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Please save these Polymorphic machines

Wow that's a lot of Polys. If you decide to sell some let me know, I'd definitely be interested.

I'm going to run my 88 on this GRI keyboard I got for now, until one without a keypad that looks correct shows up. I've seen 88s with both branded Poly and non keyboards.

I’ll definitely be selling a number of them once I have a chance to start pulling together as many complete systems from this collection as possible. Depending on the number of viable systems that result, there may be some extra keyboards left. About half of them are without the number pad (all Poly branded).

There are a number of documentation sets as well.

20BA2DB3-F71F-4C79-9818-F2D5D3EAA4D2.jpg

Mike
 
The ones you have as duplicates, look to be 'System 88 Users Manual'. I've already got one but the one in the upper left look a little bigger that the rest.
I have the text parts on disk for Word and Plan ( I think in the disk data I sent you a while back ).
I only have one clean orange Poly88 covers but I think I may have one with a fan hole carved in it that you can have ( I'll need to check my storage ).
Dwight
 
Sign me up for a monitor and a spare front strip if you got them after you take inventory and come up with prices. I travel to Texas quite often, so I can probably swing by on my next trip out there.
 
I’ll definitely be selling a number of them once I have a chance to start pulling together as many complete systems from this collection as possible. Depending on the number of viable systems that result, there may be some extra keyboards left. About half of them are without the number pad (all Poly branded).

There are a number of documentation sets as well.

View attachment 48639

Mike

Please be certain to let us know when you have anything up for sale!

Thanks!

smp
 
Please be certain to let us know when you have anything up for sale!

Thanks!

smp
Hi guys. I just found this old thread. I have an 8813 that I just tried to turn on after 20 years and a cap on the CPU board blew. I'm not inclined to mess with it, but I do have two keyboards and other parts if anyone is interested.
 
Hi guys. I just found this old thread. I have an 8813 that I just tried to turn on after 20 years and a cap on the CPU board blew. I'm not inclined to mess with it, but I do have two keyboards and other parts if anyone is interested.
I have an incomplete 8813 that needs a cpu board and floppy controller board.. would definitely be interested in those if available.
 
I have an incomplete 8813 that needs a cpu board and floppy controller board.. would definitely be interested in those if available.
It’s good this thread popped back up to remind me of the Poly equipment I have. I have numerous 8813 parts including the CPU board, single density floppy controller, and the double density floppy controller. I’ve done a lot of work with the 8813 and the SD controller, but I haven’t tried the double density controller yet. This reminds me that needs to be a project in the near future. Contact me about the items you need to get your system working again.

Mike
 
Sadly my CPU board is pretty sick. It already had once trace burned off that I jumpered around 30 years ago on the +16V line and yesterday a capacitor blew and took out another trace.
 
I’d love to adopt a basket case Polymorphic machine to resurrect, but my “Too rich for my blood” threshold is probably too low to ever make it happen. (I’m interested in them primarily because of their video support, which was clearly Radio Shack’s inspiration/thing that they ripped off almost wholesale when designing the TRS-80.)
 
I’d love to adopt a basket case Polymorphic machine to resurrect, but my “Too rich for my blood” threshold is probably too low to ever make it happen. (I’m interested in them primarily because of their video support, which was clearly Radio Shack’s inspiration/thing that they ripped off almost wholesale when designing the TRS-80.)
The video cards work OK with many monitors but there was a timing error in the design. I forget where but I think it had to do with the vertical blanking period. It has been a while since I looked at it. I know it caused problems with some monitors, on the first line.
One hopes they copied the timing error as well. It would serve them right.
I've not fiddle with my machines in some time. I've been distracted, dealing with other stuff.
Dwight
 
The video cards work OK with many monitors but there was a timing error in the design. I forget where but I think it had to do with the vertical blanking period. It has been a while since I looked at it. I know it caused problems with some monitors, on the first line.
One hopes they copied the timing error as well. It would serve them right.
I've not fiddle with my machines in some time. I've been distracted, dealing with other stuff.
Dwight
I recall having a fun time with my Poly 88 and having all kinds of sync issues. I think I resolved it by switching to my small Sanyo monitor or something. I remember it being a bit tricky to center properly vertically.
 
One hopes they copied the timing error as well. It would serve them right.

Nah, Radio Shack made a bunch of new and creative errors when they made the TRS-80. ;)

(Strictly speaking of course Semigraphics like the Poly and TRS-80 video systems had been around for a while before either system, but the TRS-80 at least feels like it was very specifically trying to be a single board Poly-88.)

Weird trivia I ran into a few months back; if you compare the Poly VTI, the SSM VB1B (an extremely similar S-100 board), and the TRS-80 they all used the same 2x3 semigraphics grid but the bit/pixel mapping was different in all three. I wonder if that was intentional to avoid plagiarism claims. ;)
 
The video cards work OK with many monitors but there was a timing error in the design. I forget where but I think it had to do with the vertical blanking period. It has been a while since I looked at it. I know it caused problems with some monitors, on the first line.
One hopes they copied the timing error as well. It would serve them right.
I've not fiddle with my machines in some time. I've been distracted, dealing with other stuff.
Dwight
I made some notes about the Poly vertical sync issue here: https://deramp.com/downloads/polymorphic/poly-88/hardware/VTI Vertical Sync Mod.pdf
 
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