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Stamford, CT.
Brochure #4
1984
Written by Alan Goodman
Production: Jessica Wolf
Produced by Fred/Alan Inc.
###
In the late 70s I was producing jazz records and became friendly with Michael Cuscuna, soon to become one of the medium's most revered producers and the leading reissue producer in history.
In the early 80s he and BlueNote Records executive Charlie Lourie started the pioneering Mosaic Records as the first company specializing in boxed set reissues of classic performances, available only by mail order. Michael and I became reacquainted when I ordered their first set (The Complete BlueNote Recordings of Thelonious Monk) and he asked me to get involved with helping them out of the hole. It turned out their 'sure thing' idea wasn't having many takers and they were worried about shutting down.
My partner Alan Goodman and I turned them down two years in a row with a lot of unsolitcited advice about what they could do better --we were broke and our company was barely alive itself-- even if we were talking through our hats. Everything we knew about direct mail cataloging was from being mail order customers ourselves and from a direct mail how-to book I'd read the first chapter of. We loved Michael and Charlie, and we admired what they were trying to accomplish at Mosaic, but we were just too low on bandwidth.
Three years in our company was doing a little better and Mosaic was doing a lot worse; Michael and Charlie successfully prevailed on us to finally help. We knew no more, but full of the arrogance of youth we lugged out Alan's first generation portable computer and invented the first Mosaic 12-page brochure on our summer picnic table. Alan wrote every word (I supervised "strategy" -- what else is new?), our friends Tom Corey and Scott Nash designed the thing, Jessica Wolf supervised the production and we mailed out the first Mosaic catalog ever in the summer of 1986.
We waited for the order phones to ring, and lo and behold, in the first three weeks Mosaic's business had increased 10 fold. They were in business forever. Alan's still writing the brochures, I'm still getting the free box sets and lobbing in ideas from the side. What a world we live in. I've never been prouder of any project I've worked on in my life.
Do you like jazz? Order one of the Mosaic sets. They are still the standard by which all others are judged.
A neighbour had this one, and we spent ages playing various Sierra Online games and wondering what the big deal was — CGA graphics (320×200, 4 colours) were a bit boring even then. Notably, this particular PC compatible came with a mouse, something that most other PCs of the day lacked.
Young boy playing video game on old computer Bothell Washington State USA MR
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©Jim Corwin_All Rights Reserved 2020 Contact me at jscorwin@mac.com or visit my PhotoShelter site using the link Jim Corwin Photography on my Profile Page.
My website is jimcorwin.photoshelter.com
My E-Mail Address is jscorwin@mac.com
Ordinateur complet en boîte " SINCLAIR ZX Spectrum+ " ( avec boitier convertisseur péritélévision ).
I got a bunch of nice pix this time out. So let's start off by awarding the Coolest Thing For Sale At The Flea prize: a KIM-1 computer. Before the personal computer came the "hobbyist" computer. These were machines that were sold to enthusiasts who'd been lapping up information from books and actually writing out sample code on paper. They'd pay any price or suffer any indignity to have a real, working computer to test out some of their programs on.
The KIM was based on the same 6502 processor as the Apple I, which it preceded by a year. It was actually built by the company who made the processor, partly to popularize the CPU and its instruction set.
Big box, eh? Well, that isn't the KIM. The actual computer is just that one plane with the keypad and the LED. One of the top features of the KIM-1 -- besides being cheap -- was that it was super-easy to expand. What you see here is the Super KIM-1 Action Playset, with extra memory, I/O, and controllers. You'd often see a KIM in a lab environment, controlling an experiment or a piece of equipment the same way a tiny $30 Arduino board would do today.
It's not hard to see reverse-echoes of the Apple-1 in the KIM. A fairly standard build-out of a KIM-1 included a CRT, keyboard, and cassette drive.
A very awesome thing. The sight of this machine (which was hidden away in a box full of manuals when I came along) stopped me in my tracks the same way that a [insert name of very rare vintage muscle car] would do for a car nut.
BOY did I want this. But this is a pretty prime, desireable example, and the seller wanted a perfectly fair price that was above what I could spend. It did put "KIM main board" on my collecting radar, though.
A Kaypro for the serious user: comes with a 10-meg hard drive, which almost certainly made it as portable as an oil drum full of cinder blocks. We're so spoiled these days. Back then, computer users had muscles.
One of the most powerful machines out there in the Eighties was also deceptively crappy and most people passed it by.
Woman working on old computer doing her small business accounts
All my photographs are copyright protected, If you wish to use my photos please contact me and we can discuss usage fees.
©Jim Corwin_All Rights Reserved 2019 Contact me at jscorwin@mac.com or visit my PhotoShelter site using the link Jim Corwin Photography on my Profile Page.
My website is jimcorwin.photoshelter.com
My E-Mail Address is jscorwin@mac.com
oldcomputers.net/altair-8800.html
Part of my set of shots at the Vintage Computer Festival SE 6.0, in Roswell, GA. www.facebook.com/events/888306171347633/
My brother's Kim-1, the first computer I ever used.
retro.hansotten.nl/6502-sbc/kim-1-manuals-and-software/th...
This one was 16 bits before home users had any clue what that meant. By the time they realised, it no longer mattered, and no-one cared.
Complete with the famous TI Extended BASIC module (cartridge), and the equally famous TI Speech Synthesizer as featured in ‘Speak and Spell’ (and by extension, the movie E.T.)
This machine had pretty decent hardware, but nowhere near enough memory to speak of: 256 bytes of RAM (part of the CPU) and 16k of video RAM. Everything was stored on the video RAM when the graphics chip wasn't looking, something that made it seriously slow until you gave up and got a memory expansion box.
This is an MSX2 machine (MSX was a Microsoft compatibility standard followed by many Japanese manufacturers who made various mutually compatible home micros in the EIghties — MSX2 offered better hardware). Somewhat unusually, it offers A/V out and in, and this made it pretty popular as a cheap special effects, marquee etc console for small TV stations (it could feed A/V in to A/V out, superimposing its own image wherever needed).
I didn't think they still used these dinosaurs for keeping inventory and such. I only assumed they were used now for those geeks out there who keep and use them for 1337 purposes.
This ancient bugger calls Canadian Tire home.
Stamford, CT.
Brochure #4
1984
Written by Alan Goodman
Production: Jessica Wolf
Produced by Fred/Alan Inc.
###
In the late 70s I was producing jazz records and became friendly with Michael Cuscuna, soon to become one of the medium's most revered producers and the leading reissue producer in history.
In the early 80s he and BlueNote Records executive Charlie Lourie started the pioneering Mosaic Records as the first company specializing in boxed set reissues of classic performances, available only by mail order. Michael and I became reacquainted when I ordered their first set (The Complete BlueNote Recordings of Thelonious Monk) and he asked me to get involved with helping them out of the hole. It turned out their 'sure thing' idea wasn't having many takers and they were worried about shutting down.
My partner Alan Goodman and I turned them down two years in a row with a lot of unsolitcited advice about what they could do better --we were broke and our company was barely alive itself-- even if we were talking through our hats. Everything we knew about direct mail cataloging was from being mail order customers ourselves and from a direct mail how-to book I'd read the first chapter of. We loved Michael and Charlie, and we admired what they were trying to accomplish at Mosaic, but we were just too low on bandwidth.
Three years in our company was doing a little better and Mosaic was doing a lot worse; Michael and Charlie successfully prevailed on us to finally help. We knew no more, but full of the arrogance of youth we lugged out Alan's first generation portable computer and invented the first Mosaic 12-page brochure on our summer picnic table. Alan wrote every word (I supervised "strategy" -- what else is new?), our friends Tom Corey and Scott Nash designed the thing, Jessica Wolf supervised the production and we mailed out the first Mosaic catalog ever in the summer of 1986.
We waited for the order phones to ring, and lo and behold, in the first three weeks Mosaic's business had increased 10 fold. They were in business forever. Alan's still writing the brochures, I'm still getting the free box sets and lobbing in ideas from the side. What a world we live in. I've never been prouder of any project I've worked on in my life.
Do you like jazz? Order one of the Mosaic sets. They are still the standard by which all others are judged.
This venerable 1984 vintage Apple IIc is similar to the II+ I had a generation ago. My II+ cost my mom about $2000 or so. This was a $12.00 thrift shop find last week.
A 'cool new kid' on the budding home computer block when I was something of a new kid myself, this dusty Apple fired right up after plugging in and connecting to a rather modern portable LCD screen with a video cable.
My 3 year old $3500 Dell XPS doesn't even fire up on the first try. Now where's my copy of Dan Gorlin's Choplifter and Richard Garriott's Ultima series?
This was my first computer - in my dorm room from 1997. This was an AMD K6 with a 166mhz processor. The monitor is still in use but the computer is long gone - taken apart by kids at a local school.
This is a CTX computer and monitor that I got from Office Max my second year of college. This was actually a floor model so there was a discount. I remember hooking it into the campus network and taking forever to get it to work. I downloaded a lot of stuff to this computer.
It looks like a TRS-80 Color Computer, and it mostly is: sadly, its compatibility was only partial for copyright reasons.
I fired up my old Apple 2c computer tonight and it was quite an experience. While doing so, I found some of the basic language programs I had written and forgotten about, such as my movie catalog program that played music when it started up. It sure brought back some old memories!
My new old Apple PB 520c! I actually just got two from a nearby business that was giving (!) them away. Now to put them together and make a fun but heavy notebook.
I purchased this second hand when I started collecting and had it sent down from Queensland. The Ohio Scientific computers were interesting: I gather that this and the 8P were intended for home automation, hence the huge number of ports at the back. I was told that it was horrible to work on in winter, as the fan pushed cold air up through the keyboard.
The IBM 5155, an otherwise pretty much standard IBM PC in a luggable case, if you're a weight lifter. Came with an amber (monochrome) screen built-in.
WOW that computer is OOOOLLLLLDDD!!! "New for 89" so I guess that means 1989. And you'll notice, it's $8500 and the monitor and mouse aren't included!
Commodore Amiga 500, Commodore Amiga 1081 monitor, The Arcade joystick, Hitachi boombox. And the Settlers!!!