Very nice unit. I had a 328 and the SV-605B years ago when they come out. It was great. Wish I never got rid of it then but the 386 came out. I built a fully working speech synthesizer for it to work on the parallel port off the expander. Got the PCB professionally done with plating and holes, cost a fortune back then, and then done all the software for it. Had the 80 column card, 64k Ram card and cassette drive. I copied all my tape on disk and boy they loaded fast compared to the tapes.
They really were a fantastic machine, with heaps of well thought out add ons that worked really well together. They were really popular with the CPM community down here. Used the disc system as my dev machine and general work horse until I cut over to first a 728 and then a 738 MSX.
Sort of a quest you're on Tony. Getting the hardware together to be able to read your original discs again. It was a joy to watch you unpack it. I can't wait to see part 2!
I never thought I would get hold of one, let alone a 2nd one. Definitely hoping that this one finally gets me a working one, hopefully have time tomorrow.
+electricadventures I haven't forgotten about our little talk Tony. I still remember exactly where we left off. If you're available any time soon I'd really like to continue.
Great stuff Tony. I used to own an expansion like that but both the computer and the expansion unit ended up being quite beyond repair. The fragments I could salvage I gave away. This was a beast of a machine with all the expansions hooked up. Very impressive.
I am hoping this one works or I can use some components with the others that I have to get a working combination. Hopefully get a chance today to have a decent play with it :)
I still have my SV328 in the cupboard after 30 something years. Haven't needed to dig it out since discovering the BlueMSX emulator which also emulates the 328 as well as every MSX and comes with hundreds of the old games . It was an awesome machine back in the day.
It was my 2nd every home computer (well technically 3rd I got a 318 1st), but the first one I really got into programming for. Fantastic system, I use BlueMSX to test my Lets Make a Retro Game series code for the 318/328 and it works very well. The disk emulation does have some timing issues though.
Crossing fingers it all fires up okay, and you can recover all your work disks. Certainly a unique design there (in having a giant expander box - especially compared to other micros).
Nice find. Brings back memories of the old Acorn 32K I once owned :-) After my intellivision gaming era I got an Acorn Electron then I skipped past the Spectrums, C64's and went straight to consoles. I never really had much to do with the 80's era computer's apart from the Electron (although I really liked the BASIC programming). Then a few years later I picked up an old Toshiba MSX 64k. A1200 was the last home computer I got before going PC. Atb, Daz
Spectravideo definitely went all out trying to release a machine that had a full range of peripherals at launch and supported the CPM community in the bargain. Everything was very well designed, built and packaged, their relationship with Microsoft (two Spectravideo programmers worked with the Microsoft team merging two versions of MS Basic to make SVI Basic) but they never got any third party developers on board and by the time they had the money to properly release it in the US the market was starting to crumble. So it basically gained a small foot hold in markets where it was released earlier I.e Australia where there was a sting CPM community.
it looks allmost like the one I sent you year before last,did you ever get time to test it? it should work as I got it from the same seller as the vic20 and that worked :) , just very curios lol
If I get mine working I might be able to make some to send to you as I have a couple of sets of the boot disks and a couple of boxes of new disks to use.
Nice shirt, Queen are such a legendary band and their 1970s albums are amazing. My favourite album? Tough one that.......possibly Sheer Heart Attack or A Night At The Opera.
I never got to see Queen with Freddy live, but have followed them for quite some time, it's extremely hard to pick a favourite album as they evolved very well through all of their albums, but I would also have to 'It's a Kind of Magic' in there as well. I was lucky to finally be able to see two Queen members live in Mlebourne last year, performing with Adam Lambert.
electricadventures The nearest I got to seeing the classic original lineup live, was at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992. That was a truly amazing and emotional event and I was really exhausted with standing up for all those hours before, during and after. I'll never forgive Axl Rose for butchering and defacing Bohemian Rhapsody though, and yet Brian May liked it! Yeah A Kind Of Magic is a big favourite for me also. As you can tell I am a HUGE Queen fan, so I best shut up before I go on at length! LOL! :-D
the language was easy to use like play "deabc".,"ade", would play those music notes. command like stick(1) to turn on commands on thise great joysticks.
It was one of the reasons I decided to get a SV-318 over a Vic-20, SG-3000 or a Microbee was both the graphics capabilities and the extend of the Basic language built in. I had only programmed in Basic on other machines at that stage.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Very nice unit. I had a 328 and the SV-605B years ago when they come out. It was great. Wish I never got rid of it then but the 386 came out. I built a fully working speech synthesizer for it to work on the parallel port off the expander. Got the PCB professionally done with plating and holes, cost a fortune back then, and then done all the software for it. Had the 80 column card, 64k Ram card and cassette drive. I copied all my tape on disk and boy they loaded fast compared to the tapes.
They really were a fantastic machine, with heaps of well thought out add ons that worked really well together. They were really popular with the CPM community down here.
Used the disc system as my dev machine and general work horse until I cut over to first a 728 and then a 738 MSX.
Sort of a quest you're on Tony. Getting the hardware together to be able to read your original discs again. It was a joy to watch you unpack it. I can't wait to see part 2!
I never thought I would get hold of one, let alone a 2nd one. Definitely hoping that this one finally gets me a working one, hopefully have time tomorrow.
+electricadventures I haven't forgotten about our little talk Tony. I still remember exactly where we left off. If you're available any time soon I'd really like to continue.
Definitely we will have to work out a time that suits soon :)
Great stuff Tony. I used to own an expansion like that but both the computer and the expansion unit ended up being quite beyond repair. The fragments I could salvage I gave away.
This was a beast of a machine with all the expansions hooked up. Very impressive.
I am hoping this one works or I can use some components with the others that I have to get a working combination. Hopefully get a chance today to have a decent play with it :)
electricadventures the 80 column and centronic cards are pretty cool. Hope you get the drives up and running!
I still have my SV328 in the cupboard after 30 something years. Haven't needed to dig it out since discovering the BlueMSX emulator which also emulates the 328 as well as every MSX and comes with hundreds of the old games . It was an awesome machine back in the day.
It was my 2nd every home computer (well technically 3rd I got a 318 1st), but the first one I really got into programming for. Fantastic system, I use BlueMSX to test my Lets Make a Retro Game series code for the 318/328 and it works very well. The disk emulation does have some timing issues though.
Nice find Tony, interested in seeing more of it.
Hopefully get some time tomorrow to try it all and see what works :)
Love such old home computer stuff, that tape recorder is a monster! :-D
It's all extremely heavy, very solidly constructed, and using quite high quality components (for the time).
Crossing fingers it all fires up okay, and you can recover all your work disks. Certainly a unique design there (in having a giant expander box - especially compared to other micros).
As expected I got interrupted, but hoping to fire it up piece by piece tomorrow, hopefully I have at least one working drive finally.
that is awesome find and rare .....i am drooling over that.....disk drives and expander!!
Still a work in progress, but definitely a very cool find. I am going to do a Spectravideo collection video when I am on holidays shortly.
glad to see your still online, haven't watched/commented in a while.
+Jason Rotbergs Yeah still here, have slowed down a bit lately, real life has been pretty busy :)
Nice find. Brings back memories of the old Acorn 32K I once owned :-)
After my intellivision gaming era I got an Acorn Electron then I skipped past the Spectrums, C64's and went straight to consoles. I never really had much to do with the 80's era computer's apart from the Electron (although I really liked the BASIC programming). Then a few years later I picked up an old Toshiba MSX 64k. A1200 was the last home computer I got before going PC. Atb, Daz
Spectravideo definitely went all out trying to release a machine that had a full range of peripherals at launch and supported the CPM community in the bargain.
Everything was very well designed, built and packaged, their relationship with Microsoft (two Spectravideo programmers worked with the Microsoft team merging two versions of MS Basic to make SVI Basic) but they never got any third party developers on board and by the time they had the money to properly release it in the US the market was starting to crumble.
So it basically gained a small foot hold in markets where it was released earlier I.e Australia where there was a sting CPM community.
electricadventures Thanks, you certainly know your stuff when it come to those retro computers :-)
I know so little about these, so this was fascinating stuff!
Hopefully will go through a few more details about the system while I am working my way through testing it today.
Good luck trying to read your original disks!
I'm definitely crossing my fingers myself :)
Spectravideo sure liked the boxy look. You could use that expander case to take the dog to the vet.
And the 2nd version was even larger as it could have two 5 1/4 drives internally!
You lucky bugger. Awesome pickup. Great machines. Long live the mighty Spectravideo. Cheers
it looks allmost like the one I sent you year before last,did you ever get time to test it?
it should work as I got it from the same seller as the vic20 and that worked :) , just very curios lol
Now that I have a working SVI328 I can test it. Just need to look for some floppies. Will do a video as well. Cheers.
If I get mine working I might be able to make some to send to you as I have a couple of sets of the boot disks and a couple of boxes of new disks to use.
That would be great. Lets hope it is working.
Nice machine! Never seen spectravideo before.
+LastofAvari I might do a bit more of an overview of the Spectravideo range soon as I pretty much have all of them now.
Nice shirt, Queen are such a legendary band and their 1970s albums are amazing. My favourite album? Tough one that.......possibly Sheer Heart Attack or A Night At The Opera.
I never got to see Queen with Freddy live, but have followed them for quite some time, it's extremely hard to pick a favourite album as they evolved very well through all of their albums, but I would also have to 'It's a Kind of Magic' in there as well.
I was lucky to finally be able to see two Queen members live in Mlebourne last year, performing with Adam Lambert.
electricadventures The nearest I got to seeing the classic original lineup live, was at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992. That was a truly amazing and emotional event and I was really exhausted with standing up for all those hours before, during and after. I'll never forgive Axl Rose for butchering and defacing Bohemian Rhapsody though, and yet Brian May liked it! Yeah A Kind Of Magic is a big favourite for me also. As you can tell I am a HUGE Queen fan, so I best shut up before I go on at length! LOL! :-D
looks like the one I sent Big G not so long back, didn't have any spectravideos so wasn't of any use to me XD
Hopefully later today I will be able to set it all up and see what is working :)
brenden from tassie sent me
Welcome, yes he drops around regularly :) do you have any original Spectravideo computers?
Cool!
+Дмитрий Пугачёв Always nice to find hard to get systems and peripherals like this :)
Nice toys :)
the language was easy to use like play "deabc".,"ade", would play those music notes. command like stick(1) to turn on commands on thise great joysticks.
It was one of the reasons I decided to get a SV-318 over a Vic-20, SG-3000 or a Microbee was both the graphics capabilities and the extend of the Basic language built in. I had only programmed in Basic on other machines at that stage.