More retro computing joy from the Computing History Archive boxes. Who knows what silicon delights lurk inside? Go check out the Centre for Computing History - www.computinghi...
Vasiliy Kas why would it be a bad thing to be trapped in the museum of computing history? it's awesome took my kids to it and I didn't want to leave. you name the computer they have it .played street fighter on the original arcade machine for ages with my son .we had lots of fun even my 65 year old mum loved the place due to the retro games and gadgets.
Right, when I was it I thought "hey, a British Minitel". I remember the Minitel. Made by France Télécom, was a sort of micro-terminal that was used to look up phone services (repertories, ads, business profiles and data, different types of services, and, most of all, a boat load of sex chat services and other sex lines that were massively overpriced du to how slow the analog connection was and how they charged overhead and made a few fortunes here and there, one of the most prominent being Xavier Niel, owner of the "Free" internet provider, which name is actually misleading because while at the beginning the service was "free" (i.e. no basic subscription + extra) it is now part of the "normal crowd" -which means around €30 a month for DSL and no data limit on your home internet). The thing was expensive, I sort of remember you had to rent it (maybe buy the terminal, I can't remember a friend's dad had one but I was 8 in 91, didn't think to ask about the price of course) plus pay by the minute of phone connection and it was using colors (for the most advanced models, the original ones were B&W) and a few images displayed using the lines, it was slow, cumbersome, but in some regards still more than just a novelty; it pioneered a little of what internet services would be: being able to look up stuff, mail-order stuff and do sex chat. Which is more or less the internet in a nutshell, plus torrents. Of course the internet bombed it to oblivion, the service disappeared completely and FT didn't even bother to collect the now useless things, but with some craft you can turn it into a CRT-Composite monitor. I seem to remember it was once even used as an attempt to hold ballots online, so you could vote for the next president or representatives using it, but AFAIK it never caught on. You can laugh at France, but this thing could have been big, and BT definitely thought there was something in there, since they seemingly cloned it (AFAIK the Minitel was the first and only of its kind, the rest of Europe refused to catch on). I still think it was a partial inspiration for what the internet became, to the point analog modems in France in the 90s often included a minitel emulation software for your computer because there was no online equivalent to look up phone directories or some services that had not yet transitioned.
Minitel terminals themselves were really cheap, at around 20F or later ~3€ a month for the rental, but the services were much more expensive though (usually 0,35€ a minute for 3615 services, and 0,86€ for 3617). I remember you had to disconnect as soon as you had the info you wanted on the screen, and it would stay on the screen. I've only used it a few times, but my dad used to use it all the time right up until it was discontinued in 2012, because it was the easiest way to look at his bank balance. Prestel was actually launched a few years before Minitel, and many countries in the world had a videotex service, often based on Minitel or Prestel, but I think France is where it was the most successful, mostly because France Telecom really pushed the format. They even gave Minitel terminals away for free to the early adopters in the early 1980s. (I'm responding in English so that everyone can understand the conversation)
I just wanted him to pull it outta the box so the word "WII" wasn't dead center in the screen at all times, always present when he's talking about things, like a high pitched background noise you can't unhear.
Holy shit, that calculator thing that looked like an old guy really brings me back. We had a ton of those at school when I was like 10, had completely forgotten they even existed.
Holy shit! I used to have a Little Professor when I was real young. I haven't seen that thing since I was like 4. To be honest, I never knew that the front cover was of a man reading a book. As a kid I always thought the book was his clothes.
It is so fascinating watching your videos like this. My grandfather loved all the early computer stuff and I remember the name Amiga from his equipment. He was also into short wavy radio, even had a set up he could send images! Long before the internet was used for such things. Sadly he passed away in 2001 shortly after September 11th. Often times when I watch your computer related videos it makes me think of him. When I was younger I didn't appreciate such things like I do now, so I never learned much about it from him. Thank you for teaching me in his place. I'm sure he would have liked you. I know I do. I have watched 98% of your videos. Take care and keep it up!
Little Professor was actually pretty amazing. My education-obsessed dad got me it one Xmas, the year I'd started school. I played on it relentlessly. Within a year I'd pretty much mastered all the number bonds and operators, and even the teacher noticed the improvement. It's only years later that I now realize how great this gadget was. I think they need to bring it back, and all kids starting school should be issued with one as standard!
These videos about old tech with genuinely passionate Ashens are always the best. The names of the old computers always make me giggle, for some reason.
I fucking love these videos, and have absolutely no idea why. Also, the edge connector on that computer card was eerily similar to the HP bus card connector used on the Empire Strikes Back Graflex lightsaber (for my fellow Saber nerds out there). Gave me the tingles.
I bought one of those before! I got it and thought "sweet, a 64gb memory stick" and when I plugged it in I found it only had about 4gb. Interestingly I also bought a 32gb stick from the same company that looked almost identical apart from the sticker and it was actually 32gb like it said
I dropped a 4 gig barely used Micro-SD card and couldn't be bothered to look for it for more than 30 seconds considering how small that is, but then your comment made me realize it had more storage then all these combined, Including the modern two (well, one doesn't have internal storage and the Wii has 512mb), and in comparison the 4 gig is so tiny that dropping it meant losing it!
At 2:18, you have there an Applied Engineering "Viewmaster 80". An 80 columns text display card for the original Apple II and II Plus computer (or knock-off clones). Before 1983, Apple II's could only produce 40x24 ASCII text, so you required one of these third party cards to do 80x24 text. The second RCA connector is a pass-thru so you didn't need to fiddle and switch cables just to see 80 columns (imagine that!). This particular 80 columns card had an unusual bonus, an input for a light-pen! Oh, and a bit of useless trivia, it retailed for US$149 back in 1988.
That mouse was for an Acorn Achimedes. The buttons from left to right are: Select, Menu and adjust. Adjust was basically the same as select but pressing it didn't close the menu you were on as well.
Yeap, amx took the logitech body, and converted them to userport use. The actual connector is the same they used on multiple mice, the side exit to the cable wasn't common on anything else I remember. Also if you had a BBC master, the connector was the same size as the cut out for the socket in the base. That lead to "fun" removing it!
Technically, the BBC didn't support a mouse. All the support was in the ROM for the mouse, so you could support anything you coded for. AMX mice normally came with 3 buttons I had an early one like this on the left www.flickr.com/photos/nickhowes/3143193697 and one of the later ones like upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/AMX_Mouse_%28Type_2%29_%28top%29.jpg/220px-AMX_Mouse_%28Type_2%29_%28top%29.jpg The one in the video is the model after the 2nd I had.
Rockwell was a huge company, making all sorts of aircraft, spacecraft, and machinery. They did a lot of programmable logic, and apparently designed calculators (like the one you were looking at) for their own engineers. Their best household familiarity came from designing the first 14.4 modem, and one of the pre-standards 56k flavors (K56Flex). The division responsible for modemy stuff was later spun off as Conexant.
Ahh, textual sigh. I wish I could afford plane tickets over there to see all the retro electronic stuffs from decades of old! One bit I recognized straight off was the Little Professor. I had one of those growing up, and we may still have it buried in some corner with other electronic tat we've had boxed up since we moved years and years ago!
I loved the Little Professor. I went through two of them as a young kid in the late 70s. It was the only electronic game I had until many years later. Loved it.
When I was a kid, my parents didn't often get us new stuff. We had a lot of partial board games and puzzles from yard sales. I remember having one of those Little Professor things but it didn't do anything or have anything with it. It was just in a random box of crap. I did not remember it until seeing it just now.
Acorn computers were pretty much in every school here. Whether it be BBC Micro or the Archimedes. Been trying to emulate the Archimedes but having little to no luck.
Built a Sinclair ZX-80 as a kit (I seem to remember they were ALL kits). Zilog Z80 CPU with resident BASIC compiler. Interesting build, and this machine ended up as our central heating controller for many years (until an unfortunate "near strike" lightning event!)
I swear to god man...you are the best content creator on this platform. I fuckin love your content.I'd love to see u upload more.Keep up the good work!
seeing that old mouse brought back some memories from the old school days. always remember those acorn computers and programming a stupid turtle thing to move where told it
2:35 It's a TV tuner card, i know all about it because I live in a Balkan shithole and thats the outdated shit we learned in computer science class back in 2010
Ah, Rockwell! The company that used to be a giant conglomerate but is much smaller nowadays, famous for making things like the B-1 bomber and the Retro Encabulator!
I worked for BT for a while in around 2009 doing cold-call sales. I may be remembering wrong but I think the DOS-based software we used had the functions that were mapped to buttons that BT PC.
Man, having seen all this stuff, I really would like to go there. I hope I remember if I ever end up planning a trip to the UK. If the Centre for Computing History and indeed the UK are still there when I might get around to that...
The T I calculator was actually a red LED display. As an electronics apprentice in the 70's I was once presented with several pages of figures that needed statistical analysis, enough to keep me busy for days. I borrowed one of those, knocked together a quick programme and had the whole lot done in half a day. Then had to go and do it manually as they didn't trust the results from this black magic device!
Well this is weird. Just a couple days ago, I was wishing there were more of these videos of Stuart in the Computing History archive and this friggin' thing pops up. Nice!
I actually had one of those Quickshot Apache joysticks for my Atari 800XL (and later my Atari ST). I had a brand loyalty thing going on with them. I also had the Cruiser which was a weird hand held joystick thing with different tension settings on the stick. What a trip down misery....I mean memory lane.
I notice the old Nokia 8110 there briefly towards the end. I had one of those and remember it being a common problem that the brush contacts would eventually wear down through opening and closing the slider so you'd have to wiggle it and give the person calling you an ear full of crackle. still, there's something satisfying about answering a call by the sliding faceplate and the click. it was in honesty a bit of a poser phone (made famous in The Matrix). a few of us used to mod the back-lit display by swapping out the led's as they were fairly easy to get to. so if you wanted a fancy purple display you could.
The red display is actually a 7-segment LED “bubble” display. The plastic overlay (the “bubble”) over each digit acts as a magnifying lens. If you take it off, the digits look absolutely tiny.
Ahh, the TI Programmable 57; I have fond memories of that model, it was the device that taught me programming. I have, in fact, bought another one on ebay a few years ago, and thus laid the foundation for a smallish, but slowly growing, collection of vintage calculators. Yes, I _*AM*: a geek! 🤓 Correction: The TI 57 and all its brethren frrom that epoch had red LEDs in the displays, except one model, the TI 45, which indeed did have a VFD - Vacuum Flourescent Display. Aside from the display, the TI 45 was pretty much the same as the original TI 30.
Oh neat ! I have two MO5 at home, they were the most prevalent BASIC computers in schools in the late '80s, and I'd be happy if I had that that memory extension cartridge. :)
Rockwell were a huge name in the air and space industries in the latter half of the 20th century. They built the B1 Lancer bomber, along with other aircraft, but were probably most famous for building the Space Shuttle Orbiter. I wasn't aware of their electronics products, such as the calculator, but it uses the generic Rockwell logo. Looking them up, they have been split into other companies now, with their semiconductor electronics branch being the basis for Conexant.
Ashens was rummaging through an old computer warehouse when he awoke, The Little Professor. Once a mere learning tool for children, it somehow acquired sentience from the surrounding electronics. Now The Professor with Ashens as its guide solves crimes only it can calculate... [cue 80's techno theme]
I'm not even thirty just yet, nor am I any kind of calculator-enthusiast, but I'm positive I've used both of the first two calculators during my school years. The TI one was definetely somewhat of an attraction at the turn of the millenium when my schoolmate had one.
Being a person who always choose Logitech everytime I need to replace my mouse and keyboard, I'm mesmerized to see that three buttons ancestor to the one I'm using now.
I remember playing with Little Professor in school when I was 7, that was back in 1991. I actually kind of liked the thing and wouldn't mind getting one of my own if I can. As for the Texas Instruments calculator, it probably uses a red LED based screen and not a vacuum tube, I think by vacuum tube you probably meant vacuum fluorescent display.
I had one of those "Little Professor" calculators. Was disappointed to not be able to use it as an actual calculator. The 70s LED display was interesting at least.
