First post, by hbsoftware
Hi
i recently accquired this rare computer on local facebook marketplece.
At first i didnt know what it was.... from the pictures it looked like a dumb terminal, but the fact it had twin floppy drives made think it was a computer...
the possibility of having a green or amber monitor plus the twin floppies made me shell out the 50€ to buy it... (almost two days salary here if you work for minimum wage)
when i was home i did some research and this machine was an attempt at making an ibm clone (not 100% compatible). it was a sales flop and ericsson offered the computers to their employees for a cheap price to be used as home computers...
it used to run a special version of dos and basic..inside it has 8 rom slots and jumpers to select between them. two are populated. the board was manufactured by matsushita in japan but the case apparently was designed and made in sweden
it has a 8088 nec cpu, 128kb of ram. two DSQD 720kb 5.25inch drives, no place to mount a HDD. it has 8 bit isa expansion slots, (atleast they look like it) and the monitor is green phosphor and only has composite input (rca jack)
it didnt came with a monitor cable.....on the monitor end it is composite rca connector and its DIN plug on the computer, its also missing the keyboard.
as for the monitor cable i was able to hack some crocodiles and make the monitor work...the computer boots and tries to read the floppy drive A then displays an error..wich is fine
but the problem is the keyboard...the plug is not the standard XT or AT din plug and i have no idea of the protocol or pinout
looks like i bought myself a monitor and a brick 🤣
worst case scenario i could use the floppy drives for something else but from what i read they dont work reliably as 360kb drives...i have put pictures of the drives and jumpers so you can give you more experienced opinion
thanks inn advance and best regards
Hugo
