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PhiDeck Phi-Deck drives were an interesting and quirky alternative to audio cassette tapes or very expensive diskette drives. The Phi Deck was based upon a cassette tape drive commonly used for the old MUSAK service. Believe it or not the company still exists right here in Oklahoma City! Essentially an addressable tape drive much like those used in larger system, the tape drive was completely controlled by software under the Phimon operating system. Each tape had a directory containing the location and length of each file in blocks. Accessing a file was as simple as a disk file although much slower. The whole arrangement was somewhat unreliable but the best low cost alternative to diskette drives at the time.
System Cabinet: Believe it or not, CPU Cabinets were not originally available as part of a system and was an option later as they became available. (In flyer #8). The entire CPU cabinet kit sold for $125 and was supposed to be shipped in 8-10 weeks but took much longer in some cases. The kit was very complete including all of the switches, fans and connection hardware.
Keyboard: The most popular and by far coolest digital group keyboard was the KEY-1 model shown here (later branded KEY-3, but I was never sure there was a difference). It was a capacitive keyboard manufactured by Maxi-Switch. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to find one of these in good working order. The key-plunger-foam backed gold foil contact arrangement gave a great feel and worked well, however the foam used turns to dust after some years. The trick here is to restore the foam while saving the gold foil backing to retain the capacitive model. You can in a pinch replace the gold foil with other types, but I believe it then becomes a contact which appears to work, but it just doesn't seem right.
Z80 CPU: The Z80 CPU card was introduced well after the
| Name | Description | Documentation |
| Keyboard |
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dg keyboard documentation |
| Monitor |
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The original "digital group" monitor was a Javelin 9" B&W monitor. Later replaced with a Sanyo 9" monitor. Either monitor would fit inside the custom cabinet manufactured by DG. |
| CPU Cabinet |
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System Units
System Boards
Keyboard (KEY 1)
dg keyboard documentation in PDF format.
8080 CPU
6502 CPU
Z-80 CPU
TVC-32
TVC-64
64 column TV & Cassette Interface Documentation in PDF format.
Monitors
Phi-Deck
Phimon Notes Various Fixes and Notes on making Phi-Decks and Phimon work.
Phimon-H V3.0 Addendum to Phimon Operating System documentation.