Retro Computers

I’ve uploaded some photos I took of the event. Take a look at Wakefield RISC OS Show ’09 Photos

It was interesting. Im supprised that RISC OS had such a dedicated following. I was pleased to see a working BBC Doomsday Project system up and running. Its one of 4 known working systems in the UK. Hopefully, after Jason Fitzpatrick from ‘The Centre of Computing History’ spoke to the owner of this doomsday system, he has enough info to try and repair their LV ROM and make it the 5th known working system.

Netsurf also had a display there, showing their multi platform web broser.

We had a lot of interest at the ‘The Centre of Computing History’ stand. Looks like we may get some more donations of machines and documentation.

RISCOScode also has written about the show. Read the article here.

Its the Wakefield ’09 RISC OS Computer Show tomorrow in Wakefield (What a supprise…)

I am going with Jason from The Centre for Computing History. I will take some photos, and place them on my blog at some point

More info on the show can be found on the following website. http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk/

If you are going, make sure you say Hi!

Here is a copy of a news item posted on the Computing History website. Make sure you take a look at their website and help support this museum in any way you can.

Source : http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/news/4058/Gadget-Show-Live-2009-Awesome/

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=416Tqf2JjhU]

Then Friday happened. The official opening at 10 o’clock came and within minutes the stand was inundated with visitors all which had huge grins and pointing fingers claiming “I had one of those!”. It was absolutely brilliant.

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What a fantastic event!

Obviously, the “Gadget Hall Of Fame” part of the show was my favourite. This display was run by the Centre For Computing History based in Haverhill, Suffolk. They had plenty of machines on display. Ranging from the ZX Spectrum, Apple iMac, Commodore 64, Binatone TV games (Pong etc) and a BBC Model B. Sadly, no Amstrad CPCs! Have told Jason from Compuing History to make sure there is one on display next year (if they are invited to go back…) It was nice to see the youngsters looking at the computers we used to use. I also saw a lot of adults saying “i used to have one of those”. I was walking around saying “I’ve still got one of those that I still use”

There were a lot of technology companies exhibiting there, Including LG, Panasonic, Epson, HP and Nintendo. I was very surprised at some of the big names not attending. Notably Apple and Microsoft. I thought an Apple stand would have gone down a storm. Maybe next year…..

The event also felt a bit cramped. With 10,000 people attending per day, they should have had a bit more floor space. Also, the food was expensive, especially the hot meat stand. Luckily, my wife prepared a packed lunch for us, so we did not need to pay these ridiculous prices.

I did see Gail Porter recording some footage for the show. I also saw Jason Bradbury signing his book. Did not see Ortis, John or Suzi.

I will upload some photos to my Flickr account this evening.

I would like to say thanks again to Jason for supplying me with free tickets.

This is the next project I will be taking on – the BBC SD Card interface!

After reading Charlie’s post on his blog, I posted a comment for more info. I later received a reply to my comment and a email with the following URL to a post on the Stairway to Hell forum with more info on the interface. The original post can be found here.

Layout by thedark

Looks like the guys on the forum have put in a lot of work to get the SD interface designed. One forum contributor has created the board layout that you can see on the left.

With the design on the left, I have enough info on how to build the interface. He has used surface mount resistors, but I will use normal wired resistors as I have a large stock of them. Biggest challenge will be getting ahold of the L78133 3.3v voltage regulator. Charlie suggested I contact BitsBox to see if they have any in stock. He also suggested that I could use HT7133 but said they are a little weedy. Another alternative is the 1086v33, but this regulator comes in a larger package.

So, I will start building the interface as soon as I acquire the regulator. Watch this space for updates!

The ultimate 486 PC now consists of the following hardware…

• CPU : Intel 486 DX2 66Mhz
• RAM : 32Mb
• Video : Cirrus Logic CL-5428 VESA Bus
• Sound : Creative Labs SoundBlaster AWE64 Value
• IDE/FDD/COM/LPT : Winbond VESA controller
• SCSI : Adaptec ISA 25 pin external/50 pin internal
• LAN : Novell NE2000 Plus 3
• Storage : SCSI CD-Rom drive, 520MB HDD and 250Mb SCSI Zip drive
• OS : MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11

MS-DOS, SCSI drivers and Windows 3.11 installed without any issues. Having the Windows source files on the Zip drive sped up the process a hundred times! No floppy disk swapping for me!

Next job was to download the drivers for the AWE64, LAN card and the Cirrus CL-5428. Again, the ZIP drive here sped the transfer of files from my main PC. Will be even quicker once the LAN card has been configured. I had to use the “PLUSDIAG.EXE” application to configure the LAN cards IRQs etc.  Also used the utility to tell the card to use the RJ-45 connector. The Sound card and the VGA card installed without issues.

It was a challange getting all of the hardware to work together. Brought back memories of IRQs, DMA, memory addresses and the like. Sound kept cutting out, and the Zip drive would stop working after I have used the LAN card. After about 1 hour of tinkering, I got it all working.

Ive also copied some games over to get me started. These are all old shareware games. Titles included Jill of the Jungle, Duke Dukem, Doom, Heretic and Commander Keen. Time to have some fun, then maybe try and install a Linux distro on it!

Photos of the machine can be found here. These photos were taken a while ago, but the hardware changes are internal, so you cant see the changes!