DIY Retro Computers...Where did they go ?

[lezanderson]

Back in the eighties there was lots of interest in the New 'Micro revolution' which spawned DIY self build micro kits in many electronics and computer magazines. The Most common being things like the ZX80/81 , jupiter Ace and the Powertran Cortex to name just a few ! The Powertran Cortex being pretty powerful for it's time with lots of expansion and could easily be made into a full business machine !

But where did this interest all go ... ? The Modern day nearest equivalemnts are things like the N8VEM, which is rather niche or the GR8BIT which at $500 is rather expensive ! So is there still a market for DIY'rs wanting the satisfaction of building their own Micro from a kit ?

I suppose the closest today would be the Raspberry Pi... but this is more of a software machine for programmers.

Where will tomnorrows techinicans, designers and hardware guys come from ?.. it feels like the optimism from the eighties has all evaporated !

[1024MAK]

Hmm, rather niche sums it up.

I have:

• N8VEM (preparing for construction, still in the process of getting some parts)
• Jupiter ACE Kit (bought from eBay - built and working ) see here
• ZX80 Core (ZX80 "remake")(bought directly from producer) (under construction) see here
• Harlequin (ZX Spectrum 48k "remake")(bought directly from producer) See the World of Spectrum hardware forums for details (awaiting construction, I have all the parts as I bought a kit)
• "New Atom" board (Remake of an Acorn Atom but without a keyboard)(bought directly from producer)(PCB on route to me, no parts ordered yet)

So there are some "hobby" projects around, but you are right. There are no large volume production kits for people to buy and learn with.

The nearest you get, are the development boards from the micro controller companies, like the PICkit3 (I don't have one, but I do have a PICkit2).

Mark

[lezanderson]

Yes your right ... microcontroller kits have taken their place... but is it the same thing ?? Soldering a single MCU + LEDs onto a PCB ... and saying look what I built just isn't the same thing !!

To compare look at these .. which where probably some of the best DIY kits in the 80s

6809 Microbox:
http://retro.co.za/6809/microbox.html
it had 60K DRAM, 8K Firmware , D7220 VDP... pretty good for the time


Powertran Cortex:http:
//www.avjd51.dsl.pipex.com/powertran_cort ... cortex.htm
http://www.powertrancortex.com/

TMS9995 CPU 12MHZ
64K DRAM
TMS9929 VDP
FDC
MMU
etc


There's no real equivalent these days... as the GR8BIT is bizarley out priced itself for most hobbyists !

[Bill B]

I suspect that a lot of the interest in hardware now goes into interfacing, robotics, etc. You mentioned the Raspberry Pi. There is also the various Arduino's and iheir clones, Beaglebone, ...

My own impression is that there are now a lot more oportunities for hardware hacking than there were say 5-10 years ago.

[Bill B]

Factors that may put people off low level design (they certainly dicourage me nowadays ):

* Surface mount chips
* High pin counts
* High clock frequencies, making boards an exercise in RF circuit design

[Martin A]

Grant Searle http://searle.hostei.com/grant/index.html has some interesting designs.

I've built the ZX80 and an 8 chip version of the 6809 single board system (the chip I have needed a 2 phase clock)

They 7/8 chip systems are I think pretty good introductions to home brew, They can be made to run off a bread board, but being programmed in basic they can be shown to be doing "real" things, it's just a shame they all use the 6850 serial chip and not something currently in production.

[Dave]

Oh, so let me see . . . .

You're asking on this forum how you can download a SPAMMING tool to flood forums with some crap that you want to send out?

Of course, you wouldn't dream of hitting this forum would you?

No, thought not.

Just off to freeze your account, send a message to the mods if I have misunderstood your intentions

Regards
Dave

[Martin A]

Gosh, I think that might actually have been a SUPER SUBTLE advert, not a request for help at all!