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So made a trip to Allentown, PA recently (about 80 miles from where I live in NJ) and picked up a Platinum //e and a Robotics kit. The control board, interface card, instruction manual and VHS instruction tape are still sealed in their original packaging. The arms, joysticks and battery eliminators are loose. Just curious what people's reactions are to this stuff since I have NEVEr looked into the value of robotics (other than how much I spent on Mindstorms stuff over the years for my son and I)
Zan
Zan,
WOW!
Looks like you and your son did well.
Congrats!
Steven
Danger, Will Robinson!
What is the manufacture year on the Kelvin Interface System? Ah I see it in the second picture. 1990.
Nice - it's the most common robotic setup for the Apple II - only somewhat rare, but they show up from time to time on eBay or in collections.
Have fun with it.
Thanks, I had not taken the time to look it up but as I said I have not really spent any time using or looking at robotics stuff other than the mindstorms my son and I have messed with over the past few years. It was always "good enough" to satisfy our desire to fiddle since my time is so limited and he is (now) in High School and fortunately interested more in Girls than robotics (although girls are still only a few paces ahead of archery, hunting and fishing in that order!)
Not sure if I will play first or leave it in the original packaging if it adds any value.
I appreciate the response and figured if anyone would appreciate the photos it would be someone on here.
Zan
That's kind of hilarious. I wonder if you bought that stuff from the same person I did -- about a year ago I drove from Boston to Allentown for a (huge) pile of stuff that included two of the same robotic arm setups (and like 7 //es, and as many monitors, and quite a bit of LEGO stuff, which was actually the main reason I spent 10 hours driving for it). The guy who had them taught in a high school as I remember and basically took the whole computer lab home with him when they upgraded, but decided it was taking up too much room. I'm embarrassed to say that I pretty much just unloaded the stuff and let it sit there since then without really playing with it, but I have a couple of the Kelvin boxes and cards and arms essentially identical to those in your pictures, as well as a couple of the manuals, the videotape, and disks. Except mine are somewhat more beat up (if it was the same guy, he must have held back the good-looking copies), I'm a little bit concerned the disks will not be readable. Perhaps you can make images of your disks? I definitely will attempt to image the ones I have, but they were stored in a coffee can (!) and so are kind of warped.
Was going to be a summer project and then summer ended. Next summer maybe. But I am still hoping to set it up on a machine in my display area at some point. We should compare notes when there are notes to compare! I'd love to find something vaguely useful to do with the arm, but just making it move at all would be neat.
Saw the (I think Google) thread elsewhere about your purchase. Yes, same guy. Nice older gentleman. This stuff was in three boxes (old Xerox copy paper boxes) in the attic/loft above his barn. Said he kept one unit for himself to play with but just never got around to it so decided to sell it. Have not had time to mess with it yet, been putting systems together to sell and have not had time to play. Definitely stay in touch and if I have something you need or vice versa to make things work we will take care of it.
Zan
I have one of these as well, rescued when our old middle school was re-purposed a while back. I tried the arm using just the joysticks and found one of the joints is stuck. I stopped at that point vowing to take it apart "soon" and fix it.
I have the //e with the interface card, external box, etc. The disk was not in a sleeve and the top was coated in dust, so I need to figure out how to clean it before I dare stick it in a drive. I also have the VHS tape, but don't appear to have any of the other doc.
This thread may inspire me to haul it all out and play a bit. If I have any discoveries or questions I'll let you all know.