For sale: Psion 3a & NetBook, Alphasmart Neo 1 & Dana, OLPC XO-1, Sinclair Z88, Tandy WP-2 & WP-3, Upgraded RiscPC, EOS animator

[monty]

[Updated 2020-08-04 to add more machines and photos.]

Offers please:

- Alphasmart Dana.

- Alphasmart Neo 1.

- Tandy WP-2 and a WP-3. A great little portable word processor from the '90s. I actually used a Tandy WP-3 as my main computer through the first year of university... in 2006... I still have that WP-3 and very fond off its odd Word Processor software. Only difference with the WP-2 (which I bought as a back-up) is WP-2 is US dictionary, WP-3 is Canadian/British. It has a fantastic thesaurus, pretty good clicky keyboard, surprisingly usable screen, and the battery life is to die for. You will need a null-modem cable for serial file transfers because the SD-card reader released for it a decade ago (yes, people were still making things for these machines) is now out of production. Plays nicely with the better class of printer (via centronix-to-USB, printer needs to support raw text).

- RiscPC with all manner of fancy pants upgrades. If there is interest I will find a record of them. Special Radeon graphics card in there for sure.

- EOS animator machine. An old Win 9x era PC with custom hardware for recording animation and playing back. Has a great custom controller with fat chunky buttons, which is what makes it worth using. Custom software for editing and composing stop motion and cell animation by video camera (not included).

I am actively trying to be rid of those first five, so offers eagerly received.

I also have and will accept offers for;

- OLPC XO-1 (the famous original 'hundred dollar laptop' which lead to the creation of netbooks in competition, starting with the Eee PC).

- Psion NetBook (not to be confused with later Netbooks). Flakey power socket but otherwise works fine.

- Psion 3a.

- Sinclair Z88.

Note on the photos: Missing photos of the RiscPC and the EOS as these two are currently buried under many boxes. My forum name seems be missing from the second photo, just trick of the light.

 

[monty]

Update:


The RiscPC has the Radeon, plus ViewFinder for video in with an editing suite (RiscPC makes for a surprisingly great video editor, albeit standard res.), plus latest version of RiscOS 4 (whatever that was), plus SSD. I think the install may have a problem with it.

Postage is from the UK. Will be something like £15 for the RiscPC or EOS, more like a fiver for the rest.

 

[levi]

A radeon in a Risc PC? RISC OS 3.7 was that last release of the OS on ROM from the original manufacturer (Acorn computers) and RISC OS 4 was the next thing which I think came from Castle computers technically, but was put together by the people these days are known as Risc OS Open, and took bits a pieces from the OS designed for the next computer that never was (the Phoebe) and patched them on top of the RISC PC OS and came up with RISC OS 4.

Maybe you have a 486 card in there, that could use a radeon card, although how it's connected electrically I don't know. Presumably the radion card talks classic PCI while the acorn system uses the podule bus, but the sort of electrical whizzes that were around the acorn scene in those days anything was possible I guess.

Edit: Misspelled last as least. Now fixed.

 

[pmprog]

You need pictures with your name on paper next to the items as part of the trade rules

 

[monty]

Thank you @pmprog. I was in a rush so did not refresh my knowledge of the rules. I'm in the middle of a big house move and am describing some of the items I've just packed up. So I hope the mods can be lenient until I have a chance to unpack on the other end. If not then fair enough, I'll repost when I can.

Believe it or not @levi there was actually a special board released for running a Radeon on a RiscPC for RiscOS. it allows a much higher resolution output. i forget what it was called but that's what I have inside. No 486 card.

 

[levi]

Oh right, I might know it by it's more acornish name. The VIDC20 chip built into the risc PC was quite capable by it's day, able to render 1024 lines with 24bit colour at the same time provided you had 2MB of dual ported video ram in the slot, but I don't remember that being an especially cheap upgrade, so maybe the radeon-based solution was cheaper and even more capable.

I might be interested to take the risc PC off your hands, but I'd need to know more first. I guess the battery had leaked by now; it has in mine, although it didn't do any important damage to the board once I'd washed off the acid. I also wonder what revision of board it has, although I can't remember what the codes are or where to find them any more (perhaps I should read the old comp.sys.acorn.misc FAQs again), but I think mines missing a resistor fix that made the system somewhat flakey with everything I had in mine; I could remove the VRAM and that reduced the load sufficiently to make it rock solid again, but that limited me to VGA resolutions so only ever happened when I needed to do something where the flakiness was frustrating me, like making a backup.
And it's important to know what CPU board you have in it; an ARM 610, 710 or Digital/Intel StrongARM (110MHz and up).

And as pmprog says, we need pictures with your name on a scrap of paper in them and the product to not be breaking forum rules.

Just read your last post more completely. I don't see any need to close this thread, we can just park it until you're able to provide pictures.

 

[monty]

Pictures added, along with new machines (in total now Psion 3a & NetBook, Alphasmart Neo 1 & Dana, OLPC XO-1, Sinclair Z88, Tandy WP-2 & WP-3, Upgraded RiscPC, EOS animator).

Thanks @levi. I don't think I will be able to give enough information on the RiscPC in the next week or two, but when I can I will add it here.