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Remembering "The Pinecom" — Parallax Forums

Remembering "The Pinecom"

PJAllenPJAllen BannedPosts: 5,065
edited 2006-01-02 10:25 in General Discussion
Here's an ad from a 1984 "Radio Electronics" for The Pinecom, a short-lived Apple-II clone.· I've been tearing out all the articles of value from my stacks of RE, Pop Elec, Elec. Now, etc.· It was $500 -- and no monitor (what would be the equivalent in 2005 $$: $1000, $1500?)· There was another ad that had Z-80 uPs for $50.
So, if anyone wants a little reminisce, then have a look at the pic.· I'll likely take this down after a week.
Pinecom.jpg
720 x 968 - 532K

Comments

  • PLJackPLJack Posts: 398
    edited 2005-12-26 17:03
    Got to like the top one. It has "dual processor", presumably you can only use one at a time. smile.gif
    The store hours are interesting as well. 10am to 7pm, hmmm...

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    Perfection in design is not achieved when there is nothing left to add.
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  • quick questionquick question Posts: 50
    edited 2005-12-29 12:32
    I remember a DOS version called DR DOS.· It worked well with My IBM clone.

    Got to wonder what happened to those guys ...

    I bet they all wished they bought stock in their competition cry.gif
  • RsadeikaRsadeika Posts: 3,837
    edited 2005-12-29 14:30
    DR DOS was a creation of Digital Research (DR). Digital Reasearch was CP/M, the "king of the hill", in those days. The owner of DR went on to form Caldera Linux, at the same time he had a lawsuit against MS, concerning DR DOS. In the mid to late 90's he won the lawsuit against·MS, I believe it was around $700 million. I believe in his case, things worked out pretty good. As for DR DOS, it still lives today, you can buy the source code if you like, and their is a company that is marketing DR DOS as DR DOS. Back then I thought that DR DOS was a better product than MS-DOS.

    Trivia, did you know that Phoenix, the BIOS company, once sold a PC-DOS clone.

    As for the Pinecom, if I remember correctly, Apple was dead set against having any clones survive, so·Apple used its own methods to disuade or flat out run them out of business.·A few years back, when Apple was in a slump, they tried to get some companies to produce some clones, there were no takers.
  • PJAllenPJAllen Banned Posts: 5,065
    edited 2005-12-29 15:44
    There were some Mac-clones, but they weren't allowed to manufacture for America or Europe.· I believe there was some initial production, but Apple pulled the plug.
  • BeanBean Posts: 8,129
    edited 2005-12-29 15:56
    Who remembers the "Franklin Ace" Apple II compatible... I think Sears sold them.
    Bean.

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  • TD-LinuxTD-Linux Posts: 33
    edited 2005-12-29 17:23
    I do, although they were obsolete before I was born :P
    My grandparents have one in their basement... a $4000 top of the line one, too!
    It still works, whenever I visit them I go down and spend hours writing programs in Apple Basic or whatever it was called...

    This one is super-fancy, with TWO disk drives (although I can only get one to read correctly) and TWO processors. The Apple 6502, and a Z80 via an add-in card. We have ALL of the available add-in cards in that computer [noparse]:)[/noparse]

    Those include the Z-80 board, serial-parallel contoller card, disk drive card (with joystick), and 80 column graphics card.

    Unfortunately, it was black-and-white only as far as I know, as they only have a green black-and-white only monitor connected.

    Switching to CP/M mode with the Z-80 is interesting. It first boots in Franklin DOS, then boots off the disk drive. When CP/M is inserted in the drive, it switched to the Z80.
    The book even has ALL of the schematics for everything, in case you want to build your own [noparse]:)[/noparse]

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  • GadgetmanGadgetman Posts: 2,436
    edited 2006-01-02 10:25
    Here in Norway we had the West PC 800.

    It was Z80-based CP/M machine, with built-in modem AND alarm-central!
    It also had a 6502 to enable it to run BBC Basic.

    Not only that, it also had a wireless keyboard.
    (You had to plug it in to recharge it, though) The one my brother has in storage came with two brand new keyboards. We know they were brand new because as soon as we plugged either of them in to charge them they let out the magic blue smoke. (According to one of the designers, which I happen to know, they came with a 'not entirely suitable' voltage regulator in the beginning).

    And if you were to believe the ads, a 68000 plug-in card was to be available shortly, to enable it to run Unix.

    Unfortunately, it was introduced in 1984, a few years too late for a CP/M machine.

    Incidentally, the PSU on that one was built by convicts(doing time for drunk-driving) and were so poorly made that the first 50 or so had to be hammered into the case...

    Another machine, and in·my collection, is the Epson HX-20 laptop from 1982(the world's first laptop) which had TWO 6301 processors, running at .6MHz(yes, that's right 600KHz)
    One 'general-purpose' and one dedicated to IO work.

    BTW: I'm working on getting an Apple II+ back into working order at the moment. Cool machine... :-)

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