Retro Thing

Recreating The First Microcomputer With A $4 Chip

We first mentioned John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 microcomputer back in 2007. Released 40 years ago, it is widely recognized as the world's first commercial microcomputer. 

Mark Wilson recently decided to create a tiny recreation of the KENBAK-1 using an Arduino-based emulator. He explains, "Not long after discovering the Arduino it seemed to me it could be a fun project to re-create an early computer, one with just LEDs and switches. I looked at things like the Altair 8800 (1975) but it has 30+ LEDs and 20+ switches and seemed like too much work. Then I stumbled on the KENBAK-1 (1971).  Perfect!  Only a dozen LEDs and 17 switches. As a bonus it was the 30th anniversary of it's introduction [It's actually been 40 years - JG].

I thought it was something I could pull off as my first real Arduino project. Naturally I called it the KENBAK-uino. This is the end-product, it can be programmed via the buttons on the front panel and show outputs on the LEDs. It's a faithful emulation of the original CPU but with a few enhancements thrown in like pre-loaded sample programs and access to a real time clock."

Visit Mark's flickr set for dozens more photos of this clever one-off project [via Hack A Day].

Old Computer Book Covers

Paul Panfalone took the time to scan a few covers from obsolete computer texts. He writes, "I have some vivid memories of random computer books kicking around the local library around the time I was in High School. Most of them were about a decade old at that time, dating back to the early 80s. Many were obsolete, but for some reason they were all readily available to loan out, whereas more relevant material was nowhere to be found. I always wondered if computer nerds had donated these books to the library the minute they became useless to them. I also recall thinking how strange it was that these books looked both old and new to me at the same time."

It unnerves me that I once owned three of these classics.

Obsolete Computer Book Covers

Star Wars Imperial March on Dual Floppy Drives

Floppy disks are almost extinct, which is not such a bad thing. They were noisy, slow and error prone -- an evil product of The Dark Side.

Pawel obviously agrees. He re-purposed two old 3.5" floppy drives as a demented duophonic musical instrument. Their head stepper motors are driven by an Arduino. While the result is definitely recognizable, it's not exactly what you'd call high fidelity.

Evil Floppy Drives [via Hack A Day]

Isaac Asimov Marvels At Miniaturization

I can't be the only one who wishes there were some way to connect a TRS-80 pocket computer from 1982 to the cellular network. It'd be the coolest texting device in the galaxy.

The first generation TRS-80 Pocket Computer was actually a re-badged Sharp PC-1211. It included the BASIC programming language in ROM, along with a 24 character LCD display and 1.5K of memory. The $29.95 cassette interface was required to make permanent backups of your programs, or you could choose the deluxe $127.95 printer/cassette interface. The tiny thermal printer could print only 16 characters per line and included a built-in Ni-Cad battery so you could work off the grid -- something that today's printer manufacturers still struggle with.

Naming The Transistor

Once, not that long ago, there were no transistors. Even the word didn't exist. Johngineer at Adafruit Industries dug up this Bell Labs memo from May 1948 that discusses naming their revolutionary semiconductor switching device.

My favorite contender is Crystal Triode, because it sounds like something Spock would install in his tricorder to save a doomed planet (oops - might have given away the plot of the next movie).

If you're in need of a sudden nap, here's the full text of the memo in all its Dilbertesque glory.

How The Transistor Got Its Name [adafruit.com]

My Favorite Hewlett Packard Handheld

It has been quite a summer for Hewlett Packard. They launched the TouchPad tablet in early July with much fanfare (and miniskirted dancers), only to discontinue it seven weeks later with a frenzied $99 blow-out.

To top it off, CEO Léo Apotheker announced that the company "needed to transform" and was looking for a buyer for its marginally profitable PC division. It was an epic public relations disaster.

At first glance, it seems foolish for the company to step away from the consumer market, but let's not forget that they're currently the #2 IT services company in the world (with annual IT service sales of about $40-billion), behind only IBM. So perhaps the company's emphasis on services and commercial sales is spot on.

At any rate, here's a look at my favorite HP hardware of all time -- the HP-35(s).

Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP 35 -- the first handheld scientific calculator -- on February 1st 1972. It carried a list price of $395 and cemented HP's position at the forefront of the calculator business for decades to come. Thirty five years later, they're back with the HP 35s -- a $59.99 retro-styled handheld.

"The HP 35s pays tribute to its revered lineage with a classic design that is reminiscent of the original HP 35, including protective raised edges so that the calculator rests nicely in the palm of one’s hand.

The new calculator is also HP’s most advanced scientific programmable calculator, featuring ample memory for keystroke programming, equation solving and more than 800 storage registers; 100 built-in functions; and a large, two-line display with adjustable contrast to easily view entries.

For greater flexibility, the HP 35s allows users to easily switch between Reverse Polish Notation (RPN), HP’s exclusive time-saving input mode, and the traditional algebraic mode. In addition, the HP 35s comes with a premium zippered protective pouch."

It's easy to forget how revolutionary the original HP 35 was - it offered a whopping 15-digit LED display and could handle trig and exponential functions at a time when competitors were restricted to the 4 standard algebraic functions. The market for such a complicated handheld was completely untested, and HP was stunned to sell more than 300,000 units by the time it was discontinued in 1975.

Useless Calculator Trivia: Bill Hewlett suggested naming it the "HP 35" because it had 35 keys. The new version has 43.

[From Richard in the comments: Have you ever visited the on-line HP museum? You might find some interesting info there, too!]

Retro HP 35s Launched to Commemorate 35th Anniversary of First HP Handheld Calculator
HP 35s Scientific Calculator product page

The Death of the Tower PC?

I last reinstalled Windows XP on my aging home-built PC in late 2009, vowing it would be the last time. The writing was on the wall, and a golden age of affordable and powerful ultra-notebooks and tablets was just around the corner.

Almost three years later, my PC is still limping along. I gave it some RAM and a spiffy new hard drive for Christmas in 2009, but it is increasingly showing its age. The time haa come to find a replacement, and I was suddenly determined to step firmly into the 21st century by leaving my hulking desktop behind.

Driven by news of a much more powerful Mac Mini, I found myself surfing the Apple site late one night last week. It was an odd experience -- I love Apple's machines for many reasons, but a grumpy little voice in the back of my head kept throwing up some very good reasons not buy one.

For example, the $599 base Mac Mini includes a poky 5200 RPM notebook hard drive and the graphics capabilities of an etch-a-sketch. To compensate, I opted for a slightly faster processor, an extra 2GB of memory, a faster (and slightly larger) hard drive and a Radeon HD 6630M discrete video chip that is roughly equivalent to a $50 entry-level desktop video card.

And then it hit me -- I was on the verge of paying $949 for a tiny desktop PC built out of notebook parts.

The Mac Mini is ingeniously designed and runs a brilliant OS, but the idea of paying a premium for a notebook computer without a screen is absolutely daft. You might as well just plunk down an extra couple of hundred dollars and get a MacBook Air or Pro -- most of the key pieces are there already.

I did what online marketers dread most and abandoned my shopping cart right in the middle of the Apple Store's virtual checkout line.

I was suddenly determined to build a shiny new mid-tower PC. Now, I'm fully aware that we live in the "post PC" era, but my netbook and iPad are good enough to keep me connected when I'm out and about.

I don't need portability or a mini PC carved out of a solid block of aluminum in my home office. I just need a reasonably powerful machine that I can tinker with and upgrade myself. Even in the 21st century, it's still the best way to balance performance, price and future upgradeability. Maybe Apple will get my money next time.

So, am I completely out of my mind? How many of you keep a desktop at home for tinkering and gaming?

Kickstart A Unique Computer History Book

David Greelish writes, "I once published a zine from 1993 to 1997 called Historically Brewed. It grew to a small, but very respectful 500+ subscribers and was even sold at the Smithsonian and the Computer History Museum in Boston, MA (now in Mountain View, CA). I published nine issues, with a tenth never completed (changing the name to 'Classic Computing'). I want to take all of these and publish them into a compilation book."

He's running a Kickstarter project to fund the release of a 195 page book with color inserts. A donation of $25 will get you a signed copy, although you can certainly pledge as little as $1. For a taste of the content, check out an online copy of the first issue of Historically Brewed along with cover images from the other issues.

David was the Founder and President of the original Historical Computer Society and is currently President of the Atlanta Historical Computing Society, so he knows his stuff. As I write this, the project is about 65% funded, and a few generous donations from Retro Thing readers could help to push it over the top.

Support the Historically Brewed Kickstarter Project

Happy 100th, IBM!

We get so caught up in the daily news about Apple, Google and Facebook that we tend to forget respectable old Big Blue. IBM was founded on June 16, 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Co., changing their name to International Business Machines in 1924. The company now employs over 430,000 people and has annual revenue approaching $100 billion. That's three times Google's turnover and $35 billion more than consumer juggernaut Apple. 

The company originally sold a diverse array of factory punch clocks and machines that read punch cards. In 1937, the US government adopted IBM equipment to track employment records for Social Security purposes, and the company went on to energetically market electronic data processing machines to major corporations and governments.

IBM has been consistently on the forefront of technology, bringing us the hard drive (1956), floppy disk (1971) and even UPC bar codes (1973) that now grace everything from books to cartons of milk.

The introduction of the IBM Personal Computer gave the computing world a standard hardware platform. Unfortunately, the company wasn't able to sustain their leading position in the consumer marketplace -- Microsoft quickly came to dominate PC software, while an army of agile manufacturers created aggressively priced PC clones that chipped away at IBM's market share.

The company backed out of the printer market with the sale of Lexmark in 1991 and offloaded their personal computer division to Chinese powerhouse Lenovo in 2005. It seemed that IBM was seeking to distance itself from the unpredictable cycle of boom and bust that has been the hallmark of the personal computer industry for decades -- today's hot product is often tomorrows amusing antique, and billions can be spent on R&D with unpredictable results.

These days, IBM is positioned as the world's largest technology services provider. The company prefers to work behind the scenes to keep the wheels of industry and government turning. I wonder that the next century will bring?

A Prehistoric Blackberry

What a difference a decade makes. This is the RIM 950, a futuristic pager/email/pda released in April, 2000 by a little Canadian company called Research In Motion. It was the perfect companion for Type-A execs and on-call gynecologists. The monochrome display measured 132 x 65 pixels and the backlight allowed them to annoy the theater-going proletariat with a quick flick of the rotary scroll wheel.

4 MB of flash memory and 512 K or SRAM were enough to store hundreds of emails or 20,000 vital appointments in the wireless calendar. You could even surf the Internet.

I could ramble on, but there are a couple of important things to note. The first is that this gadget ran an astounding 21 days on a single easily replaceable AA battery. Fast forward to the present and I carry a second battery for my modern Blackberry, just in case the power-sucking backlight leaves me stranded after a few days.

Second, it weighs only 11g more than a modern Blackberry Bold 9700. After a decade, you'd expect its progeny to be wafer thin. However, feature creep and massive displays have conspired to keep the weight up. We're turning our phones into gaudy Cadillacs rather than stripped-down racers.

It'll be interesting to see what the next decade brings. Will companies keep adding features and power to their handsets, or will we see renewed interest in simplicity? More to the point: Will RIM still exist in 2021?

RIM 950 Specifications [blackberry.com]

HxC Universal Floppy Disk Drive Emulator

The weak point in many vintage computer and music production systems is the floppy drive. They were unreliable when new, and getting a 30 year old drive to run predictably can be a massive headache. Floppy disks degrade with age and drives often fall out of alignment or fail once parts become brittle. The truth is that they weren't designed to last for decades.

The HxC is a brilliant way to keep old microcomputers running. It's a multi-system emulator that comes in two versions -- you can either load files from an SD card or through a USB connection. The number of platforms this thing supports is astounding: Atari ST, Amiga, Amstrad CPC6128, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Radio Shack TRS-80 and many others.

The HxC also works with a variety of vintage music synthesizers and samplers from the 1980s and 1990s, including the E-mu Emulator, Ensoniq Mirage, Roland S-Series samplers and even the E-mu SP1200 sampling drum machine (a hip-hop legend).

The HxC supports firmware updates by SD card and can be configured to autostart the last loaded floppy image at power up.

You can pick one up on eBay for $109.99.

HxC Universal Floppy Disk Drive Emulator

The World's Smallest Atari 810 Disk Drive

I was still a kid in the early 1980s, but I vividly remember my father's excitement when he bought an Apple II equipped with a 9" monitor and two 5-1/4" floppy drives. I get nostalgic every time I see a dusty old floppy disk.

Rossum has similar memories of his Atari 400, which came with a hulking Atari 810 drive. In 21st century hacker fashion, he decided to use an 8 GB microSD flash memory card to build a minature replacement capable of emulating up to 8 drives. The original stored 90 K on a single sided disk. His solid state version can store the equivalent of about 90,000 floppies.

The Atari 810 was an intelligent peripheral with its own microprocessor (a similar scheme was used by Commodore) that communicated with the host computer using a 19,200 bps serial connection. It's relatively easy to get a modern microcontroller to emulate the drive signals and pass data from a flash memory card, and Rossum chose an LPC1114 microcontroller for the task.

And the case? He reveals its secret: "The enclosure is a 3D print from Shapeways. This is the first time I have used them and I have to say I was delighted bt the experience. My inexperience in 3D modeling is evident but Shapeways sent me a lovely collection of little enclosures in various materials. I tried to make it as small as possible and still accomodate the microSD card. Testors enamel completed the look (make sure you mix in some olive with the light tan and cream)."

The great thing about this hack is that it's more than just a clever conversation starter. Floppy disks were never terribly reliable, and years of neglect and flaking oxide has made many virtually unreadable. Modern flash drives provide a convenient way to program vintage hardware, ensuring that future generations can experience they glory of 8-bit.

A Little Atari 810 Disk Drive [via Hack a Day]

Apple Lays Claim To Good Industrial Design

Apple sued Samsung this week for slavishly copying "several elements of the Apple Product Configuration Trade Dress." It's a bold and chilling claim for several reasons.

The first and perhaps not so obvious reason is that industrial design in the high technology field is always held hostage by technological progress. Designers can sketch fantastic products with curved, millimeter thin holographic displays, but until the physical components can be mass produced the entire exercise is merely an artistic exercise.

Apple didn't invent the system on a chip. They didn't invent ultra-thin battery packs. They didn't invent slimline capacitive touchscreens. They didn't invent flash memory. However, they did have the R&D budget to integrate them into a very successful lineup of portable computing devices.

And now Apple is turning their legal guns on Samsung, arguing that because they were the first to succeed in packaging a computer in a shiny tapered wrapper that other companies should be prevented from packaging technology in similar form factors.

The second reason that Apple's claim against Samsung is worrying is that industrial design doesn't take place in a vacuum. It's no secret that famed Braun designer Dieter Rams provided the inspiration for many of Apple products. In fact, legions of Apple fans noted that the look and feel of the original iPhone calculator app paid undeniable homage to the Braun ET 66 designed by Rams and Dietrich Lubs.

Apple is, out of necessity, a copycat. Industrial design relies on a shared cultural aesthetic and a willingless to push the boundaries of technical possibility. But let's not forget that there is a logical reason for metal smartphones to have distinctively rounded corners -- they'd draw blood in your pocket otherwise.

Computer technology and industrial material design has advanced to the point where it's possible to make digital devices that resemble fine jewelry. But that doesn't mean that only the first or biggest should be allowed to manufacture shiny, impractical electronic baubles with curved corners and slippery rectangular touchscreen faces.

As Mr Rams so eloquently outlines in his 10 design principles, "Good design is as little design as possible." And Apple should not be allowed to own simplicity.

But, thankfully, I'm not a lawyer and can accept the bloody obvious at face value. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to design something rectangular with a glass top, rounded corners and beveled edges. A coffee table, perhaps.

PC World compares the Samsung Galaxy and Apple iPhone

Macworld's analysis of Apple v. Samsung

An Unopened Timex Sinclair 1000

Here's your chance to grab a factory fresh Timex Sinclair 1000 (Sinclair ZX81) bundle including the computer, power adapter, video cable, 16K RAM pack and three program cassettes -- a $209.75 value, the box claims.

This could be a great addition to an 8-bit computing collection, although I find it incredibly sad that this little machine didn't find its way into the hands of an eager young computer neophyte almost 30 years ago.

The TImex 1000 was built around only four integrated circuits (some had an extra RAM chip), an RF modulator, and some discrete components. The membrane keyboard used the same technology as a microwave oven keypad - cheap and incredibly compact. Still, the machine included a decent BASIC interpreter in an 8K ROM and could be connected to a funky little thermal printer.

The video output was B&W, with a resolution of a 22 X 32 characters, but it was enough to get the job done. Well, as long as you didn't jiggle the connection to the RAM pack and lose hours of hard work in an instant.

New Old Stock Timex Sinclair 1000 on eBay

Abandon Wear T-shirts

You've probably heard of Abandonware, vintage software that exists in copyright limbo. Mark Farinas has taken the concept into the physical realm with a line of t-shirts featuring (mostly) defunct tech logos. They're available through the red bubble digital printing service for $24.95.

He explains, "My hope is that, as you browse the site, you’ll catch a whiff of the freshly poured concrete and cardboard boxes that filled the tiny industrial park store on the outskirts of town you bought your first system or software in. You’ll remember the 700 page catalogs you’d pour through looking for the best deal on a math co-processor. Or maybe you’ll flash back to midnight with all the lights out and your parents asleep as you finish those last few lines of BASIC you found in the back of '3-2-1 Contact' magazine."

Each shirt on the Abandonware site is accompanied by an informative writeup that makes it entertaining to browse. Now if only these digital printing places were cheaper.

[Update: Looks like the site was taken down and the shirts are no longer available on red bubble.]