Thank you to everyone who took a chance, clicked on my Ad and came to watch this video. I created this channel after the inadvertent demise of my original channel, BradH. BradH was one of those 'channels' that just got autocreated because I wanted to comment on something, or share videos of the kids with my Mom, etc. I also shared videos of my vintage computers there, basically home videos... no editing. I'd always wanted to create more 'formal' videos - videos with decentish lighting, maybe a few special effects. Particularly documentaries as I've been in love with those my whole life. My first attempt at this was the Digital Group Z80 video - shot with a handy cam and minimally edited. Several years later, I decided to really go for it and did my first 'documentary-style' video featuring the OSI 300 trainer board. That video earned the notice of hackaday and did pretty well, which was really exciting as a new 'creator'. I followed up with this Unbuilt Kits video and so on. Eventually I decided I wanted to separate the 'formal' videos from the home videos, choose a more descriptive channel name and such, so I set up a branding account. Unfortunately in the process, I managed to delete the original channel, which was unrecoverable. So I set this one up, hastily reuploaded (which is why many videos are within weeks of each other) and took the huge penalty in exposure that comes with starting all over again. Since then I've created some small 'tour' videos (8BitBites) and have been working on a bunch of projects soon to come. Anyway, I sincerely appreciate everyone who took a risk and clicked on that Ad, not knowing if they were going to be sucker punched into buying something, or Rickrolled, or worse. But that was never the intent - this channel is produced for the joy of it. There is no Patreon, no tshirts to sell, none of that for the forseeable future. It's like Biff said in Back to the Future II, relating what his future self told him about the Sports Almanac: "No catch." I've so enjoyed the learning process - probably my favorite thing was messing around with the green screen - and the joy of seeing it all come to life onscreen. I decided to go the Ad route for two reasons - one was to put some skin in the game and push myself to keep going, and the other was to try and recover from the loss of the old channel. UA-cam is a hard place for small, 'new' channels to get noticed. It is deeply moving to have even one person compliment your work, let alone a whole bunch, let alone, as of this writing, 171 people who actually took the time and the extra step to click Subscribe. Thank you so much for the kind words and those votes of confidence. It means the world to me and motivates me to keep doing, keep learning, and hopefully, keep entertaining. Thank you, thank you, thank you - BradH.
I saw the ad and decided to put it in watch later, since this sort of video would normally be something I'd click on immediately - but the ad part definitely put me off. Glad I took that chance though, it was quite an entertaining video - subscribed and best of luck with the channel!
First time I've gotten an ad on this site that actually looked interesting. I've been looking for more channels focused on vintage computing, but beyond the few big ones, had no clue where to find them. Subscribed 😊
Hi. I am the David Griffiths who designed the DG680. Thanks for the nice review. In answer to your question about the numbering, the VDU was first described in Electronics Today magazine and they assigned it project number 640. When I wrote the article about the CPU they called it 680. I am not sure whether that was the next number in their sequence or whether they jumped to 680 in a nod to the Z80. Applied Technology, the company that sold the kits, tended to brand it as DG-Z80. I don't remember what the selling price was but I think you are in the right ball park. You are right about the DG initials but I later formed a company called Digital Graphics Pty Ltd - what an amazing co-incidence about the initials ;-)
Thank you for this note! It is always an honor to 'meet' the people who designed and made this stuff work. I wondered about those model numbers! I keep hoping to stumble on a DG640. Do you know how well the kits sold?
@@TechTimeTraveller I think there would have been roughly the same number of DG640 or slightly more. Some people used the DG640 with different processors. I don't know the actual numbers but in the low thousands - small beans compared to the US market. I might have been rich now if I'd live somewhere else :-)
@@diggraph Thanks David for designing those boards, they came along at a time I was a high school student, and I learned a lot. My only wish was that the PCG was a full bit-mapped screen instead of a character rom set replacement. I spent a long time trying to devise a Least-Used system for recycling PCG chars, never got it to work properly. DGOS was a great little monitor!
@@seamusquain2706 I don't think it'd be possible to buy one new nowadays, but I've seen them go up for sale on eBay. Keep in mind they all run on 220v so you would need a transformer, and afaik they all run basic (in English too)
@@seamusquain2706 There is someone on Ebay selling a Russian sinclair clone kit, but your chances of it working on many types of video display areslim, and software compatibility with real ZXs is poor.
SO impressed by this. I'm honored to be your 1000th "like" on this video, and you have most decidedly won me over! This mirrors so well what I like to do on my channel "Forgotten Machines". Thank you for preserving and documenting these systems so well!
This tingled all the right nostalgia tingles. Great video! P.S.: Whenever I hear 8085, I think about the awesome TRS-80 Model 100 Portable Computer. Bill Gates himself worked on its firmware. This may be the last time he could be credited as lead programmer on a consumer project.
I have a Commodore MOS KIM-1 myself. This presentation is awesome as this hardware predates commercial production of personal computers and geared towards industrial, scientific/academic and hobbyists.
Liked, commented, subscribed, rang the bell. Thanks for the advertisement. It turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would be. Thank you for a well researched and presented video. You could have done an individual video on each kit. I love looking at the primordial soup origins of the computer revolution. I’m just amazed at the quality of this video. Looking forward to future videos. In the mean time I’ll go look at your other uploads.
Many thanks! Really appreciate the vote of confidence. I'm really enjoying playing around with special fx and am trying to present the info in a way that doesn't put people to sleep!
I saw this as an ad and I thought it's gonna be one of those scammy weird videos but I was wrong. This is an awesome video, as is your channel! Keep it on! I'll definitely subscribe and stay!
I was a bit reluctant to use ads, but I figured it was that or languish in obscurity unless/until the UA-cam algorithm found me. Anyway thanks so much for taking a chance!!
I worked for Midwest Scientific Instruments in Olathe Ks back in the late 70's, they developed a business system based on the SWTPC 'standard' with the Motorola 6800. I have a link to their catalog here... I also have an unbuilt SWTPC system, cassette interface and an open frame monitor that I will probably put on eBay eventually. Hard to do, because one of the original boxes is addressed to MSI from SWTPC, and another is from SWTPC to Computer Workshop of North KCMO. My experience with Computer Workshop involved fixing Polymorphic 8812/3 computers, since I already had experience with Poly 88 systems at Cyborg Computer Gaming Center in Westport (Kansas City, Missouri) back about that time too!
Awesome! I have a MSI 6800.. its a very well built machine. Someone had changed the EPROM to something called Weebug so I wasn't able to operate it with the MSIbug until someone who had a copy of the listing sent it to me, and I was able to burn the 2708 with my SWTPC 6800. I have MSI's 1702 prom burner but have not been able to locate the software to drive it yet. I'm trying to archive everything I find of theirs but it's not common. That's awesome that you worked for them! If you ever post pics of that unbuilt 6800 kit please let me know. I doubt I could afford to buy it but it'd be awesome to see!
Idk why I enjoy retro computer videos like this so much, maybe it’s just relaxing an informative. Though I don’t think this information will ever be of any use to me, it’s still cool history.
Nice retro review! Just a small correction: @4:19 The DREAM 6800 came with only 1KB of RAM (in the form of 2x 2114 1Kx4bit Static RAM chips). In addition there was 1KB of EPROM (containing CHIPOS), in the form of a 2708 triple-supply EPROM. Because the 1KB RAM + 1 KB ROM comes to a total of 2KB of "memory", this likely explains your confusion saying it had 2KB RAM. Interestingly, most users were motivated to upgrade their DREAM 6800 to 4KB RAM to allow playing the machine-coded DREAM INVADERS game. Note also that the 2x 2114 chips were transferred off the main PCB and onto the memory expansion board, required as the main PCB did not fully decode the onboard 1KB RAM space (Only A15 & A14 were decoded so the 1KB onboard RAM was replicated across the entire lower 16KB address space). Note also that most users only expanded to 4KB RAM as that was the maximum that CHIP-8 itself could address (due to it's 12bit operand addressing). Therefore, most DREAM 6800 memory expansion designs were only 4KB. With a fully populated 8KB RAM on the J.R.Components DREAM Expansion Board, the additional RAM above 4KB could therefore only be utilised by machine code programs.
Ahhh. Good catch! Yeah I was going off the cuff a bit.. the particular JR expansion board I have I think I had a bit of trouble getting info for - I had found another version without the spots for the EPROMs. As for the 6800 itself, my actual machine is technically a 6802, which Michael Bauer said was a thing JR did against his approval as the 6802 is a slightly different beast, and he was surprised it worked. I believe it had the same amount of RAM onboard as the 6800.. I think all they changed was the CPU. If it didn't that may be where I got mixed up. But more likely I just miscounted. Thank you for the correction!
@@TechTimeTraveller Yes, the DREAM 6802 variant still had the same 1KB RAM. It came about because there was a worldwide shortage of MC6875 clock chips at the time the DREAM 6800 was released. The 6802 is basically a 6800 with onboard clock generator (and also 128bytes of battery backed up RAM). Note that due to the 6875 shortage the author also published a replacement clock generator circuit, that many made up on a piece of vero/matrix board to use in place of the hard to find MC6875. Hope this helps fill in the background. :)
Great video :) I still have some Don Lancaster books, specifically TTL cookbook and CMOS cookbook. He describes the TV typewriter in the ttl cookbook. Used these books in the 80s and 90s before datasets were easily available via the Internet. I feel old now.
Now I wish I had kept my Mark-8. It had a separate octal keypad and 2 digit, 7 segment display for inputting a program. I had about 2 years of the users group newsletter as well.
What a fascinating collection! I started building (mostly) retro kit computers last year, and I just finished a slightly-updated reproduction of the "78up5" Signetics 2650 Mini System (also published in Electronics Australia as an update to the slightly older one you showed, I believe) a couple days ago. Having proved that it works as advertised (I can enter machine code into the PIPBUG system monitor via serial terminal, then execute that code and see the output), I'm please with the result but not sure what else to do with it now, hehe. Documentation I've found suggests that, at one time, there was commercial software available for it, as well as upgrade projects, but I haven't found the binaries for any of the software yet, and the old magazine articles that describe projects are not in the greatest, most readable state. Oh, well. It was fun, just the same, and there's always the future! Other kits I've built use the RCA COSMAC 1802, Zilog Z80 and Z180, Intel 8080A and 8085, MOS 65C02, and Rockwell 6501Q. I even just today looked at websites offering kits of boards to build your own reproduction Schelbi-8H or 8B and Mark 8, but the prices, just for the boards, are a little eye watering, so I think I'll have to skip those. :-O Thank you so much for showing us your fine collection of original, vintage kits! :-)
This video is a great description of early computer kits and brought back a few memories. I didn't get started with computers until the 70s. My first home computer was Tandy's TRS-80, which made computing fun for me and many others.
Back in the day, WAY back (1978-1980), I worked for a process control company. One of my contracts was Fortin Laminating that manufactured bare circuit board. Makes me wonder if any of their products ended up in these kits.
I spenr hundreds of hours building S100 boards and designing optically isolated serial interface cards, There was no standard interface available. I have a Cromemco computer sitting in the floor next to my desk; Unfinished and non working! I also have a number of unassembled card kits, including a music synthesiser. A Fairchild F8 development board and a book on how to use an F8 Microprocessor to make a Microcomputer!
Some very nice vintage items:) But you should really build those kits and bring them to life. Right now they are dead and not very interesting except to us connoisseurs:) It's like those computer museums where nothing actually works....much better if everything could be running. I just found a very rare SC/MP kit, all there in the original folder, and I intend to build and connect it to the Teletype:) You are still preserving history by building them:))))
It's a tough one. I solicited a lot of opinions on this subject and it's 50/50. I do kind of agree a computer was meant to do something, not sit static on a shelf. But there is a lot of pressure to preserve history. I actually had an email conversation with Jon Titus himself about my Mark-8 boards and he felt they should remain as is. That's pretty tough to go against. :)
4:44 My brother and I built a number of Applied Tech's S100 boards (actually 'S-100' back then) and also the black cardframe. It was a good system and the DGOS ("dee-goss") monitor with hex editor on 2716 was pretty easy to use and could save to tape. It was all fine until one Saturday we went to Applied Tech's shop in a northern suburb of Sydney only to find not a trace of their S100 machines anymore. They had all gone and been replaced by the Microbee. The CEO of AT told us it was backwards compatible with the S100 system and that Microbee software would run on our machine. Well of course it wasn't that simple. The Microbee had a different keyboard setup which IIRC used the light pen input on the 6845 and any Microbee software needed patching to use the DGOS calls. I did do it for a few programs. Needless to say we were very annoyed about it all, after having spent a lot of money on building the computer. I modified the DG680 with a rocker switch on the top edge of the board to switch a 4MHx crystal, and replaced the CPU with a Z80A and it ran really well. Sometimes I could even switch from 2 to 4 MHz and it would continue to run but more often it needed a reset. I think the DG640 VDU was based on the SOL-20 video circuitry, certainly AT sold games such as Missile Defence that displayed 'Processor Technology' on the start screen. As the supplied MicroWorld BASIC was not very good, I ported TRS-80 LII BASIC to the machine by typing in the 12K of hex digits from the BASIC Decoded book over a few weeks, patched the keyboard and (I think) video start location. I made a replica TRS80 graphics character set for the PCG card and got MS Flight Simulator to run, made a 4 voice music synth speaker for it (from a BYTE article), also started writing a DOS for a Versafloppy II based on another BYTE article. I still have some of these bits of software, the rest went with the machine a long time ago.
Giving the originals to the museum is a good gesture. But before that, make as many good copies of it as possible, so that others can learn from it. That is what the makers would have wanted. Maybe take out a few little mistakes, improve it a bit here and there, nothing wrong with that. Having to think in a structured manner is good for kids. Building something from scratch is good too. Neither is there something wrong with making a few buck by selling replicas. Information is free, it has to be spread to have effect. Carry on, you do good work.
And now having watched the whole Central Data 2650 segment, I can add a few more comments: Yes, you're right about the box and that added sheet; neither of those was part of the stock package you got from Central Data when ordering from the Radio-Electronics article. My memory agrees with you, that you did indeed just get the bare board and the PROMs when ordering that way. Those PROMs ought to still be fine, since they're the old "Fuse-Link" style where microscopic metal fuses were actually "blown" when programming those chips. So they stand a much better chance of working after all this time than the EPROMS other old computers used, in which the floating gates eventually have their charge leak away. If you or anyone else actually builds up one of these bare boards (which I recall was fun), watch out for little metal bridges. My own board was not completely etched and had a few little copper whiskers connecting traces that shouldn't have been connected. Luckily, I had a couple of experienced mentors who found that problem for me; I wouldn't have thought to look for something like that! Since this board has a composite-video output, it should be possible to connect it to any modern monitor that has a composite video input (though I've been saving a couple of old CRT monitors just for connecting to my own CD 2650 once I restore it). Oh, and the intro frame in your video indicates it ran at 3.5-something MHz. Hm, well I do recall overclocking it once I got a 2650B chip, but I believe the stock board ran at 1.[something] MHz. It still seemed pretty zippy compared to the minicomputers I used at school since it wasn't going through a serial terminal like they were. Connecting a keyboard might pose a bit of a challenge in modern times, since it uses a parallel ASCII interface. I bet there are or were converters out there to convert USB or PS/2 keyboards to that ancient standard, though, since once upon a time surplus keyboards almost all used that interface. Again, I'm happy to answer any Central Data 2650 questions if I still happen to have the information in my leaky old memory. :)
The only thing missing from this is a cameo by Steve Ciarcia ! Ask him, you might get lucky 😘 P.S. I started with a Signetics 2650 (KT-9500 board) SWTPC keyboard and ...
Amazing video!! You deserve more subs. Also, it’s a dream of mine to find an unbuilt computer kit for cheap at an estate sale etc. You’ve got a great collection.
Many thanks. I had a lot of fun with this one, esp. the green screen effects. I'm going to keep at it and keep trying to lift the quality. Your kind words are super helpful and appreciated! And motivating!
It's interesting that the same type of people who bought these kits in the late seventies and early eighties are now buying things like FPGA test boards or actual 'retro' 8bit type kits. There always will be a market for something you build yourself. It's just that compared to the computer and console markets nowadays it's still (and probably always will be) minuscule.
I got the Central Data 2650 back in the day and built it. I didn't have a parallel ASCII keyboard so used an AIM65 to provide that function. The CD2650 still works. I am thinking of expanding it and putting it into a nice perspex case. I have a spare C64 keyboard which I will use instead of having to get out the AIM65.
Very cool! If you decide to take some pictures or video please let me know. Would love to see one assembled! Apparently there was an expansion kit of some kind? I saw a pic of it on old-computers.com I think. Looked like S100 or something similar.
@@TechTimeTraveller : As someone who cut my home-computer teeth on my Central Data 2650, I can confirm that the expansion you're thinking of is Central Data's S-100 expansion board. I used mine to expand the RAM and add Central Data's floppy-controller board. (Every few years I search to see what's out there on the CD 2650, and wow I found a lot this time, including your video! I know I'll be restoring mine at some point, so I keep gathering as much info as I can toward that day. And I'm happy to answer any CD 2650 questions that my aging memory will let me - it was my only computer for a few years in the late 70s so I knew it extremely well.)
@@gordonbrandly4352 Many thanks for the reply! I actually very recently got my hands on a built CD2650 and the S100 expansion board. They look to be in pretty close to pristine condition, but are missing the interconnect cables that link them. I went through the old Radio Electronics articles and sort of followed it month to month hoping to find where they introduced the S100 expansion board, but alas.. no sign of that. I suppose it could have come out months after the original article, or maybe not even been an article at all. Any info you have would be deeply appreciated for sure!
@@TechTimeTraveller : Excellent! And yes as you suspected, that S-100 board came out a couple of years after the original magazine article. I have all that stuff squirrelled away in my garage, and I'm hoping I still have the manuals as well. You've given me more incentive to look for it now, though work is busy and it might still be a while before I can get to it. But I'll make a note to look as soon as I can and contact you if I find any of that. I could always haul my main board assembly into the house and take pictures of how those two boards are connected, at least. I'll need to take those pictures sooner or later anyway. :)
A lot of the hardcore OG computer people were electronics engineers and techs, these half built things are from people who fancied having a go but for whatever reason gave up.
There is, IMO, a BIIG hole in your list. The Sinclair ZX80. This came out in 1980 and the kit was sold for £79.95. It used the Z80 and came with 1kb RAM. It also came with full QWERTY keyboard, RF modulator for video output to a TV, & a cassette tape interface for storage. The supplied boot ROM was installed with Sinclair BASIC. In short it was a full home computer system with an input system that anyone could understand & programme c/w video output. I believe this kit marked the transition from computers being purely for engineers to their becoming something everyone could own & use. Thus it started 1980s home computer explosion. I didn't have one of these as while I was saving up its successor, the ZX81, was released and I built one of these instead. I might also add that this machine made a pretty good Z80 programmer out of me, something which later became a very useful employment skill.
The price would be horrendous, the complexity and fragility also. (look at the LGA sockets people butcher when installing CPUs clumsily) There plenty of clone 8bit and misc SBC PCBs and kits out there. There are ancient 486 and Pentium motherboards out there, 90s stuff that is still kit like enough to be interesting (but slow), also Industrial ISA backplane stuff with x86 ISA SBCs to play with, cheap enough if do some hunting around.
@@joefish6091 but i would still love to assamble my own pc completly from scratch including soldering on all the components on evrey board (excluding the psu of course) including bga components (preferably preballed) and after it is assembled it wont turn on and the debugging would start (the best part)
I accidentally dropped my phone while I watched UA-cam and when I picked it up this video started. I'm glad I did because this is great content! You got a new subscriber 👍
Alright, where do I begin, ads? I hate ads. Never click em. Like not ever. But this one was intriguing and I got nothing better going on at four in the morning. So anyway, here I am two and a half minutes in and you have a new followe! So glad I clicked your ad. I am really looking forward to watching your channel grow!
I can get you in contact with Jeff Roloff - founder of Central Data and the designer of the Central Data 2650 (in his teens aka Woz brilliant). I'm sure he'd be happy to fill in every detail. My dad worked there for many years after Central Data evolved into a SCSI systems company.
In order to align the jigs for a double sided board you simply have to put one side down before etching then drill a few holes and use them for alignment of the second side.
I am in the process of trying to redesign the S-100 computer to use modern parts and have features that didn't exist in 1977. (HDMI, i2c, USB, HPIB, WIFI, M.2 SSD, etc) I would like in to use the TDL Xitan pinout, but use one of the unassigned pins as a alt-bus pinout for high performance CPUs (ARM, esp32, CM4, etc) Is there anyone out there interested in putting such an idea put into the works? I use KiCad...
What a great video! Also great to see a new channel with some good retro content that isn't a complete hipster tech fest. Totally subscribed and passed it on to friends! =)
I have a BYT-8 Chassis with a 10 slot S-100 bus board. No display switches. This was the home to ‘Seattle Computer Products’ S-100 8086 motherboard running Quick and Dirty DOS. Will have to ask my brother what happen to the boards.
When I was in college in NYC back in the 70's, I was a member of a computer club in Long Island. There were at least 3 people in the club who had built Mark-8's, and there were one or two under construction. At every meeting we would have people bringing in their machines and demonstrating them work. The MARK-8s sometimes played music either via a speaker hooked up to an output port, or by making noise on a transistor radio. I remember that two of those Mark 8's were expanded machines, housed in large cabinets (internal separate power supplies). I don't know if those were kits or home made PCBs. In an attempt to build a PIC-A-STAR amateur radio transceiver using DSP, I actually have made some of my own double sided boards using toner transfer. It's a bear to do. I first put the resist on one side and spray paint the other side to protect from the etchant. I then etch the board, I used a mix of 2 parts H2O2, with 1 part of Muriatacid (Diluted HCL, sold to adjust swimming pool PH). After the first side is etched, I removed the paint and the resist with mineral spirits. Now I drill a few key holes to help me align the second side toner transfer. The PCB design artwork has a few "bullet points" on it for this purpose. With the second side resist ironed on, I spray paint the etched side and throw the board in the etchant again. Again remove paint and resist, clean, dry. The PCBs I made were for high density SMT parts, through hole 'jellybean" parts, and the usual gang of connectors. The 100 mill through hole parts spacing actually ended up aligning close enough for the dual side layout not to short circuit, or not circuit. I used "Augat" sockets which stand proud of the board by about 1mm, you can solder these on both sides of the board. So homemade double sided boards are not impossible, but these day you will just use Kicad to design them, and send off to China to get them made.
We had Micro Bee 16s and 32s in Primary School, here in the outer suburbs of Sydney Australia. Maybe one or 2 computers per school year if we were lucky. I recall playing some maths program on the PC. I had to play the 'Show Pony' for the adults because I was Dux of Mathematics and Science. Not Dux of the year, because I could not spell, because who needs to put the effort into that when you have a word processor that can correct spelling and grammar. And "programme"? All good programmers know that this is spelled as "program". "Colour", or "Color"? Your best guess is as good as mein? Thanks for the memories, entertainment and sharing.
Hey. Reseller here. We used to do storage units. We found a partial Altair 8800 kit. It was in a storage unit for nearly a decade. The storage facility would have likely disposed of it. But we put it up for auction. The market decided a price of $1800. Resellers provide a service. I guarantee many collectors would not deal with what you may come across in abandoned storage units. It's incredibly hard work. But sometimes it pays off.
I’m waiting to find an old box in an old barn or attic filled with New Old Stock. It’s already happened just waiting on time to catch up. Nice informative Video. Even Nicer “Junk”. As my wife says.
Oh lordy, it makes me feel so oooold, all that stuff was just coming up when I started work in microprocessors. Anyone want a z80 CP/M machine rotting in my garage? With a hard disk - whoa...
Lancaster's TVT-6 design uses the CPU to "execute" the display in the same way the Sinclair ZX80 does. I wonder whether Sinclair was inspired by Lancaster here.
You used to get kits in Yugoslavia. They would just have the circuit boards embedded into the card board covers of magazines, with a few chips and such in a plastic bag stapled to it. Pretty cool, although I think most of them were Sinclair z80 knock offs
I absolutely adore your skits, sir~! It gets so old watching all these kids on yt using the same stock footage over and over while doing monologues.. Your Style is Remarkably Refreshing and You put out such Fun content!!! I'm learning so much! Thank You!
Many thanks! The skits came about because I couldn't find images to fill narration time and I didn't want to spend on stock footage. I thought they would be fun to do, kind of an homage to silent film (except my Dr. Claw impression) and give the channel kind of a homey feel. Really glad people are enjoying them instead of being like 'omg what a loser hahahahaha' :)
Since I do not know how you store these kits, plz accept the follow as purely suggestions: You should consider storing these kits in larger plastic bins, where there is room for the individual pieces (boxes/envelopes, boards, parts bags, chips, instructions, etc.) can be separately stored inside the larger bin with instructions/paperwork in sleeved binders. The purpose being, they can be viewed without wear and tear as well as stored moisture free and jarring about during movement. You also might consider offering photos online, so that people can reproduce these items on their own. If they are so rare, it could benefit history to at least have reproduction available are parties to share and encourage each other to build/learn/modify/adapt the kits.
my grandmother was a solder technician for southwestern bell for 20 years starting in the 1960's, she is still and has never known her way around computers or tech in general. just because you can micro--solder at an industrial level doesn't mean you are technologically inclined at the slightest
Aussie Lad here. Yeah, Al-foil on polystyrene was the standard for me growing up. There was some chips stored on good antistatic foam, but most of the time it just crumbled into a gross dust. Im not sure if it was the climate or they just sent the junk out to the colonies. I’ve found huge panels of chips done this way when digging through storage at work, obviously not original packaging, but re-packed for storage (in the 80’s, I found this in about 2015). But dad had a few boxes of parts from when he worked as a photocopier tech, hes more of a mechanic, but I found enough opamps and 74xx chips to get into mischief. Electronics Australia has a long and colourful history, but I can blame/thank them for a lot, I got my first copy in ‘95. I could wax lyrical, but to keep on topic, they also got me into the hardware of computing. They had a series of articles, The $100 PC, which pointed out if you didnt need the top of the line $3000 Pentium, a very capable machine could be built from parts for bugger all. A bit of scrounging, troubleshooting, fleamarkets n hand-me-downs. This is pre-internet, so a bunch of articles telling you what to look for and the obvious Gotchya’s was priceless. As a pre-teen, that became my mission. Christmas and birthday money, dumpster diving at my Dad and Uncles work, picking the brain of the local computer shop, I had **MY** pc. There was the family computer, but I was forbidden to take the lid of that. So I built my own. My mates had a Nintendo or a Sega. I had a Computer. I now collect old electronics magazines, and had I been born a generation before, I 100% would have built myself a S100 system. Im half tempted to now, just for shits and giggles.
Yeah that special static foam I think always goes nasty.. you probably saw that in the video at various points. I think it needs very specific climate conditions and even then it degrades. EA is a great magazine.. I have been poring over articles as something I'm hoping to do with the channel is revive old electronics projects from magazines like that. I can't remember if EA published the Educ8 ? But stuff like that is really interesting to me.
I have TWO of the "Bay Area ES 106" TVT's in my hand right now. I just dug them out of storage this afternoon and washed 30 years of dirt off. They are built up but one has a number of modifications and they both look like maybe they were bought as bare boards and the parts sourced locally as many of the parts are higher voltage or larger size than spec. I picked these up as surplus around 30 or so ago years ago for about $20 as I recall. I am going to try to get one working as it has all of the chips and doesn't look too bodged. I downloaded the assembly manual a while ago and am binding all of the various "TV Typewriters" together into sort of a reference manual. If I get one of the Electronic Systems boards working, I will post some video. I also have the Synertek SYM-1 which I believe was a counterpart of the Kim-1. 6502 processor, 1 K of memory, hex keypad, etc. I paid around $380 for it originally and later sprung for the $100 Basic ROM. I had my first TVT hooked to it so as to be able to write programs in Basic.
I keep hoping to find a Bay Area TVT but they never come up for sale. I think because they just look like random electronic junk. Let me know when you've got some video up! Would love to see one operating.
PDF format, we are living in the age of good cheap inkjets and laser printers. Not to mention there large format printers at work and at local main/high street printing companies.
I had a friend (sadly now dead) who used to build the old kit computers that used switches and a momentary button to enter data into the computer and the output was via lights.
My dad built a Heath H88/89 back when I was in elementary school (around '79). He still has it and says it should still run if he replaced the power supply in it. I can remember learning BASIC on it and my dad upgrading it from a H88 w/16k to a H89 with 2 floppy drives. Even though the second drive isn't around anymore, I'd love to get ahold of some hard sector floppies and the OS for that beast and see if I could relive some of my childhood days on it.
I have an H88 here... I'd love to get my hands on the original H9 terminal they had for it. Pretty cool machine. When you use the front panel it feels like you're programming the time machine from Back to the Future.
Thank you to everyone who took a chance, clicked on my Ad and came to watch this video. I created this channel after the inadvertent demise of my original channel, BradH. BradH was one of those 'channels' that just got autocreated because I wanted to comment on something, or share videos of the kids with my Mom, etc. I also shared videos of my vintage computers there, basically home videos... no editing. I'd always wanted to create more 'formal' videos - videos with decentish lighting, maybe a few special effects. Particularly documentaries as I've been in love with those my whole life. My first attempt at this was the Digital Group Z80 video - shot with a handy cam and minimally edited. Several years later, I decided to really go for it and did my first 'documentary-style' video featuring the OSI 300 trainer board. That video earned the notice of hackaday and did pretty well, which was really exciting as a new 'creator'. I followed up with this Unbuilt Kits video and so on.
Eventually I decided I wanted to separate the 'formal' videos from the home videos, choose a more descriptive channel name and such, so I set up a branding account. Unfortunately in the process, I managed to delete the original channel, which was unrecoverable. So I set this one up, hastily reuploaded (which is why many videos are within weeks of each other) and took the huge penalty in exposure that comes with starting all over again. Since then I've created some small 'tour' videos (8BitBites) and have been working on a bunch of projects soon to come.
Anyway, I sincerely appreciate everyone who took a risk and clicked on that Ad, not knowing if they were going to be sucker punched into buying something, or Rickrolled, or worse. But that was never the intent - this channel is produced for the joy of it. There is no Patreon, no tshirts to sell, none of that for the forseeable future. It's like Biff said in Back to the Future II, relating what his future self told him about the Sports Almanac: "No catch." I've so enjoyed the learning process - probably my favorite thing was messing around with the green screen - and the joy of seeing it all come to life onscreen. I decided to go the Ad route for two reasons - one was to put some skin in the game and push myself to keep going, and the other was to try and recover from the loss of the old channel. UA-cam is a hard place for small, 'new' channels to get noticed.
It is deeply moving to have even one person compliment your work, let alone a whole bunch, let alone, as of this writing, 171 people who actually took the time and the extra step to click Subscribe. Thank you so much for the kind words and those votes of confidence. It means the world to me and motivates me to keep doing, keep learning, and hopefully, keep entertaining. Thank you, thank you, thank you - BradH.
No problem
honestly this is the first ad i've ever liked, ive been interested in making computers and this might be just what i need
I saw the ad and decided to put it in watch later, since this sort of video would normally be something I'd click on immediately - but the ad part definitely put me off. Glad I took that chance though, it was quite an entertaining video - subscribed and best of luck with the channel!
I like this, I like it a lot.
THis is great video quality! I expect this will get much more popular. Good job!
First time I've gotten an ad on this site that actually looked interesting. I've been looking for more channels focused on vintage computing, but beyond the few big ones, had no clue where to find them. Subscribed 😊
Hi. I am the David Griffiths who designed the DG680. Thanks for the nice review.
In answer to your question about the numbering, the VDU was first described in Electronics Today magazine and they assigned it project number 640. When I wrote the article about the CPU they called it 680. I am not sure whether that was the next number in their sequence or whether they jumped to 680 in a nod to the Z80. Applied Technology, the company that sold the kits, tended to brand it as DG-Z80.
I don't remember what the selling price was but I think you are in the right ball park.
You are right about the DG initials but I later formed a company called Digital Graphics Pty Ltd - what an amazing co-incidence about the initials ;-)
Thank you for this note! It is always an honor to 'meet' the people who designed and made this stuff work. I wondered about those model numbers! I keep hoping to stumble on a DG640. Do you know how well the kits sold?
@@TechTimeTraveller I think there would have been roughly the same number of DG640 or slightly more. Some people used the DG640 with different processors. I don't know the actual numbers but in the low thousands - small beans compared to the US market. I might have been rich now if I'd live somewhere else :-)
@@diggraph Thanks David for designing those boards, they came along at a time I was a high school student, and I learned a lot. My only wish was that the PCG was a full bit-mapped screen instead of a character rom set replacement. I spent a long time trying to devise a Least-Used system for recycling PCG chars, never got it to work properly. DGOS was a great little monitor!
damn wtf, i was doing something while watching and i looked up and was baffled by the sub count. keep the videos up man
I’m iiiniiiijijninniiiojniiiiibijbnk b ihij inj
Hatsune D00D nice
Sameeeee hahaha
This is a great video, I really loved it. Reminds me of the ZX spectrum clones my dad built in the Soviet Union.
Can You Send Me A Link So I Can Buy One? (In English With A Coding Manual Of Course)
@@seamusquain2706 I don't think it'd be possible to buy one new nowadays, but I've seen them go up for sale on eBay. Keep in mind they all run on 220v so you would need a transformer, and afaik they all run basic (in English too)
@@seamusquain2706 There is someone on Ebay selling a Russian sinclair clone kit, but your chances of it working on many types of video display areslim, and software compatibility with real ZXs is poor.
SO impressed by this. I'm honored to be your 1000th "like" on this video, and you have most decidedly won me over! This mirrors so well what I like to do on my channel "Forgotten Machines". Thank you for preserving and documenting these systems so well!
This tingled all the right nostalgia tingles. Great video! P.S.: Whenever I hear 8085, I think about the awesome TRS-80 Model 100 Portable Computer. Bill Gates himself worked on its firmware. This may be the last time he could be credited as lead programmer on a consumer project.
I have a Commodore MOS KIM-1 myself. This presentation is awesome as this hardware predates commercial production of personal computers and geared towards industrial, scientific/academic and hobbyists.
This is very interesting I learned quite a bit and the quality is pretty good.
There is still active development on the Australian TEC-1 including new PCB's, check the Australian Vintage Computer Collectors group on FB.
Liked, commented, subscribed, rang the bell. Thanks for the advertisement. It turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would be. Thank you for a well researched and presented video. You could have done an individual video on each kit. I love looking at the primordial soup origins of the computer revolution. I’m just amazed at the quality of this video. Looking forward to future videos. In the mean time I’ll go look at your other uploads.
Many thanks! Really appreciate the vote of confidence. I'm really enjoying playing around with special fx and am trying to present the info in a way that doesn't put people to sleep!
"...since I am situated only about 50 miles south of the Australian capital city of Whistler, British Columbia..."
i see what you did there ; )
Yes, keep the rare sealed kits as they are, for myself, I'm glad to know they exist and are taken care of.
I saw this as an ad and I thought it's gonna be one of those scammy weird videos but I was wrong. This is an awesome video, as is your channel! Keep it on! I'll definitely subscribe and stay!
I was a bit reluctant to use ads, but I figured it was that or languish in obscurity unless/until the UA-cam algorithm found me. Anyway thanks so much for taking a chance!!
I worked for Midwest Scientific Instruments in Olathe Ks back in the late 70's, they developed a business system based on the SWTPC 'standard' with the Motorola 6800. I have a link to their catalog here... I also have an unbuilt SWTPC system, cassette interface and an open frame monitor that I will probably put on eBay eventually. Hard to do, because one of the original boxes is addressed to MSI from SWTPC, and another is from SWTPC to Computer Workshop of North KCMO. My experience with Computer Workshop involved fixing Polymorphic 8812/3 computers, since I already had experience with Poly 88 systems at Cyborg Computer Gaming Center in Westport (Kansas City, Missouri) back about that time too!
Awesome! I have a MSI 6800.. its a very well built machine. Someone had changed the EPROM to something called Weebug so I wasn't able to operate it with the MSIbug until someone who had a copy of the listing sent it to me, and I was able to burn the 2708 with my SWTPC 6800. I have MSI's 1702 prom burner but have not been able to locate the software to drive it yet. I'm trying to archive everything I find of theirs but it's not common. That's awesome that you worked for them! If you ever post pics of that unbuilt 6800 kit please let me know. I doubt I could afford to buy it but it'd be awesome to see!
Awesome collection. I really miss PE magazine. I remember reading every issue that you featured.
Ditto. Good times
Idk why I enjoy retro computer videos like this so much, maybe it’s just relaxing an informative. Though I don’t think this information will ever be of any use to me, it’s still cool history.
It's a lot cheaper to enjoy it via video vs actually buying it, too. ;)
Nice retro review! Just a small correction: @4:19 The DREAM 6800 came with only 1KB of RAM (in the form of 2x 2114 1Kx4bit Static RAM chips). In addition there was 1KB of EPROM (containing CHIPOS), in the form of a 2708 triple-supply EPROM. Because the 1KB RAM + 1 KB ROM comes to a total of 2KB of "memory", this likely explains your confusion saying it had 2KB RAM. Interestingly, most users were motivated to upgrade their DREAM 6800 to 4KB RAM to allow playing the machine-coded DREAM INVADERS game. Note also that the 2x 2114 chips were transferred off the main PCB and onto the memory expansion board, required as the main PCB did not fully decode the onboard 1KB RAM space (Only A15 & A14 were decoded so the 1KB onboard RAM was replicated across the entire lower 16KB address space). Note also that most users only expanded to 4KB RAM as that was the maximum that CHIP-8 itself could address (due to it's 12bit operand addressing). Therefore, most DREAM 6800 memory expansion designs were only 4KB. With a fully populated 8KB RAM on the J.R.Components DREAM Expansion Board, the additional RAM above 4KB could therefore only be utilised by machine code programs.
Ahhh. Good catch! Yeah I was going off the cuff a bit.. the particular JR expansion board I have I think I had a bit of trouble getting info for - I had found another version without the spots for the EPROMs. As for the 6800 itself, my actual machine is technically a 6802, which Michael Bauer said was a thing JR did against his approval as the 6802 is a slightly different beast, and he was surprised it worked. I believe it had the same amount of RAM onboard as the 6800.. I think all they changed was the CPU. If it didn't that may be where I got mixed up. But more likely I just miscounted. Thank you for the correction!
@@TechTimeTraveller Yes, the DREAM 6802 variant still had the same 1KB RAM. It came about because there was a worldwide shortage of MC6875 clock chips at the time the DREAM 6800 was released. The 6802 is basically a 6800 with onboard clock generator (and also 128bytes of battery backed up RAM). Note that due to the 6875 shortage the author also published a replacement clock generator circuit, that many made up on a piece of vero/matrix board to use in place of the hard to find MC6875. Hope this helps fill in the background. :)
Great video :)
I still have some Don Lancaster books, specifically TTL cookbook and CMOS cookbook. He describes the TV typewriter in the ttl cookbook. Used these books in the 80s and 90s before datasets were easily available via the Internet. I feel old now.
Now I wish I had kept my Mark-8. It had a separate octal keypad and 2 digit, 7 segment display for inputting a program. I had about 2 years of the users group newsletter as well.
You would be sitting on $12,000 or more.. which is what the last one sold for!
Dude I learned a lot and your vids look cool how u only have 750 suubs you should have 100k I'm subbing
Much appreciated. It takes time for UA-cam to notice a channel. Right now I'd be thrilled if we hit 1000!
What a fascinating collection! I started building (mostly) retro kit computers last year, and I just finished a slightly-updated reproduction of the "78up5" Signetics 2650 Mini System (also published in Electronics Australia as an update to the slightly older one you showed, I believe) a couple days ago. Having proved that it works as advertised (I can enter machine code into the PIPBUG system monitor via serial terminal, then execute that code and see the output), I'm please with the result but not sure what else to do with it now, hehe. Documentation I've found suggests that, at one time, there was commercial software available for it, as well as upgrade projects, but I haven't found the binaries for any of the software yet, and the old magazine articles that describe projects are not in the greatest, most readable state. Oh, well. It was fun, just the same, and there's always the future!
Other kits I've built use the RCA COSMAC 1802, Zilog Z80 and Z180, Intel 8080A and 8085, MOS 65C02, and Rockwell 6501Q. I even just today looked at websites offering kits of boards to build your own reproduction Schelbi-8H or 8B and Mark 8, but the prices, just for the boards, are a little eye watering, so I think I'll have to skip those. :-O
Thank you so much for showing us your fine collection of original, vintage kits! :-)
This is Great glad the algorithm Brough this me this I'm now subscription 436
Thanks so much for checking it out! Appreciate the sub!
This video is a great description of early computer kits and brought back a few memories. I didn't get started with computers until the 70s. My first home computer was Tandy's TRS-80, which made computing fun for me and many others.
Amazing content.
Back in the day, WAY back (1978-1980), I worked for a process control company. One of my contracts was Fortin Laminating that manufactured bare circuit board. Makes me wonder if any of their products ended up in these kits.
I spenr hundreds of hours building S100 boards and designing optically isolated serial interface cards, There was no standard interface available. I have a Cromemco computer sitting in the floor next to my desk; Unfinished and non working! I also have a number of unassembled card kits, including a music synthesiser. A Fairchild F8 development board and a book on how to use an F8 Microprocessor to make a Microcomputer!
Basic in ROM, I kind of miss that feature. This is a cool look at kits!
Some very nice vintage items:)
But you should really build those kits and bring them to life.
Right now they are dead and not very interesting except to us connoisseurs:) It's like those computer museums where nothing actually works....much better if everything could be running.
I just found a very rare SC/MP kit, all there in the original folder, and I intend to build and connect it to the Teletype:)
You are still preserving history by building them:))))
It's a tough one. I solicited a lot of opinions on this subject and it's 50/50. I do kind of agree a computer was meant to do something, not sit static on a shelf. But there is a lot of pressure to preserve history. I actually had an email conversation with Jon Titus himself about my Mark-8 boards and he felt they should remain as is. That's pretty tough to go against. :)
Dang, 1K of RAM taking up an entire circuit board. Folks back then really knew their stuff compared to today.
Those pcb boards are so pretty...🤤
What a fascinating and well made video. My interests are more 80s/early 90s computing, but this was so good, accet a brand new subscriber :)
Many thanks!!
4:44 My brother and I built a number of Applied Tech's S100 boards (actually 'S-100' back then) and also the black cardframe. It was a good system and the DGOS ("dee-goss") monitor with hex editor on 2716 was pretty easy to use and could save to tape.
It was all fine until one Saturday we went to Applied Tech's shop in a northern suburb of Sydney only to find not a trace of their S100 machines anymore. They had all gone and been replaced by the Microbee. The CEO of AT told us it was backwards compatible with the S100 system and that Microbee software would run on our machine.
Well of course it wasn't that simple. The Microbee had a different keyboard setup which IIRC used the light pen input on the 6845 and any Microbee software needed patching to use the DGOS calls. I did do it for a few programs. Needless to say we were very annoyed about it all, after having spent a lot of money on building the computer.
I modified the DG680 with a rocker switch on the top edge of the board to switch a 4MHx crystal, and replaced the CPU with a Z80A and it ran really well. Sometimes I could even switch from 2 to 4 MHz and it would continue to run but more often it needed a reset. I think the DG640 VDU was based on the SOL-20 video circuitry, certainly AT sold games such as Missile Defence that displayed 'Processor Technology' on the start screen.
As the supplied MicroWorld BASIC was not very good, I ported TRS-80 LII BASIC to the machine by typing in the 12K of hex digits from the BASIC Decoded book over a few weeks, patched the keyboard and (I think) video start location. I made a replica TRS80 graphics character set for the PCG card and got MS Flight Simulator to run, made a 4 voice music synth speaker for it (from a BYTE article), also started writing a DOS for a Versafloppy II based on another BYTE article. I still have some of these bits of software, the rest went with the machine a long time ago.
Just found your channel and subbed this video is great so far keep up the content! Excited to see what's to come.
Muchas gracias por este video super informativo!! Lo disfrute
Some of MIL's early chip packages were quite strange.
Giving the originals to the museum is a good gesture. But before that, make as many good copies of it as possible, so that others can learn from it. That is what the makers would have wanted. Maybe take out a few little mistakes, improve it a bit here and there, nothing wrong with that.
Having to think in a structured manner is good for kids. Building something from scratch is good too. Neither is there something wrong with making a few buck by selling replicas. Information is free, it has to be spread to have effect. Carry on, you do good work.
If thou' cannot run Zork 1,2,&3 on your home computer, THY' PC SUCKS! No computer should run without one!
And now having watched the whole Central Data 2650 segment, I can add a few more comments: Yes, you're right about the box and that added sheet; neither of those was part of the stock package you got from Central Data when ordering from the Radio-Electronics article. My memory agrees with you, that you did indeed just get the bare board and the PROMs when ordering that way. Those PROMs ought to still be fine, since they're the old "Fuse-Link" style where microscopic metal fuses were actually "blown" when programming those chips. So they stand a much better chance of working after all this time than the EPROMS other old computers used, in which the floating gates eventually have their charge leak away.
If you or anyone else actually builds up one of these bare boards (which I recall was fun), watch out for little metal bridges. My own board was not completely etched and had a few little copper whiskers connecting traces that shouldn't have been connected. Luckily, I had a couple of experienced mentors who found that problem for me; I wouldn't have thought to look for something like that!
Since this board has a composite-video output, it should be possible to connect it to any modern monitor that has a composite video input (though I've been saving a couple of old CRT monitors just for connecting to my own CD 2650 once I restore it). Oh, and the intro frame in your video indicates it ran at 3.5-something MHz. Hm, well I do recall overclocking it once I got a 2650B chip, but I believe the stock board ran at 1.[something] MHz. It still seemed pretty zippy compared to the minicomputers I used at school since it wasn't going through a serial terminal like they were.
Connecting a keyboard might pose a bit of a challenge in modern times, since it uses a parallel ASCII interface. I bet there are or were converters out there to convert USB or PS/2 keyboards to that ancient standard, though, since once upon a time surplus keyboards almost all used that interface.
Again, I'm happy to answer any Central Data 2650 questions if I still happen to have the information in my leaky old memory. :)
Hit me up if you ever want to replicate those PCBs. It's something I'd love to play with and these days professional PCBs are cheap.
The only thing missing from this is a cameo by Steve Ciarcia !
Ask him, you might get lucky 😘
P.S. I started with a Signetics 2650 (KT-9500 board) SWTPC keyboard and ...
Amazing video!! You deserve more subs.
Also, it’s a dream of mine to find an unbuilt computer kit for cheap at an estate sale etc. You’ve got a great collection.
Many thanks. I had a lot of fun with this one, esp. the green screen effects. I'm going to keep at it and keep trying to lift the quality. Your kind words are super helpful and appreciated! And motivating!
Apple Park- larger than a football stadium, and at a cost of nearly 5 billion USD the most expensive office building ever.
This is fantastic content. Cannot believe there are less than 1000 people subcribed. @CallyWasHere
It's interesting that the same type of people who bought these kits in the late seventies and early eighties are now buying things like FPGA test boards or actual 'retro' 8bit type kits. There always will be a market for something you build yourself. It's just that compared to the computer and console markets nowadays it's still (and probably always will be) minuscule.
finally, an interesting ad, you just earned a new subscriber
Many thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
Now *this* is an advertisement I could get behind.
Thank you! I hesitated about using an ad to raise the channel profile but I thought it worth a gamble.
@@TechTimeTraveller It's better than the crap I usually see in the ad box.
If I could buy a kit laptop today, I would be soooo happy.
I am now addicted to computer kits. I need serious help, I have like 4 now. Sure, they all "do the same thing" but OH MY GOD THEY'RE SO FUN
I got the Central Data 2650 back in the day and built it. I didn't have a parallel ASCII keyboard so used an AIM65 to provide that function. The CD2650 still works. I am thinking of expanding it and putting it into a nice perspex case. I have a spare C64 keyboard which I will use instead of having to get out the AIM65.
Very cool! If you decide to take some pictures or video please let me know. Would love to see one assembled! Apparently there was an expansion kit of some kind? I saw a pic of it on old-computers.com I think. Looked like S100 or something similar.
@@TechTimeTraveller : As someone who cut my home-computer teeth on my Central Data 2650, I can confirm that the expansion you're thinking of is Central Data's S-100 expansion board. I used mine to expand the RAM and add Central Data's floppy-controller board. (Every few years I search to see what's out there on the CD 2650, and wow I found a lot this time, including your video! I know I'll be restoring mine at some point, so I keep gathering as much info as I can toward that day. And I'm happy to answer any CD 2650 questions that my aging memory will let me - it was my only computer for a few years in the late 70s so I knew it extremely well.)
@@gordonbrandly4352 Many thanks for the reply! I actually very recently got my hands on a built CD2650 and the S100 expansion board. They look to be in pretty close to pristine condition, but are missing the interconnect cables that link them. I went through the old Radio Electronics articles and sort of followed it month to month hoping to find where they introduced the S100 expansion board, but alas.. no sign of that. I suppose it could have come out months after the original article, or maybe not even been an article at all. Any info you have would be deeply appreciated for sure!
@@TechTimeTraveller : Excellent! And yes as you suspected, that S-100 board came out a couple of years after the original magazine article. I have all that stuff squirrelled away in my garage, and I'm hoping I still have the manuals as well. You've given me more incentive to look for it now, though work is busy and it might still be a while before I can get to it. But I'll make a note to look as soon as I can and contact you if I find any of that. I could always haul my main board assembly into the house and take pictures of how those two boards are connected, at least. I'll need to take those pictures sooner or later anyway. :)
All of a sudden my rasp[berry pi's seem less daunting. To the OG computer guys out there you have my respect.
A lot of the hardcore OG computer people were electronics engineers and techs, these half built things are from people who fancied having a go but for whatever reason gave up.
Why would anybody dislike this video? : /
There is, IMO, a BIIG hole in your list. The Sinclair ZX80. This came out in 1980 and the kit was sold for £79.95. It used the Z80 and came with 1kb RAM. It also came with full QWERTY keyboard, RF modulator for video output to a TV, & a cassette tape interface for storage. The supplied boot ROM was installed with Sinclair BASIC.
In short it was a full home computer system with an input system that anyone could understand & programme c/w video output. I believe this kit marked the transition from computers being purely for engineers to their becoming something everyone could own & use. Thus it started 1980s home computer explosion.
I didn't have one of these as while I was saving up its successor, the ZX81, was released and I built one of these instead. I might also add that this machine made a pretty good Z80 programmer out of me, something which later became a very useful employment skill.
Fantastic channel. I've been watching for awhile now. Absolutely love your sense of humor!
Thank you!
i would love if modern pc mainboards came optionaly in a kit variant (maybe with the plastic cpu socket presolderd) i even would pay 100$ extra
The price would be horrendous, the complexity and fragility also. (look at the LGA sockets people butcher when installing CPUs clumsily)
There plenty of clone 8bit and misc SBC PCBs and kits out there.
There are ancient 486 and Pentium motherboards out there, 90s stuff that is still kit like enough to be interesting (but slow), also Industrial ISA backplane stuff with x86 ISA SBCs to play with, cheap enough if do some hunting around.
@@joefish6091 but i would still love to assamble my own pc completly from scratch including soldering on all the components on evrey board (excluding the psu of course) including bga components (preferably preballed) and after it is assembled it wont turn on and the debugging would start (the best part)
I accidentally dropped my phone while I watched UA-cam and when I picked it up this video started. I'm glad I did because this is great content! You got a new subscriber 👍
Haha! The accidental subscriber! Love it. Thanks for your support, it is really appreciated!
Alright, where do I begin, ads? I hate ads. Never click em. Like not ever. But this one was intriguing and I got nothing better going on at four in the morning. So anyway, here I am two and a half minutes in and you have a new followe! So glad I clicked your ad. I am really looking forward to watching your channel grow!
Really glad I took a chance and clicked on this ad. This was great and an era of computing I knew very little about!
The question is, what people were doing with these? Even useless home micros could act as a programmable calculators, but those?
1:20 LOL
This is great stuff, can’t wait to watch more :)
Cool video 👍👌😎
Wow... What a true hidden gem your channel is! It's sad it took me this long to be redirected/brought to it by UA-cam's algorithms.
I can get you in contact with Jeff Roloff - founder of Central Data and the designer of the Central Data 2650 (in his teens aka Woz brilliant). I'm sure he'd be happy to fill in every detail. My dad worked there for many years after Central Data evolved into a SCSI systems company.
In order to align the jigs for a double sided board you simply have to put one side down before etching then drill a few holes and use them for alignment of the second side.
Each one of these makes all of mine look modern and boring. Except maybe the Rockwell AIM-65 I pulled out of an e-waste container about 2 years ago.
I am in the process of trying to redesign the S-100 computer to use modern parts and
have features that didn't exist in 1977. (HDMI, i2c, USB, HPIB, WIFI, M.2 SSD, etc)
I would like in to use the TDL Xitan pinout, but use one of the unassigned pins
as a alt-bus pinout for high performance CPUs (ARM, esp32, CM4, etc)
Is there anyone out there interested in putting such an idea put into the works?
I use KiCad...
What a great video! Also great to see a new channel with some good retro content that isn't a complete hipster tech fest. Totally subscribed and passed it on to friends! =)
@TechTimeTraveller Do you know where I can acquire those solder sockets that are on a reel?
I have a BYT-8 Chassis with a 10 slot S-100 bus board. No display switches. This was the home to ‘Seattle Computer Products’ S-100 8086 motherboard running Quick and Dirty DOS. Will have to ask my brother what happen to the boards.
When I was in college in NYC back in the 70's, I was a member of a computer club in Long Island. There were at least 3 people in the club who had built Mark-8's, and there were one or two under construction. At every meeting we would have people bringing in their machines and demonstrating them work. The MARK-8s sometimes played music either via a speaker hooked up to an output port, or by making noise on a transistor radio. I remember that two of those Mark 8's were expanded machines, housed in large cabinets (internal separate power supplies). I don't know if those were kits or home made PCBs.
In an attempt to build a PIC-A-STAR amateur radio transceiver using DSP, I actually have made some of my own double sided boards using toner transfer. It's a bear to do. I first put the resist on one side and spray paint the other side to protect from the etchant. I then etch the board, I used a mix of 2 parts H2O2, with 1 part of Muriatacid (Diluted HCL, sold to adjust swimming pool PH). After the first side is etched, I removed the paint and the resist with mineral spirits. Now I drill a few key holes to help me align the second side toner transfer. The PCB design artwork has a few "bullet points" on it for this purpose. With the second side resist ironed on, I spray paint the etched side and throw the board in the etchant again. Again remove paint and resist, clean, dry.
The PCBs I made were for high density SMT parts, through hole 'jellybean" parts, and the usual gang of connectors. The 100 mill through hole parts spacing actually ended up aligning close enough for the dual side layout not to short circuit, or not circuit. I used "Augat" sockets which stand proud of the board by about 1mm, you can solder these on both sides of the board. So homemade double sided boards are not impossible, but these day you will just use Kicad to design them, and send off to China to get them made.
We had Micro Bee 16s and 32s in Primary School, here in the outer suburbs of Sydney Australia. Maybe one or 2 computers per school year if we were lucky. I recall playing some maths program on the PC. I had to play the 'Show Pony' for the adults because I was Dux of Mathematics and Science. Not Dux of the year, because I could not spell, because who needs to put the effort into that when you have a word processor that can correct spelling and grammar. And "programme"? All good programmers know that this is spelled as "program". "Colour", or "Color"? Your best guess is as good as mein? Thanks for the memories, entertainment and sharing.
Awesome video!!! I also have an Altair 680 case and I'd love to get a nice copy of that Rev-0 board for it. Can you scan it so I can reproduce it?
I can certainly try. It's bigger than my scanner bed but maybe with some careful stitching it can be done. I'll take a look at it this aft.
Hey. Reseller here. We used to do storage units. We found a partial Altair 8800 kit. It was in a storage unit for nearly a decade.
The storage facility would have likely disposed of it. But we put it up for auction. The market decided a price of $1800.
Resellers provide a service. I guarantee many collectors would not deal with what you may come across in abandoned storage units. It's incredibly hard work. But sometimes it pays off.
I’m waiting to find an old box in an old barn or attic filled with New Old Stock. It’s already happened just waiting on time to catch up.
Nice informative Video.
Even Nicer “Junk”.
As my wife says.
Oh lordy, it makes me feel so oooold, all that stuff was just coming up when I started work in microprocessors.
Anyone want a z80 CP/M machine rotting in my garage? With a hard disk - whoa...
Lancaster's TVT-6 design uses the CPU to "execute" the display in the same way the Sinclair ZX80 does. I wonder whether Sinclair was inspired by Lancaster here.
You used to get kits in Yugoslavia. They would just have the circuit boards embedded into the card board covers of magazines, with a few chips and such in a plastic bag stapled to it. Pretty cool, although I think most of them were Sinclair z80 knock offs
I absolutely adore your skits, sir~! It gets so old watching all these kids on yt using the same stock footage over and over while doing monologues.. Your Style is Remarkably Refreshing and You put out such Fun content!!! I'm learning so much! Thank You!
Many thanks! The skits came about because I couldn't find images to fill narration time and I didn't want to spend on stock footage. I thought they would be fun to do, kind of an homage to silent film (except my Dr. Claw impression) and give the channel kind of a homey feel. Really glad people are enjoying them instead of being like 'omg what a loser hahahahaha' :)
Since I do not know how you store these kits, plz accept the follow as purely suggestions:
You should consider storing these kits in larger plastic bins, where there is room for the individual pieces (boxes/envelopes, boards, parts bags, chips, instructions, etc.) can be separately stored inside the larger bin with instructions/paperwork in sleeved binders. The purpose being, they can be viewed without wear and tear as well as stored moisture free and jarring about during movement.
You also might consider offering photos online, so that people can reproduce these items on their own. If they are so rare, it could benefit history to at least have reproduction available are parties to share and encourage each other to build/learn/modify/adapt the kits.
my grandmother was a solder technician for southwestern bell for 20 years starting in the 1960's, she is still and has never known her way around computers or tech in general. just because you can micro--solder at an industrial level doesn't mean you are technologically inclined at the slightest
Aussie Lad here. Yeah, Al-foil on polystyrene was the standard for me growing up. There was some chips stored on good antistatic foam, but most of the time it just crumbled into a gross dust. Im not sure if it was the climate or they just sent the junk out to the colonies. I’ve found huge panels of chips done this way when digging through storage at work, obviously not original packaging, but re-packed for storage (in the 80’s, I found this in about 2015). But dad had a few boxes of parts from when he worked as a photocopier tech, hes more of a mechanic, but I found enough opamps and 74xx chips to get into mischief.
Electronics Australia has a long and colourful history, but I can blame/thank them for a lot, I got my first copy in ‘95. I could wax lyrical, but to keep on topic, they also got me into the hardware of computing. They had a series of articles, The $100 PC, which pointed out if you didnt need the top of the line $3000 Pentium, a very capable machine could be built from parts for bugger all. A bit of scrounging, troubleshooting, fleamarkets n hand-me-downs. This is pre-internet, so a bunch of articles telling you what to look for and the obvious Gotchya’s was priceless. As a pre-teen, that became my mission. Christmas and birthday money, dumpster diving at my Dad and Uncles work, picking the brain of the local computer shop, I had **MY** pc. There was the family computer, but I was forbidden to take the lid of that. So I built my own. My mates had a Nintendo or a Sega. I had a Computer.
I now collect old electronics magazines, and had I been born a generation before, I 100% would have built myself a S100 system. Im half tempted to now, just for shits and giggles.
Yeah that special static foam I think always goes nasty.. you probably saw that in the video at various points. I think it needs very specific climate conditions and even then it degrades. EA is a great magazine.. I have been poring over articles as something I'm hoping to do with the channel is revive old electronics projects from magazines like that. I can't remember if EA published the Educ8 ? But stuff like that is really interesting to me.
I have TWO of the "Bay Area ES 106" TVT's in my hand right now. I just dug them out of storage this afternoon and washed 30 years of dirt off. They are built up but one has a number of modifications and they both look like maybe they were bought as bare boards and the parts sourced locally as many of the parts are higher voltage or larger size than spec.
I picked these up as surplus around 30 or so ago years ago for about $20 as I recall. I am going to try to get one working as it has all of the chips and doesn't look too bodged.
I downloaded the assembly manual a while ago and am binding all of the various "TV Typewriters" together into sort of a reference manual. If I get one of the Electronic Systems boards working, I will post some video.
I also have the Synertek SYM-1 which I believe was a counterpart of the Kim-1. 6502 processor, 1 K of memory, hex keypad, etc. I paid around $380 for it originally and later sprung for the $100 Basic ROM. I had my first TVT hooked to it so as to be able to write programs in Basic.
I keep hoping to find a Bay Area TVT but they never come up for sale. I think because they just look like random electronic junk. Let me know when you've got some video up! Would love to see one operating.
u: "Honey, this is priceless" ,her: "I ordered the full original barbie set w/ wardrobe , it came w/ a free g.i.joe w/ loincloth"
0:11 I'd be happy. I like building things.
My Uncle Leo Silvan owned Techniques... forwarded this video to my cousin if there is any more to the Mark-8 story.
Very nice, thank you for this. Please consider wearing gloves when handling this stuff. Thanks for your time.
Who's worse: People who bought computer kits and never built them, or people who buy them 40 years later?
PDF format, we are living in the age of good cheap inkjets and laser printers. Not to mention there large format printers at work and at local main/high street printing companies.
I remember in my day no one ever showed how to etch boards
I had a friend (sadly now dead) who used to build the old kit computers that used switches and a momentary button to enter data into the computer and the output was via lights.
It all looks pretty hokey today but back in the day this stuff was science fiction.
I like this video, but its background music got on my nerves after a while.`
This channel is a hidden gem! You’re way more in depth than the 8-Bit Guy, and you’ve discuss BBS which he has yet to do.
Wait...Kit computers were a thing in the 70's? I thought that was a more recent thing!
1 + 1 = 10 what else would it be?
Really love your channel! Thanks for all the great sharing :) :)
My dad built a Heath H88/89 back when I was in elementary school (around '79). He still has it and says it should still run if he replaced the power supply in it. I can remember learning BASIC on it and my dad upgrading it from a H88 w/16k to a H89 with 2 floppy drives.
Even though the second drive isn't around anymore, I'd love to get ahold of some hard sector floppies and the OS for that beast and see if I could relive some of my childhood days on it.
I have an H88 here... I'd love to get my hands on the original H9 terminal they had for it. Pretty cool machine. When you use the front panel it feels like you're programming the time machine from Back to the Future.
Absolutely fascinating and some rare gems there, for sure.
1 k SRAM ~98$ ::-{}