old computer tower???

I received two old towers from a local guy cleaning out his garage. They are radio shack tr-80's with a whopping 5 megs one needs a key to start it and i don't have it.Both came with power cords and a couple of ribbon wires attached to them. I put them on *bay 4 or 5 times and nobody wanted them. It seems only working complete units are selling and not just the towers. I was wondering what i should do with these? I am a curious person so it's kinda killing me not to tear one open and see the old chips and hard drive plenty of gold pins I can see in the back ports to.

Can you open them up and get the part numbers off the mobo and power supplies. Sometimes the parts are worth more then the machine to the vintage sector.

Originally Posted by BRASSCATCHER

Can you open them up and get the part numbers off the mobo and power supplies. Sometimes the parts are worth more then the machine to the vintage sector.

good idea that will solve both my problems

I don't think they have a hard drive. Not sure though. I have one I have not looked at yet, but probably not.

as low as $25 a piece and nobody wanted them. I am not looking to get rich of from useless technology I just don't think there is much of a market and people who buy are buying complete working units with the books. I am guessing $5-10 in scrap for each one so im not really making a whole lot on them over ebay but i thought it might be worth a try.

I listed them for two weeks individual lots 4 or 5 times so they had been on for well over a month and seeing as it is tax return season I thought it would be the best time of year for people to have some extra cash for things like this. curiosity is getting the better of me and I opened one up last night and realized that my guess of 5-10 in scrap was way high there is nothing inside these old machines and i mean nothing. one board one tiny power supply board and what I believe is the hard drive. I think the disk drive is in the monitor or is a separate piece that you plug in. This part I have is not needed to run the tr-80 machine I believe it is just used for storage . There are none like it listed on *bay right now so i have no comparison as far as a price goes. I will call the guy that had these back for some other work he offered and asked him if he could remember if he had the manuals these seem to sell if you don't ask $300 for them....some people lol

Vintage mice can do well sometimes too...sold a 3 button recently for about $30.

Originally Posted by NHscrapman

I listed them for two weeks individual lots 4 or 5 times so they had been on for well over a month and seeing as it is tax return season I thought it would be the best time of year for people to have some extra cash for things like this. curiosity is getting the better of me and I opened one up last night and realized that my guess of 5-10 in scrap was way high there is nothing inside these old machines and i mean nothing. one board one tiny power supply board and what I believe is the hard drive. I think the disk drive is in the monitor or is a separate piece that you plug in. This part I have is not needed to run the tr-80 machine I believe it is just used for storage . There are none like it listed on *bay right now so i have no comparison as far as a price goes. I will call the guy that had these back for some other work he offered and asked him if he could remember if he had the manuals these seem to sell if you don't ask $300 for them....some people lol

If it is a "trs-80" it had no disk drive either. It had a cable that went to a cassette tape deck.

Actually a picture would be cool. I don't think we are talking about the same stuff here.

got a chance to take some pictures.


these are the only markings on the outside.

motherboard only markings say Tandy corp. made in usa

and the part i'm calling the hard drive.




it has three ports in the back control in, control out and data in. besides what is pictured there is only a fan. I did a little more digging and I think it's called a secondary hard drive but have yet to find anything definitive.

i'm going to try ebay one more time with the individual parts and see if i have any luck. if not it will be off to the scrap pile as 3 low grade boards and some steel i'm not sure whats in the hard drive but like i said i'm curious so it will be opened.