Retro Technology
A few days ago I wrote about the
Apple I that can be built from modern parts.
A reader left the comment about the re-engineered Atari system, packaged in the joystick itself,
that sells for $25.
There is a lot more of this going on...
Not to leave out the venerable Commodore C-64, a 30-year-old woman in Oregon reverse engineered it, packaged it in its own joystick case and sold them on QVC selling 70,000 units in one day. I covered this story here:
Great Story
I had also
written about the IMSAI - this was the professional grade CP/M machine based on the S-100 buss.
Click for full-size Image
Fisher-Freitas Company is
still making them. Their unit has a small S-100 buss in front with the full front panel and an ATX PC motherboard in back. Best of both worlds...
Finally, something I haven't written about is
this PDP-8E clone. The PDP-8 was Digital Equipment's flagship microcomputer. Here are two systems with external tape drives, disk drives and a teletypewriter.
Click for full-size Image
Fortunately, people wanting to work with this awesome machine don't need quite so much floor space (or electricity) these days. The company
Spare Time Gizmos has done a software compatible reproduction complete with a full front-panel. As with the IMSAI, the hardware has been upgraded to accept current disk drives and flash memory but this computer is bit-for-bit compatible with the original PDP-8 systems and will run all the old software. Here's a pic:
Click for full-size Image
Wonderful stuff...
Posted by DaveH at March 2, 2005 5:20 PM
