KITBASH@MTUS5.BITNET (Joe Ammond) (09/10/90)
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.. It's got quite a bit of software, including a kex emulator, an HP2622 emulator that also does vt100 as an afterthought, WordPerfect 4.2, and others.. What I'm looking for as ANYTHING about this beast... when it was made, by who, are they still around.. I'm especially interested in the floppy, because it seems that a 'standard IBM PC' 1.2M drive doesn't grok Victor's. ++thanks, ja.
ehr@uncecs.edu (Ernest H. Robl) (09/11/90)
[question about Victor 9000 deleted] Victor 9000s have variable density drives which are not compatible with standard drives. In an effort to gain storage capacity, the drive changes amount of information per track, depending on which track is being used. The outer tracks with the larger circumference store more data than the smaller inner ones. It was another one of those neat ideas that was ahead of its time. I believe these drives preceded the common availability of high density floppy drives and hard drives being fairly standard on most higher-end PCs. My father has a Victor 9000 and has long been looking for a version of MS Word for it. Was it ever available? Due to turnover, even the store that sold him the machine years ago now claims never to have heard of it. When it first came out, the V9000 had fairly good graphics capa- bilities for its time. However, due to its non-standard features, the V9000 only reached a limited market, and Victor got into financial problems. I believe the company has come back -- but is now selling only standard (compatible) PC equipment. -- Ernest -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- "My other computer is a Nikon N8008." -- Ernest H. Robl Ernest H. Robl (ehr@ecsvax) Durham, NC, USA (919) 286-3845 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
ekalenda@cup.portal.com (Edward John Kalenda) (09/11/90)
> 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.. > > What I'm looking for as ANYTHING about this beast... when it was made, > by who, are they still around.. I'm especially interested in the > floppy, because it seems that a 'standard IBM PC' 1.2M drive doesn't > grok Victor's. The Victor 9000 was made by Victor Technologies, formerly of Scotts Valley in California. Note the "formerly", they . Their machine is a very close, but not quite, compatable. The major problem is with the disk drive, as you have seen. I don't really know what the difference is but I have heard some talk that they use odd formatting. Other than the disk, I haven't heard any other differences mentioned. Anybody out there ever work for Victor? Care to speak up? Ed ekalenda@cup.portal.com
ekalenda@cup.portal.com (Edward John Kalenda) (09/11/90)
Sorry, my last posting lost a few words. I meant it to say that Victor went out of business in 1983 or 1984.
dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett) (09/11/90)
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
chl@cs.man.ac.uk (Charles Lindsey) (09/12/90)
>> 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.. So far as I understand, this machine was sold in the UK by Apricot under the name "Sirius", and a very nice machine it was too. I still have one on my desk that I use for word-processing with a package called "Vuwriter". BTW, this department has several of these machines spare. Any offers?
tim@NCoast.ORG (Tim Stradtman) (09/12/90)
In article <33745@cup.portal.com> ekalenda@cup.portal.com (Edward John Kalenda) writes: >Sorry, my last posting lost a few words. I meant it to say that Victor >went out of business in 1983 or 1984. I used a Victor clone as recently as last year - They did not go out of business, they completely reorganized, and now I beleive they are a division of Kyocera (SP??). They are now in PA somewhere - If I can find the number I'll post it. -------- Tim Stradtman tim@ncoast.org or ak215@cleveland.freeent.edu -- Tim Stradtman tim@ncoast.org or ak215@cleveland.freeent.edu
landauer@morocco.Sun.COM (Doug Landauer) (09/13/90)
> I've just been given a Victor 9000 PC ...
Though Victor Technologies is no more (or is a fragment of some larger
company), the street they used to be on in Scotts Valley is still
called Victor Square ... I like to think of it as a monument to all
those startup companies that didn't quite make it. :-/nigelw@ibmpcug.co.uk (Nigel Whitfield) (09/13/90)
In article <142343@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> landauer@morocco.Sun.COM (Doug Landauer) writes: > > I've just been given a Victor 9000 PC ... > > Though Victor Technologies is no more (or is a fragment of some larger > company), the street they used to be on in Scotts Valley is still > called Victor Square ... I like to think of it as a monument to all > those startup companies that didn't quite make it. :-/ Until May I worked as Sales/Support Manager for a company in London, and we dealt in Victor systems. They're originally a Scandinavian company, but were recently bought by Tandy Corp. As far as I can remember from the information that we were sent, they are still trading as an entirely separate entity. This probably has something to do with the fact that Victor systems are a lot more popular over here than Tandy.... On a historical note, I think that the Victor 9000 was marketed by someone else as the ACT Sirius 1 in this country, or maybe I'm thinking of an earlier Victor machine... Nigel. -- Nigel Whitfield "Should have told him n.whitfield@ibmpcug.co.uk I'd do anything if I could hold him n.whitfield@uk.ac.edinburgh For just another day" ******* Gay in the UK? Join the uk-motss mailing list NOW!!! *******
fwb@demon.siemens.com (Frederic W. Brehm) (09/13/90)
Doug Landauer writes: > ... I like to think of it as a monument to all >those startup companies that didn't quite make it. :-/ Victor was hardly a startup company. It made and sold calculators for a long time before it sold personal computers. Fred -- Frederic W. Brehm Siemens Corporate Research Princeton, NJ fwb@demon.siemens.com -or- ...!princeton!siemens!demon!fwb
frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) (09/14/90)
In article <1990Sep13.112347.687@ibmpcug.co.uk> n.whitfield@ibmpcug.CO.UK (Nigel Whitfield) writes: >> Though Victor Technologies is no more (or is a fragment of some larger >> company) Well, here in Iceland Victor computers are currently by far the best-selling machines, outselling IBM, Compaq and Zenith combined...... -frisk