Kaypro "1"

I picked up a Kaypro 1 on eBay.  I bid bare minimum and got it (which means no one else wanted it).

When it arrived, I did the usual tear down and evaluation.

• Disk drives in good condition.  Cleaned.
• RIFAs replaced - because you know they will blow up.
• Deoxit in the brightness POT.
• Replaced the keyboard cable since it had gone bad.  Interestingly, the cable from my 4/83 worked, but the replacement didn't.  But the replacement worked on my 4/83 so all is good.
• Keyboard good.
• Replaced the case screws.  The previous owner(s) had replaced many screws with mismatched versions.
  

But what was strange was the ROM chip.  Instead of being labeled with the version number, it had "2.2G" on it - meaning CP/M 2.2G.  Also, there was a label on the back of the case that said "Kaypro 2".

More research showed at least 2 other Kaypros in the same state.  It seems that kaypro offered a service to "downgrade" your Kaypro 1 to a Kaypro 2/84.

The next step was boot disks.  I stole an OpenFlops out of the 4/83 and got several disk images from the Internet.  One of those images worked perfectly, so I use that to make several boot floppies.  Then I put the floppy drive back in and the OpenFlops back in the 4/83.

tl;dr I made several more disks, copying what I had from other sources and downloaded many files.  So I now have a nice disk library for the "1".

I'll probably do a Gotek upgrade to this at some point.  But my 5.25" stash is pretty large right now.  So I don't see a need.  The half-height drives in the "1" aren't nearly as bad as the full height ones from the 4/83.

I did upgrade my version of Super Star Trek to include the additional screen attributes that the 1 supports (since they didn't downgrade the video chip).  Mainly the reverse screen and the blink modes.