This is my current restoration project, an IBM Displaywriter:
The DIsplaywriter was released in June 1980, about a year before the original IBM PC, and was marketed as a word processor, but it was a full 8086 computer inside. CP/M exists for it and apparently DOS was ported by Phoenix (the BIOS people), but they never released. This is the only computer I have that has 8" floppy disks. They're nifty.
I'm just getting started on this, having *just* pulled out of storage from by backlog. If anyone has experience with these, please let me know! I suspect this one might be a tricky to fix. If I learn anything during this restore that might be useful to others, I will post it here.
(And if you want to see something that's truly nuts--try searching ebay for how much the giant keyboard from this system sells for. Search sold listings for "IBM beamspring." The going rate for JUST THE KEYBOARD is between $1100 and $1300!)
The DIsplaywriter was released in June 1980, about a year before the original IBM PC, and was marketed as a word processor, but it was a full 8086 computer inside. CP/M exists for it and apparently DOS was ported by Phoenix (the BIOS people), but they never released. This is the only computer I have that has 8" floppy disks. They're nifty.
I'm just getting started on this, having *just* pulled out of storage from by backlog. If anyone has experience with these, please let me know! I suspect this one might be a tricky to fix. If I learn anything during this restore that might be useful to others, I will post it here.
(And if you want to see something that's truly nuts--try searching ebay for how much the giant keyboard from this system sells for. Search sold listings for "IBM beamspring." The going rate for JUST THE KEYBOARD is between $1100 and $1300!)
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