I have one of Vince Briel's Replica 1 Apple I clones. I also have his KIM clone. I don't have any more real retro computers other than a TRS-80 Model 102 which is off topic.
Sadly my little 6809 board is long gone. It had a hex key pad and a 7 segment display. I thought it was from a design in Wireless World magazine but I can't find any sign of it today.
They're fun to build and some of his boards even have Propeller chips on them!
David,
I saw that the Superboard III uses a Prop, I'm thinking I may purchase one of those for a winter project. I'm usually somewhat hesitant to fire up my old machines, seems like something fails fairly often and parts are getting harder to come by.
Easy enough to recreate. The schematic and board layout are in the manual. There was a guy that did a run of ExpressPCB boards a while ago, and the worked.
Easy enough to recreate. The schematic and board layout are in the manual. There was a guy that did a run of ExpressPCB boards a while ago, and the worked.
Making PCBs is a bit beyond my comfort level. I'm mostly a software guy.
Yep, give the kids a computer and they soon forget to go out chasing girls, getting drunk with their mates and taking drugs...
... and instead play games involving chasing girls*, getting drunk* and taking drugs... while living in a post-apocalyptic world, stealing cars, killing aliens....
(*)- these references are dubious at best but nonetheless included for continuity.
Looks like a perfect fit for ExpressPCB's miniboard service. 6809's can be had for ~7 bucks, a 74LS20, a 74LS367, and a 4 meg crystal. I have plenty of 2716's. May be able to squeak a profit by selling at $60 which was the going rate.
Looks like a perfect fit for ExpressPCB's miniboard service. 6809's can be had for ~7 bucks, a 74LS20, a 74LS367, and a 4 meg crystal. I have plenty of 2716's. May be able to squeak a profit by selling at $60 which was the going rate.
Put me on the list for when you have them available. :-)
and my Atari 800XL Computer system art, I think I saved some of the animation's I made on that machine, game's like Ally Cat also made this a fun system, I wish I would have saved this system.
Ahh, that little click. For a time, I had a program that would largely emulate it on a PC. Drove some coworkers nuts! But it was oddly gratifying. The key click was actually necessary and useful when typing on the coke proof keyboard on the 400.
All my system shells, unless the software doesn't permit it, use white on blue for readability. A nice little reminder of fun times. SGI, also used white on blue, a simple thing that attracted me to IRIX straight away.
That little plotter is cool! Wanted one when I was a kid.
For a while, ebay is there. The 8bitters aren't too rare yet. Just saying. That's what I did. And I kept my machines too, but... they got stolen when I was moving. (bastards) I went for a time, then replaced them. But, it was the data... that's the real pain. They can keep 'em. I just want that data back. Had some programs I did that I would really love to have shown off.
At least you ended up with some hard copy! I should have taken a photo at least. 8 bit art was kind of fun.
That little plotter is cool! Wanted one when I was a kid.
Going to try to put a date you Potatohead, I made this eight foot banner for my daughters first birthday, colored in with marker of course that would have been October 1983. Not sure of the timeline on manufacture, but I got that system new at a really good price, most of the money was tied up in the floppy drive, I paid around $300.00 for the whole system.
I'm an 80's kid and have no real inhibitions about age, and other personal things. I started computing sometime around '79 as a young kid writing a few basic programs on both a time share and a neighbor's TRS-80. The school got Apple 2 machines very soon after that, and I did a lot on those. Basically, learned filesystems, assembly, etc...
Wanted my own machine, got an Atari on deep discount somewhere. Was a 400. Went to the user group, and they set me up with 48K and a real keyboard for like $50. Cassette. Didn't get a disk drive, until something like 84. Had my own Apple soon after that. Made the $$$ for it, and date money by using the Atari to tune up 60's through 80's era TV's.
Had a set of programs that generated "close enough" test patterns of various kinds. I could spend an hour, on TV's that didn't require manual "turn the dials" convergence, and calibrate them to look absolutely great. Convergence and degaussing took me the better part of a day. (that is seriously hard, and I made my own coil)
You might wonder how a young high schooler got into TV's and that technical stuff. I actually "interned" with a TV repair guy in grade school. Was a problem kid, and they saw me doing electronics, etc... and sent me there for an hour per day. That guy was cool, and just chattered away... And he had me do a lot of stuff, reflowing, testing, troubleshooting on old sets. Guess he figured there wasn't anything I could do that he couldn't fix anyway... never asked.
So, when I got the Atari machine, those words came back to mind, I got some books, and even went as far as replacing a few bad CRT's in some sets with "found" ones out of my then pile of throwaway sets I kept for parts. Anyway, I could load the cassette, fetch the programs and run through the calibrations, greys, color, bias, drives, purity, etc... Or, sometimes, just type in a quick program to get something I needed.
So that old 400, and Ray the TV guy and his kind treatment of a curious kid, made me a few thousand bucks! I've tried to make it a life habit since to get the hobbies to pay for more hobbies and bonus stuff, like finding a wife, parties, etc... So the 8 bitters, and the 6502 in particular, remain close to my heart. Basically, they were my life and career start.
Good times.
I got the Apple for doing actual work (business type stuff, and tutoring) on 8 bitters, but I still really wanted that plotter... Edit: I did get some plotter gratification later in manufacturing. Got a big E sized one. Was an HP, and that thing was just great! I love the look of plots. For technical illustration, good vellum... there is really nothing else like it.
I can't reference my childhood on computer developments, unless it was a successor to the Eniac. I don't remember anything drawing me to be interested in computers until the Apollo mission's, wasn't much you could do about it till the 70s.
I to got a start in a tv repair shop, the owner was also a neighbor and friend, he taught me electronic theory in his spare time in his home, he was a ham radio operator that dabbled in tv broadcasting, W8SJC, I believe were his call letters. As a tenth grade dropout, I was blessed to have a full time job, a home cooked lunch, (courtesy of his wife).
A learning experience that was priceless, he was authorized in Sony and Panasonic repair, and worked on the high dollar City of Akron sewer camera's. One of his projects at the time was to scroll his call letters on the bottom of his camera broadcast.
@Publison,
I bought a D1 as soon as Motorola released it, followed by a D2.
I interfaced the D1 to a Friden/Singer/ICL System Ten mini computer. Then I wrote a cross-assembler for the 6800 on the System Ten.
My first computer was the length of my garage. No joke! I installed it in my garage, appropriately lined and air-conditioned. It was an 18 month old System Ten, complete with maximum memory of 110K x 6-bits 2.2us core memory. Three 10MB Disc Drives (size of washing machines) rounded out the main system. The printer was so heavy that the only way they could get them upstairs was to remove a window and lift it in by crane - I was lucky they could wheel it in.
You would be surprised as how much alike the System Ten is to the Propeller chip!
My first computer was the length of my garage. No joke! I installed it in my garage, appropriately lined and air-conditioned. It was an 18 month old System Ten, complete with maximum memory of 110K x 6-bits 2.2us core memory. Three 10MB Disc Drives (size of washing machines) rounded out the main system. The printer was so heavy that the only way they could get them upstairs was to remove a window and lift it in by crane - I was lucky they could wheel it in.
You would be surprised as how much alike the System Ten is to the Propeller chip!
Love to see that.
I found my cache of Atari 1020 Pen Printer/Plotter art, is anyone interested in seeing it, after I get them scanned?
I am sure I took photos of my computer but no idea where they are now
Probably they would be slides and I have hundreds, if not a few thousand, in canisters and packed away. I have been meaning to get them out and scan them. I also have VHS-C tapes and digital tapes from my movie cameras that need converting too.
I used to let my kids play on the video terminals. They knew when the mini wasn't running with the terminal.
That's not how I remember it. Correct me if I am wrong...
Woz was the man for the 8 bit Apple machines. There was no Xerox PARC stuff in there when Apple took off.
Then came the Motorola 68000 based Apple Lisa, with its PARC inspired GUI. I'm not sure if The Woz had any input on that. I'd love to know.
The Lisa was not targeted at ordinary people or schools. It cost more than my first years salary as an engineer at the time!
The Lisa went off the market very quickly, what with being so expensive and notoriously unreliable.
Then came the Mac. A cut down Lisa. Again not targeted at ordinary people or schools, it was still terrible expensive.
In fact, my experience is than only rich yuppies and professionals bought Macs. Maybe it was different over in the USA.
Which is why the IBM PC and Windows took over the world, ordinary people and schools could at least hope to afford that.
I do agree though, Douglas Engelbart, Martin Richards and many others that made the Xerox PARC stuff possible are hardly known.
Old myths die hard. The Mac was NOT a cut down Lisa. It was a completely separate project. It was targeted at ordinary people (as opposed to the target market at the time for computers), and it wasn't all that expensive. The Lisa was expensive, largely because of the huge amount of memory that it contained. I have never heard of it being unreliable.
For some reason, some computers were marked up quite a bit when sold in Europe (this is why the Commodore computers sold so well there - they were cheaper than everything else). But price certainly wasn't what made the IBM PC a bigger seller than the Mac. $2,495 got you a complete computer with 64K ROM, 128K RAM, a disk drive and OS. Usable right out of the box. But the IBM PC would set you back $1,565 for a 16K cassette BASIC computer with no monitor. $3,005 got you 64K RAM, a single floppy, and a monitor. Text only. No mouse. No sophisticated OS. No sound (beyond basic beeps). A barely usable computer. And a steep learning curve.
But at the time, IBM was an established computer company. Apple was a relatively new company. Purchasing IBM PCs for your company was easy. Most companies had no way to purchase Apple. And the saying was that "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". IBM beat Apple largely by reputation, and by a large user base at businesses (whose employees could sometimes get the company to buy them a computer for home). At the time, only rich yuppies and professionals could afford either one. The rest of us made an ELF. <g>
The PARC BS is just that - while Apple was inspired by PARC, their end product bore very little resemblance to what they saw at PARC. While the IBM PC was fairly easy to clone, the Macintosh was nearly impossible. The sophistication of the circuit design and the software in ROM couldn't be made without directly copying it. IBM put very little time or effort into their PC, and it showed.
Those plots are pretty great. I enjoyed peering at them, musing over what I might have done then. Classic Atari too. Pretty good tech packaged for the home.
Happy to share them, do you know I parted that system out, thinking there is no reason to turn back after a few IBM PCs. I have been bummed lately over it, ebay is not to far out there.
Comments
I'd like to get one of the Briel KIM's or Superboard III's to play around with.
C.W.
David,
I saw that the Superboard III uses a Prop, I'm thinking I may purchase one of those for a winter project. I'm usually somewhat hesitant to fire up my old machines, seems like something fails fairly often and parts are getting harder to come by.
C.W.
It uses another monitor ROM, which I have made copies of. I have a full copy of the EE-3404 6809 course, also.
(*)- these references are dubious at best but nonetheless included for continuity.
and my Atari 800XL Computer system art, I think I saved some of the animation's I made on that machine, game's like Ally Cat also made this a fun system, I wish I would have saved this system.
All my system shells, unless the software doesn't permit it, use white on blue for readability. A nice little reminder of fun times. SGI, also used white on blue, a simple thing that attracted me to IRIX straight away.
That little plotter is cool! Wanted one when I was a kid.
For a while, ebay is there. The 8bitters aren't too rare yet. Just saying.
At least you ended up with some hard copy! I should have taken a photo at least. 8 bit art was kind of fun.
Going to try to put a date you Potatohead, I made this eight foot banner for my daughters first birthday, colored in with marker of course that would have been October 1983. Not sure of the timeline on manufacture, but I got that system new at a really good price, most of the money was tied up in the floppy drive, I paid around $300.00 for the whole system.
I'm an 80's kid and have no real inhibitions about age, and other personal things. I started computing sometime around '79 as a young kid writing a few basic programs on both a time share and a neighbor's TRS-80. The school got Apple 2 machines very soon after that, and I did a lot on those. Basically, learned filesystems, assembly, etc...
Wanted my own machine, got an Atari on deep discount somewhere. Was a 400. Went to the user group, and they set me up with 48K and a real keyboard for like $50. Cassette. Didn't get a disk drive, until something like 84. Had my own Apple soon after that. Made the $$$ for it, and date money by using the Atari to tune up 60's through 80's era TV's.
Had a set of programs that generated "close enough" test patterns of various kinds. I could spend an hour, on TV's that didn't require manual "turn the dials" convergence, and calibrate them to look absolutely great. Convergence and degaussing took me the better part of a day. (that is seriously hard, and I made my own coil)
You might wonder how a young high schooler got into TV's and that technical stuff. I actually "interned" with a TV repair guy in grade school. Was a problem kid, and they saw me doing electronics, etc... and sent me there for an hour per day. That guy was cool, and just chattered away... And he had me do a lot of stuff, reflowing, testing, troubleshooting on old sets. Guess he figured there wasn't anything I could do that he couldn't fix anyway... never asked.
So, when I got the Atari machine, those words came back to mind, I got some books, and even went as far as replacing a few bad CRT's in some sets with "found" ones out of my then pile of throwaway sets I kept for parts. Anyway, I could load the cassette, fetch the programs and run through the calibrations, greys, color, bias, drives, purity, etc... Or, sometimes, just type in a quick program to get something I needed.
So that old 400, and Ray the TV guy and his kind treatment of a curious kid, made me a few thousand bucks! I've tried to make it a life habit since to get the hobbies to pay for more hobbies and bonus stuff, like finding a wife, parties, etc...
Good times.
I got the Apple for doing actual work (business type stuff, and tutoring) on 8 bitters, but I still really wanted that plotter...
That puts us, what? Some 20 years apart, roughly?
I to got a start in a tv repair shop, the owner was also a neighbor and friend, he taught me electronic theory in his spare time in his home, he was a ham radio operator that dabbled in tv broadcasting, W8SJC, I believe were his call letters. As a tenth grade dropout, I was blessed to have a full time job, a home cooked lunch, (courtesy of his wife).
A learning experience that was priceless, he was authorized in Sony and Panasonic repair, and worked on the high dollar City of Akron sewer camera's. One of his projects at the time was to scroll his call letters on the bottom of his camera broadcast.
I bought a D1 as soon as Motorola released it, followed by a D2.
I interfaced the D1 to a Friden/Singer/ICL System Ten mini computer. Then I wrote a cross-assembler for the 6800 on the System Ten.
My first computer was the length of my garage. No joke! I installed it in my garage, appropriately lined and air-conditioned. It was an 18 month old System Ten, complete with maximum memory of 110K x 6-bits 2.2us core memory. Three 10MB Disc Drives (size of washing machines) rounded out the main system. The printer was so heavy that the only way they could get them upstairs was to remove a window and lift it in by crane - I was lucky they could wheel it in.
You would be surprised as how much alike the System Ten is to the Propeller chip!
Yes, I got a HAM license, with those guys setting me up with a scope and rf gear. I hand wind tuning coils, and such...
Funny how early starts can play out isn't it?
@Mike. Yeah, the TV shop. Cool beans.
Love to see that.
I found my cache of Atari 1020 Pen Printer/Plotter art, is anyone interested in seeing it, after I get them scanned?
Probably they would be slides and I have hundreds, if not a few thousand, in canisters and packed away. I have been meaning to get them out and scan them. I also have VHS-C tapes and digital tapes from my movie cameras that need converting too.
I used to let my kids play on the video terminals. They knew when the mini wasn't running with the terminal.
Old myths die hard. The Mac was NOT a cut down Lisa. It was a completely separate project. It was targeted at ordinary people (as opposed to the target market at the time for computers), and it wasn't all that expensive. The Lisa was expensive, largely because of the huge amount of memory that it contained. I have never heard of it being unreliable.
For some reason, some computers were marked up quite a bit when sold in Europe (this is why the Commodore computers sold so well there - they were cheaper than everything else). But price certainly wasn't what made the IBM PC a bigger seller than the Mac. $2,495 got you a complete computer with 64K ROM, 128K RAM, a disk drive and OS. Usable right out of the box. But the IBM PC would set you back $1,565 for a 16K cassette BASIC computer with no monitor. $3,005 got you 64K RAM, a single floppy, and a monitor. Text only. No mouse. No sophisticated OS. No sound (beyond basic beeps). A barely usable computer. And a steep learning curve.
But at the time, IBM was an established computer company. Apple was a relatively new company. Purchasing IBM PCs for your company was easy. Most companies had no way to purchase Apple. And the saying was that "No one ever got fired for buying IBM". IBM beat Apple largely by reputation, and by a large user base at businesses (whose employees could sometimes get the company to buy them a computer for home). At the time, only rich yuppies and professionals could afford either one. The rest of us made an ELF. <g>
The PARC BS is just that - while Apple was inspired by PARC, their end product bore very little resemblance to what they saw at PARC. While the IBM PC was fairly easy to clone, the Macintosh was nearly impossible. The sophistication of the circuit design and the software in ROM couldn't be made without directly copying it. IBM put very little time or effort into their PC, and it showed.
- Mark
Cool beans. Thanks.