A Somewhat Rare Local Commodore Find

I woke up to an email notice of a local estate sale, already open, with a “Commodore computer.”  That usually means a C64 and the Clowns cartridge, but the photos revealed an item of quite another level.  I couldn’t make it until the afternoon, and anything rare/ebayable is usually gone minutes after opening, but luck was with me today.  We have:

– Commodore B128-80 computer, in-box
– Commodore 8050 IEEE floppy drive, in-box
– Commodore 4023 LQ dot-matrix printer, in-box
– CA (Computer Associates) monochrome display.  This is an odd one; I thought they only made power strips and mainframe tape racks and such.

No manuals for anything.  They were either lost somewhere in the house or these items were purchased non-retail with no docs.

The B128 is fairly rare in the US but was blown out at a discount in the late 80s by the famous Protecto Computer Direct in Barrington, IL.  I’m betting that’s where this one came from – in fact it could be the very “computer/drive/monitor/printer bundle” they advertised.  It was just like Protecto to sub in a cheap 3rd-party monitor like this one.

So the original owner got a bargain.  And as soon the old man discovered there was zero software for it, back in the box it went.

Update: I guess this is indeed the “Protecto Special.”  This reddit user found the same combo, albeit with a different no-name display.