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From: dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: 'Antique' machine info sought...
Message-ID: <398@saxony.pa.reuter.COM>
Date: 11 Sep 90 05:08:07 GMT
References: <90253.024510KITBASH@MTUS5.BITNET>
Organization: Reuter:file Inc  (A Reuter Company) Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 23

In <90253.024510KITBASH@MTUS5.BITNET> KITBASH@MTUS5.BITNET (Joe Ammond) writes:

>I've just been given a Victor 9000 PC, free of charge.  As far as I
>can tell, its got a 1.2M 5 1/4 floppy, 10M Hard drive, MS-DOS 2.11 (j?),
>2 serial ports, a parallel port, and a very strange keyboard & monitor..

There was an issue of BYTE magazine that featured this machine when it was
brand new (1982-3?).

As I recall, one of its features was a variable-speed floppy drive, that put
more sectors on outer tracks than on inner ones.  This could be why it appears
to allow 1.2 MB on a floppy, but not compatibly with the AT.  (On this plus
side:  this should work with ordinary DS/DD floppies.)

I recall that the keyboard layout was totally programmable, although the details
escape me.

Note that this takes us back to the era when people still thought that it was
sufficient to build a machine that supported the BIOS calls expected by MS-DOS.
The success of software like 1-2-3, which required a closer compatibility to the
IBM hardware than that, killed the compatible market:  I'm not sure how much
modern MS-DOS software will turn out to actually work on this beast.
                                          Dave