Retro Thing

The Floppy Drive That Changed The World

Sometimes, seemingly small innovations have an enormous impact. A classic example is the nondescript Apple Disk II floppy drive. Its introduction propelled Apple II sales into the stratosphere.

Back in 1977, the Commodore PET, Radio Shack TRS-80 and Apple II led the first wave of the home computer revolution. Each machine used audio cassettes for program storage. While the Apple's 1500 bps transfer rate was fastest, it was also notoriously sensitive to minor level changes. Set your cassette deck's volume control too high or low, and the program load would mysteriously fail. This was a significant problem because, at $1298, the Apple II was more than twice as expensive as the others. It was the only machine to offer internal expansion and color graphics, but that alone wasn't quite enough to justify spending an extra $600 dollars on a fancy toy.

The finicky cassette interface drove Apple president Mike Markkula crazy. He grew tired of rewinding, fast-forwarding and countless minutes of boredom while waiting for software to load. And so, in a December 1977 executive meeting, he put "floppy disk" at the top of his wish list. It was a move that cemented Apple's position as a market leader for years to come.

Exidy Sorcerer: The 8-Track Computer

The Zilog Z-80 powered Sorcerer was built by arcade game maker Exidy. The machine was unremarkable, except for one thing -- it was the first home computer with a ROM cartridge port for instant program access (most home users struggled with slow, error-prone cassette tape storage in the late 1970s).

The designers cleverly re-purposed 8-track tape shells to hold the ROM cartridge circuit board and a Microsoft BASIC cartridge was included with every unit.

The January, 1979 issue of Creative Computing reported, "The real grabber was what appeared to be an 8-track tape cartridge plugged into the side of the machine. As the salesman was quick to point out, the cartridge didn't contain tape - it held the BASIC language in read-only memory (ROM). And, in the future, other languages and utility programs would become available in the same format, so that they could be instantly swapped with the BASIC, simply by unplugging one cartridge and plugging in a new language. This feature, combined with a really extensive keyboard providing instant access to graphics as well as alphanumeric characters, led me to fall instantly in love with the Sorcerer Computer."

The base Sorcerer retailed for $895 with 8K RAM (expandable to 32K) and an expansion chassis was available to allow the use of S-100 expansion boards. The machine ran the CP/M operating system, which was extremely popular with hardcore hobbyists and business users. It generated a 64 x 30 character monochrome display with a fairly impressive 512×240 graphic mode.

Exidy walked away from the home computer market in 1980, unable to compete with machines like the Apple II, which offered color graphics and built-in expansion (including a remarkably affordable floppy drive controller designed by Steve Wozniak).

The Sorcerer and other classics are featured in Maximum PC's Dawn of the Personal Computer: From Altair to the IBM PC

Breadbox64 - Finally, A Twitter Client For the Commodore 64

BREADBOX64 brings the entire Twitter universe to your beloved vintage Commodore, including a pixelated approximation of the bloody blue bird that seems to mock me every time I tweet.

The Commodore 64 was loved by millions, but it's been left out of the Twitter revolution by, um, the lack of anyone insane enough to Twitterize it. Thankfully, Johan Van den Brande - a brilliant yet woefully misguided Belgian electronics engineer - has finally filled this horrendous hole in the C-64's software library.

BREADBOX64 runs on the C-64 & 128, relying on the MMC Replay cartridge for Networkization (yes, that's an official IT term as of about six minutes ago). It supports tweeting and following in a rainbow of 140 character glory, and that's about it.

BREADBOX64, a twitter client for the C64

1964 Modem Reaches Out And Touches The Internet

Phreakmonkey YouTubed his vintage Livermore Data Systems "Model A" Acoustic Coupler Modem connecting to a modern Linux box. At 300 baud. That's about 30 characters per second.

He says, "This modem was given to me around 1989 by the widow of a retired IBM engineer. Even better than seeing it in a museum, I decide to hook the trusty Model A up and make it talk to something. After some trial and error, I manage to get it to talk to a terminal server at work and use it to connect to a linux box. It's ALIVE! So, 45 years after it's creation, this antique modem gets to send data to and from the modern Internet."

1964 Antique MODEM Live Demo [thanks, Matrix!]

Colossus: The Computer No One Knew Existed

BBG just posted some nice photos of Colossus, the code-breaking computer that cracked the German Lorenz ciphers during World War II. It was the first digital programmable electronic computer, developed in complete secrecy by Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers.

Ten of these massive machines were operational by the end of the war, and several remained in service at GCHQ until the late 1950s. What they were used for during the cold war remains a mystery. All of the others were destroyed and the design would have been lost forever if it weren't for the efforts of a team led by Tony Sale, who reconstructed the machine you see here based on the few scraps of information that had not been destroyed after the war.

The fully operational reconstruction is on display at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes.

Colossus [Boing Boing Gadgets]
The Colossus Rebuild Project
The Design of Colossus [written by Tommy Flowers himself]

Oddball Micros: Timex Sinclair 2068

The $199.99 Timex Sinclair 2068 was the fourth and final Sinclair-designed machine marketed in the USA. Released in late 1983, it didn't meet sales forecasts and was quickly discontinued. Part of the problem was that the machine wasn't 100% compatible with the incredibly popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum (sold as the Timex Sinclair 2048 in the US).

The TS 2068 was an extended version of the popular British ZX Spectrum. In addition to a 3.5 MHz Zilog Z80 processor and larger 48K RAM & 24K ROM, the engineers added a General Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip (later included in the ZX Spectrum+ 128K, although with imcompatible addressing ), dual joystick ports, and an awkwardly sized cartridge port to the right of the keyboard for quick loading ROM programs and games (this made lots of sense in the early 1980s world of cassette-based storage). There were also a couple of additional video modes and some additional BASIC language commands. Great on paper, but not so great when your favorite Speccy game didn't run.

The incompatibility problem was largely solved by the introduction of Lemon Soft's Magic Emulator cartridge, which did a great job of smoothing the differences between the ZX Spectrum and this new supercharged version. Sadly, it really didn't matter because the machine ceased production after approximately 80,000 units rolled off the production line.

A slightly different version of this machine - the Timex Computer 2068 - remained in production in Portugal until 1989, making it the longest lived Sinclair model. The TC 2068 included PAL video and a Spectrum expansion bus port. Because Timex Portugal was only allowed to market their product outside Sinclair's market area, they also produced the Polish Unipolbrit Komputer 2086. [photo by Facundo A. Fernández / flickr]

related:
My Favorite Oddball Microcomputers

Ten Beautiful Computers That Should Live In My Basement

Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing Gadgets posted some gorgeous computer pix this morning. Worth ogling.

Ten Beautiful Computers

DOSBox: Run Old DOS Games, Even On A Mac

One of life's little annoyances is that Windows has a way of clobbering old DOS games, rendering otherwise amusing vintage titles completely and utterly paperweightish.

DOSBox can help. It's an emulated x86 machine with integrated DOS that allows you to control the speed of old games and emulate classic sound and video cards. The streamlined installer is only 1MB, and it runs 90% of vintage software.

In fact, DOSBox has proven so successful that publishers like Id Software, Sierra and 2K Games are using it to re-release their old titles. Compatible with Windows 2K, Win XP, Linux, Free BSD and Mac OS X.

DOSBox DOS Emulator

How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution

Priming The Pump tells the tale of Radio Shack's TRS-80, the first complete off-the-shelf microcomputer system. Designer Steve Leininger worked alone to build the prototype TRS-80 at a cost of less than $150,000. To keep the retail price low, they modified a black & white television set to serve as a monitor. That explains the machine's signature black-and-silver color scheme, since it's what RCA had on hand.

What happened next jump-started the home computing industry. "John Roach, Tandy's product manager, got an agreement from Charles Tandy to build 3500 units after Leininger demonstrated the prototype; this was exactly the number of stores they had -- Roach figured if no one bought the computers, at least the stores could use them.

Don French, a true believer, predicted they'd sell 50,000 the first year and urged the company to gear up the factory for mass production. Tandy managers, thinking they could never sell that many, were surprised when, in the weeks after the introduction, the Tandy switchboard was paralyzed with over 15,000 calls from people wanting to order a TRS-80. In the first year, over 250,000 people went on waiting lists to buy a TRS-80."

The Zilog Z80-based TRS-80 Model I was shipped as a ready-to-use $599 system. The main board was built into the keyboard unit and shipped with a plug-in B&W monitor and portable cassette recorder for storage.

The base unit could support up to 16K of memory, although an expansion dock (shown above) was available that increased memory to 48K and controlled two floppy drives. I loved the crisp 64 character x 16 line display, although there were no lower case characters in ROM. The cassette-based storage was somewhat finicky, because you had to be careful to set the volume just right to ensure a successful program load.

Radio Shack introduced a number of popular machines throughout the 1980s, but they eventually found it impossible to compete with a tide of inexpensive IBM-PC clones. Sadly, the TRS-80 name is now ancient history and Radio Shack markets a "me too" lineup of name-brand PCs and notebooks.

Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution [also available from Amazon]

Apple's Brief Moment of Clarity

This Macintosh SE is one of only a handful molded in transparent plastic. Twenty cases were produced in 1987 to verify internal component layout. Ten were ultimately built into working machines and given to members of the development team. Unlike the final production models, the clear case molds were untextured for maximum clarity.

This particular machine was originally equipped with a 20 MB hard drive, a configuration that listed for a hefty $3900 in the late 1980s. Even though these transparent machines are striking, they weren't suitable for production. To meet FCC requirements, the final cases were equipped with metalized paper inserts that obscured the internal flux capacitors and warp coil.

The unwashed masses would have to wait until the arrival of the iMac in the late 1990s to get their hands on a transparent Mac. I suspect that if Steve Jobs had still been with the company at that point he would have found a way to push it into production.

Charlie Springer owned this machine for years after buying it from an Apple employee who had a pair. He sold it in 2006, so this might be the only one to hit the market for a long while. However, you can buy a beautiful 18" x 24.75" poster of this image from photographer Kozo Takeuchi for a mere $19.95.

Charlie Springer's Clear Mac SE/20

"Bohemian Rhapsody" - A Concert For Codger Computers

It always makes me smile when someone uses retro computer hardware to create music today. Normally this is in the form of a Game Boy chiptune, or perhaps squeezing more than two notes of music out of an Atari 2600. It's seldom the actual hardware making the musical sounds happen.

Thanks to the untiring efforts of YouTube author bd594, he has harnessed the motor sounds of a scanner, floppy drive innards, and old Atari & TI computers to creak and buzz out a very credible version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen. These aren't manipulated and sampled sounds (though the author does mention doing some multitracking to thicken the chords), the song comes from the noises of the actual hardware.

I find the sound oddly reminiscent of an automatic fairground organ, or some Victorian era mechanical music machine. The way that the gear mildly drifts in and out of tune, the fragile nature of the sync, even the actual timbres of the music itself sounds much more ancient and charming than a pile of 80's scrap computers should. It's all terribly clever, and infectiously smile-inducing. And yes, there's a devil put aside for you too.

[via matrixsynth]

related:

8 BIT: Video Game Documentary
A brand new chipsynth
Free Commodore 64 inspired software synth

Modding A Sinclair ZX Spectrum To Run Linux

No, Linux won't run on a home computer from the early eighties (not yet, anyway). But this is no ordinary little Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Its diminutive case hides a 600 MHz ARM Cortex-powered BeagleBoard running Debian Linux.

Brian Smith's clever case mod includes 128 MB RAM, 256 MB onboard flash, a full-fledged Linux distro on an 8 GB compact flash card, and a healthy slathering of video, audio and USB ports. He even went to the trouble of figuring out a keyboard hack that preserves the original rubber keypad in working order.

Here's a shot of the newly hacked Spectrum on the left, alongside an unmangled original. Smith managed to get the interface ports to line up with existing holes in the case, although there's a 4 port Kensington USB hub where the expansion slot used to be.

In the end, the daft jokester couldn't resist installing a Spectrum emulator on his spiffy new machine, which somewhat undermined the point of the whole exercise.

ZX Spectrum Upgrade Photos [flickr via Technabob]

Magnificent Commodore 64 Laptop by Ben Heckendorn

Ben Heckendorn breathes rarefied air among the hacker/modder elite. From his earliest days creating handheld Atari 2600 systems, to his mindboggling conversions of modern systems, his work has always been among the best. Today he unveiled his Commodore 64 laptop, and it truly is breathtaking. The case design looks like it could have existed in the 80's, yet it has many distinctively modern amenities like a sharp LCD screen, and an SD card reader to make it easy to run software copied from a PC.

The important thing to realize in Ben's designs is that he's not merely creating a cool looking case for an emulated retro system - he is using original authentic 80's computer hardware inside. For this project he started with a C64-C which had the smallest motherboard of the classic Commodores. This project even uses the original keyboard!

Commodore did their best to create a luggable C64 back in the 80's. Too bad they didn't use their engineer's efforts to develop a time machine instead to reach into the future and see what a portable C64 was always meant to look like.

Ben's site with more info & build photos

related:
C64 laptop... er... PDA... I don't care - I want one!
A computer built into a joystick
Commodore 65: like the C64, but it's one louder

Getting Online: The Hayes Smartmodem

The Hayes Smartmodem took the market by storm in 1981, connecting thousands of computer enthusiasts through online bulletin boards systems (BBSs) and online multi-user networks such as CompuServe. Back in the late 1970s, modems were expensive and communicated over phone lines at 300 bps - well below reading speed. They also used bulky acoustic couplers which required users to dial a number and place the handset into a pair of cushioned ports on top of the modem.

Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington set out to change all that. Their Smartmodem was a clever little box containing a Z8 microprocessor that communicated with a home computer using the industry standard RS-232 serial port. It could be programmed to answer calls and dial numbers without manual intervention using a simple string of control characters passed from the computer. Introduced at a price of $299, the Smartmodem quickly became the industry standard.

The $699 Smartmodem 1200 arrived in mid 1982, followed by the $549 Smartmodem 2400 in 1985. Intense competition from clone makers pushed prices down rapidly in the late 1980s, and modems became commodity products. Hayes gradually slipped into obscurity, unable to reestablish itself as a leader in the high speed modem market of the 1990s. The company bet its future on the emergence of digital ISDN technology and lost, declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1994.

A 1984 review from Analog magazine
Modem image from John Davin's Antique Computers collection

Two New XGameStation Retro Consoles

Nurve LLC's Chief Scientist Andre LaMothe just introduced us to the latest XGameStation retro gaming boards. He says, "We developed two new AVR and PIC development boards in collaboration with Atmel and Microchip respectively. The two kits are very complete, come with everything users need including power supply, programmer, API, printed manual and more. They use retro gaming and graphics technology to keep the user's interest as he/she learns the processors."

The new game systems include NTSC/PAL video, VGA, Serial Ports, Micro SD card slot, PS/2 Port, Game Ports, Expansion Ports, Dual 3.3/5V Power Supplies and more. Both kits include a 300+ page book that guides the user into the depths of the system.  APIs for graphics, sound, I/O and interfacing are provided to speed game development. Nurve also developed a high performance XGS BASIC for each system, allowing users to choose from C/C++, assembly or BASIC when coding.

The Microchip-based XGS PIC 16-Bit Development System (256K flash, 16K SRAM, 40+ MIPS processor) retails for $159.95, while the Atmel-driven XGS AVR 8-Bit Development System (64K flash, 4K SRAM, 20+ MIPS processor) goes for an even more reasonable $139.95. Let me know if you get your hands on one and create the next big retro game!

Explore the XGameStation Site