Historic Microcomputer Restoration? 170
Pojodojo asks: "I am doing an independent study next semester with my computer science professor which we decided to call Historic Microcomputer Repair and Restoration. I will be working with such classics as the Altair 8080 and the Apple II. After I have repaired and or restored these machines, I will put them in a display for others to see. I have the opportunity for a modest budget to get equipment to put in the display, and would like to know is, what sort of things would you as fellow comp sci geeks like to see in a Historic Computer exhibit?"
Duh (Score:5, Funny)
*sheesh*
Re:Duh (Score:3, Funny)
Porn. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Porn. (Score:2)
The abacus (Score:3, Insightful)
well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:well... (Score:5, Interesting)
When testing to see how fast the Colossus could perform reliably, engineers found that it would perform flawlessly until it was running so fast that the paper tapes that fed the input data into Colossus caught fire, at which point they abandoned the experiment for fear that they'd burn the wood-framed building down. A true testament to Turing and the other fine scientists at Bletchly Park.
Pity Churchill ordered it destroyed after the war was over. It was decades ahead of its time.
Re:well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, considering Moore's law doesn't apply to DRAM and Hard Disk Drives, I'd say almost all machines these days are thusly limited when given a problem set larger than its L3 cache.
Re:well... (Score:2)
The fact that Colossus existed was heavily guarded until Winterbotham's book (about 1974) so the remains were carefully destroyed as were most records of its construction. However Tony Sale managed to reconstruct it [codesandciphers.org.uk]
Outperform a P4?! What an absurd notion. (Score:2)
Re:Outperform a P4?! What an absurd notion. (Score:3, Insightful)
(quote)
A simulation of Colossus which Sale ran on a top-of-the-range Pentium PC took twice as long as the real thing.
or this [pgp.com]:
If you wanted to program a modern computer to do what Colossus does, you'd need a 2GHz Pentium to match it.
Don't forget Colossus was massively parallel [codesandciphers.org.uk]:
At 5,000 cps the interval between sprocket holes is 200 microsecs. In this time Colossus will do up to 100 Boolean calculations simultaneously on each of the five tape channels and across a
Re:well... (Score:2)
Huh?
Re:well... (Score:2)
The Amiga 500 (Score:5, Informative)
But who am I to judge.....
Re:The Amiga 500 (Score:3, Informative)
"I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! "
"IN FACT...YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED!"
Classic.
Definitely the computer Matthew Broderick used in WarGames (IMSAI?) should be in there.
Scrounging up a working Apple Lisa and Apple
Lest we forget (Score:2)
PET Computer
MultiVac
Radio Shack Model I
Commodore 64
ENIAC
DEC 2060 w/ TOPS20
PDP-11/70
C/30
C/70
VAX-11/780 (and 750)
H-316
H-516
DEC-1090T
Radio Shack (Score:2)
The Atari 800 design seems to be quite advanced in concept, but lackluster in execution. If you look at it, it's basically a badly-done Amiga. Custom chips, etc. The insis
Re:Radio Shack (Score:2)
Speaking of the venerable Trash Eighty, another home-made tool of the times was a keycap popper, so you could clean the dang keyboard and get the frickin "S" key to work again.
Re:keycap popper (Score:2)
I actually went to some trouble to find one of those a few years ago to keep my venerable IBM Model M keyboards going. Works like a charm.
Re:Radio Shack (Score:2)
Also, who else remembers typing quickly a space l enter a space l enter a space l enter....
good times.
Re:The Amiga 500 (Score:2)
The Apple II was arguably the micro with the greatest historical impact.
The first flight simulator was written for the Apple II, which triggered the imagination of a lot of people. But more importantly, the first electronic spreadsheet was written for the Apple II, and became an instant hit with accounting firms. Suddenly these micro computers were no longer just toys for guys who spent too much time with Popular Science; there might be money to be made with them, somehow...
Re:The Amiga 500 (Score:3, Informative)
I believe there was an external genlock for the Amiga 500. However, the Amiga 2000 was by far the more popular platform for business use, with or without the toaster. I used to have an A2000 with the internal genlock (used the video slot, same place the toaster taps into for video, while it also goes into a normal slot) and the only thing I ever used it for was to chat over television (output from my vcr, which has a tuner of course) but it was pretty spiffy and fairly decent-quality.
A friend of mine al
Variety of platforms (Score:5, Informative)
Suggestions for platforms (Score:2)
Re:Variety of platforms (Score:3, Interesting)
What about embedded systems? (Score:2)
Re:Variety of platforms (Score:2)
I've got about 3 Exidy Sorcerers (2 working), a couple APF imagination Machines (working), and a non-working Compucolor II (circa 1979).
Supposedly, only 4,000 Compucolor IIs were made, and I have to find any technical info on them. If any
Re:Variety of platforms (Score:2)
But I agree- some of these are INCREDIBLY hard to find even one of- your Compucolor i
Re:Variety of platforms (Score:2)
People have a tendency to look at history of technoloy in a teleological sense: let's portray technology as an inexorable march towards the modern machines: for airplanes, you start with the Wright Flyer and you end with the A380. For Micros, you'd start with the Altair/Sol sort of stuff, and end with a dual-core dual-LCD screen workstation, some glowing riced-out gaming rig, a laptop, PDA and tablet PC.
But there are many other interesting stories to tell th
Re:Variety of platforms (Score:2)
No, the Sinclair ZX80 [old-computers.com] was the precursor to the ZX81 [old-computers.com] and ultimately the Sinclair Spectrum. [old-computers.com] The BBC Microcomputer [old-computers.com] was built by Acorn Computer, [wikipedia.org] who were rivals of Sinclair Research [wikipedia.org] in the competition for the BBC contract, and won because of clearly superior engineering. This rivalry became something of a personality clash between the founders of the two Cambridge-based companies: I remember reading reports of an altercation in a Camb
Re:Variety of platforms (Score:2)
That ran Windows. You just need to find a copy of Windows 1.0 to run on it.
repair? (Score:2)
Re:repair? (Score:2)
Among our finds was a Commodore 64 with a blown VIC graphic chip. When turned on this computer just displayed a constantly changing flow of colors similar to those "plasma" color demos that were popular at the time.
We had computers from houses near the ocean with corroded motherboards from the sa
I think your best bet... (Score:4, Informative)
Computer History Museum (Score:5, Informative)
Next week's big festivities involve a restored PDP-1 [computerhistory.org].
Their collection of hardware is pretty much unmatched, and is open to the public. What's on display is the tip of their collection's iceberg. Who knows what might be kicking around in the background, just waiting for a small team of geeks to restore? [computerhistory.org]
And conversely, who knows what might be kicking around in your classmates' basements that's on CHM's wish list [computerhistory.org]?
Re:Computer History Museum (Score:2)
from the tour.
Run, don't walk, to this museum. And if you really feel the need, Google is a few blocks away, Apple is a 10 minute drive, and a bunch of other fine folks. There's even the local Sports Bar, right across the street.
Go for the Museum. It's so worth the effort.
If you're in the northeast US..... (Score:3, Informative)
Illustrate the speed of change (Score:2)
While most people don't think of them as "historic", displaying a 5 to 10 year-old computer and comparing it with a modern computer highlights the rapid pace of change in the industry and is interesting to see.
so many milestones... (Score:4, Informative)
Desktops:
Commodore PET 2001 (color chicklet keyboard).
Sinclair ZX-80/81.
Coleco Adam.
DEC Rainbow 100.
Amiga 2000.
Portables:
TRS-80 Model 100/102.
Osborne 1.
Compaq suitcase PC.
HP 200LX.
Apple Newton.
Toshiba T1000.
Re:so many milestones... (Score:2, Informative)
Remarkably hackable OS for ROM firmware. Arguably the truest random number generator
Re:so many milestones... (Score:2)
Re:so many milestones... (Score:2)
I only had the "mini memory" cartridge, and no good documentation, so I never learned a whole lot about the different things I could do with the TI. I really wanted the Editor/Assembler... later, I graduated to a CoCo3 with it's Assembler - that 6809 was a dream to program on.... (and since the Basic wasn't interpreted 6 wa
Re:so many milestones... (Score:2)
Re:so many milestones... (Score:2)
Yes it is. I keep one on a table in my office for others to take notice of. I don't get as many questions about it as I first thought I would. I need to interface it with my office computer to give people something to "fiddle" with.
How about... (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably the easiest computer to rebuild from the classic era as there is only one bus (Unibus), and nothing but traces and some very simple electronics on the backplane. Well that and you could hit them with a hammer.
The PDP-11 series, along with the PDP-8's were some of the first nodes on the ARPANET and you can still get working Ethernet adapters for them.
Hell, I still miss mine (Viper tape drive, RSX/11, RSTS/E 10, BASIC Plus2, 512MB EDSI drive).
(You can still find these things running if you look hard enough... (Try asking old medical/dental offices, most of them ran PDP/11's))
Re:How about... (Score:2)
Emulations are fun too. (Score:2)
It would also be very good if, as a part of your exibit you had for sale a CDROM with various emulators. You might have to get permission for a for sale CD..
If you miss PDP11 with RSTS/E.. try simh.
Re:How about... (Score:2)
I don't know if the PDP-8 and 11 qualify as microcomputers; I always thought they were minis, but they sure were great boxes.
I have a Heathkit badged PDP-11/03 sitting at my parents house. It's no bigger than the original IBM PC, though I admit, I don't have a 8-inch dual disk unit that is supposed to be paired with it. The bigger Unibus machines were mini's. I'd consider the Q-Bus systems to be micros.
The Heathkit version is rather rare, I wonder if I need to find a collection to donate it to...
Re:How about... (Score:2)
I too started out (at school) on a PDP-8/e with paper tape and teletypes and you are correct - it and the PDP-11 were minicomputers. Witness the fact that rather than containing a microprocessor they had multiple-board processors: "The first 6 cards is the CPU". [pdp8.net] (Don't blame me for the grammar, folks; I'm quoting.)
DEC did produce a PDP-11-on-a-chip called the T-11. [trailing-edge.com] For a while in the mid-80s I had a system based on it, which a friend who had a combination of too much scrap hardware and too much free tim
Old school Unix... (Score:3, Interesting)
And a Xerox Star.
Re:Old school Unix... (Score:2)
You can simulate it. There's a couple PDP-11 simulators that you can run on Linux that will actually boot V7 Unix images. I had it running back in 1996 or so... Always amusing to tie it to port 23 and leave it on the net for the script kiddies to play with....
cardiac (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously. [bellsystemmemorial.com]
You haven't really lived until you've run a multiplication (by repetitive addition) manually on a cardboard computer simulator.
BASIC (Score:2)
i've actually been getting back into it, and i'm writing a BASIC interpreter in my new language of choice, and i've been picking up old applesoft BASIC manuals on ebay... really fun
once you've got them looking pretty, you should let users play with them via some fun BASIC program you've written
Re:BASIC (Score:2)
what language? is it working?
I still have all my apple ][ disks with all my basic programs from those days, and my beagle bros peeks & pokes chart. it was good, indeed. but those days are long gone, and all that work is hidden away on disk, on fading cheap fanfold paper, etc. I've been thinking over the years of ways to keep/
Re:BASIC (Score:2)
PDP-10/11 - Early VAX models (Score:2)
Good luck on this. I expect this won't be an easy chore. I hope you have LEET soldering skills - you will need them
If you consider an Apple II "historic"... (Score:2, Interesting)
... then you should try to get your hands on a KIM-1 [wikipedia.org], the original testbed for the 6502 CPU. A mid-1970s kit built around Chuck Peddle's baby... now that's historic!
relay computer (Score:2)
Re:relay computer (Score:3, Interesting)
The best old computers (Score:2)
Also, thundercats rule.
NeXT cube (Score:2)
Age related bugs vs design flaws (Score:2)
Given the premise of your work, I'd want to know what you fixed on each machine that was due to age and neglect, versus what you did (or didn't) fix because it was a side-effect of a known design flaw (such as impact damage to the bottom of th
Re:Age related bugs vs design flaws (Score:2)
Hang on there. Do what to Lisa?
Things I've seen that amuse people.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The stuff that amuses folks the most?
Hand modified "rev b" boards.. Every major manufacturer had em. So thick with a spiders web of enamelled wire patching flaws you were amazed they functioned.
Drive platters. I have a few the size of small car tires. People always get wowed when I explain they hold far less data than a floppy disc.
Memory boards. I have a Hewlett Packard board that holds 128 megabytes of memory. At 18x12x2 and a couple pounds, setting it next to a DRAM chip stripped from a modern DIMM usually elicits a 'WHOA'.
Re:Things I've seen that amuse people.. (Score:2)
I used a Texas Instruments PC (similar but not compatible with IBM PC).
It had a disk controller board that had to go
to double character revision markings and *still*
had an unholy rat's nest of wires. The motherboard
was not much better.
I hate it when (Score:2, Funny)
It makes me feel old.
Sol (Score:2)
Also, for the love of God, don't put them behind glass. These things were meant to be hacked with.
more of a mini, but... (Score:2)
I found a (Score:2)
My old roommate used to cart around some huge spark box from apartment to apartment...had like 8 processor boards. He never got it running, but it would boot. We almost had a computer museum in our 3rd bedroom "NOC"...thank god for all-bills paid apartments with a good net connection. I think he had some Amiga box, maybe even a commodore 64. I remember him playin
hello, computer (Score:2)
Re:hello, computer (Score:2)
True! A 300 baud acoustic modem is a must. In the late 70's and early 80's, these were just barely legal. You leased you phone from "ma bell", and were not supposed to attach unapproved devices to "their wiring". The acoustic coupler skirted these rules quite effectively.
It depends. (Score:2)
Over the last 28 years I've worked at several railroad museums (as a volunteer), and one was extremely anal about the "originality" of the rolling stock.
For example, about 40 years ago they were given a functionning 100 year old steam locomotive, but they totally neglected it because over it's century of
Apple peripherals of the time (Score:2)
Paddle wheels and joysticks (good lord they were so primitive!)
Green phosphor and amber phosphor CRTs
Cassette tape
Acoustic coupler modem
Mockingboard sound card
External keyboard (with lowercase letters!) that attached via an umbilical.
CP/M Card
80-column card
Oh, and a box of 5 1/4" floppy disks, and a flippy-notcher to use the back, and a Beagle Bros poster to complete the scene.
This make me nostalgic for the CP/M card and the Videx 80-column conversion that let me run WordS
Try something less typical. (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone mentioned the sinclair, that might be interesting, especially if you could find one of the color ones. PDPs and the like fall in with one of my favorites, the Pr1me, as being mini-computers.
How about an Alpha-Micro? It dates to about 1982, so while not _super_ old, it's no spring chicken. The company still exisits in some form, so you might be able to get docs, schematics, etc. And that whole 'write your backups to a VHS
Next (Score:3, Interesting)
Please don't tell me the Apple II is historic... (Score:2)
The LINC speed control... (Score:5, Interesting)
The LINC had a pair of dials on it: one was a (continuous) potentiometer, like a volume control, the other was a four-position "decade" switch. The pair of dials joint produced a signal that could be used to make any of a number of front-panel functions auto-repeat at a variable rate. In particular, you could make the "single-step" function auto-repeat. The pot adjusted the repeat rate continously over about a ten-to-one range. Each switch position was a factor of ten faster than the last. The slowest speed was about two per second.
This means that you could make the LINC single-step through its programs at an rate from about 2 to 200,000 steps per second... the later being about half of its full speed.
So, you could take a program... run it at 2 steps per second and watch the lights flash... then gradually speed it up over a five decades to 200,000 steps per second. At 2 steps per second if you watched closely from time to time you'd see one dot on the screen flash momentarily. As you sped it up the, the flashes would occur more rapidly... then you could see it was forming characters... then lines of text appearing at about the speed of a dot matrix printer... then finally a whole screen of flicker-free text.
Meanwhile, the LINC's speaker, attached to bit 6 of the accumulator, would gradually change from ticks to a buzzes to beeps.
I never saw anything that gave you such a feeling for just how incredibly goddam fast a computer was. Even one running at about 0.5 megahertz clock rate.
You actually could build a LINC from scratch, I suppose, since it was discrete components and the design was public domain. But it would be equally interesting to take a "stock" computer of almost any vintage and give it a continuously variable clock, a la the LINC.
286 + Wing Commander (Score:2)
Erm, this would appeal to *ME*, but I don't know how well it'd work for you. The pre-Wolfenstein days are pretty interesting.
Re:286 + Wing Commander (Score:2)
Yes, I remember watching the frames "paint" onto the screen during the FMV segments. They were really pushing the limits at that time. Otherwise, the gameplay was pretty good.
But, I got bored easily and went back to my Amiga for some more games.
Better yet, create a troubleshooting repair guide (Score:3, Interesting)
If you did your repairs and also worked up some rudimentary troubleshooting guide (or better set up a Wiki) for others I think you would be doing a bigger service to the classic computer communtity than just some me-too restorations.
If you want a challenge for a restoration I would go and get a classic system restored and running, then gather a bunch of choice apps for the system and code up some easy front end (on that system or use a virtual drive, something friendlier) to demonstrate the actual programs in an "exhibit environment" (easy reset/reload, nice menu, etc.), a computer that successfully lights READY. is one thing, but one that also presents a menu of some of the popular games or programs of the time to experience is something way better.
Three indispensible tools for the geek of 1981 (Score:2)
These were all the rage in the late '70s and early 80s:
What to see in the museum? (Score:2)
The BBC Micro (Score:2)
Just gather EVERYTHING!!! (Score:2)
Whatever you do, think about it as saving the stuff from going to a landfill overseas, which is where this stuff is heading. You'd be surprised as to who may want to buy some
Re:Really old stuff (Score:2)
Re:Really old stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Really old stuff (Score:2)
After that, it was a TRS-80 model I my dad bought in'79 or '80. We had an account with CompuServ and Genie and a 300 baud modem. Later he got the expansion interface with floppy drives, woot!
My first computer was a TI99 4/A. After that I owned a Commodore 64, and that was when I really go into the BBS scene. My friends
Re:Really old stuff (Score:2)
I'll have to pass on the bonus points, though...
Re:Really old stuff (Score:3, Informative)
No you couldn't.
Not unless there was an 8088 or 8086 card you could put in them. I guess it is possible such a beast was sold but they would have been rare.
You could get CP/M for them and maybe ZPCR. I also remember a OS called LDOS I think was available as well.
Now the Model 16 could run Xenix which was very cool.
The first computer that Tandy made that ran MS-DOS I think was the Model 2000. It was better than the IBM CP but it wasn't PC com
Re:Really old stuff (Score:2)
Re:Really old stuff (Score:2)
Not to mention that MSX-Dos isn't MS-DOS.
So no it didn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Really old Geek ? (Score:2)
Re:Really old Geek ? (Score:2)
Re:Really old Geek ? (Score:2)
A good exhibit mentions Multics [multicians.org]... and not just as the father of unix.
Re:Really old Geek ? (Score:2)
Or typing in your code into the keyboard of an Ollevetti Programma 101. Then there was "Gotran" for the 1620 - or the ORIGINAL Fortran IV for the IBM 1130.
Experience with a Papertape is required also to really qualify here. We ASSUME you can program an 029! If you tell me you can't program an 029 - you don't qualify!
To answer the guy's original question. Certainly an Apple II, IBM-PC Version 1 with the tape cassette, and the Altair 8080 are all good things to display. They were mainstream st
Re:Really old Geek ? (Score:2)
Re:Tandy 1000 (Score:2)
Sadly, shouting "Give flowers to MERMAID!!" at the top of your lungs just doesn't have the same oomph as a modern "BOOM, Headshot!"
Re:Maybe one of the GRiD laptops? (Score:2)
After reading this, I mysteriously heard every joint CRACK on my aging skeleton!!!
To give you an idea of my age, I still have one of the first production VIC-20's (with the 9VAC P/S) that I got as a teenager.
Re:Commodore 64 (Score:2)
Of course, I'm biased. I remember when we went to the store in 1985 my parents and I, to buy our C64. It was supposed to be a much better system than the old TI-99 I had learned to type my name on, before I could even write it with a pen. When we got home, with the precious box, after many hours late at night, my father had to give up because the d