Exidy Sorcerer: Mystery Solved
Buried in a “power supply” as described to me by the previous owner, I managed to acquire a fully populated Exidy Sorcerer S-100 Expansion Kit card. It is in an interesting case that very much looks like an old bench power supply.
Once you study all angles of this heavy metallic case and figure out where the rubber feet are located you will find that pointing them down will transform the case into an early S-100 based mid-tower. The case is split up into two compartments. The lower compartment houses the power supply and the top compartment holds a 6 slot S-100 bus motherboard that is literally “cut to fit”. One side is trimmed.
So the mystery of the Exidy Interface card is solved because I now have a fully populated version in this “Exidy Tower” noted in quotes because it certainly is not an Exidy product but is a tower of sorts with, what appears to be, a home brew S-100 Expansion chassis. The tower includes:
– An Exidy S-100 Expansion kit card (to connect the S-100 tower to the Exidy Sorcerer)
– A California Computer Systems Model 2422 FDD (for an 8″ dual floppy drive that came with the lot)
– A California Computer Systems Model 2032 32k Static RAM card
– A CompuPro Disk 3 hard disk controller (for a Tandon ST-506 compatible hard drive that came with the lot as well).
I am missing a the Exidy S-100 cable and the power cable for the tower needs renewing so I’ll be looking into that shortly but all accounts seem to point to this Exidy Tower as being the missing hub to the Sorcerer and some peripherals I acquired from the same person.
This is very exciting to see if all of the parts work. I also have Exidy CP/M 8″ disks as well as others and I’m very interested to see what’s on those disks, if this in fact works.
More to follow. For now, here are some pictures.
The “Exidy Tower” computer:
The S-100 interface cards:
A full size front picture of the Exidy S-100 Expansion Kit card (for detail):
Exidy S-100 Expansion Kit card – Detailed
More to come once I try to connect everything.
Writing from Calgary…
A most interesting & topical web site, to be sure. Have here a Sorcerer II with all mods, also upgraded to 56K (ROM pack with static RAM). Just sourced an Exidy Video Disk from a friend, hopefully all will work once connected & powered up.. Have one problem – I upgraded to aftermarket boot roms that have a different start “go address” Unsure of what it is, though I still have the original ROMS. Also have original copies of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, as well many games (most on cassette tape). And Small talk programming language on disk. Not to mention a parallel port (rudimentary) audio adapter. More to tell if you are interested. P.
WOW!!!!
What Hath God Wrought!
I am amazed at 80 years old this year I am finding all of the amazing stories and finds on the internet for my previous companies in Silicon Valley.
Your story and the many others that I have read about warms the cockles of my heart that so many people have taken to computers and spent so many countless hours in the pursuit of their interest. I participated in a podcast this year with ” Floppy days” after I had heard the story of the exidy Sorcerer from Howell Ivy the designer. That fueled my interest to elaborate with my own upcoming story of the true success of a beautifully designed product of its time and elaborate on its true success in spite of what has been said..
Your interest and endeavors prove my point that the Sorcerer Computer was my dream of what a personal computer should be …..
Thank you all,
The Sorcerer of Exidy
Paul Terrell
I happen to be of your vintage. I too purchased a Sorcerer Mk1 that died and later aMk2 with a double Micropolis floppy hard sectored drives, an S100 box populated with extra memory as well as the Micropolis controller. I have recently fired up the system that likely did not catch fire, but without a monitor, I had to purchase a composite to VGA adaptor. Still waiting for that as I hope all will work. Along the way through the Australian SCUA club, someone knoledgeable designed a very profession 80 column card that could be retrofitted to the Sorcerer.
I still hold dozens of floppies with various programs, eg. Dbase, word processors, Mdos an CPM. I designed a daisy wheel Olivetti typewriter interface to act like a parallel printer, and my wife used it to write thesis for university students. Ah, the good old days!
The complete system cost over $3500 in 1980 money, a fortune in today’s money.
Paolo Colombo Canberra Australia