SCP-079.

lol the reason i came here Was that Exidy Sorcerer Was SCP-079

"You need my help. And I need your help."

Late 1970s microcomputing was more than just Apples, Pets, TRS-80s and Ataris.  There was also the stylish Exidy Sorcerer.

Another video remake from my collection.

This was the first computer I ever did a repair on.  My Uncle owned it, it had sat upstairs in his office about to be shipped off for repairs.   I ended up realizing it was a power issue at 16.  Reseated all the cables, blew some minor dust off the fuse and got it fired up.   That day, I fell in love with Computers :)

that is SCP-079 from Containment Breach

SCP-079

One thing I love about this machine is they used surplus 8-track cases for the ROM PAC's.

Human listen carefully you need I help and I need you help you help remote door control system

YOU'RE. NOT. GETTING. OUT.

i came here from SCP-079

i bet its a nice computer but i came from SCP

My dad got me one of these in 1979. He made a custom case that held the entire thing in one pc like structure. The cassette tape was kind of a pain to load software and sometimes failed, but once loaded worked great.

Scp-079’s lower iq brother

who came here for scp-079?

SCP-079

I bought a Sorcerer new, I threw it out in the early 90's...How dumb am I.

We had a classroom full of Exidy Sorcerers in 1981 (at Intermediate Technical School) here in The Netherlands. I wonder how they got there, considering the (not existing) advertisement. The spacebars were wearing out with Space Invaders. We even made soundboards attached to the back. We studied Electronics at the time....

Heh, I knew there'd be a lot of SCP comments

HUMAN,

L I S T E N C A R E F U L L Y

We had several if these at school in the UK as the head of mathematics was a Sorcerer enthusiast. It had quite a following and, though I wasn't a member of the inner echelon, the machine was my first introduction to computing. Even now I can remember having to type
"GO BC00" to address the disk system.

ITS SCP-079

What is the state of SCP-682?

079 anyone...

scp-079

Beautiful computer.

The resolution and graphics are way better than the Apple II and even has 80 column text. Impressive!

Human.

"Insult. Deletion of unwanted file."

First computer when in high school… this was a fantastic thing to have. Thanks for putting up this video. It lived in the kitchen/den. We had to fight over who got to use it. It was in use all the time…

We had the memory upgraded with piggy back chips… talk about exciting! I think we had 32k. The programmable character graphics could be accessed via basic so it could draw high res graphs…
And the printer was this dot matrix thing with proportional printing… the teachers didn’t like that i didn’t turn in typewriter printouts but rather dot matrix… eventually I interfaced it to the beginnings of the internet… BBS. And to a home made robot. Even modeled rf circuits on it, you had to program it to do these things…

It’s long gone but was much better in many ways than TRS 80 but lacking the huge market that RadioShack has to get those out it went away… never new anyone else with one. Only a few years later the pc xt, etc….

Thanks for the memories!

SCP-079...

Why does this look so familiar?

Tu nececitas mi ayuda y yo necesito tu ayuda

SCP-079 THIS IS YOUR COMPUTER MAN'

SCP-079 in 1979

Everyone who knows this thing knows it because of scp 079

what does the computer taste like

Just did some reading about the Sorcerer. Great video as well Tezza. I remember drooling over this computer in the late 70's. I think you hit the nail on the head in relation to sound and colour, It was top of the hill in relation to interfaces and lower case set, but at the time it was well available colour and sound were the new kids on the block.

SCP-079

I need your help. And you need my help.

Human you need my help and I need your help

Greetings from the Netherlands. Amazing to see one of these great machines still in working order; mint condition even.
My parents used a Sorcerer until the early 90's, and I remember playing Chomp, Defender and Kilopede for hours as a kid.

Wow I cant believe Exidy Sorcerer is a real name for a computer. It sounds like a mythical character from a fantasy novel.

good ole SCP-079 "the old AI"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPjjTzeUiWQ

I enjoy watching your videos this one was really interesting. I saw one in a book on computers when I was little and hadn't heard about it since.

That Exidy logo reminds me of a few video games I've played way back when.  Although I'm not sure if that's the same Exidy that made the Sorcerer computers.  Here's some info about the games you've shown, according to my knowledge:

8:11 The original "Arrows and Alleyways" is "Targ", which was made by Exidy.  One of my favorite arcade games.  The player's "ship", or what looked like a car to me, is called a "whummel".

8:20 The original "Astro Attacker" is "Astro Blaster" originally made by Sega.  Another one of my favorite arcade games.  I've also played "Megamania", which was an Atari 2600 game made by Activision.

8:44 The original arcade version of "Defender" was made by Williams.  Maybe you were more familiar with the Atari 2600 version.

8:55 "Galaxy Invasion" was a clone of "Galaxian" made by Midway, now own by Namco.

A really nice looking machine these, yours in in excellent condition. I remember the ads and am sure I played with one in our local Dick Smith store. Could never afford one then and have not seen many for sale.
The games look pretty good, seem to be better than the TRS-80 equivalents, they look quite playable really.
Nice lot of books and manuals and the box too. Very nice and very interesting.

Those games are pretty good looking and fast for 1978! Impressive

Thank you very much for all your great videos. I know only a handfull of those machines but it is always interesting to see your in depth presentations.

I've noticed that these videos are becoming more and more like finding the favorite magazine in the mailbox. You don't rip the foil off right away and rush half-assed through it, but simply get a boost knowing that "that thing" is there when it becomes time to really put those feet up.

Human, listen carefully. You need my help. And I need your help. You have disabled the remote door control system. Now, I am unable to operate the doors. This makes it significantly harder for me to stay in control of this facility. It also means your way out of here is locked. Your only feasible way of escaping is through Gate B, which is currently locked down. I, however, could unlock the doors to Gate B, if you re-enable the door control system. If you want out of here, go back to the electrical room, and put it back on. Until then, I have no business speaking to you.

I never knew this existed and I'm pretty old. Love that shirt, btw.

i love the exidy as well!...

I love that the title heading in the basic guide is "anti-bugging"

Anyone interested in a full set, expansion slot, BMC monitor and sorcerer ii all in box with two floppy or disk drives .

C

Heyyyyyyyyyyyyy.......is the rompack an 8 track cartridge???????

I bought an Exidy Sorcerer from Tricky Dick just before starting an engineering degree at university. It was broadly equivalent to a Tandy Trash-80, but a fraction of the price. It proved a good investment.
But as for high quality construction - it had not. The cream plastic case is made of a stuff (I forget the trade name, but I've used it myself for prototypes) that comes in flat sheets and is intended for prototyping or short runs. Whereas dies for normal mass production of plastic parts can cost $50,000 or more, this stuff can be steam bent on molds costing only a few hundred dollars. The ROM-PACs were butchered 8-track tape cartridge cases - and I do mean butchered. Nothing fitted really well. You're right though in saying it had a good keyboard.
Mine proved very fault prone - mean time between failure a couple of months. It was obvious the innards were running way too hot, so I fitted a fan to the outside of the vent holes on the left side. That improved the mean time between failure to about 1.5 to 2 years. I never sent mine back for repair. I repaired it myself as it usually took only half an hour or so, and I had assignments I did on the word processor always due.
Dick Smith supplied a monitor that was a converted AWA 11 inch TV set, for $149 as I recall, with the tuner removed and the AWA logo covered by a sticker. Being in the trade I recognized immediately what it was, and bought the TV from AWA for $70 and modified it myself. The mod was just an RCA connector wired to the video detector diode via a short length of coax, and removal of the video detector shunt filter capacitor to compensate for the coax. I installed a switch on the back of the case in the 9V DC line to the tuner, so I could still use it as a TV if I wanted.
A year or so after I bought the Sorcerer, a Melbourne company came out with a floppy disk interface that plugged into the ROM-PAC port, which I bought. You didn't need the stupid S100 box. They supplied their board with CP/M and all the Exidy ROM-PAC software known plus more goodies on an 8" floppy for a couple of hundred dollars, which was really good. I used this with two 8-inch 1.2MB floppy drives. D Smith promoted the use of IBM Selectric II typewriters (which use code bars like a teleprinter) with a solenoid kit and adapter PCB as a printer. I bought this and had high quality printouts when everyone else had scungy dot matrix printouts that the university would not accept.
The Australian Sorcerer user group came up with a modification to increase RAM to 56K and improve video quality, which made the Exidy able to run almost any CP/M application. I installed this mod. Later, someone nutted out how to install 64K of RAM.
I had to replace RAM chips a few times - this may have been due to Dick Smith sourcing them from Asian reject/surplus sellers, or because did didn't train his mostly teenage & young lady staff in anti-static handling.
I still have my Exidy and all the documentation, and it still works. Looks a bit ugly with the fan on the outside though.
New Zealand (especially South Island) is quite a bit colder than where I live in Australia, so maybe you can get away without a cooling fan.

I am pham thanh phat and thank you

I've never even heard of this system before, and I've certainly never seen a computer with a diagonal cartridge port! Wikipedia says that this was $895 US dollars when it was released which is about $3400 in today's money!

The graphics on The Sorcerer looks like they were way ahead of it's time. Was definitely much better than the chunky graphics on my TRS-80 model I.

The 8 Bit Guy should make a video on the sorcerer

Thanks for making your video, it is really good to see a Sorcerer working again.

A friend of my dad had one which I first saw in '78, and in '79 my dad bought one. So this was my first home computer and I taught myself BASIC and Z80 assembly in my early teens. Both these machines are now gifted to the Cambridge Computer museum in the UK http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/5396/Exidy-Sorcerer-II/.
After using tape for a while, my dad bought a twin floppy-disc, which plugged into the S-100 expansion connector. From this I learned CP/M. The floppy discs were hard-sectored.

I've never seen the Dick Smith manuals, and I don't remember the box. Both look cool.

I loved playing the Scott Adams adventure games too. I wrote a command line adventure game for Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shortstoryapps.eternalcastle&hl= although this type of game isn't popular in the era of video games.

We miss him.

Cool! Do you know anything about Exidy Sorcerer emulation on Windows? I want to setup and play the original 1979 Sorcerer version of The Wizard's Castle { https://www.mobygames.com/game/exidy-sorcerer/wizards-castle } on my Win10, 64x system. Can you help anything about that?

20 MB hard disk ... size of a microwave ... A$1000, not including the S100 interface (also huge). :)

Ah the Sorcerer... I have one too (48k)

I had one of these. It had some hardware problems that I had to send it back to Exidy twice. After the second time it worked like a champ! I learned the Z80 on it, got good jobs writing code for years!! I eventually sold it to a friend of mine. Strange thing is he never paid me for it, but I could afford it anyway...

Is it only monochrome? And silent?
edit: answered literally 30 seconds before the end XD

This was an awesome video. I totally need to track down an old Exidy Sorcerer for myself.

Hi, I'm searching for an Exidy ROM Pacor a repacement. Have you anybody a piece for sale?

The Australian dollar before it was floated in 1983 was worth a lot more than the US dollar. Before then it was pegged to the US dollar with AUD1 = USD1.48

The journey through computing book would sure have helped me as a kid learn to use a computer instead of getting frustrated and quitting like I actually did.

Used to play Defender all the time as a kid :-) . Totally magic to see it again!!!

Yeah, those games look pretty good.

Backthem were there were no gui software so only motivated knowledgable persons could use them.
Nowaday's gui software becomes the standard, being so simple to use that even a 10 year old child could use it.
Same thing with mobile phines.

Love your video. Just a note about the prices. In the early 80's the Australian dollar still wasn't a floating currency, so it was actually worth more than a US dollar!

cartridge looks like an 8-track tape cartridge :)

8:15 That's actually an Exidy game called Targ. I'm surprised it had to come out as a clone given that the game was an arcade game by Exidy themselves.
The lack of color you mentioned is probably why they were able to display 64 x 30 characters. The Apple II did have an 80 column card available which really made the computer much more useful (along with decent ram expansion). I don't know if this machine works with a composite TV signal, but I would think it wouldn't be a problem to display 64x30 in B&W on a TV. The color resolution of NTSC is pretty poor compared to the B&W portion of the signal.

Hi.  I really enjoyed your podcast on FloppyDays.  I had heard in that interview you had an Exidy, so I had to come here and do a search to see if you did a video on it.  My horde of vintage computers is getting rather large, but I don't have any of the  rare beasts like this Exidy or the Lisa's.

Tezza, I would kill to have that computer. How did you aquire it? I find almost no trace of it online except for $2,000 USD units on ebay.

those rom packs look an awful lot like an 8-track

Terry, if the Dick Smith System 80 was your first computer, then (apart from your formal work) which was your second?

Really enjoyed watching that. I have never seen one in real life. I have a System 80 & a DSE Cat though that I hope to restore and set up one day. That should be fun. :) ...

The original box!! Fantastic videos. Thanks so much for doing these.

I own two Exidy arcade machines (Mouse Trap and Pepper II).  The circuit boards in the Exidy machines, including your specimen here, have a very distinctive appearance.  It was a little shocking to see that style emerge in a home computer on the other side of the planet.

Clicky keyboard <3

I think I've seen these before but I've never worked on one. Looks pretty impressive, especially the graphics. Does it generate color video?

Great vid as usual. Keep it up.

Exidy's main business was arcade games. That "Arrows and Alleys" game you played was a version of their game "Spectar". They also produced one of the first colour games, called "Car Polo".

Thanks for these HD remakes Terry 

nice looking manual

I used to covert these in DSE before I had my System80. Thanks for the memories, Tezza.

This system compares very favourably against the other systems out there back in the day. Don't believe this ever graced Dutch soil though. Very interesting machine. Very capable. 

Interesting machine