Some of our latest additions are shown below - clicking on the link will take you to the items main page and will also show any further photographs.
This prototype of the Spectrum was assembled in Portugal, but never saw a full release, they were intended for the Portuguese and American markets, most were to have the Timex Sinclair branding, and they pre dated the ZX81 Timex machines, the TS1000 and TS1500 by nearly a year.
(see picture for a Timex Sinclair TS2000)
A few of these machines with the Sinclair branding appear to have made it back to the UK, as this one has stickers on the computer and power supply that reads:
Supplied by SYNTAX COMPUTERS
76 Cornwall St., Plymouth PL1 1NS
Telephone: (0752) 28705
Equipment & software for home & business
The power supply is a standard Sinclair one, except for a European two pin plug, and as with all TS2000 machines, this Spectrum is a standard 48K issue 4B motherboard, A sticker on the inside of the case reads: 'P 068973 MODEL M 332 48 K'
Although the TS2000 was never released, the black cases were used in the later Czerweny CZ2000 machines in Argentina, (see picture) while the case molds were used to make the grey cases for the Timex TS1500 machines, which were the Sinclair ZX81 variant.
It is possible the prototype was shelved to ensure sales of the earlier TS1000, and following TS1500 machines, which as stated were born from the ZX81 technology.
This battery-powered unit can be setup to log data from any of it's four analogue and two digital inputs at a variety of intervals. It supports 'sleep mode' logging to significantly extend the battery life. Data can be downloaded to a BBC Micro, IBM PC, or Psion handheld computer using the included cable. A variety of sensors and included, as well as the software necessary to download and view collected data.
This unit attaches to the Commodore 64 expansion port and, with a modem attached, allows the user to browse and download viewdata frames. It can also download telesoftware and interact with viewdata mailbox systems.
With manual and modem cable.
"Visual Memory expands Dreamcast's gaming experience beyond the boundary of consoles. As well as being a memory cartridge, which allows you to save scores and game data from your Dreamcast, Visual Memory is a tiny portable games machine. Thanks to a liquid-crystal display on the front, you can load programs from your Dreamcast ont othe Visual Memory and play games on the move. Visual Memory slots into a wide variety of Dreamcast peripherals where the extra screen can display special game information. In addition, plugging two Visual Memory units together will allow you tp share data between players."
This item consists of the Acorn Final Inspection Testing system (FIT) and additional PET memory testing board, plus software, manual, and schematic.
From the manual:
"The Final Inspection Testing system (FIT) is designed to test the BBC machine after it has been fully assembled and just before it is packed and dispatched, whether by a manufacturer or a dealer who has serviced it. As such it therefore requires no connection to the computer other than those readily available. In the case of the Model As this is simply the cassette and video/monitor ports, wheras the B types require a small circuit board with linmks to the 1MHz bus, printer, user I/O, and analogue ports and a plug with links for the RS423 output as well."
instructions and box only.
From the packaging:
"If you have played on a British arcade video machine then there is a good chance you have played with an RP PRODUCT joystick before. We have sold over 250,000 joystick controls in the amusement amachine industry, world wide. The same technology is built into the SHURESHOT as is in our amusement machine joystick controls. BRITISH MADE using 90% of British produced parts."
A three-button mouse designed for the BBC Micro and Master 128. Includes mouse, manual, and Quest Paint ROM.
Manufactured by Watford Electronics. Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
A four-piece controller for the Steel Battalion game. Consists of two joystick units, centre console, and foot pedal unit. The blue buttons mark this as a second edition -- the original controller was released with green buttons.
Complete in original box with games. Kindly donated by Jon Colverson.
The VideoLogic DVA-4000 allowed you to display full-motion video or still frames overlayed onto standard PC graphics. It was available in ISA and MCA variants. It consisted of three cards:
- The VideoLogic MediaSpace, a full-length ISA card. This can take a video signal in several different formats (S-VHS, VGA, etc.) and compress it into an MJPEG video stream. The encoding was performed by a CL550 JPEG chip under the control of an Inmos T400 Transputer chip. This card was capable of encoding video a quarter the resolution of the screen at 25 frames per second.
- The VideoLogic DVA-4000 motion video board, a full-length ISA card. This is capable of capturing 24-bit-per-pixel images from either the two external VGA inputs, the internal VGA feature connector, or from the MediaSpace card via a custom bus.
- The VideoLogic video card. This was a standard VESA local bus video card that connected to the DVA-4000 through the feature connector.
The Jaguar Team Tap allows up to four controllers to connect to a single port. With two Team Taps you can connect eight controllers to a single Jaguar console.
The Team Tap required games to be written specially to work with it. Only one such game was released: the baseball game White Men Can't Jump.
The external ROM expansion unit for the B plus is designed as a plug-in unit to allow easy exapnsion of total ROM capability up to the maximum the system will allow. An alternative set of ROMs may also be selected if 32K ROMs are fitted by means of a front panel switch or by fitting a second card if 16K ROMs are fitted.
The unit consists of two parts:
- A driver card which fits inside the computer into one of the ROM sockets.
- A cream painted steel case housing a mains derived power supply together with a ROM expansion card.
The two units are connected together via a 34-way ribbon cable. The case has a hinged top cover allowing easy access for inserting or replacing ROMs without continually opening up your computer.
Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
The Morley Electronics RAM Disc contains 1MB of RAM and provides 256 virtual drives with a DFS-like interface. It is incompatible with the ADFS disc system.
Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
This package contains everything required to network an Acorn Archimedes to either a neighboring machine or a standard Ethernet BNC connector box.
Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
"The User port/ADC expansion card fits inside your A3000 computer and expands its capability by providing an 8-bit User Port and an Analogue to Digital Converter.
"The 8-bit User Port is compatible with the user port on the Archimedes I/O expansion card, and largely compatible with the User Port interface on the BBC Model B and Master 128 microcomputers. This enables you to connect your A3000 computer to a wide range of peripheral equipment already available for these computers.
"The Analogue to Digital Converter is based on a 10-bit integrating converter, but in this implementation the accuracy can only be relied on to 8 bits. In practice it should prove to be 100% compatible with the ADC fitted to the BBC Model B and Master 128 computers."
In original box with manual; kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
The BCS or Business Computer Systems, were a series of machines designed for business management, the 3030 was a very flexible machine, designed to work with many different modules, including hard disk capacity up to 10MB.
It could also use 4 removable disks and floppy disks, a very significant addition to this machine is the 15'' monitor.
It is powered by the Intel 8080 processor, and had a wide library of software available to the user, called fast.
Date: 1978
"The Newton Connection Kit for Macintosh contains everything you need - software, a cable, and a handbook - to connect your Newton MessagePad communications assistant to your Apple Macintosh computer. You can view, edit, and back up your MessagePad information on your Macintosh."
Box only.
Box only.
An extra nickle-cadmium battery pack for use with Newton Messagepad.
Box only.
"Use the 2MB Flash Storage Card to increase the storage capacity of your Newton MessagePad communications assistant, and to back up your information.
"For example, your Newton MessagePad lets you store up to 250 name cards (name, title, company, address, and three phone numbers), 200 notes of up to 50 characters, 500 calendar appointments, and 35 screens of uninterpreted text and drawings.
"This 2MB Flash Storage Card can store eight times as much information as your Newton MessagePad. The 1MB Storage Card can store four times as much information."
Box only.
An external recharger for Newton MessagePad. Box only.
The
Commodore 64 was one of the most succesful home computers in the world selling around 30 million units between 1982 to 1993 !
There were several versions of the
C64 from the original "Bull Nosed" style through to the later re-styled version and even versions produced specifically for the education market.
The C64 features 64 kilobytes of RAM with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of that time. During the Commodore 64's lifetime (between 1982 and 1994), sales totalled around 17 million units. Part of its success was due to the fact that it was sold in retail stores instead of electronics stores, and that Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control supplies and cost.
Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles were made for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office applications, and games. The machine is also credited with popularizing the computer demo scene. The Commodore 64 is still used today by some computer hobbyists, and emulators allow anyone with a modern computer to run these programs on their desktop.
The Commodore 64 C was released in 1986, and is cosmetically different to the original version, which is affectionately known as the bread bin, this was styled to fit more with the Amiga and C128 machines, there were also internal differences, such as revised SID and Vic chips.
This machine is in a Terminator 2 box, and is in excellent condition, with no yellowing, a leather cover, PSU, Aerial Lead, and free copy of Commodore Format Magazine.
It also has the original receipt showing it was purchased on the 5th of February 1993 at ten past one in the afternoon, and cost £79.99.
It has the Serial No. 1664328.
This expansion card allows the Acorn Archimedes to display enhanced graphics modes. Normally the Archimedes can display 256 of 4096 possible colours - but only in blocks of 16. With the Graphics Enhancer a true 256-colour palette is available. Specially-written software can also take advantage of 12 and 16 bpp modes, giving up to 65536 simultaneous colours.
Complete in box with manual and utilities disk. Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
This third-party adapter allowed you to play Sega Master System games on a Sega Game Gear. Due to the high level of compatibilty between the Master System and the Game Gear, it is purely a physical adapter -- no active electronics are involved.
This kit contains everything needed to upgrade a BBC B Micro to the DDFS ROM.
This video digitiser expansion card is designed for the Acorn A3000. It can capture single monochrome or colour images or a series of frames to make short animations. It is complete with manual and software disk.
Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
The iMac G4 was a computer that was produced by Apple from the beginning of 2002 to mid 2004. It replaced the aging iMac G3. The computer had a new design compared to older Macs. It had a 15-inch LCD which was mounted on an adjustable arm above a hemisphere containing a full-size, tray-loading optical drive and a fourth-generation CPU (the PPC 74xx-series). This LCD computer was known and sold as The New iMac throughout its production life, while existing egg-shaped iMac was renamed the iMac G3 and continued to be sold for a few months. After the New iMac was discontinued, it was retroactively labeled iMac G4 to distinguish itself from the succeeding iMac G5.
Apple advertised it as having the flexibility of a desk lamp and it was nicknamed the "iLamp", similar to "Luxo Jr.", who was featured in a short film produced by Pixar, another venture of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. It was featured in an ad, sitting in a store window and "reacting" to every move made by a passer-by on the street. At the end, when the man sticks out his tongue, the iMac responds by opening its optical drive.
The Apple iMac G4/800 (Flat Panel) features an 800 MHz PowerPC 7445 (G4) processor with the AltiVec "Velocity Engine" vector processing unit and a 256k on-chip level 2 cache, 256 MB of RAM (PC133 SDRAM), a 60.0 GB Ultra ATA/66 hard drive (5400 RPM), a tray-loading "SuperDrive", and NVIDIA GeForce2 MX graphics with 32 MB of DDR SDRAM (AGP 2X support).
The internal components are housed in an attractive 10.6" half-sphere, ice white case with a chromed stainless steel neck that supports a 15" TFT Active Matrix LCD display. This model shipped with MacOS X 10.1 and MacOS 9.2 installed with MacOS X selected as the default, as well as an ice white Apple Pro Keyboard, Mouse, and Speakers. Unlike some earlier iMac models that are convection-cooled, the iMac "Flat Panel" series is cooled by a quiet internal fan.
The Audio Dynamics DMI 50 is a dual MIDI interface for the Acorn A5000 and Risc PC. In addition to MIDI the DMI50 offers 16bit CD quality sampling capabilities.
Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
The EMR BBC MIDI Interface connects to the BBC User port and 1Mz Bus. EMR's Miditrack Composer and Performer packages were designed to work with it.
Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
Professional 24-bit colour frmae grabber for all 32-bit Acorn desktop computers.
- 24-bit photo-realistic colour
- PAL digital signal processing
- 254x720 picture size - upgradable to 508x720
- Requires RiscOS 3 or higher
- Real time
- Free JPEG compressor
- Accepts any PAL signal from VCR, camcorder, and most TVs
Kindly donated by chris Whytehead.
- 512K of RAM installed
- Plus straight into the A500 trapdoor - no soldering required
- Uses industry standard SIMM RAM
- Works with all Amiga 500 computers
This handheld scanner connects to a Watford Electronics scanner interface. Kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
The HP-71B is a programmable calculator manufactured by HP between 1984 and 1989. Using a plug-in ROM it could be made backward compatible with programs written for the HP-41.
It has a 22-character display, 64KB system ROM, and 17.5KB user memory. Additional ROM and RAM could be added through the four plugin-in ports. An optional magnetic card reader could be installed but this was not a populat option as each card could only hold 1300 bytes.
The HP-71B was the first handheld to implement the IEEE floating-point standard and was HP's first calculator based on their Saturn processor.
Our HP-71B has the magnetic card reader option, three 4K memory modules, and the HP-71 Forth assembler. Serial number 2514A00511.
This Addometer is a mechanical calculator designed to work in pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings. The wheels are turned with a pen tip; each revolution causes the next wheel to advance one place. In this way addition and subtraction of Sterling currency is accomplished.
Manufactured in England by Taylor's of Chancery Lane.
A small circular slide rule. Made in Japan by Concise. The reverse side has various conversion ratios.
An adding machine working to base 16 (hexadecimal). In case with instruction sheet and decimal-hex conversion sheet.
An adding machine working to base 8 (octal). In case with instruction sheet.
This circular slide rule has additional marking to allow you to calculate production time based on parts per cycle, cycle time, total number of parts, and multiple tooling. It can also be used in reverse to determine production details given a required completion time.
The reverse side is used for calculating addition and subtraction of dates.
In 1985 Atari Corporation introduced its new 16-bit computer system. It was called the 520ST, 520 being the memory size and ST for Sixteen/Thirty Two bit processor. The Atari ST originally had its OS delivered on floppy disk since the OS ROMs were not ready for shipping. The 520ST represented a major step forward in computer design and OS design. However many rough spots do show through and this most likely is a result of the machine being rushed market to gain a lead on the soon to be released Amiga computer system which was bought by Commodore and the money that Atari had been supplying to Amiga for development to use the technology in the Atari 1850XL computer before the Tramiels bought Atari was paid back.
The ST computer utilized the Digital Research GEM interface for a graphics environment. (As an interesting note, Apple Computer sued Digital Research for the GEM "Look & Feel" on the PC version and Digital Research was forced to change it, however Apple never sued Atari or Digital for the version used on the Atari ST's. Perhaps Apple felt that the Atari ST's were not going to be a enough of a threat to merit a lawsuit.)
This system was very kindly donated by Donated by Clare Hayes-Bradley
1976
Assembly Language programming
Investigation of Operating System Techniques
ACTP Contract K78B2/308
The Serial Port Joystick Interface allows one or two standard digital joysticks to be used with an Archimedes or A3000 computer (It probably also works with later models). The hardware is a small interface box which plugs into the Archimedes' printer port, a printer can be plugged into the back of the interface. The software consists of a relocatable module to control the joystick interface and a set of RISC OS applications to control the module's behaviour.
The Joystick interface can be used with any digital joystick conforming to the Atari/Commodore standard. Joysticks of this type contain 5 switches, 4 for the directions and one for the fire button.
The Sun Ray 1 was the first in a series of thin client terminals developed by Sun Microsystems. Development began in 1997 under the codename NeWT (NetWorkTerminal). The terminal was designed to be low-power and stateless - user's applications ran on a server and only display/input were handled locally. An integrated smart card reader could be used to authenticate users and, properly configured, allowed a user to remove their smart card (logging them off the thin client) and insert it into any other Sun Ray immediately picking up their session where they left off.
Early model Sun Rays feature a video-in connector originally intended for video conferencing, but this was dropped in later models.
Our two Sun Rays were kindly donated by Paul Shore and have serial numbers HD946028203 and HD110010851.
This expansion unit connected to the Exidy Sorcerer and provided six S-100 card slots.
This assistive device allows people without the power of speech to communicate with other people. It features dual displays encouraging face-to-face communication, and select models feature a voice synthesizer. A memory feature allows multiple phrases or speaches to be prerecorded and replayed multiple times.
Our LightWriter was kindly donated by Toby Churchill.
This expansion card for an Acorn A540 computer added 4MB of RAM. This item was kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
This electronic calculator is complete with original box and manual. The Al-10 was Casio's first calculator range to handle fractions and sexagesimal numbers easily. The "P" key function depends on the position of the sliding switch. The calculator IC used in the Al-10 was also used in the AL-8 model which featured only eight display digits.
A 16K RAM expansion for ZX80 and ZX81 computers. In original box.
This joystick is compatible with the ZX+.
The Acorn A500 Archimedes was used internally at Acorn, often for desktop publishing. They were not sold to the general public.
This Acorn A500 has serial number 46 and has socketed EPROMs. It was kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
The Palm m500 was the first personal digital assistant in the m500 series. It improved on the Palm V series with a faster processor, USB sync interface, vibrating alarms, and mechanical case fastenings instead of hot-glue.
Physically it was slightly smaller than the Palm V but had the same resolution screen (160x160). Initally monochrome, later models would feature a colour display and larger memory capacity.
The Universal Second Processor Unit is a second processor unit that allows any BBC Master internal co-processor boards to be installed, thereby allowing the BBC B and B+ to use them as external co-processors. It contained a power supply, interface logic and a connector that matched the internal co-processor connector built into the BBC Master main board. The possible co-processor boards were:
- The Turbo board: a 4MHz 65C102 with 64KB RAM.
- The Master 512 board: a 10MHz 80186 with 512KB RAM.
The universal second processor unit could also be attached to the BBC Master in addition to an internal co-processor. In this case only one of the second processors would be enabled, switchable through software.
Our unit has been fitted with the Master 512 co-processor board and was kindly donated by Chris Whytehead. It has serial number 03-ANC21-1000861.
This was Brazil's first Spectrum clone released in 1985, by Microdigital Electronica, from Sau Paulo, who had also released various ZX80 and ZX81 clones.
The machine is about 90-95% compatible with Spectrum software, due to some changes to the ROM.
There are a few notable improvements over the original Spectrum, firstly the machine is a fair bit taller, and has a grill on the top for better heat dispersal, there is a joystick port on the rear, but the one major difference between this machine and the Spectrum was that
the sound was now via the modulated RF to the TV, rather than through
the beeper on the circuit board.
There are of course also some changes of lettering on the keys, some Portuguese and Spanish symbols are included, while others such as the pound symbol are removed.
During this period of time, no importing of computers was allowed, so the TK90X became the first computer for millions of people, not only in Brazil, but in other Latin American countries.
The machine was replaced by the TK95, which although identical in performance, was housed in a case very similar to the Commodore Plus 4, it also housed changes to the Rom which made it more compatible with the original Spectrum, but changes to a diode caused some different incompatibilities, so owners would make modifications to the TK95, in the form of a switch, so most software would run.
This unit was very kindly donated by Marcus Vinicius Garrett Chiado.
The PSU was donated by Marcus's friend Wilton Abreu.
The Acorn JP101 "spark ink jet" printer was an Acorn badged Olivetti printer. The printer was designed as a personal computer and hard copy printer. It is a serial matrix printer and is bidirectional. It can print can be normal, double height, double width and underlined. The printer can handle either fanfold paper or paper rolls.
Our printer has serial number S7153040 and was kindly donated by Chris Whytehead.
This Atari 400 has had the standard membrane keyboard replaced with individual switches.
