Greetings. I know I don't normally do haul or pickup videos,
but this is absolutely exceptional and I had to do it. These unassuming
boxes here are rather unassuming,
but it's the content that counts. I got this all from a guy on Craigslist,
John, he's completely awesome. Really cool, really nice guy, and I drove almost two hours or so each way to
pick up this stuff. Now of course we have these three mysterious boxes here,
but I will be getting to the contents of them soon. Here is why I went down there in the first place.
These two
metallicky, plasticky boxes. First up here, we have this one, and in case you don't recognize it, allow me
to demonstrate the goodness.
This is a Kaypro 4
'83 model as far as I can tell from the full-height floppy drives here. This is one of the earlier portable computers,
runs CP/M, and
is completely awesome.
I've been wanting one of these for a long time
just because it is so completely rad-looking and I have no idea how to use it.
I've never used one of these before and I can't wait to find out. I don't know if it works.
I know that it does at least come with the keyboard cable and
it plugs in and turns on and such and asks for the boot-up diskette,
but this, I guess this is the A: drive. I can't get it to boot anything. I don't know
that it's actually connecting with the disk because this is a little bit loose. B: drive seems fine.
It's got the proper spring loading and it feels like the head is at least making contact with the disk so
probably have to work on that a little bit. This is the back of the beast.
Completely awesome, this is where the keyboard plugs in. And here we have the next machine. This came before the Kaypro.
It is the Osborne 1. It's actually an Osborne 1a,
at least again
I assume, judging by the floppy drives,
five-inch black and white, monochrome screen. The Kaypro 4 actually has a green screen.
It's got the cables. It also boots up, but I also can't get it to boot anything - at least not yet,
I don't know, at least the screen's nice and sharp.
The different slots and everything seem to be here.
Not much to see on the back of these things. You do have the power cord with the on-and-off switch
goes right in there.
Handle,
typical sewing machine look.
It's pretty dirty. Space bar has a little bit of an issue there. Looks like it's rusted through, but you know what, that's fine.
I'll fix it up and get it cleaned and working gracefully here soon, and if you
wonder why I am so confident that I will get it working, let's get to the boxes.
"Arabesque," well, maybe. I'm not really sure what it says, but it doesn't matter because inside is...
goodness. Oh, my goodness, it's goodness.
We have here several diskettes for the Kaypro. Many of them seem to be original. At least all these.
Different versions of CP/M. This is Microsoft BASIC-80.
Profit Plan, The Word Plus, and a whole bunch of other things: WordStar,
some games here, Aliens and
other things.
More WordStars, some dBase, and MS-DOS version
2.11 for the Kaypro II and 4.
This one confuses me because I didn't think there was MS-DOS on CP/M-
type machines that ran that kind of processor, but you know what? I've got a lot to learn here.
All the rest in here is pretty interesting stuff because, ok well this is more Kaypro stuff.
Lots and
lots of Kaypro stuff.
I remember these things, but I don't remember what they're called. I know they had something to do with laser-based optical media.
This is pretty cool. It's a whole CD-ROM full of CP/M software and text. Here's where it starts to get interesting. This is a
computer cover
for a Heath Zenith machine.
Now, from what I was talking to from John,
he said the guy that this stuff came from was a complete old-schooler computer guy that worked on
precursor to the Internet for Heathkit and other things like that.
ARPANET, I assume. Yeah, I'm really not sure. He didn't really know too much either for sure except that, you know he had some historical
stuff, and this all came from him via his daughter,
and all this has to do,
from what I can tell, with Heathkit machines, almost all of these in here.
This looks like more Kaypro stuff here. This is WordStar, more WordsStar, more WordStar, Fortran,
C-BASIC and MBASIC. Almost all of these here are single-sided,
single-density, 35-track floppies.
Some of them are 40-track.
This is old-school stuff. I mean, this is you know, before,
well, double-sided, double-density. This one's honestly more of the same
This is mostly stuff from the Heath Users Group
Lots of software. In fact this one's never been opened.
It's some sort of update for SuperCalc.
These are different games. See, here's Adventure and miscellaneous.
Miscellaneous, hard disk support package,
More Games I and II.
No telling what those are and no telling what will run these.
At least not at this point. I'm assuming most of this stuff is also Heathkit.
Lots and lots of diskettes in here. Different versions of CP/M.
I really, really like these disk boxes by the way. I mean that's quality stuff. Oh, yeah, I especially like this here.
This is a never-been-opened box
of 10-sector, single-sided, single-density floppy disks.
That's awesome. This will go well with my
never-opened box of 8-inch floppies for the TRS-80.
They're all tapes, looks like for the Heath Users Group stuff. They're not really labeled.
They just have part numbers, so I really don't know what they're for.
On the other hand this one, this one intrigues the crap out of me.
That's Spacewar! In case you're not familiar,
it's one of the very first games ever made back in the '60s. Again, I assume for a Heathkit system.
I don't really know.
This one says nothing.
This one is, it's like some debug and BASIC programs perhaps. Good grief! There's a lot more than I thought.
Extended BASIC.
There's a lot of tapes in here. I guess I need to find out what these actually go to. Yeah,
several games and some really random Heathkit-related things and that one, I really don't know what too much of it is.
If and when I find out more, I will find out more. This one on the other hand is labeled Kaypro,
so, this one really, really had my attention and that attention had merit, apparently. This is the manual to Kaypro WordStar,
Kaypro Perfect Writer and Perfect Speller,
Kaypro Perfect Filer,
Perfect Calc, The Perfect Manual for the Kaypro II. They had this obsession with perfection,
apparently. I really love this thing. It's pretty much
terribly made. It's like photocopies and cheap spiral plastic. The WordStar Handbook.
Lots of
handwritten margin notes and such in this one.
Little pocket references for Perfect Calc and Perfect Writer.
Pretty useful. Some high-quality annotations right here.
Manual for Kaypro S-BASIC.
That's
freakin' awesome.
Some other really cool stuff here. This seems to be the first issue of Pro-Files magazine for the Kaypro
with the Kaypro computers in a desert.
That really confuses me.
All sorts of useful information though, I mean everything from troubleshooting to upgrading.
I mean of course there's tons of that in those manuals, too, which
You know that's why I really think I'm going to have a pretty
acceptable time troubleshooting those things getting them to work. I love the cover of this.
Holy crap. You see how portable the Kaypro is? You can do it while rollerskating like a weird '80s lady.
This one's pretty cool. Kaypro's 2010 connection.
It's just funny because this is 2010 when this is being recorded.
I'm assuming it has to do with the movie "2010".
Yeah, yeah, "2010", the sequel to "2001: A Space Odyssey".
These are freaking crazy.
Micro Cornucopia, the single-board systems journal.
There is so much information in these things I've just spent like 30 minutes
just sitting down quickly looking through them. I haven't even begun to look at this stuff.
I mean, this is all about crazy systems and languages and all sorts of stuff that half of it
I've never even heard of. I mean, it's just, you know one of those users group's
journals with tons of code,
tons of articles, and just crap-tons of stuff about the Kaypro and other micros from the time.
Several newsletters, this is the MKCUG newsletter from 1983.
"Report from our noble leader, Bob Larkmin."
These are uncommon, really uncommon things here.
Pretty much just the handmade, photocopied, journals with all sorts of handwritten things in here.
This is pretty cool. The Kaypro Users Disk Catalog.
It's all these different programs and little things. Utilities that you can buy for your Kaypro
right out of this little catalog.
Again, it looks so amateur. It's just stapled together. I love it.
Another issue of Pro-Files with a completely "pro" business man right here.
This will be really freaking useful. The Kaypro II User's Guide, and I like that they put this on here.
There's a little sticker: "The operation of the Kaypro 4 is the same as the Kaypro II.
The only difference is that the capacity of the Kaypro 4 diskettes is double that of the diskettes for the Kaypro II."
Which in effect is pretty much it. I mean, the Kaypro II and 4 were almost identical,
so...
That'll be useful as a little tiny guide to Microsoft BASIC for the Kaypro.
The Kaypro Word Plus manual.
Microsoft BASIC, Kaypro.
The manual for Kaypro CP/M.
I'm pretty psyched to have this one. I hardly have any CP/M stuff at all, at least before today,
and there's a lot of stuff in here from Digital Research themselves.
The manual to Kapro Profit Plan.
That sounds impossibly boring.
Looks like manual supplements for the SWP Co-Power 88, which I still have no idea what is.
Just typed-out, photocopied stuff that's been rusted to this paperclip.
The MS-DOS 2.0 User's Guide.
Somebody's phone number.
It looks like it's on newsprint or something.
Super old-looking. It's just all commands and syntax and all sorts of loveliness for MS-DOS 2.
And this right here is probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite thing in here.
This is the original letter for buying the Kaypro.
"Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a Kaypro 4 personal portable computer.
Be sure to save all the packing materials in case you ever want to ship the computer."
Unfortunately they didn't save the packing materials, but that's pretty cool. Like it shows the value,
supposedly, of all the different software and everything that it comes with.
Which is an insane amount of money for how much you paid for the thing.
You know, like the Osborne it came with like fifteen hundred dollars worth of software when the computer itself only came
for about that cost. And this right here. This is the Digital Research
Operating System End User License Agreement. Yes, it's the EULA for CP/M.
Signed by Gary Kildall.
Probably not his actual signature, but holy crap that is cool. I am framing that!
So there you go. Tons and tons of
CP/M, Kaypro, a little bit of Osborne, lots of Heathkit stuff, other
random things. Just an absolute retro treasure
cove all from a simple Craigslist find just a couple hours away.
Some people might think this is just
stupid like where am I going to put all this, but you know what? I think this is completely awesome.
It might not be worth what I paid for it for some people, but to me it is very much worth it,
and I'm gonna get a lot of enjoyment out of this. Oh yeah, and how much did I pay for it? 50 bucks.