View allAll Photos Tagged retrocomputing
Finally! I've got my hands on an HP 35 calculator, the world's first pocket scientific calculator. It's older than me, though just barely.
Keytops from my spare-parts BBC B. Now lapel pins. My only concern is that people will be inclined to push them while I'm wearing them thus impaling me on the metal part. Even with the back on they're quite sharp.
Uno IMSAI 8080, clone dello Altair 8800, poggiato sopra un Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 8/E.
An IMSAI 8080, clone of the Altair 8800, on top of a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 8/E.
Un Commodore PET mod. 3016 accanto a un drive floppy doppio mod. 8250.
A Commodore PET 3016 next to an 8250 double floppy drive.
Dad hard at work. The piece of technology to our left is not a personal computer, but a very obscure bleeding-edge AT&T product, the Personal Terminal 510D. You can see some images here, and a helpful description here, but it's otherwise very little discussed on the Internet. Essentially, it's a phone - the whole screen apparatus (in brilliant green-on-black monochrome) just gives you the ability to store and call up numbers in a directory. That's a lot of hardware to replace a Rolodex and save a few button presses, but you could also plug in an optional (and proprietary) QWERTY keyboard, making it more clearly a "terminal" for remote mainframes or, I imagine, dialing in by modem to start games of Global Thermonculear Warfare.
Its most interesting feature - which honestly feels like AT&T slapping together some patents they had lying around in the hopes of generating a marketable product - is the gimmicky monitor. It's a touch-screen, or more like a "push" screen - I remember it having the resistance thick rubber, or a very stiff Jell-O, and you really had to push your finger against it to get a press to register. Consequently, it was known (at least around our house) as the "Jelly Telly." It seems to have first been shown off by AT&T in 1985, and seems to have come to market soon after (it's mentioned in this 1986 leasing ad)... but no idea when it came into our house or when this picture was taken.
Un sistema completo di elaborazione dati Hewlett Packard 3350 Laboratory Automation Systems.
A complete Hewlett Packard 3350 Laboratory Automation Systems.
Watching Petar Puskarich's presentation on running AppleWorks on the Apple II+ from the Byte Cellar during KansasFest 2022.
Uno ZX Spectrum modello originario (1982-1984) affiancato da una ZX Printer ed equipaggiato con un moderno lettore di schede Compact Flash. Il messaggio sullo schermo si riferisce al mio articolo pubblicato su Gamesark.it alla pagina:
www.gamesark.it/mostra_speciale.asp?c=165201420001453577&...
A ZX Spectrum, first series (1982-1984), together with a ZX Printer and equipped with a modern Compact Flash card reader. The message on the screen is related to my article published on the Gamesark.it website at this page (Italian only):
www.gamesark.it/mostra_speciale.asp?c=165201420001453577&...
Freshly compiled OTHELLO.C
ĀOnce upon a time in prehistoric days of personal computing, Robert Halstead of MIT wrote a game of Othello in C programming language. In late 1978, Leor Zolman really wanted to play that game on his micro but couldn't, he had to write a C compiler first. The compiler he wrote became known as BDS C -- one of the most widely known and influential C compilers of the 8-bit era.
In the fall of 2007 I really wanted to run a few old games and demos for an awesome but mostly forgotten computer called Vector-06C and, disappointed by the state of existing software emulators, created my own hardware implementation. Reverse engineered without a complete circuit diagram, with scarce documentation, tested by software written for the original computer it has fancy graphics and it plays music. But I find its role as a historical link the most fascinating.
Recreated in 2008 for want of a demo, using a compiler written in 1979 for want of an Othello game, running the game from mid-70's on a 21st century FPGA, here it is. Looking not very impressive but with a kind heart, this is an entirely free and open source project. It utilizes approximately 30% of EP2C20 FPGA on Altera DE1 development board, fully recreating a 8080-based computer that was popular in the former Soviet Union in late 80's to mid-90's. It's worth noting that unlike many other Soviet-era designs this computer was truly original, borrowing very little from any other computer of the time.
Other projects created for, or ported to the DE1 kit include at least a couple of ZX Spectrum clones, FPGApple: an Apple ][ recreation, Minimig: the Amiga clone, One-Chip MSX, and new projects keep emerging.
vector06cc project URL: code.google.com/p/vector06cc/
My first laptop, a Toshiba T1100 plus. Two 3.5" diskette drives (no hard disk). 640 KB RAM. 7.16 MHz 8086 CPU. 4 color CGA graphics and internal modem (used to connect to Bullettin Board Systems).
Watching Petar Puskarich's presentation on running AppleWorks on the Apple II+ from the Byte Cellar during KansasFest 2022.
Burroughs TD700 Self-Scan early gas plasma display screen, with control unit and keyboard, Design Level 4 c1973.
Yay... we have a cursor (of sorts - with a bit of ghosting on rows 4 & 7)) after 4 days slowly notching up the variac to avoid popping old capacitors.
I had already replaced the power socket, a defective mains fuse holder, and 2 corroded capacitors on cards "A" and "T" in the control unit cage. The faint pixels shown up by the cursor occur in the same positions across the row so I'm hoping this may be a resolvable logic or driver issue in the self-scan control card, rather than a write-off self-scan module.
The identity plate is stamped for 240 volts, but the power supply test points for 5.1v, 12v, -12v, 30v, and -250v were all up to required values on 110 volts AC supply from the variac..!