VOGONS


First post, by Dominus

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Heya,
usually I'm not in the old hardware but I bought a huge lot of things. A lot of games, games memorabilia...but also some hardware. I wasn't going after the hardware but buy all or nothing 😀
But my problem is that I live in Germany and the stuff is in the US. So if I were living in the US I'd just keep all of it, store it etc. But shipping across the sea is just costly and the things are not exactly worth the high shipping costs (and not guaranteed to work to begin with - the seller bought this lot from another collector, so he only knows what the original seller told him).
So there is a Macintosh SE I'm on the fence of keeping but its plastic on top is damaged so it might be better not to ship it and just get one here if I really want one, a C64 (which I might keep but the Commodore monitor and floppy I'll leave behind), a TI99, an Apple II+ (I think) which supposedly doesn't work anymore, and an FM Towns II tower (which I'll keep for sure 😀).

And this Osborne. So my question is: worth keeping for someone who isn't really into collecting old hardware? (and shipping costs of $200 - $300). Mind you, I'm not going to throw these away, the seller is ok to sell some items on ebay as long as it isn't excessive.

And no, this is not a fishing expedition, I'm not trying to sell these here. The seller is going to sell them via ebay.

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Reply 1 of 4, by dionb

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An Osborne is a remarkable piece of computing history - but it's only really interesting if you're into CP/M and early '80s business stuff that wasn't a PC.

The keyboard is remakable as it doesn't have a built-in controller of any kind and just feeds the scanlines into the system. I have one and fed them into a Teensy and wrote my own scan program so I could type. Badly (no de-bouncing etc). Still was a fun exercise, but here again, you have to be into this sort of stuff to enjoy it.

Reply 2 of 4, by Dominus

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that confirms what I was thinking! Thank you!🙏

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
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Reply 3 of 4, by HanSolo

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Dominus wrote on 2023-10-12, 07:22:

a C64 (which I might keep but the Commodore monitor and floppy I'll leave behind)

Keep in mind that an US C64 need a NTSC monitor and a 110/60 PSU. A NTSC C64 is an interesting collector's item in Germany but not really useful.

Reply 4 of 4, by Dominus

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thanks, good reminder

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper