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Historic Microcomputer Restoration?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the preserve-the-past dept.

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?"

5 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. The abacus by luder · · Score: 3, Insightful

    After all, it was one of the first calculating devices.

  2. Things I've seen that amuse people.. by technos · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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'.

    --
    .sig: Now legally binding!
  3. Re:well... by Boone^ · · Score: 2, Insightful
    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.

  4. Try something less typical. by soward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I feel like the altair / apple / C= stuff has all been done over many times....
    Someone mentioned the sinclair, that might be interesting, especially if you could find one of the color ones. PDPs and the like fall in with one of my favorites, the Pr1me, as being mini-computers.

    How about an Alpha-Micro? It dates to about 1982, so while not _super_ old, it's no spring chicken. The company still exisits in some form, so you might be able to get docs, schematics, etc. And that whole 'write your backups to a VHS tape' trick still raises eyebrows today.

    --
    John Soward...University of Kentucky
  5. Re:Outperform a P4?! What an absurd notion. by hcdejong · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The claim probably comes from this incident:
    (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:
    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:
    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 five character matrix.