A Trip Down Computer Memory Lane

News.com has an interesting stroll down memory lane with a look at the "DigiBarn", a collection of technology from early mechanical calculators to modern web appliances. NASA contractor Bruce Damer and partner Alan Lundell run this "museum in transition" from a 19th-century farmhouse deep in the Santa Cruz mountains. In addition to notable success milestones, the company also includes some of the industry failures, like an Apple III Damer acquired from Apple's legal department.

Comments

wooo

[sepelester]

Could be called RAM Drive, but Computer Memory Lane is cool too

Re:wooo

[StikyPad]

In Soviet Russia, RAM Drive travels on Memory Bus!

Handy link to TFA

[iaculus]

Post links to second page; first page at http://news.com.com/A+trip+down+computer+memory+la ne/2100-1042_3-6203311.html and almost-ad-free print version at http://news.com.com/2102-1042_3-6203311.html?tag=s t.util.print

Go on. Read the article. You know you want to. You'll find out why the museum has to be packed up every winter, and learn that Apple had a portable music player as far back as 1979. And more!

Re:Handy link to TFA

[KlaymenDK]

It seems a bit odd that the article is so focused on the *artifacts*, when it ends in stating that the museum's purpose is to convey the stories of the *people* behind them.

But I'm just jeleaous(sp!)really. I live too far away, I'll never get to make a visit.

Accuracy

[spacefrog]

Articles like this do more harm then good when they are filled with inaccuracies.

Not everything in the collection is Apple, though. There's also an original 1979 Osborne I--one of the first computers my father ever owned--the giant suitcase-size portable computer, and a Kaypro II, which helped kill the Osborne due to its smaller, sleeker design.

The Osborne I was introduced in 1981. The Kaypo II (there was no Kaypro I) was slightly larger then the Osborne, and weighed 6 pounds more.

This article is crap.

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

The Osborne II, and news of its impending release, is what killed the Osborne I and the company. It is a cautionary tale in not releasing news of an impending product upgrade too early. Particularly when you have huge unsold stock of the prior product.

They should include that famous Bill Gates quote in the article.

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

People who in two short sentences manage to write then instead of than twice are also crap.

Re:Accuracy

[garcia]

One room over, however, was my first computer, the Commodore Vic-20, a 2K masterpiece on which a friend of mine and I would sit and write incredible programs in BASIC to do things like ask you your name and then print it on the screen an infinite number of times.

He could be my twin brother, if I had one, as the Vic-20 was the first computer I used and I was programming in BASIC before I could knowingly spell or read (just imitating my father's keystrokes) and what I remember doing the most was printing my name over and over again.

My second computer was the C-64 (not the fat box with dark brown keys but instead the sleeker one built a few years later) and while we used cartridges almost solely with the Vic-20, we only had one cartridge for the C64 (Spyhunter!)

This article, while it may be filled with date inaccuracies, is still fitting my history nearly to the "T".

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, so much harm has been done. Won't someone please think of the children?

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Articles like this do more harm then good when they are filled with inaccuracies. Posts like this do more harm than good when they are filled with grammar and spelling errors. Spacefrog is another self proclaimed "genius" that was "homeschooled" or looked out the window in English class. These Slashdot "geniuses" think they are too smart for secondary education. I guess maybe you weren't. Then is not the same as than! People who don't care about the difference usually listen to poor music and write "software" in PHP. People who do care about the difference only listen to Madonna and write software using the C programming language.

The CAPTCHA is "marxist."

Re:Accuracy

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

The one he never said, you mean?

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you think I meant another quote?

Re:Accuracy

[Tablizer]

[smaller, sleeker design.] The Osborne I was introduced in 1981. The Kaypro II (there was no Kaypro I) was slightly larger then the Osborne, and weighed 6 pounds more.

One of Kaypro's advantages was a larger screen IIRC. That may have made it look "sleeker".

Re:Accuracy

[nurb432]

There was an optional external video display for the osborne. But that does sort of blow it being portable.

Re:Accuracy

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Well, I'm just saying that Mr. Gates never actually said you people continue to insist that he did.

Re:Accuracy

[rbanffy]

I think he says he never said that. There is no proof either way.

Re:Accuracy

[multipartmixed]

I'm sure there are plenty of other factual errors in TFA, then. I only skimmed and spotted the "2K VIC-20" part.

I don't think a VIC-20 would even RUN with only 2K of RAM installed (and to get so little, you'd have to take a soldering iron to the main board). They shipped with 5KB RAM with 3583 bytes free for BASIC programs. Some of that would be around 0-page, some of it must be mapped higher for video.

Re:Accuracy

[Dog-Cow]

Virtually every laptop produced today has a video out for an external monitor. Does that stop them from being portables too?

Re:Accuracy

[nurb432]

When we are talking a 3x5" screen to start with, ya.

Re:Accuracy

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Well, is there a publication that documents Mr. Gates saying that? Or did some anti-ms fanboy make it up?

I'm not a MS lover, I'm a Mac user, but I dislike people bringing that quote up so often.

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen non-AC, the context of my post was a reply to another post stating this article is crap. I added further factual detail in support of the sentiment. Why would I want a quote Bill Gates never said added to the article? Think. Deeply. Real deep. It has nothing to do with an anti-Microsoft attitude.

Vista is a good operating system.

Re:Accuracy

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

So which quote did you want included? Please log in and inform me of what possible REAL quote from Mr. Gates could apply.

Quote from an interview:
QUESTION: "I read in a newspaper that in l981 you said '640K of memory should be enough for anybody.' What did you mean when you said this?"

ANSWER: "I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time."

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Gates calls Jobs a no one.

Now that is a quote!

In case you didn't notice

[LordSnooty]

The link goes to page 2 of the article.

I'd be interested to learn more about the "iPod prototype" - described as a Mac in a briefcase - how was the music stored on this? If it were on separate medium such as cassette, disk or somesuch then is it really a prototype of anything? Would it not be a similar, more cumbersome version of the Walkman, which had already appeared by 1980. Since it's a Mac I'd like to say the files were in AIFF format, 'cept WP says that was developed in 1988. What was the state of audio compression at the turn of the eighties? Uncompressed audio seems unrealistic on yesterday's storage media.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[jimicus]

I don't know about early Apples, but in the early 1980's it was fairly common for personal computers to use audio cassettes for data and program storage. Wouldn't surprise me if someone built a computer which had a built-in audio cassette player which could be used for both audio tape playback and loading software.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[zlogic]

My guess is that it's either MIDI or something algorithmically-generated (e.g. looping samples need to be stored only once).

Re:In case you didn't notice

[LordSnooty]

Quite, only I had one of those with my ZX Spectrum, as long as I disconnected the EAR lead. Hardly a "prototype portable music player" though...

Re:In case you didn't notice

[GPL Apostate]

When I was a kid, my father brought home an IBM 5100 a few weekends for us to mess with. It included a massive tractor-fed line printer. There was one program for it that used the sound side-effects of the line printer to play the William Tell Overture. This was in about 1975. It clearly constitutes an 'Ipod Prototype' that is earlier than anything Apple produced. Why, in 1975 all that Apple Computer's founders were doing was selling dope and blueboxes to steal telephone long distance time.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[bobdinkel]

I was pretty curious about the "iPod prototype" as well. I was able to find a little more info, but not enough to satisfy my curiosity. Link to more info

Re:In case you didn't notice

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to be pre-midi, but able to control a synthesizer by direct connection to the keyboard matrix.

In the Digibarn article, it appears to be controlling a Casio MT10.

Some people did some amazing hacking interfacing computers with those early Casios.
It was the first really cheap digital keyboard. This guy reverse engineered the upD931 in a Casio M-10 back in '84.
He was able to program voices and play it on the fly from his 4MHz CPM box! :

http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/casio-keyboards/Casi o-931-2006-06-17.txt

Re:In case you didn't notice

[OakDragon]

My 2nd computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer II. Unfortunately, I could not afford the disk drive for it. Here are a couple of ways I used the tape drive to provide music for my programs.

The first was really a demo. I made a BASIC program to fill the screen with the James Bond "007" logo as the tape drive played "View to a Kill" (which I "downloaded" by holding the tape recorder up to the radio speaker). The program loaded, and started drawing to screen, while the sound played through the computer's hardware to the TV speaker.

The second program used the same technique to load a game (D-n-D type), play some mood music while the title screen was up, then some data was loaded from tape.

As for music produced by the computer, the CoCo was from the "beep-boop" school of sounds. Producing a note pretty much stopped all other processor functions too, if I remember.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[RedMage]

There was - it was called the PET. While the 4032 and 8032 (and the later SuperPET) used an external (but still proprietary) cassette recorder, the 2001 had it built in, next to the keyboard. Actually, I don't remember exactly if the PET could play audio through the cassette drive, but I do remember that it was a little more reliable than, say, the TRS-80, for loading, as long as the tape alignment was good.

Someone else mentioned the Spectrum...

I never actually used in anger a cassette tape for data storage, but I remember a friend loading EDTASM for his TRS-80 Model I from tape. Of course, even though the later IBM PC had a cassette interface, once memory sized exceeded a certain threshold, say 64K for sake of conversation, loading and saving from tape became completely impractical. What were data transfer speeds? 500 B/sec or so? Even SA400 drives circa 1980 could move 15K a second on average.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[RedMage]

Depending on the time frame, I'd say it was probably pre-MIDI. MIDI was first available on the Yamaha DX7, which was released in 1983. I would guess it was voltage control, as used on many analog synths of the time. Digital audio, as we use it today, would have been a non-starter in a portable system. Even commercial samplers were up in the I-Need-A-Mortgage realm of cost.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[rbanffy]

Actually, quite a few computers in the late 70s and early 80s had cassette tape drives built in. I remember the PET, of course. There were some ZX Spectrum-based machines (in the post-Sinclair life-cycle) and I remember a TRS-80 model I clone made by Dismac (I am from Brazil) that had one next to its keyboard.

A trip to http://www.old-computers.com/ should turn up a lot of them.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[Fred_A]

I think they intended to add a slot for LPs under the screen.

I might be wrong though ;)

Re:In case you didn't notice

[clickclickdrone]

Really clever people like Atari used stereo data recorders with their machines. On software like 'Conversational Spanish', one track would load data while the other talked away giving examples of words & pronounciation etc. Some games had the load music on the audio track for extra quality.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[Anonymous Coward]

"Depending on the time frame, I'd say it was probably pre-MIDI. MIDI was first available on the Yamaha DX7, which was released in 1983."

No, it was the SCI Prophet 600 in 1982.

"I would guess it was voltage control, as used on many analog synths of the time."

No, it was digital control by connecting to the keyboard matrix of a digital keyboard called a Casio MT-10.

"Even commercial samplers were up in the I-Need-A-Mortgage realm of cost."

Yes. :) Till the SK1 in 1985 or so.

Re:In case you didn't notice

[TopShelf]

My first computer was an Atari 400, and the Kingdom game (a Hammurabi clone) did something similar, playing title music and an audio introduction through the tape drive...

One slight error

[PapayaSF]

The article says:

In fact, with the early Macs, you needed a "Mac Cracker," a funky metal device that looks something like a book stand, to open the machine.

I remember needing just a putty knife and a foot-long Torx wrench (the screws that held it together were seated at the top of the machine, but only accessible through deep holes in the bottom)....

Re:One slight error

[zakezuke]

I remember needing just a putty knife and a foot-long Torx wrench (the screws that held it together were seated at the top of the machine, but only accessible through deep holes in the bottom).... I remember the mac cracker... it was actually a very useful tool for things other than macs. Mine was just a small blunt blade about 1.5 inches in length attached to a plate, attached to a right angle connector which connected to your universal screwdriver. Which I still had it as it would be handy for laptops without screwing up the plastic.

The torx screws in those old macs however were a royal pain... I can't remember exactly what I did but it did involve the use of an allen key with a segment of the short bit cut off and attached to a pole.

Re:One slight error

[ConceptJunkie]

That reminds me of the Lisa. If the computer locked up, you have to dismantle it to get the floppy disk out... or at least that's what the computer lab operator at Virginia Tech told me. I found it hilarious how user hostile the early Macs and proto-Macs could be.

Apple should have listened to Steve

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no step 3.

not an error

[commodoresloat]

For the SE and Plus and probably some others, you needed the "Mac Cracker" in addition to the long T-15. The cracker was a spring loaded device that pushed parts of the case outward in order to open it.

Re:not an error

[GPL Apostate]

I have opened SE's, and Pluses, and SE/30's using just a long handle T-15. In fact I don't even have the long handle T-15. A long handled flat bladed screwdriver (in fact, one of the common ones most large hardware stores stock) will wedge into the splines on the torx screws on the Mac to back them out.

I have never needed any special tool once the screws are out. You just lay the Mac face down on a pillow or some padding and do a little 'heft' action and it slides open.

It's entirely within the realm of likelihood that Apple spent a good amount of effort insuring that people believe that expensive special tools are needed to open a classic Mac. Because they don't want regular people in there. The Mac was designed for 'the rest of us' so the tech elite could transfer plenty of green from them.

Re:not an error

[commodoresloat]

"Expensive tools"? I don't know how much it cost, but it didn't look like it was worth more than five bucks, and I doubt I spent more than that on it at the time. At the time it was easy to get one (most companies that sold ram for the thing sent along the tool with the ram), so I'm not sure I agree with your point about Apple trying to keep joe sixpack from opening the box.

Re:not an error

[clickclickdrone]

>just a long handle T-15
The same T-15 some people used to bullseye Whomp Rats?

Re:not an error

[GPL Apostate]

I didn't buy my SE/30's until long, long after there were places to casually order the tools to open them. I specifically acquired them to run NetBSD on.

I'm dissapointed to see...

[niceone]

...that this is a just another computer museum, rather than one dedicated to computer memory, I was getting excited by the thought of all those glass cases full of SIMMs, DIMMs and maybe even some magnetic core.

Re:I'm dissapointed to see...

[nurb432]

I do believe they do have some Core memory cards on display.

Re:I'm dissapointed to see...

[RedMage]

Aw heck - I've got some core laying around here... Great as a conversation piece. Mine comes from my Circa 1972 PDP-11/40, and is laid out in 8KW cards.

Re:I'm dissapointed to see...

[clickclickdrone]

I had some bubble memory but it popped :-(

640k

[dotslashdot]

It would have been a short trip down memory lane if the Gates had stopped us at 640k.

Why no link to the actual museum?

[ruiner13]

Is it that hard to put a link to the actual museum instead of to page 2 of an article that talks about said museum? Are the mods asleep today?

Re:Why no link to the actual museum?

[ruiner13]

s it that hard to put a link to the actual museum instead of to page 2 of an article that talks about said museum? Are the mods asleep today? There are no ads on the museum site, so no revenue to drive up by linking to it.

Re:Why no link to the actual museum?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I am a retard and replied to my own post. I just realized the reason after I posted the 1st one.

Re:Why no link to the actual museum?

[badc0ffee]

Because they have a wish list http://www.digibarn.com/help/index.html of *junk they want. My last move, I tossed a lot of old computer stuff like WORM drive, Diablo daisy wheel printer, paper tape reader, teletype, monochrome monitors, Rockwell AIM-65, manuals, old operating systems, and the list goes on.

But I kept my first computer, a Geniac, for no good reason. Ah, the memories when you turn 0100 (octal).

*Junk = the **stuff you throw away.

**Stuff = the *junk you keep.

Re:Why no link to the actual museum?

[multipartmixed]

WOW, I thought I was old a couple of years back when I turned 040! Of course, I too have a lot of computer memories, I have been programming since I was 011. And I learned basic TTL logic and how to count in binary up to 10000 when I was 111. I must have burnt myself with a soldering iron -1 times that year!

(Thanks for the link -- email sent)

Grammar matters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Articles like this do more harm then good when they are filled with inaccuracies.
Posts like this do more harm than good when they are filled with grammar and spelling errors. Spacefrog is another self proclaimed "genius" that was "homeschooled" or looked out the window in English class. These Slashdot "geniuses" think they are too smart for secondary education. I guess maybe you weren't. Then is not the same as than! People who don't care about the difference usually listen to poor music and write "software" in PHP. People who do care about the difference only listen to Madonna and write software using the C programming language.

The CAPTCHA is "centrist."

Re:And remeber folks:

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure as hell arent getting MY vote.

First post........to mention...

[3seas]

the article forgot Amiga....

OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[twitter]

Ah the irony, a computer museum filled with old M$ OS. Bill Gates once boasted that he would keep a copy of gnu/linux for his computer museum but would eliminate it otherwise. Yet nothing is more useless than an old copy of Windoze. They can be fun, but they are tied to a particular set of hardware and software that's all rotting away. Emulation is interesting but difficult thanks to all the built in traps. Still, it's nice someone is keeping these things around.

Roughly Drafted has a set of articles detailing the OS wars that would complement the physical collection. If you are looking for a trip down memory lane, here it is:

• 1980-1985: 8-bit Platforms
• SCO, Linux, and Microsoft in the History of OS: 1980s
• 1990-1995: The Race to Deliver The Next New Platform

They are all well written, entertaining and accurate.

Re:OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Yet nothing is more useless than an old copy of Windoze.

Several problems. You claim that old versions of Windows are useless because they are tied to specific hardware. So, I presume you are anticipating driver issues. How is this Windows's fault any more than the lack of Linux drivers is Linux's fault? I have a Win 95 box (well, laptop) used to play old games. I have an XP box used for newish games, and testing apps I write. I have a Vista box for ubernew games (still waiting on one of those worth buying actually), and compatibility testing apps I write. So, I suppose I disagree with your nortion that they are uselss.

Interestingly, you complain about emulation, and while I agree with you, it should be noted that even Apple was unable to make a good OS9 emulator for OSX. I just want to point out the difficulties involved.

Re:OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[GPL Apostate]

I think he is actually saying that because his only experience with 'older copies of windoze' is that his Ma once had a Packard-Bell 486. It came with a 'Windoze' cd installer (actually just a recovery CD) and he thinks that's all any of us ever have gotten.

I have a full retail boxed copy of Windows 1.03, have Windows 2.1, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT 3.1, NT 3.51, NT 4.0 and 2000 install media. All of which is generic and can be installed on essentially any x86 hardware with the drives to read it.

There are decent emulators to run OS9 even on my NetBSD box. If I wanted to be really, really weird I could even run BasiliskII and (probably) install OS9 on the NetBSD that I have installed on my old SE/30. It would be really, really slow, of course.

But the GP for this comment is Twitter, so the only reason IHNBT is that I have a sense of humor.

Re:OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're all linking to other sites, some of you might like this little trip:

Vintage Computing part 1
Vintage Computing part 2
Vintage Computing part 3
Vintage Computing part 4

Covers everything from punched cards and mainframes to our beloved Amigas, with tips on emulating the systems today.

Re:OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[Anonymous Coward]

twitter, please read this carefully. Following this advice will make Slashdot a better place for everyone, including yourself.

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
• Give credit where credit is due. Linux is just the kernel. Without the efforts of people involved with the GNU project , MIT, Berkeley and others too numerous to mention, the Linux kernel would not be very useful to most people.
• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy

Re:OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[TheRaven64]

The only old copy of Windows I've found to be tied to a particular computer was Windows 1.03 that came with an Apricot machine I picked up (and only managed to boot twice before it failed completely). The Apricot used an unusual format floppy disk (standard 3.5" disks, but a strange data layout). Apparently you could read these disks on standard PCs with some special software, but I never got it to work, and the disk was so dusty I didn't want to put it in an important machine.

Re:OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[TheThiefMaster]

Windows 3.1 runs on dosbox.

It's the only way I can run 16-bit software, as you can't run 16-bit programs under today's 64-bit OSs. Not that big of a loss really, and I get the authentic feel of running it in Win3.1.

Re:OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[TheRaven64]

WINE has supported pretty much all Win16 APIs for years, so you might try that (and then get working copy-and-paste, at least for text, with newer apps too).

Re:OS Wars and Memory Lane.

[TheThiefMaster]

That doesn't help with the fact that I can't run a 16-bit executable (16-bit code) under a 64-bit OS. It's physically impossible to switch the cpu from 64-bit mode to 16-bit mode, so a full emulator is the only option (and wine is not one).

I come from that era

[kurt555gs]

I remember when I got my 1st Radio Shack Model 1. I remember when I bought a Kaypro II. ( I still have it ). I remember how much I loved writing Z80 Assembler on CP/M.

I started out fooling around with these computers, sharing information on CP/M bulletin boards, learning how computers worked from the ground up.

I also remember having the opportunity to meet industry leaders like George Morrow, and work for Takioshi Shiina of SORD computer of Japan. I got to travel, and live in Japan working for SORD.

I remember COMDEX when there were competing operating systems and unique hardware before Microsoft got a strangle hold on innovation and creative thinking.

I remember a time where software patents were unheard of and the thought that ideas for software not the software itself could be owned by some one.

I think of how lucky I have been being able to work on projects where the ideas of creative people not the lawyers and accountants counted the most.

I have been lucky to have grown up in that time.

Thank you Mr Shiina

Cheers

Re:I come from that era

[Anne Honime]

I remember my first computer was a M68 ; I still have it, and it works well. I loved SGL, it was so sleek at the time to describe graphics in actual words instead of peeking and poking at vram. You are a lucky person to have worked for such a brilliant company. I was too young at the time.

Re:I come from that era

[Tablizer]

I remember a time where software patents were unheard of and the thought that ideas for software not the software itself could be owned by some one.

If they had software patents back then, imagine how much slower things would have moved. You'd pay a fortune for GUI's and cut-and-paste. But at least we wouldn't be bombarded with Flash ads.

Re:I come from that era

[kurt555gs]

The M68 was my favorite also. The IS-11 was another that I loved working with. It is great to see some one here has heard of SORD. SORD was really years ahead of any other computer company at the time and Mr. Takayoshi Shiina never seems to get the credit he deserves.

Any M68 Questions? , email me any time.

Cheers

Re:And remeber folks:

[normuser]

So whats your vote?

Bush
Clinton
Obama
Edwards
Mccain
Paul
Nader
CowboyNeal
Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 7.1).

Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[JonTurner]

THey mention keeping a copy of (Integer) Basic on cassette. That got me thinking... I'm a little surprised that people haven't converted these old tapes to MP3s; the fidelity is far more than sufficient and once converted will be far more reliable than the original**. It would certainly make "offsite distributed peer-to-peer backups" easier. And it would be cool to hook up your iPod to your Apple ][ (or Vic20 or C64 or TRS80...) audio input cable and spend a few minutes loading Alkabeth or Visicalc "from tape".

[**One wrinkle in your tape and presto! You've got an audio drop-out and with it, code that fails to compile. Of course, that was part of the masochistic fun "back in the day" when your code had chunks of nonsense operands in the middle of a routine producing a different bug every time it loaded due to a dying tape or a sticky transport mechanism. I think it actually improved your debugging skills.]

Anyway, the tape->MP3 conversion seems like a common sense idea, but a quick search didn't turn up anything.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[TheRaven64]

I'm a little surprised that people haven't converted these old tapes to MP3s; I think there are probably better ways of doing this. There are emulators that can read the audio data, and so it would be simpler to just store a digital copy of the data; I doubt MP3 could get the data down to anything like the size of the original, which is likely to be well under 64KB (it must be smaller than the amount of RAM the machine has, or it couldn't have been loaded. Even big programs that had to be loaded in segments weren't more than 100KB or so).

A few emulators can read from WAV files of the tapes. MP3 should be okay bandwidth-wise, but the psycho-acoustic model throws away information humans can't hear, and I don't know if that is a problem for some data encodings. The WAV-reading only exists to load files from old tapes, it's not a sensible long-term storage mechanism.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[blincoln]

Anyway, the tape->MP3 conversion seems like a common sense idea, but a quick search didn't turn up anything.

Back in the mid-90s, before mp3s became popular, a small company did a limited run of audio CDs that contained most/all of the games for the Starpath Supercharger Atari 2600 add-on.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[Novus]

With a little knowledge of the tape hardware and the way it's used to store data, you can store the data on a tape much more efficiently than an MP3 does (and get faster encoding and decoding to boot). Your average 8-bit with a tape deck (for example, a ZX Spectrum) essentially has a 1-bit ADC and DAC hooked up to the tape deck. Data is (mostly) stored on tape as a long series of pulses of two different lengths (each representing a 0 or 1). Therefore, to create a nice and small tape image file (even of data in a custom copy protected format), simply detect and store a description of these pulses in e.g. TZX format. Especially Spectrum emulation users often work with tape files like these.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[Alioth]

We have - certainly in the Sinclair Spectrum community. Nearly every piece of Spectrum software has been saved. Not in MP3 format, but in TZX format which gives a compact and accurate representation of the original tape. The World of Spectrum archive has several thousand programs for the Speccy stored in this way.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 compression is lossy. You do not like audio drop outs on tape, you would not like the non-sense result of MP3-compressing a program saved to audio tape. I am not even sure the loss-less audio encoders would cut it. They are designed for a digital audio input (generally CD quality audio or below), not the A/D conversion back up format on circa 1980s audio cassette tapes.

I remember not too long ago when hard drive prices were high enough people were dreaming up ways to back up their data to the video micro-cassette tapes used in consumer camcorders.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[Stormwatch]

Back in the mid-90s, before mp3s became popular, a small company did a limited run of audio CDs that contained most/all of the games for the Starpath Supercharger Atari 2600 add-on.

Which, converted to pure data, takes less than 200KB. In fact, you can fit pretty much every Atari 2600 game ever made in two or three floppies.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[jhalme]

At least on a ZX Spectrum, the psycho-acoustic models do damage the data enough to make it impossible to load. I exported a few .TZX files into .WAV, compressed them into MP3 and tried to load into my 48k Spectrum from a portable MP3 player. I didn't manage to load the program one single time as every attempt ended with an "R Tape load error". I also tried recording the .WAV onto a minidisc (old MZ-R90 portable) but still got similar results, so apparently ATRAC loses too much data as well. Burning the .WAV files onto CD as audio tracks worked flawlessly, though.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[clickclickdrone]

>old tapes to MP3s
For some strange reason, lossy compression is something you *really* don't want with program/data files.

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[Richy_T]

Old hardware, ZX Spectrums. Gotta be an opportunity to mention

heyhey16k

FOR n=0 TO 2
Those were the days
NEXT n

Rich

Re:Cassette tape? Where are the MP3s???

[ncc74656]

I think there are probably better ways of doing this. There are emulators that can read the audio data, and so it would be simpler to just store a digital copy of the data...

There are also methods for transferring files over audio connections between vintage and modern hardware. ADTPro works with the cassette ports in an Apple IIe, II+, or II. I remember reading recently about something with similar capabilities for the TI-99/4A, but I don't recall the name offhand. (Some quick looking-around turned up Tape994a and CS1er.)

A few emulators can read from WAV files of the tapes. MP3 should be okay bandwidth-wise, but the psycho-acoustic model throws away information humans can't hear, and I don't know if that is a problem for some data encodings.

With most computers writing to tape at somewhere between 600 and 2400 bps, I'd think that lossless compression would be able to shrink the file size significantly without running the risk of garbling the data.

Vic20..

[eniac42]

"..the Commodore Vic-20, a 2K masterpiece.."

2K? 2k???!? Its 5K, sir, I will have you know!

http://www.viceteam.org/ (VICE VIC20 emulator..)

Re:Vic20..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, the VIC 20 was 2k. I had one for a number of years.

Re:Vic20..

[schon]

I'm sorry As you should be, spouting incorrect information like this.

the VIC 20 was 2k. I had one for a number of years. No. The Vic20 was 5K, with ~3.5K usable for programs (The exact amount usable by BASIC was 3583 bytes.) The rest of the RAM was used by the system, and for video memory.

M$ Windoze LOLZORZ

[dedazo]

On the contrary, old copies of "Windoze" are extremely useful, now more than ever, because so much software was written for the platform that you never know when those old floppies and CDs are going to come in handy. A few years ago I helped a friend of mine get some data he had in the files of a shareware PIM application that wouldn't install on Windows XP. I just made a copy of my VPC Windows 95 image, installed the PIM from the shareware CD it was in, opened his files and exported them to Access 97. Then I just copied the MDB file over to an Office 2003 machine and exported the three or four tables as CSV.

I did this myself a few times even before, but by actually installing the OS on older boxes. Either way, the "Windoze" copies are handy to keep around.

They can be fun, but they are tied to a particular set of hardware and software that's all rotting away.

What does this even mean? You mean Linux 1.08 x86 isn't tied to some hardware that's "rotting away"?

Emulation is interesting but difficult thanks to all the built in traps.

How is it "difficult" and what are the "traps"? So far VPC and VMWare work fine for most people.

80's Compression technology

[nurb432]

Thats why none of our prototypes ever got off the ground. Storage meida was just to expensive and compression was limited.

I was a packrat. Now I'm a technolgy archivist...

[dharmadove]

They should take some of the crap in my garage. My retirement investment. You never know when someone might want a Type 80 rectifier, CK722s, BC-348, RTL chips, JSR Model 15, 1401 core memory, bubble memory, 8080, etc... Not mention the magazines / books, LOTS of books. My wife loves it. Not...

OS Machine Specific

[WED Fan]

In the bad old days, there was a key difference between PC-DOS and MS-DOS. PC-DOS was useless for clone machines if the user wanted to program in BASIC. At the time, IBM was putting the BASIC interpreter on chip, there as a basic.com file that would call up the interpreter. MS-DOS was distributed with BASIC and then later GW-BASIC, and finally QBASIC. I think IBM stopped with the BASIC ROMS when the XT came out.

Re:OS Machine Specific

[hawk]

PC-DOS assumed the ROMs of the IBM PC, but thi was a throwback.

MS basic (BASIC-80) used to come in three flavors,

ROM, the minimal level
Extended,which was in ROM
Disk Basic

In the early 16 bits, IBM had extended basic in ROM, and BASICA on floppy extended this to disk basic.

MS-DOS, not being able to rely on having those IBM ROMs (disk basic usually relied on extended basic being in ROM and extending it, rather than replacing it) has GW-BASIC ("Gee-Whiz BASIC"), which was the same thing (but for machine dependent variations).

Anyway, BASICA and GWBASIC, though on 16 bit machines, were for most purposes, MBASIC 5.0 from the 8 bit machines.

hawk

Re:OS Machine Specific

[Just Some Guy]

Utterly OT: when are you getting your blog back online?

Re:OS Machine Specific

[hawk]

When I find a few hours to set it up :) I could launch an actual blog, I suppose, but dochawk.org is really a series of mainstream op-ed articles.

I've found my old content with the wayback machine, but but godaddy is still holding my code hostage after their billing errors. I also need to convince myself that I really will write at least a couple of columns a week once I get the site up(hmm, a reason to buy another laptop :).

hawk

Open PC BIOS.

[burnttoy]

The article states that the IBM PC was an open architecture. In fact it wasn't.

Whilst the OS, CPU, RAM, UARTs, DMAs etc could all be purchased from 3rd parties (Intel, Microsoft, Motorola and friends) they were not open in the OSS sense, the BIOS was proprietory. Compaq then Phoenix had to write clean room BIOS's to make a compatible machine. The same is true of the video BIOS.

Re:Open PC BIOS.

[Anonymous Coward]

"open architecture" != "open source"

open architecture just means it's documented and uses standard parts that you can replace with parts from other vendors.

Re:Open PC BIOS.

[RedMage]

Yes, sort of... The BIOS was proprietary, but IBM did publish the source for it. The reason Phoenix had to clean room it was because it was published they needed to deliberately avoid tainting their efforts. IIRC, what they did was have two teams - one team read the IBM code and wrote descriptions of the routines, and the other team took those descriptions and wrote the code from them. This was how they managed to have such a high level of compatibility without actually copying the IBM code.

Re:Open PC BIOS.

[soundman32]

Open in as much as the manual you got with a PC came with the BIOS assembly listing as an appendix.

I remember looking through the hard cover (was it purple) ring bound manual in the late 80s.

You want to know how to write to the display, look for the interrupt vector 0x10 and follow the code.

Perhaps the average use couldn't copy it, but hey, why would you want to, you've already got a PC with a BIOS.

Navigational aid

[internewt]

Back in the day, with the Scalectrix that I had, I had a couple of circular "mechanical computers" that looked alarmingly like that navigational aid from TFA. They were speed calculators, from what I remember, but they were simply a circular slide rule, of sorts.

Basic, but functional. Even if the power went off you could work out how fast the cars might go ;)

Re:I was a packrat. Now I'm a technolgy archivist.

[hawk]

Ahh, but do you have a wire recorder? :)

Mine is actually a cassette recorder. OK, the cassette is about 5 pounds, but . . .

[explanation: A WWII or earlier vintage machine, it recorded autdio on spools of wire. The specimen I have uses a cartridge, about three inches tall and deep, 8-12 wide (I'm not going out to check), with spools. I actually have a (broken) second spare cartridge. Some day I'll get the whole thing working.]

hawk, whose collection also includes ancient test meters, memory boards with 2102's, and contraptions with reed switches. Oh,and the parts to make an 1802 system . . .

This 'computer museum' sucks

[DirtyFly]

I really dont know why do article come out pointing to an half baked computer museum,check this one out , http://www.homecomputer.de/ , and tell me wich one should be on the news ! Jorge Retro Review Magazine http://www.retroreview.com/

Re:This 'computer museum' sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

That one sucks too, no TI-99.

Re:Accuracy It was Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

who said that 64K was enough for an early Apple.

also missing...

[airdrummer]

the ti-99, a 16bit machine.

Apple III Damer?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is that?

Santa Clara computer museum

[peter303]

You see a lot of old hulks there- a fascinating excursion down memory lane. The museum is located in an old SGI building, slowly being engulfed by the Google Ameoba up the road.

Re:Santa Clara computer museum

[Anonymous Coward]

MOUNTAIN VIEW, not Santa Clara

www.computerhistory.org

Videos of the Digibarn

[GWBasic]

Here are some videos I took of the digibarn last fall. Unfortunatly, my camera malfunctioned when I tried to take more videos during Bruce's most recent tour.

1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=gYz8tsHbkYM
2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=I6CN1rpPJQY
3. http://youtube.com/watch?v=OUizzaTIJTk

Oh, memory of computers!

[autophile]

Not computer's memories. I thought it was, like, a bunch of guys hanging around and nostalgically reminiscing about when a meg of RAM cost a thousand bucks.

--Rob

Pioneering work in documentation!

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

There are more than one advantages to taking the cleanroom approach.

Prctically open.

[Joseph_Daniel_Zukige]

It was open for most practical purposes until Microsoft was able to wield a long enough but to close it down.

Regardless it was the design

[bug_hunter]

Personally, I don't really care if he said it or not, it was what DOS said.
I remember the hours of pain using 3rd party loaders that could access RAM above 640KB while trying to reduce the number of programs that use the sacred first 640KB of RAM.

Same way I wouldn't care if Jobs said "1 mouse button should be enough for anyone". It's still implied. (hopefully this doesn't start a mouse button tangent, but you get the idea).