Vintage computer Tandy 1000 upgrade @ smbaker.com: A Tandy 1000 was the second computer that I owned, the first was a Tandy CoCo. Note that I keep a slightly different mental “computers that I owned” list and “computers that I used list”. There are a few computer I was able to gain access to and […]
Tag Archives: computer
Minimal ATSAMD21 computer
Johnson Davies shared detailed instructions of how to build an ATSAMD21-based computer on a prototyping board using a 32-pin ATSAMD21E: If you’re looking for something more powerful than the ATmega328 in the Arduino Uno a good choice is the ATSAMD21. This is an ARM Cortex M0+ processor with up to 256KB flash memory, 32KB RAM, […]
Scott’s Z80SBC: Z80 single board computer
Dr. Scott M. Baker published a new build: When I was first getting started with electronics, wanted a Heathkit ET-3400 Microproccessor trainer, but could never afford one at the time. Eventually both I and the world moved on, to fancier more capable computers. However, I’ve still always wished I had an iconic trainer, complete with […]
Repairing a 1960s mainframe: Fixing the IBM 1401’s core memory and power supply
Ken Shirriff wrote a great article describing the repair process of the vintage IBM 1401 mainframe computer: The problem started when the machine was powered up at the same time someone shut down the main power, apparently causing some sort of destructive power transient. The computer’s core memory completely stopped working, making the computer unusable. […]
Zeta 2 single board computer
Scott Baker has a nice write-up on building a Zeta v2 single board computer designed by Sergey Kiselev: A few of the features of the Zeta 2: 512K Flash Memory, allows CP/M to be booted from Flash, and mounts Flash as a CP/M disk including many tools (assembler, editor, …) 512K Flash ROM, can be […]
Mini version of the OSI-300 trainer
Here’s Christopher’s mini version of the OSI-300, he wrote a post on his blog detailing its assembly: The OSI Model 300 Computer Trainer was advertised by Ohio Scientific Instruments in 1976 as a computer designed to introduce individuals to computers and teach them the basics of programming the MOS 6502 processor. The original trainer consists […]
Single chip AVR BASIC computer
Dan over at HackAday documented his single chip computer project with the PCBs from DirtyPCBs: A single AVR microcontroller (the ATmega 1284P) has been used to create a standalone computer system which runs the BASIC programming language. The 1284P runs TinyBASIC Plus, generates RCA video signals (using TVout) and reads PS/2 keyboard input. A single sided […]
A computer kit from the ’70s: Ithaca Audio Z80 CPU card for the S100 bus
Fabio Battaglia blogged about his Ithaca Audio Z80 CPU card for the S100 bus project: First of all, I assembled some simple test code to write a letter on my video console, just to check that code was actually executing. Obviously I only got a black screen at first, which seems a constant when I build […]
Car computer build
ptodorov over at the EEVblog forum shared his experience building a carputer: For the last 5-6 months everything ran fairly smoothly with a few glitches and bugs. But a few weeks ago all hell broke loose while I was driving. Suddenly left and right blinkers started flashing, the headlights started blinking and doors kept locking and unlocking. […]
ReCoMonB – Real Computer Monitoring Block
Ivan Creations made this ReCoMonB (Real Computer Monitoring Block) and wrote a detailed explanation on his blog describing the build: I managed to de-virtualize the CPU/MEM/HDD/NET stats and now I have them physically represented on my desk. The device that does that is named ReCoMonB – Real Computer Monitoring Block. I have also made the […]