Welcome to the Retro Hack Shack! My name is Aaron and on this channel I make, break, and hack on vintage computer systems and other technology. I have a love of computers from the 70s, 80s, and 90s and decided to start filming my adventures with them.
A little about me ... I have been a maker since I was old enough to hold a screwdriver. I have worked in the IT industry for companies like Cisco, New Relic, NetApp, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett Packard. I co-host several shows about technology for TWiT.tv including FLOSS Weekly. In 2012 I founded Benicia Makerspace. I also wrote a book called Linux for Makers which you can find in the links below.
Ebay Store: www.ebay.com/str/retrohackshack
If you are interested in making a donation to the channel, you can send things to this address:
Retro Hack Shack PMB 217 836 Southampton Road Ste B Benicia, CA 94510
You can find my email address below under "Business Inquiries" on the desktop RU-vid site.
As to the qualityof the scope, I have been a ham for 40 years, and this scope out performs any scope I have had in that time, except for my Tektronix (which had to be rolled around on a cart). This scope is even on par to scopes used in the plant where manufactured computers (for time frame, the computers were Z80 based, CP/M machines). So, I am going to say for a hobbyist, if you don't have a scope, and DO have a budget, if you don't plan to do professional work with it, this might be a solution. So far it fulfills my needs, aligning my radios. It is annoying that they spec it to 50MHz, but it craps out at about 30 MHz, still for hobby use it is more than adequate. Just realize its true limitations.
Technically this was the first computer I ever bought. I never took it out of the box. The first thing I wanted to read was how to set it up. Secondly, it was how to use it. Sadly, when I opened the box there were NO manuals at all. I took the box back to Radio Shack and asked where the manuals were. They said there weren't any manuals BUT R.S. does offer a class I can take that will teach me everything. The class was in Milwaukee (about a 1 hour drive) and was 8 weeks long. Each class was $50/each meaning I would have to spend another (8 * $50) $400 just to learn how to set it up and use it. I said no thank you and returned it for my money back. About a year later I was at a Sears that was closing its doors. They had an Atari 8-bit machine + cassette recorder + a few cartridges for ~$900. So I bought that and was quite happy with it. I later found out it had 16K instead of 8K (because it was the demo model) so I really got a good deal at the time.
I had a 1000 RLX (Tandy) with Windows 3.1, Desk Mate(I loved it!), DOS 6.22 and QBASIC). 1992 I sold it to a friend so her daughter(now, late) could get a start in computers, she was in high school. I miss that system!
Thank you so much. I know very lil outside the multimeter and I work in games and such(again very new to this) and I need tools and I have no idea what I'm doing. This helped a lot.
Nice find. Just for a stock 2000 much less the goodies inside! I still have my original 2000 from 1988. Unfortunately even though I removed the battery years ago one of the slot covers on the back fell off and mice got inside!!!! Pee and poop everywhere!!! I originally bought mine for its expandability, especially adding a PC card. However reality showed it to be an incredibly expensive thing to do. It didnt take long though before one could build a nice PC clone for about what a bridge card and accessories would cost with the bonus of having a second PC!!!
Just FYI on something that might be confusing. On the oscilloscope testing. The picture of the 68000 CPU and the CPU on the board are oriented differently. The pins on the left side of the picture are actually the ones being tested.
I've always loved these small TV's from this era. I was fascinated by them as a kid. They were just so "cute"! I was use to the larger 20-27 in console TV's we watched as a family. I have about 15 in this size and smaller that Ive picked whenever I find find them. Surprisingly only one of them doesnt come on. Several have really crappy pictures. I still love them anyway.
I've no idea about the WHY? You put a FPGA in a C64, which is massively overpowered, and a quite expensive IC. You could everybit as well rip out the entire PCB, stick a Pi Pico 2350 in it for 6€, and bit bang the HDMI heck out of it using its PIO by emulating a C64 on its RISC core. It even can produce RGB SCART output at the same time. Even that is weird, as the Pico 2350 is as well 100 times as powerfull as a 6502. Another benefit of the Pico-route is that you can power the modded C64 with one of your 20 old phone chargers in your kitchen drawer, instead of keeping the achilles heel of the C64 in place: its brick-of-death. So I would say: embrace the diahrea that the C64 is SUPPOSED to output on RF, and hook up a vintage TV that can be found for 10 bucks. OR just run an C64 emulator on a modern computer, so you can really do stuff for C64 code and use a decent keyboard instead of a shitty one.
These Sony CRT TVs are sooo Expansive these days. Even non working... the no name TVs not, even from the same Year. I do not Understand that. I have a Universum TV from this time. it is a German Brand. It is Fire RED :D And Works just Fine. Thank you for the Video.
Judging from the memo, Steve Jobs did not actually recommend using a Sony TV115. It seems the recipient of that letter asked something like "can a Sony TV115 be used?" in a prior conversation, and SJ just responded to that. His statement "I don't know if the Sony TV115 is a monitor or not" indicates that he actually wasn't familiar with the product.
To find something in a box from a time long gone (perhaps our own childhood) is always a special kind of magic. I remember I collected quite a bunch of things, including finds from the early 80s, but realized times have moved on and then there's very little space for a bunch of big CRT screens or even retro computers with their numerous adapters, floppy disks, harddisks, expanders, memory units, sidecars etc. so it had to go. But it was fun, everyone around their middle age will probably experience this need for a "flashback" of their youth, or some young person who is just curious about a time they were never a part of, exciting for sure - long lasting? Probably not. But it's fun to watch you guys do this, It'll always be good for some entertainment to remember the times we spent loving this so much.
Those old Sony TVs were very well made but since it's from the 60s it uses those gray electrolytic capacitors which are normally dried up and fail doto age by now. If you plan to use that TV a lot then a recap is highly recommended and I expect you will get better performance out of it. Note I'm not one to recap something unless it is needed and 60s electronics are at the age they need replacing.
You going through that TV reminds me of a 14 year old me experimenting with with an old TV that had a screwed up picture. Learning how it works. Another time, working off the knowledge that an Oscilloscope was 75% of a regular TV set, I took an old TV chassis that had a broken tube but apparently still worked and started probing around for signals. Eventually I located the horizontal, vertical, and luminescence signals. Hooked them up to the horizontal, vertical and trigger/brightness inputs on the scope. After lots of tweaking on the Scope controls trying to get the triggering and sync right, I was finally able to watch perfect broadcast TV video on the scope display. Albeit in green monochrome. Sound came from the TV speaker. I remember thinking that was so incredibly cool.
That would be pretty cool to make some for hopefully someday for some Apple Museums I might do it as my own art gallery and after section of Jobs wing and then a Tim Cook wing besides my own art painting gallery wing
But . . . the Commodore 64 was never intended to have pixel perfect graphics. ALL monitors at the time the machine was designed were CRT based, and the C64 was designed to use these.
Good job. While I was watching I was thinking “That board doesn’t look that bad to have all those problems” But now you know a lot more about the board then you would have if it worked. I just bought a rough 2000 on eBay that I hope I can turn into my dream machine.
This guy is a total cuck, not knowing about the Mac interrupt button, keyboard power button or drive bays on a legacy Mac means he is most likely just a windows fan boy who has never watched the years old videos on similar products.
I'm doing a similar project, replacing the CRT with an infinite mirror and I want the "channels" to be different effects, and the other knobs to control the other variables, but I don't know how to use the channel rotary switch with my esp32. Do You have some resourses to get this info?
Hi there, i have a macintosh SE thats powering up fine, screen is up, single beep after power on, ends up in a cursor blank screen but nothing there after, no disk icon, nothing. Not booting at all from the sd card behind the computer. may i know what could be the problem?
Hi mate, i have a Mac SE that powers on fine, 1 beep, and screen comes on, then ends up in a blank screen with cursor icon but no disk icon or anything after that. May i know what could be the reason? Even if the memory card is faulty, there still should be disk icon, but none.
