Binary Dinosaurs Computer Museum
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button1Museum History button2Museum Updates button4Adverts&Reviews spaaaaace button5Moan, Bitch, Gripe scroll1
button6Inhabitants button7Reviews button8WOW! button9Contact button10Recursion 2017 scroll2
button11Links button17Floppy Recreation button13BDonFacebook button14CGE-UK 2004 button15WROCC 2006 scroll2
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2004 Museum Updates
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Lisa Icon06 Jan 2004
First updates of the new year - more bumf and pictures about the Atari 400 and 1200XL
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Lisa Icon15 Jan 2004
Biiiiig update coming up after my 2 day round trip to see the opening of a new exhibit at the Museum of Computing in Swindon's Bath University. Several new inhabitants have arrived including BinarySaurs' 400th machine, a Microvax I kindly donated by John Gartland :) Not many of these about since most people upgraded to MicroVAX IIs. Hopefully it'll power up OK. Also in the haul was a box of Microtan 65 bits kindly donated by Dave Maddocks - thanks Dave! 
Next up was a visit to see Nick Toop, aka the man behind the Acorn Atom and 'Nick' the graphics chip in the Enterprise 64 amongst other things, as he kindly offered to look at my Atom and sort it out - many thanks Nick! Great to see a professional at work. 
Last but by no means least was a visit to long-time collector and ex-webhost of mine Kevan Heydon to help him slim his collection a bit :) I'm now home to an Ohio Superboard II, Memotech RS128 with FDX floppy drive, boxed NeXT Station (yay!), another Microtan 65, Osborne 1 and an oddity by Cambridge Systems Technology called the Thor - essentially a Sinclair QL with an upgraded operating system, case and floppy drive. Thanks Kevan! 
Pages and pictures to follow!
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Lisa Icon19 Jan 2004
Bugger. In trying to 'borrow' the RS232 interface in the not-surprisingly dead Memotech RS128 I got last week I discover that Memotech have soldered everything together instead of using edge connectors......cost cutting I s'pose. This means the extra 64K of RAM and said RS232 board are well stuck to the main board unless I get out the soldering iron. Bugger.
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Lisa Icon20 Jan 2004
The NeXT page is up and ready for reading. Yay!
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Lisa Icon22 Jan 2004
Just because I can I've updated the Spectrum+ 128K page with new pictures and bumf, some of which might be correct!
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Lisa Icon03 Feb 2004
What little info I have on my CST Thor is now up, any more will be muchos appreciated! More coming soon about the Sharp MZ80B I got last week once I sort its tape drive out - one of the rubber wheels has melted! I've also updated the Mattel page with more pictures and info, particularly on the Aquarius.
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Lisa Icon04 Feb 2004
Postie brings a box full of stuff from Matt Petty - Merlin Tonto manuals, microdrive carts, the 'Messaging' subsystem ROM cart and docs. Where the hell did I put my Tonto?! (I know, I know - ask the Lone Ranger :o))
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Lisa Icon09 Feb 2004
Yay! Courtesy of Mike Tomlinson and the Astrophysics Research Institute of Liverpool John Moores University I now have a Digital Alpha 3000-300LX, which was the machine I taught myself DEC OSF/1 installation/upgrade/maintenance on back in the mid-90s. Hopefully it'll make a nice webserver for BinarySaurs :) Thanks to Mike and everyone involved!
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Lisa Icon23 Feb 2004
Many updates, particularly in the Adverts section, Acorn Atom section and others. Check the Inhabitants page for latest updates date!
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Lisa Icon11 Mar 2004
Many thanks to Don Jacobs over at BT for more books about the BT Merlin Tonto, as well as a couple of branded Tonto Microdrive storage boxes that I didn't know existed :)
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Lisa Icon15 Mar 2004
Several new arrivals at BinarySaurs Towers today - a CBM 1541-II floppy drive courtesy of Rich "I own a Dragon Professional prototype, me" Harding, also a load of Intellivision kit including the Computer Adapter and Music Keyboard.
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Lisa Icon03 Apr 2004
Thanks to my job interview in Newmarket I managed to expand the trip to allow me to pick up a few outstanding donations as well as show my face at RetroBeep in Bletchley Park, so in no particular order I now have an excellent condition Apple ][GS with 2 floppies/keyboard/monitor - thanks to Jon Newson and his wife Chris who also gave me a Lisa lapel badge - Cheers! Next up is a Apple 512K from Stuart Northfield who also gave me a few extra NuBus cards to turbo up my Mac IIfx - thanks Stuart :) Finally is something I've been after for years - a Digital VK100, aka GIGI, a colour graphics terminal from ~1982.
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Lisa Icon18 Apr 2004
For no other reason apart from 'I could' I decided to wash a CBM PET today. This will be an ongoing series since it's still drying :)
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Lisa Icon21 May 2004
First update for a bit now that I'm gainfully employed again, and now I've got full out of hours workshop facilities for all that scope and meter based troubleshooting japes :) 
Anyhoo, latest BinarySaurs arrival is a no-poly boxed TI99/4a, but the more uncommon beige version rather than the black/chrome machine everyone knows....more soon.
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Lisa Icon12 Jun 2004
Thanks to the PROM reader I've borrowed from work I've managed to dump some of the more interesting EPROMS I got from the old Enterprise factory along with the 16-way programmer and the memory tester. If you've got an opened Enterprise64 BASIC cart you can now substitute things like the TEST ROM or tinker with LISP, PASCAL and ASMON, or even HDOS - the hard disk version of EXDOS 1.2 :)
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Lisa Icon13 Jun 2004
After a chance phonecall from a friend I've now got my paws on a fat Atari VCS with some boxed games I'd not heard of before. I say 'fat' because the case is a good 3/4" thicker than the normal VCS; also the serial number is just over 70,000. More on that as I find it!
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Lisa Icon15 Jun 2004
Oh yes! A trip up to the Scottish Borders to see Rich Kilpatrick results in me obtaining his working Acorn Cambridge Workstation as well as a slightly foxed (and parcelforced by the looks of it) prototype Archimedes 540. Many thanks to Richard for letting me have it and also ta to Gavin Saxby for rescuing it in the first place :D 
 
Pix on the way.
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Lisa Icon21 Jun 2004
Cor! Thanks to Tim Frogatt and his donation to charity I'm now the proud owner of a veritable library of Enterprise stuff, including another EP128 and floppy disks for EXDOS, many many plans, letters, schematics (including the hard drive interface I've got), magazines, brochures including an Elan Enterprise advert and spare parts......but most importantly a working Czech/Hungarian bridgeboard and the much fabled hardware Spectrum Emulator. I've had a massive grin on my face this afternoon while playing Jetpac on an Enterprise - it's got to be seen to be believed so I'll be showing it off at the Classic Gaming Exhibition in Croydon on the 24/25th of July! Hardware pictures to come as soon as I've worked out how to open the case..... 
I also got a PCML Teledrive unit for the ICL OPD, DEC Rainbow 100 on its own and more Enterprise spares for Rich "ACW workstation" Kilpatrick. 
 
Cheers Tim :)
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Lisa Icon22 Jun 2004
Here's a good swap for a Sord M5 thanks to Greg Taylor and his son Andrew - 3 Newbrain motherboards and enough keyboard bits to turn my French Newbrain AD into an English one - thanks both!
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Lisa Icon26 Jun 2004
Yay! Thanks to Roger Ludgate I've now got upwards of 20 Jupiter Ace software titles from both Boldfield (the company that bought the rights after Jupiter Cantab went under) and original Ace titles from the likes of Micromega. Thanks Roger! Just need to find time to load 'em...... 
Next arrival is the long forgotten Laser 200, aka the Texet TX8000 aka the Dick Smith VZ200 probably aka several other names :) It's a 4K BASIC machine along the lines of the Sord and/or Aquarius and it was equally as successful......more on that as soon as I actually do it.
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Lisa Icon26 Jul 2004
*pant* *gasp* 
 
The first UK Classic Gaming Exhibition is over, and what a blast it was! Literally, since one of my tellies blew up. Everyone had a whale of a time and the place was much busier than I expected it to be. Lots of interest in the Apple Lisa, Commodore 65, SAM Coupe and Vectrex..... 
There's a preliminary page up here with more updates pending. Those of you interested in seeing the C65 demos will be pleased to hear I've finally worked out the 1581 filesystem so some of them are running.....Roll on next year!
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Lisa Icon29 Jul 2004
Finally managed to finish the CGE page so head on over using the link in the box below :)
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Lisa Icon28 Sept 2004
Hells - long time no update! Everything's upside down now that I've moved to the Cambs/Herts border.....here be dragons (and dragon prototypes).... 
 
Finally got a proper work area going so I can do more site updates instead of playing online Unreal Tournament :) 
 
Plenty of new scans soon to appear on the Adverts section, and new entries to the museum are a second Acorn Domesday system to back up my current one (fully working disks I hope!), a BBC Master Turbo and courtesy of Richard Cassidy an Apple Newton Messagepad 120 with dock and loads of extra as well as another Cambridge Z88 with the all-important power supply, extra RAM and the PC-Link cart! Thanks Richard :)
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Lisa Icon29 Sept 2004
Happy birthday to Mrs Witchy, love ya lots pet! 
 
Slightly less important news, the new scans are up in the Adverts section :)
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Lisa Icon06 Oct 2004
Helping Tony Firshman clear out his shed of bits has swelled the QL side of things quite nicely, with enough spare parts to hopefully make one working one of: CST RAM/ROM expansion, MEDIC disk interface (and floppy drive), CST floppy interface, CST floppy/SCSI interface, Qonfig interface (the company's still going, fact fans) plus floppy drives that happen to be Enterprise compatible too and other stuff.....thanks Tony :oD
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Lisa Icon13 Oct 2004
Coming soon: Boxed 512K twin-floppy SAM Coupe and Apple Mac XL, aka Lisa 2/10 with slight tweaks. Marvellous :)
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Lisa Icon17 Oct 2004
Oops - forgot some new additions courtesy of Gavin Saxby, aka Man Who Rescued My Acorn Workstation - a boxed BBC Robo Bitstik and a Microwriter with manual....anyone remember those? :) Thanks Gavin!
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Lisa Icon19 Oct 2004
SAM is here and worth it just for the packaging alone; it was sent in its original mailing box from Oct 1991 so the internals would be in A1 condition had parcelfarce not dropped it. I'm pleased we don't pay through the nose for such a service! Hmm. 
 
Also! Picked up the Mac XL from Graham Hallett, it's previous owner, today - thanks for transporting it Graham! Originally a Lisa 1, it's had the Sun Remarketing treatment but came with Lisa OS V3, MacWorks Plus, a Stylewriter II with Localtalk card plus other bits and bobs.....excellent :) More on both of those as soon as I've done it......
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Lisa Icon20 Oct 2004
Lisa update: happy machine, unhappy memory card. She runs with memory from my other Lisa but won't boot, and looking at the LisaOS disks it seems that they've either been erased or have given up the ghost after 11 years. Good job I can re-create them :) I *think* I can recreate the Macworks Plus disks too....
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Lisa Icon30 Nov 2004
The best donation for a while has arrived - a boxed Jupiter Ace plus a 2nd machine, unpopulated motherboard and lots of software courtesy of Alex Lindsay....thanks mate :) 
 
Site updates are in progress, more designed to make update life easier for me than anything else.....got to love PHP for that. Mind, since it's several months since I did PHP in anger I'm having to relearn things but hey ho.
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disk iconTo 2003 Updatesdisk icon

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