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Vintage computer fun

I used to run my Master with a VT something or other monitor that my wife had managed to get scrapped off from her workplace in Reading. A 241 perhaps? It’s still in the loft - in Chris’s Computer Corner (next to Chris’s Hifi Box Corner)
 
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Loopback plug done. I didn’t even bother firing up the soldering iron, a suitably cut and bent paper clip wedged in perfectly. These really are the daftest plugs I’ve ever seen in my life. They fit in to the back of the BBC sideways (anyone familiar with DIN plugs know they have a distinct top and bottom. These go in sideways, and either way round, e.g. it will fit into the socket at either a 9 o’clock or 3 o’clock orientation. WTF were they thinking? Why?!

Anyway, it works perfectly, I have loopback so this Beeb is now a functioning old-school computer terminal capable of various protocols.

PS If anyone needs a couple of these odd ‘domino’ 5 pin DINs give me a shout as I landed 15 of them for a fiver delivered and I can’t imagine I’ll need more than half that no matter how adventurous I get.
 
Still got some Amigas in my garage. I REALLY regret getting rid of/throwing away my A1000, A3000, A4000 and CDTV. Not necessarily in that order. I could cry.
 
The large case Amigas are worth a fortune now! There is a recreated case from Checkmate that can rehouse any of the Amiga boards along with drives, modern card interfaces etc. A lot of interest in that machine for sure. Never used one at all. I had an Atari XT at the time as Cubase and the MIDI interface was the main priority.

PS I love the bespoke chip names in the Amiga; ‘Denise’, ‘Gary’, ‘Agnus’ (‘Fat Agnus’ for the later larger one), Paula’ etc. There’s even a B-52’s ‘Rock Lobster’ reference on the mainboard. That is exactly how one should design a computer.
 
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If anyone enjoys tinkering around fixing old PCs this channel really is superb. The guy’s knowledge and board-repair skill is exceptional. He’s remarkably knowledgeable about BIOS etc and rewrites ROMs, enables hidden features etc. Great to see so many vintage 8088-Pentium era machines being saved.

PS I’ve made little progress in the BBC terminal project as a) I work very slowly anyway, and b) I’ve had an intermittent ‘long beep non-boot’ fault on the Beeb which I’m pretty sure is just a slightly dirty or worn DIL socket somewhere. It seems to be back working again now after re-plugging a load of stuff, so I don’t think it is a component fault. My suspicion is the ROM sockets, specifically the OS one, but it will need to fail again to figure that out.
 
That’s actually a very good deal if it works! Cubase ran very solidly on the Atari, a really good sequencer system.
 
MJS said:
Proper RAM, that. And you see what the contents are.
Click to expand...
Before RAM there was also the acoustic delay line. I recall as an undergraduate attending an evening lecture by Prof. David Barron about early computer history.

One topic was acoustic delay line storage and the research on what fluid to use. I am not entirely sure about humour vs fact when he said that one good fluid they found was an alcohol-water mixture that was well approximated by gin. But they decided gin posed too many risks and mercury got used instead.
 
John Phillips said:
Before RAM there was also the acoustic delay line.
Click to expand...

It was a concurrent development really; EDSAC & LEO used mercury delay lines and the technology was still in use through to the Ferranti Pegasus in the late-50s. We’ve got a Pegasus delay line in our props bin somewhere (no mercury in that design thankfully!). The real game-changer was ferrite core store which came a fair bit later.

The SSEM is interesting as it was the first one over the line, the first stored program computer albeit a very small one. The Williams Tube CRT memory made it into the Ferranti Mk1, which was the world’s first commercially available computer, and also into IBM’s first memory stores in the 701 (licensed from Manchester Uni!). Some remarkably fast development occurring at that time.
 
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Look Mum No Computer refurbishes a 70s computer (SWTPC 6809) and turns it into a sequencer.

 
I watched that. Fascinating. Do enjoy his projects. He's one of the influences for getting me into modular synths.
 
Im looking forward to recieving my retro Agon Light machine.

Supposedly the fastest 8 bit micro not implemented in an FPGA.
 
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