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Northstar Horizon Keep or Sell?

R

RadRacer203

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Burlington VT
So I've never messed with any S-100 machines in my life but I've been keeping my eye out for something and I just picked up a Northstar Horizon today. It's in excellent cosmetic shape and what's there seems to be in nice shape but the problem is there aren't any cards inside whatsover. My question is should I keep it and spend the time and effort sourcing all the cards for it to make it a usable machine, or should I just sell it and keep looking? I really like it but I'm leaning towards selling it and waiting for a more complete machine... Basically all that's in there are the floppy drives, power supply, and backplane, no cpu cards or any other cards at all...
 
Keep it

If you sell and some cards come along you will kick yourself

If a more complete machine comes along, sell it then.

BTW, you live in Shrewsbury in the US ?, I grew up in the 1000 year old Shrewsbury in the UK, didnt know there was another one :)
 
I know there is a Birmingham in Alabama.

On a business trip many years ago to the US with a colleague, I found myself booked in on the flight back to Birmingham UK and my colleague found himself booked in on the flight to Birmingham Alabama...

Fortunately, he spotted the error when we realised we were departing from two different gates in the airport!

The story did, however, have a happy ending.

My advice would be to do it up and populate it with cards. You can use a variety of cards (not just N*) as a large majority of owners did in the day. The N* machine could even be purchased as a self assembly machine. Plenty of Cromemco S100 cards come up on a regular basis.

There is currently a N* refurbishment thread going on with how to bring the chassis and power supply back to health. The bulk of the costs is in the chassis, power supply, backplane and floppy drives, so you are largely there (especially if it is in good cosmetic condition).

Why not even look at the 'modern' stuff over at http://www.s100computers.com to go in there?

Dave
 
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Ok I think you convinced me. The one thing Northstar specific I'll be looking for is the floppy controller, unless there's another that will work. I may be picking up a very rough Motorola Exorciser that could possibly donate its guts to this.
 
Don't forget that the N* disk controllers (the ones I know about at any rate) are HARD SECTORED - so getting true media is an impossibility :).

There is a small unit that you can add that means you can use soft-sectored media.

Anyone else's disk controller will almost certainly be soft sectored.

Obviously, with checking what make/manufacturer/model the drives are to ensure they will work with a soft-sectored controller.

Dave
 
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