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Historic Microcomputer Restoration?

Posted by Cliff on Tue May 09, 2006 05:35 PM
from the preserve-the-past dept.
Education Hardware
Pojodojo asks: "I am doing an independent study next semester with my computer science professor which we decided to call Historic Microcomputer Repair and Restoration. I will be working with such classics as the Altair 8080 and the Apple II. After I have repaired and or restored these machines, I will put them in a display for others to see. I have the opportunity for a modest budget to get equipment to put in the display, and would like to know is, what sort of things would you as fellow comp sci geeks like to see in a Historic Computer exhibit?"
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  • Duh (Score:5, Funny)

    by baldass_newbie (136609) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:38PM (#15297301) Homepage Journal
    Ascii pr0n, obviously.
    *sheesh*

  • Porn. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Threni (635302)
    I'm not kidding. I remember having a disk of porn for the BBC Micro. That computer only had 32k of ram, and the porn I had was for a mode that used about 5k..perhaps 10, something like that. It was animated too - two frames of it. Amusing.
    • I had a lot of Beeb software but never stumbled across porn. It could have been mode 4 (2 colours, 320x256, 10k) or 5 (4 colours, 160x256, 10k). The only one using less ram was mode 7 (teletext, 1k) and somehow I don't think the pr0n would have looked too good in that, though I guess you'd have gotten plenty of frames.

  • The abacus (Score:3, Insightful)

    by luder (923306) * <slashdot@COWlbras.net minus herbivore> on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:40PM (#15297311)
    After all, it was one of the first calculating devices.

  • well... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joe 155 (937621) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:41PM (#15297319) Journal
    .. I don't know the extent to which it fits your definition, but if I was to think of a bitchin' computer (insomuch as it could do some level of computing). It would be an Amiga 500, god I loved that... if you want something a little more in the line of "computer" I would say collosus, the original bletchly park beast... it could still out perform a P4....

    • Re:well... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by moosesocks (264553) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @07:06PM (#15297728) Homepage
      You've got to love it that when a computer is so efficent that it's only limited by the speed at which data can be fed into it.

      When testing to see how fast the Colossus could perform reliably, engineers found that it would perform flawlessly until it was running so fast that the paper tapes that fed the input data into Colossus caught fire, at which point they abandoned the experiment for fear that they'd burn the wood-framed building down. A true testament to Turing and the other fine scientists at Bletchly Park.

      Pity Churchill ordered it destroyed after the war was over. It was decades ahead of its time.
      • You've got to love it that when a computer is so efficent that it's only limited by the speed at which data can be fed into it.

        Well, considering Moore's law doesn't apply to DRAM and Hard Disk Drives, I'd say almost all machines these days are thusly limited when given a problem set larger than its L3 cache.

      • The claim probably comes from this incident [iankitching.me.uk]:
        (quote)
        A simulation of Colossus which Sale ran on a top-of-the-range Pentium PC took twice as long as the real thing.

        or this [pgp.com]:
        If you wanted to program a modern computer to do what Colossus does, you'd need a 2GHz Pentium to match it.

        Don't forget Colossus was massively parallel [codesandciphers.org.uk]:
        At 5,000 cps the interval between sprocket holes is 200 microsecs. In this time Colossus will do up to 100 Boolean calculations simultaneously on each of the five tape channels and across a

  • The Amiga 500 (Score:5, Informative)

    by scenestar (828656) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:45PM (#15297349) Homepage Journal
    this thing is mroe important seeing as it was used for years for video editing.

    But who am I to judge.....
    • The Amiga 1000 (the original Amiga) is the better historical computer, IMO. Hey - any movie used in The Price of Darkness has gotta have it goin' on!

      "I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! I LIVE! " ...
      "IN FACT...YOU WILL NOT BE SAVED!"

      Classic.

      Definitely the computer Matthew Broderick used in WarGames (IMSAI?) should be in there.

      Scrounging up a working Apple Lisa and Apple /// would be good, same for a Kaypro and an Osborne. All the classic 8-bits: Atari 400 and 800, Commodore PET,

        • I believe there was an external genlock for the Amiga 500. However, the Amiga 2000 was by far the more popular platform for business use, with or without the toaster. I used to have an A2000 with the internal genlock (used the video slot, same place the toaster taps into for video, while it also goes into a normal slot) and the only thing I ever used it for was to chat over television (output from my vcr, which has a tuner of course) but it was pretty spiffy and fairly decent-quality.

          A friend of mine al

  • There was an amazing variety of 8-bit platforms manufactured between 1976-1985, the more you have the better. But take my advice, having refurbished a number of these machines: Plan on buying 3 for every one you get working, Ebay is your friend, no single machine is worth more than $5. You should be able to pick up core cpu/keyboards for $15 following these rules. Use a modern audio cable switch box and a single composite monitor to switch between them- Composite monitors are hard to find and expensive, but many modern cheap 15" TV sets have the correct RCA inputs.
      • Depends on how you look at it- 1976-1979 certainly had the big names come in (Commodore Pet, Vic 20 & 64; TI-99/4 and /4a, Apple I, II, II+, IIe, Altair, the Tandy Radio Shack series, and of course, who can forget the precursor to the BBC micro, the Timex Sinclair Z80?), all of which were TECHNICAL leaps forward. But the real explosion came in with the merging of the Home Video Game Industry with the Home Computer industry: Coleco Adam; Atari 400, 800, 1600. And of course the business machines from I
  • I realize that you're doing this as an independent study project for which the repair aspect is certainly a valuable learning tool. However, is repairing these machines particularly necessary? Will you power them up and leave them running in the display? I mean, unless you've got some decent demos running (and maybe I'm missing the point and that's exactly what you're asking for here), the machines will be sitting idle behind some plexi. In which case all you really need to do is clean them up to be present

  • I think your best bet... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bin_jammin (684517) <Binjammin@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:52PM (#15297392)
    is to stick with well documented hardware. The two you've picked so far ought to more than fit the bill, but considering you've added "repair" to the title of the class, I assume you'll be doing pcb level hardware repair. This is a LOT of fun and frustration at the same time, but if you start digging into machines that nobody's thought of, cared about, or kept track of over the past 30+ years you probably will start getting into headaches of trying to diagnose some seriously weird bugs. Not to discourage you from this course of action, in fact far from it, it sounds like something I would have enjoyed in my public schooling days (or at least getting credit for it). Find clubs that support the machines and can give you advice, don't try to go it alone, after all, the machines were built by teams, teams should help you rebuild them. Most of all remember to have fun!

  • Computer History Museum (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tackhead (54550) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:53PM (#15297397)
    If you haven't already done so, you and your professor need to contact the Computer History Museum [computerhistory.org] in San Jose.

    Next week's big festivities involve a restored PDP-1 [computerhistory.org].

    Their collection of hardware is pretty much unmatched, and is open to the public. What's on display is the tip of their collection's iceberg. Who knows what might be kicking around in the background, just waiting for a small team of geeks to restore? [computerhistory.org]

    And conversely, who knows what might be kicking around in your classmates' basements that's on CHM's wish list [computerhistory.org]?

    • You might want to contact MARCH [midatlanticretro.org], The Mid-Atlantic Retro Computer Hobbyist group. They've only been around for a very short time, but they're gathering a lot of informative members. They are running an exhibit this weekend (May 13) in Wall, NJ. Their website is still just basic info, but they have a discussion forum on Yahoo as linked on their main page.


  • While most people don't think of them as "historic", displaying a 5 to 10 year-old computer and comparing it with a modern computer highlights the rapid pace of change in the industry and is interesting to see.

  • so many milestones... (Score:4, Informative)

    by TheSHAD0W (258774) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:59PM (#15297422) Homepage
    Here's some computers I'd recommend you try to get. Each represents one or more milestones to what we now consider commonplace. (I've left out some of the more obvious ones; please forgive me if I've named some you consider obvious.)

    Desktops:
    Commodore PET 2001 (color chicklet keyboard).
    Sinclair ZX-80/81.
    Coleco Adam.
    DEC Rainbow 100.
    Amiga 2000.

    Portables:
    TRS-80 Model 100/102.
    Osborne 1.
    Compaq suitcase PC.
    HP 200LX.
    Apple Newton.
    Toshiba T1000.
    • Atari 400/800/XL series. One of the first computers to feature separate programmable chips for CPU, I/O, sound and graphics, and much more sophisticated multi-mode interrupt-driven video than either of its 6502 peers, the Apple ][ and the C64. The first digitized video I was on was connected to an 800 and the first computer playback of music I ever heard came from it (10 scratchy seconds of "You Really Got Me" by Van Halen).

      Remarkably hackable OS for ROM firmware. Arguably the truest random number generator
      • One of them. The TI-99/4A did as well- and then they gunked it up by abstracting BASIC behind two levels of interpreters. If you were lucky enough to have the Editor/Assembler Cartridge and learn 16-bit Assembly, you quickly found out that the darned thing actually had 4 sub processors (Graphics/Video, Mathematical, Sound, Memory/Peripherial) with their own memory spaces, and that almost every peripherial you added to it added a small amount of memory + another processor. If you were intelligent about it
    • An interesting and somewhat rare one in the portable's category is the Commodore SX-64 [nyud.net]. This would would be a great historic machine to have on display.

  • How about... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EnigmaticSource (649695) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:59PM (#15297428) Homepage
    A DEC PDP-11/73, my personal favorite.

    Probably the easiest computer to rebuild from the classic era as there is only one bus (Unibus), and nothing but traces and some very simple electronics on the backplane. Well that and you could hit them with a hammer.

    The PDP-11 series, along with the PDP-8's were some of the first nodes on the ARPANET and you can still get working Ethernet adapters for them.

    Hell, I still miss mine (Viper tape drive, RSX/11, RSTS/E 10, BASIC Plus2, 512MB EDSI drive).

    (You can still find these things running if you look hard enough... (Try asking old medical/dental offices, most of them ran PDP/11's))

  • Old school Unix... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Otter (3800) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @05:59PM (#15297429) Journal
    There were people bragging about running these at home in the "How Pointlessly Excessive Is Your Home Network?" Ask Slashdot, but -- I'd be curious to play with a PDP-11 running circa-1970 Unix.

    And a Xerox Star.

  • cardiac (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MrRobahtsu (8620)

    Seriously. [bellsystemmemorial.com]

    You haven't really lived until you've run a multiplication (by repetitive addition) manually on a cardboard computer simulator.

  • my favorite feature of the Apple ][ was the built-in BASIC on the rom, and man, you could do *so* much stuff with that basic...

    i've actually been getting back into it, and i'm writing a BASIC interpreter in my new language of choice, and i've been picking up old applesoft BASIC manuals on ebay... really fun

    once you've got them looking pretty, you should let users play with them via some fun BASIC program you've written

  • Find some of the early ports of Unix to run.

    Good luck on this. I expect this won't be an easy chore. I hope you have LEET soldering skills - you will need them

  • ... then you should try to get your hands on a KIM-1 [wikipedia.org], the original testbed for the 6502 CPU. A mid-1970s kit built around Chuck Peddle's baby... now that's historic!

  • This isn't something one could easily acquire or build, but I recently saw a demo of an 8-bit relay computer [pdx.edu] built by one of the professors at my school. It is constructed from 415 relays (electrically actuated mechanical switches) wired together, and is capable of addition, and, or, xor, not, conditional jumps, shift left and a few other misclaneous instructions I can't recall.
  • I think I speak for many of us when I say that the most historically significant computers are whatever ones I happened to have access to.

    Also, thundercats rule.
  • Mr. Lee worked out the server methodology for serving up the web and it was the forerunner of the operating system and dev-tools of the current OSX environ. Plus you don't see many working cubes these days - at least with working Magneto-Optical drives. Another triva note - the engine for the first iteration of Doom was sussed out on NeXTstep. I have the binaries around somewhere...
  • All of those old machines had one flaw or another, something that came up even when brand new as a result of bad design -- having to lift and drop the LISA on occasion, for instance, or having to reseat the memory cards in Atari 800s every few days to keep 'em running.

    Given the premise of your work, I'd want to know what you fixed on each machine that was due to age and neglect, versus what you did (or didn't) fix because it was a side-effect of a known design flaw (such as impact damage to the bottom of th

  • Things I've seen that amuse people.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by technos (73414) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @06:53PM (#15297670) Homepage Journal
    I have a fair amount of, shall we say, junk.

    The stuff that amuses folks the most?

    Hand modified "rev b" boards.. Every major manufacturer had em. So thick with a spiders web of enamelled wire patching flaws you were amazed they functioned.

    Drive platters. I have a few the size of small car tires. People always get wowed when I explain they hold far less data than a floppy disc.

    Memory boards. I have a Hewlett Packard board that holds 128 megabytes of memory. At 18x12x2 and a couple pounds, setting it next to a DRAM chip stripped from a modern DIMM usually elicits a 'WHOA'.

  • People start talking about "historic" computers, and I look around and see I have most the ones they mention still plugged in and running on various tables in my home office.

    It makes me feel old.

  • Processor Technology's Sol [digibarn.com], obviously. The first prebuilt personal computer -- yes, before the Apple II. Can't think of many microcomputers more historic than that.

    Also, for the love of God, don't put them behind glass. These things were meant to be hacked with.

  • I'd like to see a PDP-11.
  • RS 6000 desktop under a desk at my job at IBM. Don't know much more about it, but it was good for a "woa...um, I don't support those" comment.

    My old roommate used to cart around some huge spark box from apartment to apartment...had like 8 processor boards. He never got it running, but it would boot. We almost had a computer museum in our 3rd bedroom "NOC"...thank god for all-bills paid apartments with a good net connection. I think he had some Amiga box, maybe even a commodore 64. I remember him playin

  • Next (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wandazulu (265281) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @08:15PM (#15298013)
    I would argue a NeXT computer should be part of any display, only because you can show it to people familar with MacOS X and then tell them that this machine has been around since *1990*.

  • The LINC speed control... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith (263124) on Tuesday May 09 2006, @08:43PM (#15298132) Homepage
    I'm not sure whether this can be easily retrofitted into other computer designs, but one of the coolest things on the LINC [wikipedia.org]--sometimes billed as "the first personal computer"--was the adjustable speed.

    The LINC had a pair of dials on it: one was a (continuous) potentiometer, like a volume control, the other was a four-position "decade" switch. The pair of dials joint produced a signal that could be used to make any of a number of front-panel functions auto-repeat at a variable rate. In particular, you could make the "single-step" function auto-repeat. The pot adjusted the repeat rate continously over about a ten-to-one range. Each switch position was a factor of ten faster than the last. The slowest speed was about two per second.

    This means that you could make the LINC single-step through its programs at an rate from about 2 to 200,000 steps per second... the later being about half of its full speed.

    So, you could take a program... run it at 2 steps per second and watch the lights flash... then gradually speed it up over a five decades to 200,000 steps per second. At 2 steps per second if you watched closely from time to time you'd see one dot on the screen flash momentarily. As you sped it up the, the flashes would occur more rapidly... then you could see it was forming characters... then lines of text appearing at about the speed of a dot matrix printer... then finally a whole screen of flicker-free text.

    Meanwhile, the LINC's speaker, attached to bit 6 of the accumulator, would gradually change from ticks to a buzzes to beeps.

    I never saw anything that gave you such a feeling for just how incredibly goddam fast a computer was. Even one running at about 0.5 megahertz clock rate.

    You actually could build a LINC from scratch, I suppose, since it was discrete components and the design was public domain. But it would be equally interesting to take a "stock" computer of almost any vintage and give it a continuously variable clock, a la the LINC.
  • I've got many emails over the years on asking verious questions on repairing old PETs (I have a couple simple fixes like check the sockets, clean contacts etc. but I'm not a hardware guy). The popular classic computers like the Atari 800, Apple II, VIC, C64, etc. have some really nice troubleshooting cheatsheets and guides, usually with text like 'if this is the symptom, check and/or replace these items..' Unfortuantely for the less popular machines (PET, Coleco Adam, etc, etc) there are no or very few guides.

    If you did your repairs and also worked up some rudimentary troubleshooting guide (or better set up a Wiki) for others I think you would be doing a bigger service to the classic computer communtity than just some me-too restorations.

    If you want a challenge for a restoration I would go and get a classic system restored and running, then gather a bunch of choice apps for the system and code up some easy front end (on that system or use a virtual drive, something friendlier) to demonstrate the actual programs in an "exhibit environment" (easy reset/reload, nice menu, etc.), a computer that successfully lights READY. is one thing, but one that also presents a menu of some of the popular games or programs of the time to experience is something way better.

    • I am a REALLY old geek, but I cut my teeth on the Z80 processor running in a TRS80 model III.
      No. You're not a really old geek.
      • If he were a really old geek he'd have mentioned that he and Ada Lovelace used to sip tea whilst bragging about staying awake until the sun came up weaving towels out of nothing but some thread and the quadratic formula.
    • Hah! I cut my teeth on a teletype hooked up to a university mainframe. I was six, my friend's dad was a comp-sci professor. He let me play lunar lander and hunt the wumpus on his uni account.

      After that, it was a TRS-80 model I my dad bought in'79 or '80. We had an account with CompuServ and Genie and a 300 baud modem. Later he got the expansion interface with floppy drives, woot!

      My first computer was a TI99 4/A. After that I owned a Commodore 64, and that was when I really go into the BBS scene. My friends
    • "you could get a version of MS-DOS that would run on these beasts."
      No you couldn't.
      Not unless there was an 8088 or 8086 card you could put in them. I guess it is possible such a beast was sold but they would have been rare.
      You could get CP/M for them and maybe ZPCR. I also remember a OS called LDOS I think was available as well.
      Now the Model 16 could run Xenix which was very cool.
      The first computer that Tandy made that ran MS-DOS I think was the Model 2000. It was better than the IBM CP but it wasn't PC com

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