I know this may not be the place to ask this, but I recently got a hold of an Osborne.
It's fully functional. The only problem is my grandfather only kept WordStar, SuperCalc and the MBASIC, CBASIC disks. Sadly he threw away all the other disks.
Does anyone on this board know about the Osborne? Do you know what a good price for a 5 1/4 floppy drive is or where the best place to buy one is? I've never handled a computer of this vintage before, but I would like to run Colossal Cave at the very least.
Any information helps.
here's a better picture.
>>53727937
>>53728038
Wish my grandparents had that laying around, they tossed out all of their 286 and older equipment right before I started getting into it.
The Osborne did not use PC compatible disks, instead they used 90k single-sided disks, which you may or may not be able to create using special software on a PC.
If it's possible, I'd recommend sourcing a Pentium or late-model 486 box with both a 5.25'' drive plus a 3.5'' floppy drive and/or an Ethernet controller as a file transfer box, you might also be able to transfer files via serial, but my experience with CP/M systems is pretty limited.
>>53728322
Also, this page may be of use:
http://www.z80.eu/transfercpm.html
>>53728322
>>53728344
Thank you for the info. Sorry about the 286. My parents tossed our old 5150 so I know that feel.
I'll keep on the lookout for an old Pentium, (another thing my parents tossed) but there's a phone port (see >>53728038) so I wonder if I could transfer files to a blank floppy that way. I haven't played around with cp/m utility too much yet.
>>53728621
You've got a standard RS-232 port that will be much more useful in that regard, check out the section on Kermit on that page, I didn't read much into it and I've never used it myself, but maybe there might be a way to do a one-way transfer with it, which in that case you'd just need any old thrift store shitbox that can boot into a DOS environment.
>>53728649
It's hard to find PCs in Canadian thrift stores, no Goodwills or anything. I'll see what I can find though. Fuck it'd be amazing to play cc on that microscopic monitor. Thanks again for the help.
>>53728707
If it's really worth it to you you could snag something like this from Ebay, though the price is obviously quite a bit inflated versus a thrift store or a no-bid:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Poweredge-SP590-Server-Pentium-90-MHz-Tower-Computer-/152004197052?hash=item236427fabc:g:~50AAOSwo6lWNxBr
Pentium-90s and 486DX/2-66s are kind of a sweet spot for legacy file archivers, they usually feature both 3.5'' and 5.25'' drives either separately or in combo drives, and in the case of the P90, CD-ROMs, not to mention they're some of the fastest systems manufactured while DOS was still a "bleeding edge" product, at least in the world of personal computing.
Either way, have fun with it, I've always wanted an Osborne for the sheer history of it, but I haven't come across one in a long time.
kill it before it turns into an incompetent chancellor
GIGANTIC NOSTALGIA BONERZ HERE
