[geeks] ColorGraphics Artstar?

[Clay Mellender]

It looks like a cromemco system we had, tipped on its side. I believe it
was a system zero or a 3 series. Your error may be caused by the quirky
habit Cromemco boards had. In heat and humidity changes the IC chips
would walk out of their sockets. I remember my dad going nuts over a 3
month old machine suddenly getting errors from RDOS and not booting. I
took a look inside over his shoulder and saw 3 or 4 chips half out of
their sockets and leaning away from the boards. Needless to say, an Air
Conditioner appeared overnite in the computer room. If you are
interested, I may have some CROMIX docs in my storage locker. It is a
pretty decent OS, and very powerful for one that can run on less than
one meg of ram!

Clay

David Michaud wrote:
> 
> A number of months ago I picked up a Colorgraphics Artstar video
> workstation from a TV station where I worked for a while. At the time
> that it was pulled, it was working, and even when I unloaded it from my
> Jeep and powered it on, it booted to console. It booted off 5.25"
> diskette that was still in the drive (luckily), and it booted some
> version of Unix, but I can't recall what it was. But now that it has
> been sitting in my garage for a number of months through the humidity it
> seems to want to bitch and complain. It drops a "Memory bad" error to
> console and hangs. What is really odd about this machine is there is
> *nothing* anywhere on the net about it. Not references to it, no
> documentation, nothing about the company... Not on Usenet, not on
> commercial or personal websites, etc. So I am sort of at a loss. The
> thing weighs a ton, at least 200lbs, as the entire enclosure is
> constructed from steel and the base is cast steel, about 1/2" thick.
> Additionally, it is powered by a linear power supply (!). The machine is
> dated 1981, and did something for the on-air weather graphics for the
> station. If anyone knows *anything* about this machine, I would greatly
> appreciate some leads. I have taken some pictures of it and thrown them
> up here:
> http://users.757.org/~cshell/artstar.html
> 
> Thanks!
> -Dave
> 
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