEDIA Dual DS DD 48 TPI floppy-disk unit I guess the archive photo is just one without the drives. Even the Keyboard is the same just without the colour overlays.
It has to be 8080, and from the looks of it european and very specialized, perhaps special built keyboard. Probably for medical paperwork. The brits would never use colors like that so makes me think it's french
Keyboard just looks like an overlay with macros/fuctions for a certain application. They were quite common. Example: http://www.hamstuff.com/Overlays/overlay.htm Also, this looks close to the machine: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/4601/Cifer-1887-G-Black-computer-system/
Yeah I see the resemblence from that angle now it looks like the Cifer 1887-G Black with a keyboard overlay, though the Function key colour doesn't match.
That seems to be it. Just shows how knowledgeable people here on things. Thanks, and my friends says Thanks too. So is it Z80 or 8080?
Z80A, in fact two of them. By the early 80s, 8080 CPUs were more expensive then the Z80A and required 3 voltages and required more complex circuitry for RAM refresh where as you could make a full computer with a handful of chips, even the 8085 was more expensive and did not offer any real benefit over the Z80, which Zilog basically licenced to anyone that wanted to make it for free and had tons of extra features over both ;p It does look like it has two hard drives in the machine, but for 1985 that would have cost more then the computer, it could have been two floppys with spring covered flaps but it is hard to tell.
i guess an easy way of finding out is ask what company his grandfather worked for at that time then just call up the company and ask its worth a shot
