Trying to identify a piece of kit from one poor photo

CheshireNoir · 01-10-2022, 01:10 PM

Hey Folks,
I've joined the WA branch of the Australian Computer Museum Society, and they have a lot of densely packed kit in their warehouse. I spotted some gear in the Microbee giant pile I wanted to check on.
Is this mysterious black box a Star-Net adapter?

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It looks to match the ports on the back of my Star-Net board, thus my guess.

Cheers!

John

Ernest · 01-10-2022, 02:59 PM

Hi John,
Sure looks like you have found a Star Network File server, the Black box with all the connectors on the back.
It may even have the master workstation there as well if you keep digging.
The master station will look just like a normal disk based system (maybe with a hard drive as well as floppy). keep diging and see what you may turn up.
You are making me green with envy looking at that stash and what gems may be hidden there.

Ernest

CheshireNoir · 01-10-2022, 04:30 PM

Cheers Ernest,
I'll keep looking around when I'm next in there to see what I can find.

***ChickenMan*** · 02-10-2022, 04:46 PM

Arr great to see another Starnet unit found, now to locate the floppy&HD unit to go with it and then the right Microbee that has a 40 way out and a H18 boot rom Smile

I had been in contact with the WA ACMS 10 years ago looking for software and documentation for the bee but they had no idea what they had then or where any of it was. Hope you are able to locate them in the future.

CheshireNoir · 02-10-2022, 05:49 PM

Cheers ChickenMan,
It's definitely one of my goals of joining to see if I can start poking through for anything not already captured.
It's a surreal place and I can understand why they couldn't tell you what they had. It's literally a barn packed to the ceiling with old "stuff".

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Our big project currently is to be able to get in far enough to be able to catalog it all.

John

MikeCornflake · 14-10-2022, 03:52 PM

Holey moley, that's amazing. I joined the ACMS for the Microbee presentation, didn't realise they had a local presence... Time to be more active on their forum :-)

Mike

someone · 14-10-2022, 09:24 PM

Don't forget to wear your safety helmet when walking through the storage area!
You just don't want something heavy plummeting down on you from the shelves above.

paulmackay · (This post was last modified: 17-07-2024, 03:26 AM by paulmackay.)

that is the same black starnet that was mounted to my microbee. had a 20meg harddisk in it though the starnet part was on an at pc case and the hood lifted up to open the cover. it had a z80 controller board and connected to a 128k bee standard with mono green screen. i loved that computer. was awesome.