Cambridge Retro Computer Club Meeting Notes 8th February, 2026

The Philips P2000C (1982) was brought by Binary Dinosaurs. It is a luggable but at 15kg only if you had a cast iron shoulder. 64k RAM running CP/M 2.2 or UCSD p-System (Pascal). Unique in luggable terms because it’s two machines in one – the Z80 compute side which also has a SASI HDD interface, and a serial terminal which is also Z80 powered. The terminal side can be driven externally. Twin TEAC FD55 360k and ports for external HDD, floppy, monitor. There is also a slot internally for a CoPower 8088 board to allow the machine to run MS-DOS.

Brought by Will, the last “BBC Microcomputer” with a BBC logo on the keyboard. This machine has recently been restored needing repair from internal battery leakage. Showing off Star Fighter 3000 and Zarch today.

Brought by Adrian

Last of the MSX family of computers, this is the MSX Turbo R, for the first time, the computer features a huge memory upgrade to 256k, there was a more expensive version, the GT which has 512K

The machine is notable for its dual processor design, as well as the usual Z80 processor, it also contains the much faster R800 one.

This allowed it to run its own dedicated software, as well as keeping backwards compatibility with older titles, though little Turbo R software of note was released

Older games often have hacks to allow it to run at more than double speed, using the R800, when this processor is in use, a light appears on the dashboard above the keyboard.

Other features are the inclusion of two cartridge ports, a fast 2DD disk drive, a slider control for faster firing, there is no tape interface with this machine.

The computer also has PCM sound capability, and contains a full word processor suite built in. A switch on the dash can select whether the machine boots into the word processor GUI, or boots to DOS, or if a cart or disk is inserted it will automatically load.

By the time the Turbo R standard was finalised only Panasonic were left as an MSX manufacturer, not a huge number were sold, and as a result, the computer is highly sought after, commanding high prices.

This was from the museum collection.

The museum holds 3 Enterprise 64K machines, and this sole model of the 128 edition

The Enterprise is a powerful 8 bit machine, and is notable for its flat profile, inbuilt joystick, and striking, colourful design.

Sadly the computer was released far too late, arriving around the time of the Atari ST launch in 1985, and made little impact on the computer scene.

More successful in Eastern Europe, The 128k has enjoyed support from home brew coders, who have produced hundreds of titles, mainly ported from the Spectrum and Amstrad. Egypt became a moderately successful home to the 64k model

Original contemporary software titles are very hard to come by and are hugely expensive when found.

This will soon be raffled off to make some charity money for The Befriending Scheme. Watch out for that on Discord!

This is Henry’s IBM 5162. Although it looks like a straight XT-era IBM PC, it represents an interesting transitional design, bridging the gap between the original XT and later AT-class machines. This particular example is upgraded with a 2MB RAMPack memory card, pushing it well beyond a typical XT configuration, and a custom GOTEK complimenting the standard-fare 1.2MB floppy disk drive for day-to-day usability. A rare exhibit, showing how far the XT platform could be taken with the right enhancements.

This is one of the museum’s current projects, trying to assemble a working Nascom.

This is my 65c02 home brew computer. I’ve tried to adopt the RCBus standard, to allow me to utilise cards produced for that system. It’s mostly built using wire wrapping on vero board. The backplane uses standard header sockets that allows cards to be connected. I’ve used a couple of GAL16v20 as glue logic. These also enable me to simulate some of the Z80 signals MEMREG, IOREQ so z80 io based RC2014 cards can work. I’ve lots of plans for the future of this, the big one is Multi User access.

From the museum collection.