This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Vector Graphics  Vector 4 computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

Hey Jeff, this is Dennis Wingo, used to work in Engineering. If any of you guys want to get rid of your Vector 4 let me know.

Dennis

I still have an new Vector 4 in storage. I should since I was one of the key Operation Systems developers at Vector Graphics.

Amazing that there are still a few of these in operation. All-in-all they were a great machine for a specific niche market (Word processing, spreadhseet, and simple accounting through Peachtree).

I was given this computer as a second-hand gift when I was thirteen years old in 1985. I had no idea what to do with it or how to operate it, but one day I was messing around with it, thinking of the movie Wargames, and typed in "PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY SYSTEM" for no other reason than being thirteen. I was met with an "illegal operation" error message. I stared in horror at the screen, thinking$despite having no modem$that I had been caught by the Secret Service! I pulled the power plug out of the wall and spent the next few days waiting for a knock on the door. I refused to turn it back on for weeks after that!

Looking for service info on the Vector Graphics 4. Even just a main board schematic would do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v$zsjTpFR0oYQ please help we have zx spectrum 48k and one 128k program running at 6mhz using external ram and snapper discs from velesoft site

I have an old Vector 4 or 4S. Is it worth anything? If interested email me at wings@wctc.net

Back in the early 1980''s I hired a small programming company to create a complete personal financial planning software system to create financial plans instead of doing it manually. The only machine at the time that could handle what we needed to do was a Vector 4.

I still have that original machine but have lost the keyboard. It boots up fine except for the KB error.

I am trying to find a keyboard that will work and it appears to be impossible to find one made for this computer. Because it has a RJ11 interface I am wondering if other keyboards of that era that have RJ11 plugs will work. I have found a HP 2392 2394 Terminal Keyboard and a Vintage Wyse 901876-01 RJ-11 Terminal Keyboard (US/UK ASCII). Does anyone know if either of those two KBs would work with my Vector 4 box? If not, any suggestions of what else I might to to get a keyboard that can work with this machine?

Thanks

E-mail if interested in buying is thovey@proactinc.org

Dennis Wingo or anyone else I have a I have a Vector 4 I am looking to sell. We are an R2 recycler and would be selling this as an untested collectable

Hi guys, worked at Vector Graphics Ventu Park in the mid 80''s. Nice group of people. It was so sad watching assets being sold off. :-(
I still have one of the Tektronix oscilloscopes they were selling off near the end. Sad end to a great company.

Greets- I''m amazed that there are still Vectors out there running. I had a Vector 4S as my very first personal computer. I discovered the trace on the MB that you could cut or bridge to get either the Z80 or the 8088. I put in a micro switch on the side so I could easily boot either OS. The 16 hard sector floppies were a pain tho.
I started on a TRS-80 Level 1 16K for our family business. We later got 8088 clone. The Vector was my very first all my own. I have kept most of the boxes that I used thru the yrs. This 1 I didn''t. If any1 has 1 4 sale...

I have two Vector Graphic 4 systems and am interested in selling them. Both are fully operable and have software (MEMORITE +). Is there a market for these?

I purchased a Vector Graphics in 1982 because you could run multiple workstations at the same time. I had four machines hooked together and ran accounting, word processing and spreadsheet applications at the same time.. only problem was, each others data got in each others data! VG engineers came to sort it out. For awhile, software vendors pointed at hardware, hardware pointed at software. In the end... they believed it was "dirty power" - voltage spikes! I often wondered if some internal computing processing had problems with slicing how it shared memory or something. No matter, at the time it was cheaper than the $12K per machine I had paid in 1980 for Wang word processors. And with the VG I could have multiple people working on the one machine at the same time. Just had to be careful to make sure each person saved their data at separate times. Overall it was a great machine.

In the mid-80''s, the firm i worked for as the controller bought a Vector Graphic 4 switching our accounting system over from pen ''n ink (or even a Pegboard system). It had a 5 Mb hard drive and 1 floppy drive used for backups. We bought and installed CYMA as our accounting software$ we utilized only G/L, A/P and A/R and this fulfilled our accounting to a "tee." We loved the keyboard (over the IBM-PC''s) and the processing speed was certainly fast enough for us. We had only one user, my accounting assistant, enter data, but I did the financials, etc. Bottomline: Loved it.

I had one of these in 1991 that I brought for $100. I was heavy into CP/M and felt this would be a good start switching to the MS DOS world as it did both.The first day I had it I was exploring the C drive, seeing what was on there and decided to get rid of some junk on the hard drive. So at the C:$ prompt I typed del *.* to clean out the directory. I didnt realize I was in the root directory, CP/M didn''t have that it had user areas, and thought I was in the directory that had the files I wanted to $ so now I had a nice CP/M machine and a PC compatible system with no operating system. And since it used hard sector disks I wasnt able to find any boot disks to restore it. Other than that I loved the system.

Hello, if you remember I ran Maintenance after John Murray. John passed away last year. And Bill Lawson is at Polymetrics in Arlington TX.

My husband started his computer business on the old Vectors. We still have 3 complete units that still run. Are they worth anything?

I have a Vector 4 in storage. I picked it up for free at a Hamfest years ago. I knew nothing about the machine but the sleek design of the machine was really intriguing. It looks like it belongs on the set of Space:1999.

I also have 3 Vector 4s and still run them to this day all with 10mb hdds soon to be 20mb as i just got a few old 20mb MFM-RLL drives.

I have a WORKING Vector 4 computer! I use it for experimenting with programming and stuff. I actually wrote a chess game for it!