California Digital
roger hanscom
interest for the folks reading this thread. Digital Research CP/M (format
unspecified, but it looks like 5.25" in the picture) for $9 with dox. 8"
DD diskettes $12.95 for 10 (pretty steep!), and an 8" head cleaning kit for
$5.00. A page-long list of 8" disk drives from many vendors (15+). They
claim to maintain the world's largest selection of 8" drives. If they have
all that are listed on the page (maybe 40 to 50 types), this claim is probably
true. They also have some "oldie" 5.25" drives. They actually advertise a
CompuPro RAM-21 card (S-100) for $79 ( list is given as $799. ---- heh, heh,
heh!). I believe that this is a 128k board based on 16k x 1 chips. The
blurb says it will go above 10 MHz!!
I have no connection with California Digital. I've not even been a customer,
but that will change shortly ($9 for a licensed copy of CP/M...what a deal!).
California Digital, 17700 Figueroa Street, Gardena, CA 90248
800/421-5041 or 310/217-0500 FAX 310/217-1951
Anybody who tries them out, please give us a review....OK?????
sa...@ll.mit.edu
and asked:
>> Anybody who tries them out, please give us a review....OK?????
I had a number of extremely unsatisfactory dealings with them years ago
and personally would never order from them again no matter how
attractive the price. Some of the problems involved disk drives that
came miswired so as to potentially damage themselves and the equipment
to which they were attached. Customer service responded very poorly,
if at all, to my attempts to get service.
It is possible, of course, that my experiences were just several
isolated incidences or that the company has changed since that time.
-- Jay Sage
roger han...@athens.dis.anl.gov
-
Jeff Mickey
jeff
Don Maslin
: I got a flyer from California Digital in the mail tonight. A few items of
: interest for the folks reading this thread. Digital Research CP/M (format
: unspecified, but it looks like 5.25" in the picture) for $9 with dox. 8"
: DD diskettes $12.95 for 10 (pretty steep!), and an 8" head cleaning kit for
: $5.00. A page-long list of 8" disk drives from many vendors (15+). They
: claim to maintain the world's largest selection of 8" drives. If they have
: all that are listed on the page (maybe 40 to 50 types), this claim is probably
: true. They also have some "oldie" 5.25" drives. They actually advertise a
: CompuPro RAM-21 card (S-100) for $79 ( list is given as $799. ---- heh, heh,
: heh!). I believe that this is a 128k board based on 16k x 1 chips. The
: blurb says it will go above 10 MHz!!
Yeah, but did you check the prices on those 8" drives? Just like they
were ten years ago!
: I have no connection with California Digital. I've not even been a customer,
: but that will change shortly ($9 for a licensed copy of CP/M...what a deal!).
: California Digital, 17700 Figueroa Street, Gardena, CA 90248
: 800/421-5041 or 310/217-0500 FAX 310/217-1951
: Anybody who tries them out, please give us a review....OK?????
I haven't purchased anything from them recently, Roger, but was a
customer a number of years ago. They were straight!
- don
do...@cts.com
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
Norman Kraft
>Roger Hanscom reported on a flyer he received from California Digital
>and asked:
>>> Anybody who tries them out, please give us a review....OK?????
>I had a number of extremely unsatisfactory dealings with them years ago
>and personally would never order from them again no matter how
>attractive the price.
>It is possible, of course, that my experiences were just several
>isolated incidences or that the company has changed since that time.
I doubt they've changed. The last few times I've called them to
get information about something they had advertised, they were
unfriendly, hurried to the point of rudeness, and unhelpful. This
has happened on several phone calls. I've given up on these guys.
Recycle that flyer.
Norm.
Bob Harbour
: I got a flyer from California Digital in the mail tonight.
: California Digital, 17700 Figueroa Street, Gardena, CA 90248
: 800/421-5041 or 310/217-0500 FAX 310/217-1951
: Anybody who tries them out, please give us a review....OK?????
I have not dealt with them for about 8 years, but I used to buy from
them. I quit dealing with them because they refused to solve a problem
that I had with a disk drive that I bought from them. They also took 4 or
5 months to credit my credit card after I returned the drive (with RMA#).
I finally had to get the credit card people involved.
Bob Harbour
cwfe...@cctr.umkc.edu
I bought the $39 Xerox portable from them last year after
it was mentioned in this newsgroup.
It died overnight and they asked if I wanted a replacement
or a refund. I chose a refund because I wasn't as
enamored of the box as I thought I'd be.
A couple of months later, the credit showed up on my
credit card account.
Perhaps, they've improved?
Charles F. St Joseph MO
Don Maslin
: I haven't purchased anything from them recently, Roger, but was a
: customer a number of years ago. They were straight!
Sounds like I just lucked out back then!
- don
Norman Kraft
>Wellll...... not to contradict Jay and Jeff *too* much:
>I bought the $39 Xerox portable from them last year after
>it was mentioned in this newsgroup.
>It died overnight and they asked if I wanted a replacement
>or a refund. I chose a refund because I wasn't as
>enamored of the box as I thought I'd be.
That Xerox portable was a pretty strange machine. I called Calif.
Digital about it but, as usual, the person on the phone was hurried
and rude, so I never bought one.
I did get a chance to see one, though, at a friend's house. My problem
with it was that while the machine was advertised as portable, by the
time you plugged in all the hardware needed to get it running, it was
bigger than my Kaypros. No internal disk drive, no internal monitor,
nothing. Interesting to look at, but not very useful.
While I'm not a big fan of California Digital, and even though the
machine would most likely collect more dust than use, I probably
should have bought one for my dinosaur computer collection. It's
definitely an oddity.
Norm.
arog on BIX
The Cp/M that is in the California Digital ad may well be
for the Heath/Zenit and a hard sectored version at that.
They've been running the ad for a very long time and it's
not a supprise that that got left out as the copy was re-edited
for the flyer.
I've been doing business with them for near to eight years
my self.
Let me describe the operation there, from my memories of
the times that I've stopped in.
There is no real show room. There was a time, very long
ago, when they had aspirations of having one, but.... then
the rice.box.clones hit the market and the margins went
to zilch. There are normaly for folks there. One of them
is doing the shipping and three are on the phones, which
often get into an 'all lines lite' state as they try to
keep up with things.
As to service, such few problems as I've not been able to
clear myself, have been delt with fairly and in a reasonable
time frame.
What really matters to me is that unlike a majorchain store
not all that far from them, I have never gotten a repackaged
return from them. That other place has done that with manafestly
broken equipment and recently a friend hit that other place and
got equipment that was clearly broken when she opened the nicely
sealed package.
Maybe it's just me. I'll take a lot, in some areas, and understand
the store's problems. What I won't take is the kind of thing that
that other place pulls...
So, I'll keep dealing with California Digital, in no small part
that they've done a decent job over the years.
No, I don't and I have never worked for them.
Alan Ogden
ar...@BIX.com