atariscott
Well-known member
Here is a little piece of arcade history that I picked up recently. It is a complete miracle that this thing has survived. The story is slightly complicated but here it goes.
A friend of mine was looking for a Tektronix 8560 to help someone read some data from an 8 inch floppy of arcade source code from 1980. He needed this unit, because the game was developed with this hardware. He searched eBay and he eventually found a selling, with a lot of 5 units for sale. In the pictures of the auctions were lots of vintage computer parts and floppy discs. He won the auction and paid the seller.
He had a friend that was local to the seller pick up the items and they delivered it to him a couple months later. When he started going through the boxes, he noticed some floppy discs with familiar names on them. Solar Quest, Space Wars, Hovercraft, and a whole bunch of others. He had stumbled upon one of the Cinematronics development systems and a floppy disc archive. There are hundreds of 8 inch floppy discs in 4 bankers boxes.
What is truly amazing, is that this pickup was was a complete fluke. The eBay seller had picked up these items at a storage unit auction in the San Diego area. He had no idea what he had stumbled upon. The original auction never mentioned the Terak system and did not have any pictures of it either. Also, if my friend had not been looking for a Tektronix 8560, during the week that this auction ran, this stuff may have ended up in a non-arcade collectors hands. It may have even ended up in a dumpster if the auction had ended with no bidders. Not many people are looking for a Tektronix 8560....
I have just started going through the discs, but there are some amazing things on the few I have looked at.
A friend of mine was looking for a Tektronix 8560 to help someone read some data from an 8 inch floppy of arcade source code from 1980. He needed this unit, because the game was developed with this hardware. He searched eBay and he eventually found a selling, with a lot of 5 units for sale. In the pictures of the auctions were lots of vintage computer parts and floppy discs. He won the auction and paid the seller.
He had a friend that was local to the seller pick up the items and they delivered it to him a couple months later. When he started going through the boxes, he noticed some floppy discs with familiar names on them. Solar Quest, Space Wars, Hovercraft, and a whole bunch of others. He had stumbled upon one of the Cinematronics development systems and a floppy disc archive. There are hundreds of 8 inch floppy discs in 4 bankers boxes.
What is truly amazing, is that this pickup was was a complete fluke. The eBay seller had picked up these items at a storage unit auction in the San Diego area. He had no idea what he had stumbled upon. The original auction never mentioned the Terak system and did not have any pictures of it either. Also, if my friend had not been looking for a Tektronix 8560, during the week that this auction ran, this stuff may have ended up in a non-arcade collectors hands. It may have even ended up in a dumpster if the auction had ended with no bidders. Not many people are looking for a Tektronix 8560....
I have just started going through the discs, but there are some amazing things on the few I have looked at.



