This was me, crunching away on BASIC and Machine Language on my Apple II+, oh yea the old days of faster computers and smaller tape decks. From 1980! The Apple was awesome because it had seven expansion slots and everybody made add-on boards for it.
I was looking at the Christmas 1982 Dixons catalogue and was surprised to find four pages of computers. At the start of 1981 Tandy (Radio Shack) was probably the only high street name selling computers. Back in the early 1980s the U.K. Government was heavily pushing Computer Literacy. telling parents that if their Children didn't learn how to use computers they would be unemployable, in TV series like this
I remember seeing tons of TRS-80's at the thrifts years ago but I never knew anybody that actually owned one when they were new. There was that time when everything was going to be computerized and you'd need a keyboard and working knowledge of the system, it took much longer than we thought and the keyboard kind of disappeared.
The TRS80 and Commodore PET were really aimed at small businesses for accounting etc. The sweet shop lady in the TV programme was using a PET. At work one department had a top of the range TRS80 system with dual disc drives, printer etc for processing their quality information. They employed a guy full time as "The computer operator". I can't comment on Apple IIs. They were so expensive over here that I only ever knew one person who bought one.
A good video on the TRS80 I can believe the 70% market share. Even then Commodore were probably beating Apple. I might as well add the Commodore video as well
Usagi Electric is one of my favorites, he goes through older mainframes among other vintage computers.
I don't think I've seen this one before, the Seiko TUC-2000 from 1985, did they ever make this, it kind of looks like a prototype.
http://www.digital-watch.com/DWL/1work/seiko-memo-dairy https://wornandwound.com/from-deep-in-the-watch-box-the-seiko-data-2000/ I guess the Casios which let you enter information using the buttons were far more practical. Before the days of mobile phones and MS Outlook I used mine regularly. Phone number for the Garage I used to service my car in the 1990s. It is probably still in the watch.
So the box might be a prototype, the links show a slimmer calculator style version. This is the kind of stuff you want to find in a garage sale but I've had no luck with one of these. I do have the Casio from the early 2000's but it was quickly replaced by an HP PDA which was much easier to use.
I have a Franklin A1000 8088 processor 64 KB total memory with all the accessories. The main unit which has a connected keyboard, no mouse. And I think two floppy drives a orange am deck monitor and then a Gemini 10x.matrix printer and all the paperwork and everything that goes to it and it still works. But it's out in the garage. Anybody wants it. Just contact me. I hate to throw it stings away like that .
Maybe reach out to 8-Bit Guy, he's in your area and loves stuff like that but would also know other collectors. https://www.youtube.com/The8BitGuy
1994 from aiwa. I thought it might be Apple OS but it says DOS and it has an Intel 486. At this price it was probably a powerhouse at a short time when all-in-ones were kind of hot.
Like most Japanese computers it was probably out of date before it was even released. The DX2-66 CPU came out in August 1992. In March 1993 the first Pentiums came out, although given the number of bugs in them buying one that year was probably a mistake, although they were good enough for Doom. In October 1994 the higher frequency, cooler running, bug free Pentium P54Cs were out and having no problems running stuff like this.
If you love the old computer wars (Apple vs MS & IBM), this movie was one of the first. I think it originally was on HBO and can be very difficult to find. Luckily it's been on archive.org for a few years and highly entertaining. https://archive.org/details/piratesofsiliconvalley_201908
