"Terry Yager" wrote:
> One of the first two Victors I had was
> equipped with one. Unfortunatly, it
> had been left in a garage for several
> years, and the plus board was corroded
> way beyond any hope of repair. The
> good news is that it came with a large
> pile of software and "manualage"! It
> didn't cost me anything except the gas
> to drive about 40 miles (into the
> backwoods) to pick 'em up. Some guy
> had put an ad in the paper that he had
> a couple of computers, free for the
> picking up, so I went out to have a
> look. Sure enough, he had two
> Victors. The second machine fared
> better than it's sister, and actually
> worked when I got it home, but no
> Plus board in it. The documentation
> for the plus was there, so I knew wat
> it was and what it was s'pozed to do.
> A few years (and several Victors) later,
> I was in the computer store when a
> lady brought in another 9000 hoping
> to use it as a trade in. This one even
> had the very hard to find hard drive,
> but refused to boot from it.
I had a simular case with my first IBM
(an XT) which had one of those early
Hard Disks (the one where you had to
tell the hard disk to park itself - through
a program). It was a mystery which
was never solved, until I tried to recover
it. I got it to boot, but figured the Hard
Disk must of being faulty because it
didn't hold it's info for long, or would
corrupt it. So, I figured the Hard Disk
has gone.
I still have my XT, in case I want to do
something else, like add another more
modern Hard Disk to it, or perhaps just
a floppy & run a network from it to one
of my 386 Hard Disks or perhaps a
Superdisk - if it can do it!
> We got it to boot to a floppy tho. Mark
> was in the process of giving her the ol'
> "we can't give you anything for it ,
> but we'll gladly take it off your hands"
> speech, when I brought to his attention
> that the keyboard had some very
> interesting stickers attached to some
> of the keytops, with labels like "alt"
> and others not found on the usual
> Victor keyboard, but which are on the
> IBM. This got his curiosity up, so we
> took the time to remove the 2 screws
> from the back and have a look inside.
> Sure enough, there was the plus board
> installed in it. That instantly raised the
> value of it (to a collector like Mark), so
> he gave her $20. for it, which she was
> happy to get.
> The plus board comes in (at least) two
> completely different versions. The
> (dead) one in my old machine was a
> large daughterboard that was mounted
> "piggy-back" on the mainboard, but the
> one (working) in Mark's machine is a
> regular expansion card that plugs into
> one of the slots.
> As far as revitalising the machine (and
> possibly saving the company), I don't
> think it was non-IBM-compatability that
> caused the death of the Victor. I think
> the cause was purely economic. The V
> 9000 was a very expensive machine,
> costing around $5000.00 (without the
> plus option). You could get a "real"
> IBM-PC for about half that much at the
> time. (The base PC listed for $2205.00
> in 1985).
Well that's also a good possibility, I
remember you telling me this once before,
but I keep forgetting everytime I open
that book & look at those machines. Price
is usually the last thing to consider. It
book hasn't helped either, because it fails
to mention this, but it had to talk about
the price tag of the Apple Lisa didn't it!
It's also why Apple are second to IBM in
the stakes. No matter how more
sofisicated the public get, they always go
for that cheaper machine! Oh well, I guess
it's better when they throw it out 3 years
down the track to buy a new one! ;-)
I think "Sir Vic 9000" has a form of honor
to it, unfortunately no-one will know what
I'm talking about when I'm talking about
it NeXT time! ;-)
