I put chapters in - I usually go with scripted narration to cut down on rambling time, but I thought I'd try just off the cuff for these three videos. I won't be offended at all if you skip around!
That EKI Micro-Mentor actually interests me quite a bit! If you find more info, especially. I'm actually looking around to see if I can find you some more info, I'm intrigued. I did find one thing so far -- apparently EKI was a kit maker -- "Electronic Kits International".
@@laserhawk64 Looks like my main comment about documentation for the Micro-Mentor board either never made it or was removed. Anyway, there is some documentation on the archive sight but it doesn't contain schematics or user guide-like info.
As for wanting to do more with the email terminal; WebTV was a set top box created in 1995 that hooked up to your TV and telephone line that was mostly for email. Microsoft bought it around 1997 changing the name to MSN TV and adding a lot more functionality to it like games.
@@Squossifrage Even the phones have grown into generalists, I don't see the specialized devices like this email machine. And everyone has a PC, at least for office tasks.
Always love your videos Brad, if that’s your name. It’s really nice to see stuff from the generations before the IBM PC and C64. Whatever comes next I’ll be watching!
For the Micro Mentor, try typing the (two-digit) address, pressing ADDR to set the current address, and then holding READ to read the data at that address or typing data and pressing WRITE to write the location. This would be a fairly obvious way to build it: one latch for the data on the display and a second latch for the address bus. READ then just asserts /RD and sends the data bus to the display; WRITE sends the display latch to the data bus and asserts /WR.
Yeah I tried it a few different ways and messed around with it again off camera. I think I even tried what @Laserfur suggested at one point as I went through every button combination I could think of. One thing that has me suspicious is the LED display sometimes is not correct.. im wondering if something isn't quite working right. I'll try what you and laserfur suggested again though and just triple check. I was kind of just blitzing it before.
@@TechTimeTraveller Ah, I'd missed @Laserfur's answer when I was reading through them all earlier. Anyway, if that doesn't seem to be working it shouldn't be too hard to build a rough block diagram of the chips and what's connected to what and figure out how the thing is supposed to work. And even a multimeter should do for checking the signal levels for the "load" states.
Love these vids. The 40 guy showing computers that milennials and generation x only heared their dads talk about. keep them coming Brad! and of course the self chastising, nerd sarcasm and cheesy background music :)
The older MailStations have a Z80 CPU and it's actually possible to do some programming on them with a bit of trickery. There was a piece of terminal software written for them a couple of years back.
I have one of those EKI Micro-mentors but it mounted really nicely with a small breadboard and it also has an additional relay board. I plan on doing a video on it at some point, once I figure out how it works...lol. Would love to find that speech board so we may end up bidding against each other if one comes up on ebay!
28:25 -- RE: The EKI Mentor -- Oh so cool with the 8 LEDs plus the 2 digit LCD display. If I wanted to mock up an Apollo-style Navigation computer, I'd consider using this as the basis for its library of navigation stars, although as I recall, the Apollo computers used 2 digit codes x 8 options per digit, so it had 25% as many potential data locations as this device.
^^ I thought a little bit more about this, because I can see how it might work. ( a ) Apollo's computers had *NO* RAM; everything was hard-wired ROMs which were useless for long-term operations because "Date / Time" was part of the information contained in the locations of navigation stars, and since the missions were 7-10 days in length the computers basically bricked themselves (in terms of the internal logic) after that mission window had passed. ( b ) So then, *since* this device has 400% more memory locations than the Apollo-style of computer, I'd only need to treat 25% of them as Functionally equivalent to ROM, and could use the remaining memory as RAM for calculations involving the library of Stars stored in the ROM.
EKI Micro-mentor is using both numeric display and LEDs because decoders (7447) can only decode BCD (0-9), and ABCDE are some weird patterns (F = blank). Also in 8085 addresses starting from 0 would be most likely ROM.
The email terminal renminds me of the presto email device my dad got my grandmother. It basically was a printer. I could send my grandma pictures and emails and it would automatically print them out on paper. It was such a hit at the assisted livening home they bought them. And would put the print out into residents mail Boxes
That email machine would make a good distraction-free writing environment like an Alphasmart if there was some way of getting files off of it other than old-fashioned landline modem...
The EK1 appears to be very similar to my PAIA 8700 controller computer which came with my 4700 system, except it has a 6503. I need to fix it as it was sitting loose in the keyboard, and two of the chips came off during shipping, and were flying about in the case.
Weirdly enough tbose sockets used on the byte S100 card have become rather hard to find, there's almost no mention of them pretty much anywhere on the internet aside from scans of Molex catalogs from the 70s, and presumably they've been out of production for some time. Kind of a shame really as they seem like they'd be useful for prototyping and maker projects.
Thank you! Yeah I'm still kinda brain foggy.. this video took a lot longer to produce as my mind didn't organize very well. But at least I don't feel like a gorilla is sitting on my chest anymore.
@@TechTimeTraveller did you check out shop goodwill? I sent some interesting things a while back. Old trs80 and some apple stuff. Always good place to look for old junk.
I have a Micro Mentor too! It's missing the keypad on the keypad interface board, but those look pretty standard. According to my notes I also bought a set of "construction sheets" for it... maybe I need to dig those out if nobody else has them.
I think it's just a Digitran hex keypad. They were used on a lot of projects like the DREAM 6800. They come up once in a while on ebay. I'd love to see any documentation!
Sorcerer Stan, I have a Digitran KL0042 keypad with same layout but the dimensions are a bit larger. I need to make a 16pin dip cable to connect the two boards at which time I can connect the Digitran to see if it works. By any chance perhaps I just bought the Micro-Mentor from you on ebay? Odd that both of ours are missing the keypad.
@@johnn0hj LOL, as a matter of fact, that is mine you purchased. I'm also the person who put the scans of the yellow construction sheets up on archive (and now you have the originals). I hope you get it going, I just have too many projects and needed to thin out some that weren't progressing.
@@sorcererstan it shouldn't be too difficult to get going. I'd like to reverse engineer the schematic as well to get a handle on how it works since I've not found a user guide. It should increase my knowledge of basic microprocessor circuits and how they function without any code in ROM. Thanks for posting the data on the Archive. That saved me from scanning it for others.
@@TechTimeTraveller I have another EKI Micro Mentor coming soon with a course book which may have more info. I'll scan and post a link once I get around to it.
Those kinds of "chiclet" keyboards, if they have full size key spacing and are decently made, are _enormously_ better than the ZX81 membrane keyboard. They do often need some cleaning if they've been sitting around for a while, but they're a lot easier to clean than a keyswitch keyboard. After I cleaned the one on my National/Panasonic JR-200 it's been working quite well, better than some of my old mechanical keyboards that suffered too much deterioration over the years. I'm not getting the 100 WPM I get on a proper keyboard, but I'm not slowed to a crawl, either. (And come to think of it, some of my speed issues might actually be related to lack of rollover in the keyboard scan routine. That utterly kills my typing speed on my Hitachi MB-6885.) My JR-200 does have a full size space bar in the proper place, though. I suspect that leaving it out on your machine was to make for a somewhat smaller PCB, and thus a bit of cost savings.
At some point you'll have so much retro gear that you're going to need to open a museum. But if you charge admission you might be able to recoup some of your costs.
As much as Canada needs a retro-computing museum (the only such facility permanenrly closed a few years ago), our host would need to do much more background research for the exhibits first. Perhaps we could just tour the warehouse instead (for a lesser admission fee). Some years ago, a local museum under development acquired a very large collection of artifacts. Sadly, the government pulled the funding shortly before the facility was due to open. A group of well-intentioned and enthusiastic community volunteers then took over the project. They were not knowledgeable about the collections, however, and so rather than a museum it became a building full of "stuff". There was minimal signage or curation, and nobody able to answer any questions.
@@williamharris8367 Even when it is done properly there is no guarantee it survives. PCmuseum sadly did not survive the sudden passing of its creator. The Living Computer Museum was supposed to exist indefinitely with support from Paul Allen's estate.. it apparently was already in trouble before covid hit and now may be permanently shuttered as his heir (sister I think?) isn't interested. Here in Vancouver many years ago we had a store called Cal's Computer Warehouse and they had a space set aside as a museum. But all it did apparently was consume precious space, and it and the store vanished eventually. It really sucks when dedicated museums close too, especially for donors who hope their donations will be preserved for posterity. Opening a museum in my area would be financial suicide as we are in one of the most expensive real estate corridors on the planet. I think the best chance of preservation for vintage gear remains individual private collectors.
The issue with the PC Museum was that it was privately operated rather than run by a public institution, non-profit, or charity. It was, legally, a private collection that had no continuing existence once the founder died as it was all his personal property. If someone is going to formally establish a museum, the very first step is to recruit a board and create a corporate body to hold title to the artifacts. This will then make the institution eligible (under CRA rules) to issue tax receipts for the fair market value of items donated. It will also provide continuity to the organization should the initial parties/founders die or otherwise lose interest. In the 1990s, I was an active member of a community heritage organization. I ceased to be involved when I moved cross-country, and most (all?) of the members at that time are no longer active. Because it was formally incorporated under the Society's Act, the organization continues to exist despite none of the original members still being around. The corporate body holds the title to real property and artifacts; not a specific individual. People die and are then replaced by new members. Organizations can go defunct too, of course, but they typically last much longer than one lifespan.
It wasn't going to let me go there anyway. I'm not sure why it kept freezing up like that.. its a little cranky I guess after sitting in a box for 20+ years.
@@TechTimeTraveller I had a big box (24?) of (similar) eMail (only) machines sold by Sears… I never opened it… IIRC someone gave me $20 for it at a garage sale. I got it with a pallets of unsold merchandise at a silent bit auction (in RL; before eBay… ;-)
i love seeing the old computers being put pack in to working order. i my self have an apple IIe and a Commodore 64 with a few 1541 drives and i am building up a 1581 for it.
honeywell was indeed a major supplier of computers to governments and businesses in the late 60's. they had their own line of internally developed and manufactured 16 bit machines that was in production until some time in the early 70's i believe it was competition the cheaper pdp line of mini computers that led to them selling off the business unit
Seeing an Apple II brings back memories. Where I’m from you don’t see a lot of home brew machines. IBM systems were rare in Western PA, only large companies had them, then medium sized companies. The first one that I saw in person was a spare given to my Grandfather in the early 1990’s in order for him to get adjusted to the new Automotive Diagnostic software that was based on MS DOS. Before that though out here it was mostly Apple II and a very small spattering of the competition. I took until 2006 for me to see a Commodore 64 in person. Tandy systems were also out there but really sparse. In western PA it was Apple II -> IBM -> PC Clones at least in the sticks lol
That's interesting.. I think Commodore was HQed in Westchester PA? Would think you would have seen more of them. Up where I lived in Ontario, there were mostly Commodore.. Apples were the preserve of teachers and the well to do on account of being so expensive.
30:10 -- RE: Owning v. Renting technology -- And I thought my current Internet provider was being shady with the "you don't own your fiber modem" mentality, it turns out this is a much older pattern of business. It makes *A LOT* of sense pre-1999 for companies to rent equipment for a minimal or nominal fee versus selling it outright, because the "Homebrew" market was a much different beast back then and hacking was a more hands on type of activity.
^^ Add to this the following: the BBS / Email server that this device expects to connect with is *either* configurable or not, and I'd guess that it expects to connect to a server being operated by Bell. That's yet another reason to discourage hackers from messing with the internals.
I'm glad you seem better, thanks for the interesting video! Are the CGA cards that common in your parts? I've been trying to get one for the historic aspect but any ones I find that go to Ontario charge an arm and a leg in shipping, so I've thusfar given it a pass. I only have one leg left after all!
@@TechTimeTraveller Thats not bad at all, usually its like $40 and then like 60$ shipping for me, and it seems a bit excessive to pay more than the item is worth in shipping.
@@maiyannah I must have one lurking (untested) in a garage somewhere. Too many old systems and I am not looking for megabucks, just the time to sort everything !
I wonder if that EKI board was reverse-Polish -- that is, type a number, hit "Address," then either press "Read," or type another number and press "Write," rather than pressing those buttons first and _then_ typing a number. I know this was a trendy way to do things with the calculators of that era. (Also really simple to implement in hardware.) 👍️
20:09 -- RE: "Animation graphics" -- O Boy, they didn't only clone the Sinclair, they also straight up ripped off Atari-style pixel-sprites for box art to sucker in the plebs who didn't have stacks of quarters or a Space Invaders cartridge.
If you use the RCA composite connector on that CGA card it will do 16 colours via NTSC artifacting. Not supported by all software though as few EGA cards and no VGA cards supported this feature. The small card in your PC also lacks this connector so can't do this.
Yeah I didn't have the composite jack on my childhood PC either I don't think... we had some kinda ATI CGA thing, only half length and I'm pretty sure it only had some jumpers and the 9 pin connector on the back.
I have some really cool IBM stuff I collected from a old programmer that passed away. A loaded 5170 I believe, full of expansion cards and a model m keyboard. Gold memory chips. Loads of things. I've since lost interest and looking to unload. Any interest?
@@TechTimeTraveller It was before my time (at Apple) but it seems like I remember someone that was on the Apple hardware team mentioning the EuroPlus and the J-Plus. They supported different fonts also. I’ll drop him a note and see if I recall correctly. ;-)
Did you mean to have the CPU in the Apple 2+ in the wrong place? A pair of pins were hanging out of the socket at one end and there was a gap at the other. I'm no expert on the platform, but I'm going to guess that it's not going to help troubleshoot the problem... :P
I also hated CGA back when I was younger because I saw other people's EGA computers and it is much better. Now though, I get kind of nostalgic for 4 color CGA because I like the simplicity of it. Sierra did a poor job optimizing their games for 4 color CGA; but for composite CGA and EGA you have 16 color graphics which are pretty awesome.
I think the ATI CGA card I had as a kid didn't have composite. Trying yo remember what card it was. But yeah I wouldn't have thought to even try that though I tried everything else. I remember constantly messing with the card because I couldn't understand how it could do 16 colors with text but not graphics.
I put chapters in - I usually go with scripted narration to cut down on rambling time, but I thought I'd try just off the cuff for these three videos. I won't be offended at all if you skip around!
Just a tip- the chapters don’t break up the timeline unless you have the first one start at 00:00 , enjoying the videos though!
That EKI Micro-Mentor actually interests me quite a bit! If you find more info, especially. I'm actually looking around to see if I can find you some more info, I'm intrigued. I did find one thing so far -- apparently EKI was a kit maker -- "Electronic Kits International".
@@adamsteelproducer Yup I goofed.. I was wondering. I usually do put that there but wasn't aware it was required. Many thanks, fixed!
@@johnn0hj Gonna need a comment link, broski. If you right-click-copy on the timestamp you get one you can paste elsewhere.
@@laserhawk64 Looks like my main comment about documentation for the Micro-Mentor board either never made it or was removed. Anyway, there is some documentation on the archive sight but it doesn't contain schematics or user guide-like info.
As for wanting to do more with the email terminal; WebTV was a set top box created in 1995 that hooked up to your TV and telephone line that was mostly for email. Microsoft bought it around 1997 changing the name to MSN TV and adding a lot more functionality to it like games.
29:57 "The predicted post-PC era" We're still waiting...😋
We're in it, lots of younger people only use phones and tablets.
@@Squossifrage Even the phones have grown into generalists, I don't see the specialized devices like this email machine. And everyone has a PC, at least for office tasks.
@@Breakfast_of_Champions No, not everyone has a PC. A lot of people get by with tablets.
@@Squossifrage Sure if they don't write CVs nor papers, and no gaming either...
@@Breakfast_of_Champions You can do that on a tablet.
The email terminal would probably choke on modern HTML email messages. In 1999, a lot of email was still just text.
Always love your videos Brad, if that’s your name. It’s really nice to see stuff from the generations before the IBM PC and C64. Whatever comes next I’ll be watching!
For the Micro Mentor, try typing the (two-digit) address, pressing ADDR to set the current address, and then holding READ to read the data at that address or typing data and pressing WRITE to write the location.
This would be a fairly obvious way to build it: one latch for the data on the display and a second latch for the address bus. READ then just asserts /RD and sends the data bus to the display; WRITE sends the display latch to the data bus and asserts /WR.
Yeah I tried it a few different ways and messed around with it again off camera. I think I even tried what @Laserfur suggested at one point as I went through every button combination I could think of. One thing that has me suspicious is the LED display sometimes is not correct.. im wondering if something isn't quite working right. I'll try what you and laserfur suggested again though and just triple check. I was kind of just blitzing it before.
@@TechTimeTraveller Ah, I'd missed @Laserfur's answer when I was reading through them all earlier. Anyway, if that doesn't seem to be working it shouldn't be too hard to build a rough block diagram of the chips and what's connected to what and figure out how the thing is supposed to work. And even a multimeter should do for checking the signal levels for the "load" states.
@@TechTimeTraveller BTW, I also sent you a note about this in e-mail a couple of days ago. If you've not seen it you might check your spam folder.
Love these vids. The 40 guy showing computers that milennials and generation x only heared their dads talk about.
keep them coming Brad!
and of course the self chastising, nerd sarcasm and cheesy background music :)
The older MailStations have a Z80 CPU and it's actually possible to do some programming on them with a bit of trickery. There was a piece of terminal software written for them a couple of years back.
I would love to find that.. I'd love to port something like scummvm over to it and play some old games.
@@TechTimeTraveller Didn't I say it was a Z80? I think this one is as well.
@@douro20 Yeah I'm kind of dreaming there. I forget what the complete list of cpus is that scummvm supports. Probably not z80
I have one of those EKI Micro-mentors but it mounted really nicely with a small breadboard and it also has an additional relay board. I plan on doing a video on it at some point, once I figure out how it works...lol. Would love to find that speech board so we may end up bidding against each other if one comes up on ebay!
28:25 -- RE: The EKI Mentor -- Oh so cool with the 8 LEDs plus the 2 digit LCD display. If I wanted to mock up an Apollo-style Navigation computer, I'd consider using this as the basis for its library of navigation stars, although as I recall, the Apollo computers used 2 digit codes x 8 options per digit, so it had 25% as many potential data locations as this device.
^^ I thought a little bit more about this, because I can see how it might work.
( a ) Apollo's computers had *NO* RAM; everything was hard-wired ROMs which were useless for long-term operations because "Date / Time" was part of the information contained in the locations of navigation stars, and since the missions were 7-10 days in length the computers basically bricked themselves (in terms of the internal logic) after that mission window had passed.
( b ) So then, *since* this device has 400% more memory locations than the Apollo-style of computer, I'd only need to treat 25% of them as Functionally equivalent to ROM, and could use the remaining memory as RAM for calculations involving the library of Stars stored in the ROM.
Awesome Part 3 ! Loved just seeing the random bits and bobs
EKI Micro-mentor is using both numeric display and LEDs because decoders (7447) can only decode BCD (0-9), and ABCDE are some weird patterns (F = blank). Also in 8085 addresses starting from 0 would be most likely ROM.
I owned a black Apple from 1980 to 1984 when it sadly died. I threw it away and replaced it with a Franklin ace 1200. Wish I had either machine now.
Ouch! Yeah the Bell & Howell is worth between $600-1100 these days
The email terminal renminds me of the presto email device my dad got my grandmother. It basically was a printer. I could send my grandma pictures and emails and it would automatically print them out on paper. It was such a hit at the assisted livening home they bought them. And would put the print out into residents mail
Boxes
That email machine would make a good distraction-free writing environment like an Alphasmart if there was some way of getting files off of it other than old-fashioned landline modem...
Could use the parallel port potentially.
The EK1 appears to be very similar to my PAIA 8700 controller computer which came with my 4700 system, except it has a 6503. I need to fix it as it was sitting loose in the keyboard, and two of the chips came off during shipping, and were flying about in the case.
The emailer devices always seemed like a solution in search of a problem ( and I bought a similar UK device !)
Weirdly enough tbose sockets used on the byte S100 card have become rather hard to find, there's almost no mention of them pretty much anywhere on the internet aside from scans of Molex catalogs from the 70s, and presumably they've been out of production for some time. Kind of a shame really as they seem like they'd be useful for prototyping and maker projects.
So glad you are better. Not ready for the pc recycle bin in the sky you have too many stories left to share.
Thank you! Yeah I'm still kinda brain foggy.. this video took a lot longer to produce as my mind didn't organize very well. But at least I don't feel like a gorilla is sitting on my chest anymore.
@@TechTimeTraveller fog is still creeping on me after a year and half.
@@TechTimeTraveller did you check out shop goodwill? I sent some interesting things a while back. Old trs80 and some apple stuff. Always good place to look for old junk.
it's a latch address button. you have to press the address button after entering the number.
I have a Micro Mentor too! It's missing the keypad on the keypad interface board, but those look pretty standard. According to my notes I also bought a set of "construction sheets" for it... maybe I need to dig those out if nobody else has them.
I think it's just a Digitran hex keypad. They were used on a lot of projects like the DREAM 6800. They come up once in a while on ebay. I'd love to see any documentation!
Sorcerer Stan, I have a Digitran KL0042 keypad with same layout but the dimensions are a bit larger. I need to make a 16pin dip cable to connect the two boards at which time I can connect the Digitran to see if it works. By any chance perhaps I just bought the Micro-Mentor from you on ebay? Odd that both of ours are missing the keypad.
@@johnn0hj LOL, as a matter of fact, that is mine you purchased. I'm also the person who put the scans of the yellow construction sheets up on archive (and now you have the originals). I hope you get it going, I just have too many projects and needed to thin out some that weren't progressing.
@@sorcererstan it shouldn't be too difficult to get going. I'd like to reverse engineer the schematic as well to get a handle on how it works since I've not found a user guide. It should increase my knowledge of basic microprocessor circuits and how they function without any code in ROM. Thanks for posting the data on the Archive. That saved me from scanning it for others.
@@TechTimeTraveller I have another EKI Micro Mentor coming soon with a course book which may have more info. I'll scan and post a link once I get around to it.
Those kinds of "chiclet" keyboards, if they have full size key spacing and are decently made, are _enormously_ better than the ZX81 membrane keyboard. They do often need some cleaning if they've been sitting around for a while, but they're a lot easier to clean than a keyswitch keyboard.
After I cleaned the one on my National/Panasonic JR-200 it's been working quite well, better than some of my old mechanical keyboards that suffered too much deterioration over the years. I'm not getting the 100 WPM I get on a proper keyboard, but I'm not slowed to a crawl, either. (And come to think of it, some of my speed issues might actually be related to lack of rollover in the keyboard scan routine. That utterly kills my typing speed on my Hitachi MB-6885.)
My JR-200 does have a full size space bar in the proper place, though. I suspect that leaving it out on your machine was to make for a somewhat smaller PCB, and thus a bit of cost savings.
At some point you'll have so much retro gear that you're going to need to open a museum. But if you charge admission you might be able to recoup some of your costs.
Shhh don't let my wife in on the plan!
As much as Canada needs a retro-computing museum (the only such facility permanenrly closed a few years ago), our host would need to do much more background research for the exhibits first. Perhaps we could just tour the warehouse instead (for a lesser admission fee).
Some years ago, a local museum under development acquired a very large collection of artifacts. Sadly, the government pulled the funding shortly before the facility was due to open. A group of well-intentioned and enthusiastic community volunteers then took over the project. They were not knowledgeable about the collections, however, and so rather than a museum it became a building full of "stuff". There was minimal signage or curation, and nobody able to answer any questions.
@@williamharris8367 Even when it is done properly there is no guarantee it survives. PCmuseum sadly did not survive the sudden passing of its creator. The Living Computer Museum was supposed to exist indefinitely with support from Paul Allen's estate.. it apparently was already in trouble before covid hit and now may be permanently shuttered as his heir (sister I think?) isn't interested. Here in Vancouver many years ago we had a store called Cal's Computer Warehouse and they had a space set aside as a museum. But all it did apparently was consume precious space, and it and the store vanished eventually. It really sucks when dedicated museums close too, especially for donors who hope their donations will be preserved for posterity.
Opening a museum in my area would be financial suicide as we are in one of the most expensive real estate corridors on the planet. I think the best chance of preservation for vintage gear remains individual private collectors.
The issue with the PC Museum was that it was privately operated rather than run by a public institution, non-profit, or charity. It was, legally, a private collection that had no continuing existence once the founder died as it was all his personal property.
If someone is going to formally establish a museum, the very first step is to recruit a board and create a corporate body to hold title to the artifacts. This will then make the institution eligible (under CRA rules) to issue tax receipts for the fair market value of items donated. It will also provide continuity to the organization should the initial parties/founders die or otherwise lose interest.
In the 1990s, I was an active member of a community heritage organization. I ceased to be involved when I moved cross-country, and most (all?) of the members at that time are no longer active. Because it was formally incorporated under the Society's Act, the organization continues to exist despite none of the original members still being around. The corporate body holds the title to real property and artifacts; not a specific individual. People die and are then replaced by new members.
Organizations can go defunct too, of course, but they typically last much longer than one lifespan.
"A lot of E. Bay sellers have no clue how to operate a camera" - Amen to that!
There was an eMail in the outbox… until you cleared it. Now we’ll never know what it said… (probably “I suck”)
It wasn't going to let me go there anyway. I'm not sure why it kept freezing up like that.. its a little cranky I guess after sitting in a box for 20+ years.
@@TechTimeTraveller I had a big box (24?) of (similar) eMail (only) machines sold by Sears… I never opened it… IIRC someone gave me $20 for it at a garage sale. I got it with a pallets of unsold merchandise at a silent bit auction (in RL; before eBay… ;-)
i love seeing the old computers being put pack in to working order.
i my self have an apple IIe and a Commodore 64 with a few 1541 drives and i am building up a 1581 for it.
That CGA card is amazing to me. To think that sat in a machine and did stuff and its a crazy amount of chips on that thing. Just, wow!
Next time I go to the recycle electronics shop, a mailstation is on my list.
honeywell was indeed a major supplier of computers to governments and businesses in the late 60's.
they had their own line of internally developed and manufactured 16 bit machines that was in production until some time in the early 70's
i believe it was competition the cheaper pdp line of mini computers that led to them selling off the business unit
41:10 - Don't forget about playing Doom! Speaking of...will it run it?
Seeing an Apple II brings back memories. Where I’m from you don’t see a lot of home brew machines. IBM systems were rare in Western PA, only large companies had them, then medium sized companies. The first one that I saw in person was a spare given to my Grandfather in the early 1990’s in order for him to get adjusted to the new Automotive Diagnostic software that was based on MS DOS. Before that though out here it was mostly Apple II and a very small spattering of the competition. I took until 2006 for me to see a Commodore 64 in person. Tandy systems were also out there but really sparse. In western PA it was Apple II -> IBM -> PC Clones at least in the sticks lol
That's interesting.. I think Commodore was HQed in Westchester PA? Would think you would have seen more of them. Up where I lived in Ontario, there were mostly Commodore.. Apples were the preserve of teachers and the well to do on account of being so expensive.
that CGA card it's self it beautiful, that Chocolate brown and copper it awesome!!
That is a really cool printer, Great video!
Many thanks! I cling to the hope of finding the ribbon assembly and trying it out one day.
30:10 -- RE: Owning v. Renting technology -- And I thought my current Internet provider was being shady with the "you don't own your fiber modem" mentality, it turns out this is a much older pattern of business. It makes *A LOT* of sense pre-1999 for companies to rent equipment for a minimal or nominal fee versus selling it outright, because the "Homebrew" market was a much different beast back then and hacking was a more hands on type of activity.
^^ Add to this the following: the BBS / Email server that this device expects to connect with is *either* configurable or not, and I'd guess that it expects to connect to a server being operated by Bell. That's yet another reason to discourage hackers from messing with the internals.
I'm glad you seem better, thanks for the interesting video! Are the CGA cards that common in your parts? I've been trying to get one for the historic aspect but any ones I find that go to Ontario charge an arm and a leg in shipping, so I've thusfar given it a pass. I only have one leg left after all!
I got that one off ebay for about $40. The shipping was reasonable.
@@TechTimeTraveller Thats not bad at all, usually its like $40 and then like 60$ shipping for me, and it seems a bit excessive to pay more than the item is worth in shipping.
@@maiyannah I must have one lurking (untested) in a garage somewhere. Too many old systems and I am not looking for megabucks, just the time to sort everything !
I wonder if that EKI board was reverse-Polish -- that is, type a number, hit "Address," then either press "Read," or type another number and press "Write," rather than pressing those buttons first and _then_ typing a number. I know this was a trendy way to do things with the calculators of that era. (Also really simple to implement in hardware.) 👍️
20:09 -- RE: "Animation graphics" -- O Boy, they didn't only clone the Sinclair, they also straight up ripped off Atari-style pixel-sprites for box art to sucker in the plebs who didn't have stacks of quarters or a Space Invaders cartridge.
that printer is dope, how is the mindset related to the X68000, if at all its case design
I don't think they're related AFAIK.. I think they're probably a case of great minds thinking alike.
If you use the RCA composite connector on that CGA card it will do 16 colours via NTSC artifacting. Not supported by all software though as few EGA cards and no VGA cards supported this feature. The small card in your PC also lacks this connector so can't do this.
Yeah I didn't have the composite jack on my childhood PC either I don't think... we had some kinda ATI CGA thing, only half length and I'm pretty sure it only had some jumpers and the 9 pin connector on the back.
I have some really cool IBM stuff I collected from a old programmer that passed away. A loaded 5170 I believe, full of expansion cards and a model m keyboard. Gold memory chips. Loads of things. I've since lost interest and looking to unload. Any interest?
email thingie... argh... center minus on the power jack !
Yeah that pin arrangement has hurt me once or twice.. heh
21:25 How can a Keybord be wors Then Tne ZX81 :)
Trust me. I can top it. Future video. :)
When I purchased my Apple ][+ circa 1980-1981, it only came with16k RAM. I had to buy 16k RAM when I purchased a Disk ][ later on.
Excellent video, I wonder what is inside the email gadget. What CPU etc?
I think it's a z80 if I'm not mistaken.
That first Apple II... senior moment, huh?
I actually think I have a bit of covid brain going on still. I didn't believe in it but definitely memory has gotten a bit sketchier than usual.
@@TechTimeTraveller I'm in my 30s and it made me forgetful and dull-witted for a while. It's really not fun.
IIRC: That 20,000 gap in serial numbers were shipped to Europe and Japan as the Apple II Europlus and J-Plus.
I was under the impression those were II+ units and shipped with Applesoft rather than Integer. But maybe they did that as an internal thing?
@@TechTimeTraveller It was before my time (at Apple) but it seems like I remember someone that was on the Apple hardware team mentioning the EuroPlus and the J-Plus. They supported different fonts also. I’ll drop him a note and see if I recall correctly. ;-)
The printer MIGHT use TTY3 commands ?
Did you mean to have the CPU in the Apple 2+ in the wrong place? A pair of pins were hanging out of the socket at one end and there was a gap at the other. I'm no expert on the platform, but I'm going to guess that it's not going to help troubleshoot the problem... :P
Yeah that was accidental in putting it back. I caught it but didn't bother to resort. :)
You missed a great chance to type "subscribe!" In your fancy email paper weight.
I also hated CGA back when I was younger because I saw other people's EGA computers and it is much better. Now though, I get kind of nostalgic for 4 color CGA because I like the simplicity of it. Sierra did a poor job optimizing their games for 4 color CGA; but for composite CGA and EGA you have 16 color graphics which are pretty awesome.
I think the ATI CGA card I had as a kid didn't have composite. Trying yo remember what card it was. But yeah I wouldn't have thought to even try that though I tried everything else. I remember constantly messing with the card because I couldn't understand how it could do 16 colors with text but not graphics.
You might use a proxy for an auction. They know you are a collector as well as being very bush bearded
hi nice video
Thank you!
No sane person would buy one on purpose. I hope you recover from your accident.