Subject: Digital Group equipment?

From: "Jon Titus" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon May 5 22:12:19 2003

Does anyone follow or collect Digital Group equipment?  This company, based
in Colorado, had some nice equipment that let users plug in various CPU
boards, yet the same basic memory, I/O, and peripheral controllers worked
for all the CPUs.  Data storage used Phi Deck cassette recorders, although
in its later stages, someone may have offered a disk-drive controller.  The
Digital Group computers were quite popular with amateur-radio operators.

Jon

Jon Titus
36 Sunset Drive
Milford, MA 01757-1362 USA
Phone: +1-508-478-8040
E-mail: [email-masked]
Member, National Association of Science Writers

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From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu May 8 23:53:30 2003

> Digital Group computers were quite popular with amateur-radio operators.

Hi John.

I have a Digital Group computer.  I forget the model, but it has an 8080
CPU card in it.

I'm seeking a PhiDeck cassette drive.  Those are exceedingly cool (and
exceedingly rare).

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

 * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

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From: Bryan Blackburn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu May 8 23:54:52 2003

I collect, restore, and actually use them!! The Digital Group was way ahead of the times in a lot of ways, but poor management and customer service killed the company in the early eighties. Also of interest, The Digital Group began by selling information and hardware to improve the Mark 8 Minicomputer. They sold a number of items such as video cards and cassette tape interfaces, and wrote all the software to support the hardware. It is interesting to note that the software they wrote for the Mark 8 is almost identical in function and appearance to the software that was included with all of the systems sold by Digital Group later on. For more info, see my web pages:

http://members.cox.net/oldcomp/tdg.htm
http://members.cox.net/oldcomp/dg_restore.htm
http://members.cox.net/oldcomp/dgsoftware.htm

(You may also be interested in clicking on the link to my Mark 8 page!)

-Bryan

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From: "Stuart Johnson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu May 8 23:56:36 2003

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bryan Blackburn" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: Digital Group equipment?

> I collect, restore, and actually use them!! The Digital Group was way
ahead of the times in a lot of ways, but poor management and customer
service killed the company in the early eighties. Also of interest, The
Digital Group began by selling information and hardware to improve the Mark
8 Minicomputer. They sold a number of items such as video cards and cassette
tape interfaces, and wrote all the software to support the hardware. It is
interesting to note that the software they wrote for the Mark 8 is almost
identical in function and appearance to the software that was included with
all of the systems sold by Digital Group later on. For more info, see my web
> >Does anyone follow or collect Digital Group equipment?  This company,
based

Bryan, what a great collection and web site!

I remember the Digital Group well; I made a trip to Chicago in the 70's to
Bally, the manufacturer of video games (I worked for their Aladdin's Castle
arcades as a traveling specialist) to train some of their technicians. While
I was there I met a fellow that had a COMPLETE 4 Phi-deck Z80 Digital Group
system with the dress skins! I was immensely impressed with the system and
ALL THE SOFTWARE! I couldn't believe how nice it was. I think that this was
around 1978.

I was then running an Apple ][ (original model, s/n 16,000 something) with 2
Disk ][ drives (s/n 600 or so) that I carried around in the top half of my
Samsonite suitcase, it being more important for that purpose than to merely
tote clothes around <g>. My first computer was completely hand built, but
that isn't relevant here...

Needless to say, the Apple ][ was somewhat underwhelming after seeing the
Digital Group OS and hardware.

Stuart Johnson