Talking Electronics TEC-1D
Posted by musovern on Jan 30th, 2019 in Single Board Computers, Talking Electronics TEC-1D | 0 comments
The TEC-1 is a single-board kit computer first produced by the Australian hobbyist electronics magazine Talking Electronics in the early 1980s.[1] The design by John Hardy and Ken Stone was based on the Zilog Z80 CPU, had 2K of RAM and 2K of ROM in a default configuration. Later versions used a 4k ROM with two different versions of the monitor software selectable via a switch. This allowed the early software presented in the magazine to be used with the later version of the TEC-1.
Read More...VeriFone Tranz 330
Posted by musovern on Jan 30th, 2019 in Single Board Computers, VeriFone Tranz 330 | 0 comments
The VeriFone Tranz 330 was a very popular, possibly iconic credit card terminal that was produced almost unchanged from 1985 through the mid ’00s. Inside is a Zilog Z80 running at 3.57MHz (colorburst!), 32K RAM and 32K EPROM, Z80 DART (SIO), Z80 PIO, Z80 CTC, modem, RTC, and the keypad/display. It’s a cookie cutter Z80 SBC design, which makes development pretty easy. They are plentiful and cheap on the used market due to the lack of PCI security (tamper proofing, end to end encryption, etc).
Read More...MiniMax 8085
Posted by musovern on Jan 29th, 2019 in MinMax 8085 | 1 comment
The MiniMax8085 project has been brewing for almost three years. Sometime in the spring of 2014 my kids and I visited local the surplus store, where my kids found some Intel 8000 series parts in the kids-fill-your-bucket area. Among these ICs were there: an 8085 CPU, an 8155 RAM with I/O ports and timer, a couple of 8255 PPIs, an 8282 latch, and some 27C128 UV EPROMs. It looked like a good start for an 8085 based computer that can be used to teach my kids some computer design and programming basics.
I wanted the project to be simple to build, with a minimal number of components, but yet to be a fully functional single board computer (e.g. to include the memory and an input/output device, for example a UART) with an extension bus. I checked the Internet for existing homebrew 8085 computers and found Roman Fülek’s NCB85 and NCB85v2 projects, and Glitch Works 8085 projects. While I liked these projects, they didn’t quite meet my project design goals:
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory MST-80B
Posted by musovern on Sep 14th, 2018 in Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Single Board Computers | 0 comments
The LLL MST-80B is a complete microcomputer system self-contained in a briefcase for portability and easy usage. The microcomputer was designed as a training device for LLL’s Technology Training Program (TTP), and lowing students to explore the hardware and software capability of a typical microcomputer.
Read More...Kaypro II
Posted by musovern on Sep 13th, 2018 in Kaypro II, Vintage Computers | 0 comments
The Kaypro II was the first computer released by Non-Linear Systems, in 1982. Non-Linear Systems was founded by Andy Kay in 1952. But they didn’t make computers back then, they made digital multimeters. You see, Andy Kay is the inventor of the digital multimeter
The Kaypro II is unusual because the entire case is made out of metal. Kaypro’s computers were an extension of their test instrument design philosophy: rugged, reliable, reasonably priced, looking more like instruments than the creative, communications (and business) tools that they heavy.
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