Vintage Sharp PC-7000 Pick-up

A local newspaper outlet closed in my hometown, so I was was instructed to go through their inventory to see if there was anything I'd be interested in keeping before everything got recycled or thrown away. While picking through a particularly dusty pile, I stumbled upon a long lost treasure from our not so distant past.

When I first spotted it in the pile, I thought it was an old speaker or some sort of old medical device. At closer inspection, my heart dropped and I knew I had struck gold.

I immediately plugged it in to see if it still had a pulse. Pressed the power button, and the screen turned on with the classic DOS prompt we've all come to love. It had Dos 2.11 preinstalled, although it didn't boot at first because I had to find its matching master boot disc. Once booted, it worked just as well as the day it was purchased.

It included a matching genuine copy of MS DOS 2.11 on two 5 1/4 inch floppy discs specific to this particular model. I didn't think the data on the floppys survived till now, but I was proven wrong. They worked just as well as the day they were purchased. Whoever bought them must not have used them more then once.

The screen is similar to a glass version of a monochrome calculator screen. It can be tilted up based on the users preferences, and there is a contrast dial for when your working in bright or dark environments. For a 40 year old computer, it runs SUPER quiet, just a subtle hum from the CPU fan inside.

Unlike modern laptops, it only needs a 3-prong PC power cord to be powered and it does not have any internal battery.

There is no internal Hard Drive on this model. Disc drive A: would contain your operating system boot disc, and disc drive B: would have the software you were running as well as your current working files.

I have no idea what something like this is worth, and I've been struggling to find a definitive value as this is a niche item that only collectors would be interested in. When it first released, it retailed for $2,500 USD although its current value is WAY under that. Regardless of value, I'm glad to have it in my collection.

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