This one came with the Juki 6100 daisywheel printer and was commonly sold as a packaged deal. I recall this combination costing about $2,500, roughly $1,800 for the Kaypro 4 and $700 for the printer. (See Eisenberg, "Writing with a Word Processor" (1983).) Adjusted for inflation this is equal to over $5,000 today. Daisywheel printers produced excellent text, but were very slow (as I recall about 10 or 12 characters per second) and noisy. Things have changed a lot today. As I write this on 3-16-08, I can get a Dell laptop with 1 gigabyte of RAM, a 120 gigabyte hard drive, and a DVD-RW drive, with an all in one printer, copier, scanner, for a total of $500. That laptop has over 15,000 times the RAM and over 150,000 times the secondary storage of a Kaypro 4! The Kaypro 4 basically just showed letters and numbers. Today we can make and watch movies, edit photos, make and view Web sites, listen to and make music, and do countless other things that were impossible on a Kaypro 4. The all in one printer can scan, copy and print with very little noise, very high speed, and very high resolution producing photographic quality prints. All of this has become possible for one tenth the price (adjusted for inflation) in less than 25 years. The computers of the early 1980s were a true revolution compared to a decade earlier. That revolution has continued, however, in the succeeding 25 years.

I purchased this Kaypro 4 '84, the printer and all original software and manuals (the Kaypro came with a whole stack of books) for about $40 to $50 at a garage sale on 3-15-08 in the San Carlos area of San Diego less than a mile from my house. The computer is in great cosmetic condition and seems to work perfectly. I was able to create a save a Perfect Writer document with no problem. The printer turns on but I have not yet been able to print a document. I could easily be doing something wrong, however, because you had to remember a lot of key commands with the early machines prior to the introduction of the graphical user interface which came along with the Apple Macintosh 128k, also released in 1984 (see below).

My Kaypro 4 Plus 88 is paired with a Star Micronics Gemini-15x dot matrix printer. It has a nine wire print head printing at 120 characters per second. The 15x allowed fanfolded paper up to 15.5 inches wide while the similar 10X allowed paper up to 10 inches wide. Generally, a wide carriage dot matrix printer like this would sell for well over $500 in 1983. (See Kathy Yakal, "The New, Low-Cost Printers," Compute! Magazine, page 44 (June 1983) at www.atarimagines.com.) (See also Vectronics Apple World (Apple ImageWriter II cost about $600 in 1985.)) Dot matrix printers at the time were fast and could do limited graphics, but did not produce true letter quality results. Daisywheel printers like the Juki 6100 were painfully slow but produced results as good as the best typewriters at the time which were often also a daisywheel design. Both were expensive and often you needed both. When I had to type a thesis in 1984, I started with renting a NEC dot matrix printer (I think it sold for around $500 to $600) and returned it to rent a daisywheel printer for the final printing. My Kaypro 4 Plus 88 also came with a large Epson dot matrix printer.

The price for my Kaypro 4 Plus 88 and two printers? Free! I acquired them at a garage sale in the San Carlos area of San Diego on March 8, 2008. It was a large garage sale. The Kaypro and printers were on the curb. I asked if they had been sold. The reply - no, they are free. What a deal! No software or manuals were included. I used the Word Star from the Kaypro 4 '84 above, however, and it worked fine. The Keyboard for my computer has a bad connection. If it is just the connection, it can probably be fixed. I tested the computer out with the keyboard from the Kaypro 4 '88 above. The computer is in fair cosmetic condition. It has some scratches and the keyboard is very dirty. I have not tested the printers.

The less yellowed machine is serial no. CA 123808 manufactured 12-27-82. It's pretty cool that inside the door where the plug is there is a tag with punchouts of the exact year, month and day the computer was made. It did not turn on at all. I then noticed the fuse by the plug was missing. I put in the fuse from the other machine. The B drive light briefly comes on and then nothing happens. My guess is someone took the fuse out because the machine was not working.

The more yellowed machine has two floppy disks. That computer is serial no. NA 211816 made 10-28-1982. It comes on. It started to try to read one disk, but then I could not get it to do anything else. This machine also has the optional modem that fits into one of the floppy disk storage compartments in the front of the machine. (It appears to be missing the cable from the modem to the front of machine.) Oldcomputers.net describes it as a 300 baud modem that gave "you access to more than 200 electronic bulletin boards across the country (well, in 1982, that is)." Today, Cox High Speed Premier Internet service in San Diego provides download speeds up to 25 Mbps. That's over 80,000 times faster. (25,000,000/300) Upload speeds are 1.5 Mbps, or over 5,000 times faster than 300 baud. The Internet as we know it did not exist in 1982 and the World Wide Web did not exist at all. As of the Summer of 2009 there are perhaps over 200 million Web sites world wide. (See Digital Inspiration.) This machine also has an adapter in the video port in front that allows you to attach an external monitor with an RCA plug - a good idea when the built-in monitor is only 5 inches!

The base model 5150 came with only 16 kilobytes of RAM, but could be expanded to 640k using the expansion slots. Each 5 1/4 inch floppy drive held 360 kilobytes of information. My IBM 5150 was purchased for $61.50 in October 2004. It has only 64k of RAM. It is in generally good working and cosmetic condition, except the trim around the monitor is cracked. It has one floppy drive and a hard drive which currently does not work. It is running on PC DOS 2.1. It also boots to Microsoft Basic if DOS is not installed. My computer is apparently the post April 1983 version. As shown, it came with a DOS guide and a BASIC guide. The base model started at $1,600 but this was with no drives or monitor. As I recall in 1983 a decent setup with drives, monitor and printer was about $5,000!

While the Alto was not commercially produced, its ideas were incorporated in the Xerox Star system introduced in 1981. The Star cost about $16,000 per machine, but was usually networked with other machines and a file server. (Wikipedia - Xerox Star.) It was therefore quite expensive. In addition to its cost, the hardware at the time often had trouble keeping pace with the software. This therefore could lead to mediocre performance. Therefore, while innovative, the Star was not a large commercial success.

The successor to the Xerox Star was the Xerox 6085. It was the last model in the Alto, Star, 6085 trilogy. It was a large tower about 21 inches high, 14 inches deep and 9.5 inches wide - more comfortable under a desk instead of on top of a desk. The floppy drive which fits perfectly on top of the tower adds another 2.5 inches to the height. Mine comes with a 19 inch monochrome monitor, itself very large with a face of approximately 19 inches by 19 inches and extending about 16 inches deep. Toastytech.com has a nice photo with an Alto, Star and 6085 showing the size comparisons among the three. RAM was 1.1 mb expandable to 3.7 mb. It had an 80 mb hard drive. The operating system and graphical user interface was called Viewpoint and was written in a language called Mesa. The Xerox 6085 also could run MS-DOS. (See oldcomputers.com.) It sold for around $15,000 in 1986, or about $30,000 in 2008 dollars. (See DigiBarn Computer Museum.) This was much more expensive than a typical PC at the time, but the Xerox 6085 was also very advanced at the time. It had a two button optical mouse - years before most optical mice. The mouse also plugs into the keyboard like in later Apple computers. Tens of thousands were sold, but it was still not a huge commercial success since lower priced PCs dominated the market. Guidebookgallery.org has a two page Xerox ad for the 6085.

I acquired my Xerox 6085 for free from an ad on Craigslist on 10-12-08. The seller lived in the Sorrento Valley area of San Diego. He worked in computer networking and was moving. It sounded like he had the machine for about ten years. It comes with several manuals and disks. He indicated it is working. I still need to try it out. It is in good cosmetic condition. It is a very interesting and historical addition to the museum.

This design of iMac continued until 2002 when the very stylish flat panel monitor with half sphere base iMac came out. The original iMac design continued in the larger eMac introduced in 2002 with a 17 inch monitor and a white on white motif. The eMac was originally designed for educational use - hence the "e." While later sold to the general public, it again is now sold only to educational markets and as of the Summer of 2006 may be on its way to being phased out eliminating built in CRT monitors from the Mac mix.

TRS 80 Series: Tandy Radio Shack already had an established system of small electronics stores which are still common today in shopping areas. In August 1977 they released the Tandy Model 1 computer which, along with the Apple II and Commodore PET, was one of the first complete personal computer packages. The computer was in the keyboard. It came with a monitor and sold for a reasonable $599 with a whopping 4K of RAM. An expansion interface could be purchased for an additional $299 increasing the RAM to 16K. Initially, only cassette recorders were available for long term storage. When floppy disk drives became available they were more expensive than the computer. The photo of the cover of the Summer 1987 Tandy Answers Magazine shows the TRS 80 Model 1 on the left and the 1987 Tandy 4000 on the right. In May 1979 Tandy released the TRS 80 Model II which was directed to small business users and had a 500k 8inch floppy drive. The Model III was released in July 1980. It could be equipped with dual 178K floppy disks and up to 48K RAM. The entire computer - keyboard, monitor and drives were all in one unit. With two drives and 32K RAM it cost $2,495 in 1980, almost $6,000 in 2005 dollars! The final model in the TRS 80 series was the Model 4 released in May 1983 with 64K RAM and dual drives which I have below minus the cathode ray tube! In October 1983 a transportable Model 4 was also released having a suitcase type design like a Kaypro, Osborne or original Compaq. All of these TRS 80 computers had Z-80 processors and the Model 4 could run CPM programs in addition to the TRS DOS. Tandy in July 1980 also relased their less sophisticated Color Computer which was targeted at the home/family/gaming market. Great information, including a historical timeline and links, is available at oldcomputers.net. TRS 80 Homepage is also excellent. Another good historical timeline and summary of Tandy Computers is A Brief History of Radio Shack. Manuals are available online at TRS 80 Hardware Manual Download Page.

TRS 80 Model 100 Series: Bearing the same family name, but an entirely different computer than the Model 1 - 4 series, was the TRS 80 Model 100, made by Kyocera. This is called by some the first laptop with software develped by Bill Gates. With a great keyboard it has been used by journalists for years. More information about the model 100 is contained below. The basic premise of the machine is still carried on today in small, rugged laptops used primarily for word processing like the Alpha Smarts, marketed primarily to the educational community. The Model 100 was followed by the Model 102 and Model 200.

Tandy IBM Compatibles: Starting with the Tandy 2000 in 1983 designed for small businesses and the Tandy 1000 in 1984 designed primarily for home users, Tandy produced IBM compatible computers. The Tandy 2000 was a well designed computer but only semi IBM compatible. The Tandy 1000 and its successors such as the Tandy 1000 SX below were largely IBM compatible and competed directly against the IBM PC Jr. Tandy won that competition with the Tandy 1000 series being highly successful while the IBM PC Jr. was considered by many a flop.

Included is the "User's Manual for Level 1," by David A. Lien, copyright 1977, First Edition, Second Printing 1978. This manual itself was a great success and is a very cool part of early personal computer history. Dr. Lien was Dean of Mathematics and Physical Sciences at Grossmont Community College in El Cajon, California, about 3 miles from where I live. This Web site started out as a project for an introductory Web design class I took at Grossmont College. I have also taken a Computer Networking class there. Dr. Lien also authored a Tandy Book on MS-DOS I remember reading in the early 1990s.

Very interesting information about the Model 1 is at Ira Goldklang's TRS-80 Revived Site Model I Page, oldcomputers.net, digibarn, wikipedia, and TRS-80 Homepage. One site has a 1979 Radio Shack TRS-80 Catalog which is fascinating. A single disk drive cost $499, equal to almost $1,400 in 2007 dollars! Each 5.25" diskette held 89,600 bytes (89.6 kilobytes) of data and cost $5.95, or $16.68 in 2007 dollars. As of April 2007 you can buy a 2 gigabyte (approximately 2,000,000,000 (two billion) bytes) SD card for $15 at amazon.com. The 2GB SD card for less money in constant dollars holds over 22,000 times more information than a TRS-80 diskette. A "Model II 'Deluxe 2 Megabyte Business System'" in 1979 cost $8,737 (almost $25,000 in 2007 dollars), with 1,000 times less secondary storage than a $15 two gigabyte SD card!

Update: On 9-15-08 I purchased two more Tandy 1000-SX computers, both with working keyboards, for $19 with $26.50 shipping from Arizona. That was a pretty decent price since the keyboards are fairly rare and tend to be pricey. They had originally been used by the Bisbee, Arizona School District. One of them was sold in working condition and one for parts. The one in working condition indeed does work. I tried it out with MS-DOS and GW Basic for the Tandy 1000 SL which I had purchased years ago at a yard sale for something like a $1 or $2. It worked fine. That machine has 640K RAM and two 5.25" floppy drives. The parts machine has 384K RAM. It had two loose floppy drives. I took the machine apart and hooked up the drives. While the machine powers on, it comes up with the message to insert system disk. The drives do not appear to be reading the disks. The drives do not light up and I don't hear them. Finally, I tried my original machine with the 5.25" and 3.5" drives. It has 640K RAM and works well now that I have a keyboard. Since my Deskmate software is for the Tandy 1000 SL, I don't think it will work on the Tandy 1000-SX.

Mine is a PET 2001-16N, which means it came with 16K RAM. When mine boots, however, it shows 32K RAM available. I assume it was therefore upgraded from 16K RAM to 32K RAM. Multiple ads in the November 1979 Byte Magazine list the price for a Commodore PET 2001 with 32K RAM as $1,295. That's equal to $3,847 in 2009 dollars! A PET 2040 Dual floppy drive also sold for $1,295. A complete system with two drives would hence be $2,590, or about $7,700 in 2009 dollars! When I purchased my used PET 2001 on July 15, 2009, Costco had a complete e-Machines desktop unit with 3GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, DVD burner and wide screen LCD monitor for $400. A complete computer system in 1979 therefore cost about 20 times more than a system today in constant dollars. The speed, RAM and secondary storage are also orders of magnitude greater today. The uses, capabilities and impact of a computer today were difficult to image thirty years earlier.

I purchased my Commodore PET 2001-16N (serial no. 0709863) from an ad on Craigslist on July 15, 2009 for $80. A similar non-working model sold recently on eBay for about $100. An original model, also not working correctly, also sold recently on eBay for almost $200. $80 therefore seemed like a reasonable price for a local sale. Mine came with a Commodore PET 2031 single floppy drive, serial no. V1003945. It also came with two books, Abrey B. Jones, Jr., I Speak Basic to My PET (Hayden Book Co. 1982) and User's Reference Manual, Commodore Basic Version 4.0 (1st edition, Commodore Business Machines, July 1980). The seller of my PET is a Macintosh specialist running a business called the Macintosh Guru. The first computer he used was a Commodore PET when he was 8 years old. Mine is in decent condition. There is some rust coming through the metal case. It turns on and boots to the command line. Only a few keys presently work. The seller thought it may just be oxidation on the keys. Removing the keyboard and cleaning the contacts might therefore fix the problem. While it didn't make a sound in seller's office, when I got it home and tried it I got a continuing buzzing sound. This computer has an added internal Archer (Radio Shack) speaker. It also has an added VisiCalc ROM chip. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program, initially made for the Apple II. The Apple II's success is often attributed to the VisiCalc "killer app." VisiCalc was later released for the Atari 400 and 800, the Commodore PET, the TRS-80, and eventually the IBM-PC. (VisiCalc Wikipedia.) The Apple II, Commodore PET and Atari 400/800 all shared the same MOS-6502 processor and could hence use the same code. (TRS-80.org - VisiCalc.) While initially I thought the VisiCalc ROM was the program itself, it likely is simply required to run the program from a floppy drive as an extra measure of copy protection. TRS-80.org - VisiCalc states the Commodore PET version of VisiCalc came with "with a special ROM chip that needed to be plugged into a socket on the PET motherboard" in order for VisiCalc to run. VisiCalc on tape or disc may still be needed. (If it is the program, you may type VC at the command line to access the program. See HP Forum Archive 15 at the Museum of HP Calculators referring to an HP 75 pocket computer/calculator.) VisiCalc for the PET with 32K RAM is available at zimmers.net which states: "This version should run on all 32 kB PET models that have the 901472-04 ROM at $9000." PET/CBM FAQs - Programming, portcommodore.com, at the bottom, also confirms that the VisiCalc ROM chip is for copy protection.

My Commodore 128 D (Model C128D) came with a Commodore 1084S Color Monitor made in Taiwan June 1988. The computer itself was made in Hong Kong. This computer has a metal case. Another version of the 128D apparently had a plastic case. My computer and monitor was purchased at a La Mesa, CA estate sale on July 17, 2009 for $5. It is in good cosmetic condition and comes with the original box. It boots. Unfortunately, it didn't come with a keyboard so I can't check it out further until I locate a keyboard that works with it. The following day I went back to the estate sale looking for the keyboard. I didn't find the keyboard but did find and buy for about $5 a Commodore 1571 external disk drive that appears to be in good condition. A discussion at The Vintage Computer discusses modifying other keyboards to work on a 128D. Commodore 128 Alive also discusses the possibility of using a built-in keyboard from an original Commodore 128 on a Commodore 128D. The box has the price tag. It was bought at the "Computer Outlet" in San Marcos, CA (North San Diego County). List price says $599.99. "Our price" is listed as $539.99. One of the tags has written in pen, however, $499.99, apparently the price paid. That equals $911.62 in 2009 dollars, inflation having been pretty tame in the past twenty years compared to the twenty years before that. The monitor was extra. The side of the box lists the features, available enhancements and what's included in the box.

Keyboard Update: I was runner-up on a 128D keyboard on eBay being outbid at the last moment. Bummer :(! I did buy two Commodore 128s and a Commodore 64 without power supplies and without assurances they would work for $1 and $24 shipping. My thinking was that at the garage sale where I got the 128D, I also got a power supply for a 128. (At least I assume so - it is beige Commodore power supply and has the right connector.) Therefore, with that power supply there was a decent chance one of the 128 computers would work. Also, I could try and use one of the 128 keyboards to fashion a keyboard for the 128D. Outcome: I can't get the 128 computers to power up. Bummer again :(! It might be the machines or it might be my power supply. My power supply feels really light compared to a Commodore 64 power supply. I took off the case to make sure it was all there. It looks complete. I opened up a 128 computer. The keyboard attaches to a 25 pin connector - one row of 13 and one row of 12 just like parallel connectors. The connector on the 128 keyboard is female as is the connector on the 128d computer. It seemed like I probably just needed to attach the two. I had a converter with two male ends. I joined one end to the 128 keyboard and one to the 128D computer. (It was actually more complicated since I had to cut away part of metal around the end that the 128 keyboard was going into.) I hit a key and got a response on the monitor! Unfortunately, it's not the right response! For example, you hit the "h" key and you get a six. Not all the keys gave a response, but many did. Unfortunately, no key gave the correct response. Therefore, apparently you cannot simply convert a 128 keyboard to a 128d keyboard even though they both have 25 pins or receptors and even though they both look pretty much the same. Bummer once again:(! Three strikes. I'm out. If anyone has other ideas, please let me know! I'll keep looking for 128D keyboards. Patience is a virtue. I looked for two years off and on for a Tandy 1000 keyboard and eventually got two. My dilemma points out that standardization is a great thing. Isn't it nice to know that if you spill a Diet Coke on your PC keyboard you can go to Target, Wall-Mart, or wherever and get another one for $10 or so?

While it appeared to have everything a family would want including word processing and games, the Adam system was unsuccessful and partially the cause of Coleco's Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy in 1988. (See a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco">Coleco - Wikipedia.) After the initial shipment in October 1983 further shipments were stopped until early 1984 because of printer problems and data cassette issues. (See Oldcomputers.net, Coleco Adam - Wikipedia, and Dave's Old Computers.) The computer stopped shipping in January 1985. The computer had several quirks. You could not turn the computer on or off with a data pack in it. This risked destroying the tape and/or breaking the drive. You could also not keep the tapes near the printer. That might destroy the data. The power supply was in the printer. You could therefore not use the computer without the printer. (See old-computers.com) The printer was apparently very noisy, but that was true of all daisy wheel printers. (See myoldcomputers.com, www.codinghorror.com.) Daisy wheel printers sounded like a machine gun. That was the only way at the time to get letter quality printing, however. I remember reading about the Adam in 1983 and seriously considered getting one to type a master's thesis on. I luckily decided not to, however. I was mainly concerned with the inconvenience of using a cassette tape system as well as the readability of a television monitor. It would have also been disastrous to set a tape on the printer and have my writing disappear. I instead rented a Kaypro 4 in early 1984. The Coleco Adam Technical Manual is at drushel.cwru.edu. The Adam still has quite a following. See, e.g., www.adamcon.org, Coleco ADAM. The setup manual and dozens of other manuals are available at theadamresource.com, simply an amazing compilation of information about a nearly 30 year old computer system that was sold for about a year!

I purchased my Coleco Adam system on October 5, 2012 in Poway, CA from a Craigslist ad. I actually got three systems. Two of the consoles do not have a game port. This type of console is called the Memory Console 3. You could purchase a less expensive system with this console if you already had a ColecoVision game console. (See www.digibarn.com.) The third console is the standard with the game port. The cassette device for this one was loose. I have three keyboards. I only have two printers, however. One of the printers has a key lock installed by a prior owner to turn it on and off. I have one SmartBasic cassette. I have not yet tried any of the machines. I purchased the machines as a lot of several computers which also included an Apple IIe Platinum with two floppy drives, a Monitor III and two file boxes full of educational software, a Kaypro II without software, a Commodore 64C with a 1541 floppy drive and color Commodore model 1701 monitor, two Commodore Amiga 1000 computers, one Commodore Amiga 500 computer, two Amiga keyboards, one Amiga monitor and an older Magnavox monitor. The total price was $120. The seller had been an avid collector of ColecoVision games. He said he sold his very complete collection of ColecoVision games recently for an astonishing $17,000!