Ye Olde Spectrum 2015-05-07

[Ian Rogers]

Ian Rogers submitted a new article:

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/articles/ye-olde-spectrum.718/ - Vintage computing

I hope you don' mind me sharing this with you..

As many on this forum may have noticed, I am nuts over vintage computing.... I have oodles of old computers namely Amiga, Atari, BBC and of course Spectrum's....

Way back in 82 I got one of these for £40... It was sporting 48k of ram.... WOW..... As programming seemed to flow in my blood it was ideal for me... My brother in law had the trusty BBC+ with opus disk drives ( snob ), but I had an old getto blaster to load my programs with.. A sticker...

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/articles/ye-olde-spectrum.718/

 

[Tony Stewart]

you have a dead link

My 1st personal Computer was the B20 based on CT's design, the best computer of the decade in 1982. It could either be diskless or had HDD included with bootable ARCNET had a dozen programming languages and a great word processor called Write One with a 132 column screen.

 

[Ian Rogers]

you have a dead link

I know.... These links are generated by Xenforo... If you run your mouse over them only " **broken link removed** " is shown.

As this is the discussion tab, you only need to swap tabs.. But now its fixed...

 

[Ian Rogers]

the best computer of the decade in 1982

Possibly... But its a personal thing... I think differently.. The Z80 machine code learning curve was institutional as it was so closely related to the XT PC... It, IMHO, was a forerunner for all those assembler writers...

 

[Gasboss775]

Great wee computer. Sadly I destroyed my 48K spectrum with careless connections to the expansion bus.

 

[Tony Stewart]

Possibly... But its a personal thing... I think differently.. The Z80 machine code learning curve was institutional as it was so closely related to the XT PC... It, IMHO, was a forerunner for all those assembler writers...

Z80 was good for micro-applications but the B22, B25 were full featured OS's with many high level languages (cobol, unix, fortran etc) and 68000 machine language, with arcnet LAN, full featured Word Processor, spreadsheets, and office communication. with 128 column screens not 40 or 80.

 

[Tony Stewart]

I am in Winnipeg managing a moving sale before my house sale. I had a bunch of old towers in storage. The 1st one to boot up was the Packard bell win95 which I had upgraded to win98 with 2GB HDD . After 10 yrs in storage, the clock was only off by 5 minutes.
If anyone wants a collector's item. This is a good one. Otherwise. trashing it.

20yrs old. Does this make it a collector's item?

 

[Gasboss775]

I am in Winnipeg managing a moving sale before my house sale. I had a bunch of old towers in storage. The 1st one to boot up was the Packard bell win95 which I had upgraded to win98 with 2GB HDD . After 10 yrs in storage, the clock was only off by 5 minutes.
If anyone wants a collector's item. This is a good one. Otherwise. trashing it.

20yrs old. Does this make it a collector's item?

In the world of computing 5~10 years old is bordering on the collectable.

 

[Ian Rogers]

I am in Winnipeg managing a moving sale before my house sale. I had a bunch of old towers in storage. The 1st one to boot up was the Packard bell win95 which I had upgraded to win98 with 2GB HDD . After 10 yrs in storage, the clock was only off by 5 minutes.
If anyone wants a collector's item. This is a good one. Otherwise. trashing it.

20yrs old. Does this make it a collector's item?

PC's have no place in my collection... I just replaced a very similar machine (running 95 ).. Its replacement was a tower sporting two quad core xeon processors... Runs windows 7...

 

[Gasboss775]

PC's have no place in my collection... I just replaced a very similar machine (running 95 ).. Its replacement was a tower sporting two quad core xeon processors... Runs windows 7...

In retrospect I agree that PC's aren't quite collectable yet, except perhaps the very early ones and "special" variations that may only have had a short production run.

 

[Tony Stewart]

After 10 yrs in storage, the clock was only off by 5 minutes.

and it was the right date. in 20 yrs, I dont ever recall changing the RTC Lithium battery.

In spite of Packard Hell's bad rap for customer reputation, I can only praise them as having prompt-& effective state-of-the-art support with effective database symptom guided answers that always worked from my personal experience.

 

[Ian Rogers]

In retrospect I agree that PC's aren't quite collectable yet, except perhaps the very early ones and "special" variations that may only have had a short production run.

I have the Amstrad 1640 AT!!! that's PC enough for me...

 

[spec]

I have the Amstrad 1640 AT!!! that's PC enough for me...

Damn good machine

Just read your article Ian- brought back memories.

My first computer was called Algernon. It was a from scratch Z80 design, with 2K of ROM, 1K of static ram, PSU, built-in keyboard and 625 line PAL TV interface. It only executed Z80 instructions and that was that, but it was a good learning experience. Next, I ripped off an Acorn Atom from the schematic: all turn-pin IC sockets and hand wired. What a thrill when I finally got the flashing OK_ on the screen.

Meantime our son caught the Sinclair bug, and I was forever shelling out for an endless stream of enhancements, peripherals, games, books and new models. Finally he progressed to a BBC model B, and that brought a whole new level of upgrade expenses, the heaviest being a Sanyo monitor and twin floppy drives.

 

[Ian Rogers]

BBC model B, and that brought a whole new level of upgrade expenses, the heaviest being a Sanyo monitor and twin floppy drives.

I have one of those in prime condition... The two drives are mounted above the BBC and my CUB monitor sits on top.

I also spent a fortune recently on my Amiga... The old 100Mb SCSI drive took a dive south!!! So I have bought a SCSI - SD adapter... HERE... Its okay but it isn't bui directional... Format / verify took ages.. I need to boot up my Archimedes soon... This hasn't run for at least 10 years...

 

[spec]

I have one of those in prime condition... The two drives are mounted above the BBC and my CUB monitor sits on top.

I also spent a fortune recently on my Amiga... The old 100Mb SCSI drive took a dive south!!! So I have bought a SCSI - SD adapter... HERE... Its okay but it isn't bui directional... Format / verify took ages.. I need to boot up my Archimedes soon... This hasn't run for at least 10 years...

Sounds like you have a fine collection of vintage machines Ian. There was something magic about the early days of home computers. You seemed to be much closer to the silicon and the naughts and ones. These days you are completely removed from all that, but I do love the power that you have: Word, Phtoshop, EAGLE, AutoCAD, Excel, Dreamweaver for example. And the internet is the most wonderful thing.

Three of us laid out a BBC B computer PCB from the circuit diagram in the BBC manual. A few got built into computers, but then we discovered that one of the engineers, from the lab, had a source of working BBC B boards from a guy over in Wales who got hold of failed production boards which he repaired and sold on. We bought a case, PSU, and keyboard from Acorn and then you had a BBC B, for about half price.

I also laid out a EPROM expansion PCB for the BBC. It plugged into one of the EPROM sockets on the motherboard. Quite a few of those got built.

I also remember building the Wireless Word modem which was massive and only got CEEFAX or something like that.