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The Mindset

The Mindset was one of the first dedicated video-processing (plus effects) computers. Released in the mid 1980s, it had a short life in the market due to the fact that it had a closed architecture. Just as the Bay Area-based company was opening the Mindset up it went out of business. The Mindset was supplanted by such systems as the Video Toaster on the Amiga platform as well as the Macintosh. The Mindset was once included in a museum of modern art for its case design. The Mindset was one of the few commercial computers that used bubble memory cartridges for stored programs.

Thanks Robert Furber for your donation of this Mindset and Larry Shaw of the Exploratorium for donations of two other Mindsets.

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Mindset expansion and base module
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Bob Furber talking about the Mindset
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Installing a bubble memory cartridge
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TS-232 Module
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Installing modules on the back
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Mindset Documentation

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Mindset OS
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Mindset users group
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Using the Lumena software on the Mindset
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Mindset speed comparison
with other computers of the time
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Mindset video effects fader/transition
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Comments from Curt @ Atari Museum (July 2005):

What I can do is share with you many of the emails I exchanged with several of the people who ran Mindset. I got heavily involved with researching and collecting Mindset because basically it was an Atari computer system, brief history:

Roger Baderscher (President of Mindset) was the head of Atari's Home Computer Division from 1980-1982 and had quietly commissioned the design of a new modular computer system while at Atari, using Atari Industrial Design resources and tapping into one of Atari VLSI engineers Chris Rhode. Roger, Chris and about a dozen Atari Home Computer division engineers would leave Atari in 1982 and form Mindset, and their quiet skunkworks project would become a reality.

I've got some nice brochures and other materials I can scan and send to you, I have every module, expansion pak and controller made for the system and Chris Rhodes has promised me that eventually when he digs up his old schematics and notes he'll send them my way for the M-1001 Mindset. I also have 2 M-3000's which are the rackmount JVC'd versions of the Mindset system that JVC used in-house after they bought Mindset in 1986.

Know anything more about the Mindset? Contact us!

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