A recent writeup by Tom Nardi about using the 6502-based NES to track satellites brought back memories of my senior project at Georgia Tech back in the early 80s. At our club station W4AQL, I had become interested in Amateur Radio satellites. It was quite a thrill to hear your signal returning from space, adjusting for Doppler as it speeds overhead, keeping the antennas pointed, all while carrying on a brief conversation with other Earth stations or copying spacecraft telemetry, usually in Morse code.
Retro computer enthusiast [Steven Combs] documents his adventure building the TEDuino, a modern replacement for the Commodore Datasette which uses an SD card instead of audio tape. He based the design on [Peter Edwards]’s Tapuino project, which was featured by Hackaday back in 2014. [Steven] took the aesthetic design to a new level, and also modified it to work with his Plus/4 and other TED series Commodores. We are amazed that he was able to design this enclosure in SketchUp, and impressed with the results from his Creality Ender 3. He went to great lengths to match the color and style of the Plus/4, and pulled it off quite well. [Steven] also applied some interesting design features in this enclosure. The PCB modules are snap-fit, the buttons are made as a single piece – not unlike a living hinge. The 3D-printed strain relief for the cable is a nice finishing touch, and we cannot disagree with [Steven]’s sage advice – “Gorilla anything is just cool”.
This is only part 1 of the project. Stay tuned for future improvements, tweaks and embellishments.
I miss my friend Dave DiOrio. He was a chip designer in the 1980’s, which made him one of the true wizards back then. We met my first day when I started at Commodore Business Machines, though my paycheck said MOS Technology on it.
MOS Technology was the birthplace of the venerable 6502 microprocessor, the VIC video chip, and the SID sound chip to name the really famous ones. It also brought us the TED Text Display chip, a whole boatload of Amiga chips, and several other chips that almost did what we wanted them to do.
I worked with magicians whose stock and trade were comprised of half-part quantum tunneling effect and half-part straight-up logic implementation. These magicians weren’t bound by the number of pins available for TTL logic, not like us lowly hardware engineers who had to string 14 and 16 pin chips together to do any real lifting.
Below the spartan offices where the designs were drawn lived the dragon otherwise known as a chip fab, short for integrated circuit fabrication plant. This beast ate sand and made wafers; slices of almost pure silicon in crystalline form with all kinds of intricate things craftily grown on top of them.
Memory Lane: Touring the Abandoned MOS Headquarters
MOS Technology was started in 1969 by Allen Bradley but only became the MOS that I think of when I talk about the good old days when Chuck Peddle and a bunch of cohorts from Motorola, including Bill Mensch, swept in and produced the 6502 microprocessor, which resembled a particular Motorola processor quite a bit, in fact a lot. Lawsuits followed.
Meanwhile the 6502 was taking over several industries as the go-to processor for everything from medical equipment to microwave ovens to home computers. It was while designing home computers that I met Dave while standing above a chip fab. I can still remember the smell of that dragon farting below our feet… its an understatement to say I miss those times.
A couple of years ago I had a chance to return to the old stomping ground as it were, and set foot (legally) inside of MOS headquarters in Norristown, PA — which had become CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group) by the end. The basement was dirty and flooded and yet we found wafers, one from one of the computers I worked on.
The ground floor was dark and quiet, I stood at the dirty glass entrance doors looking out at a drab street and I quickly moved on before I got hit by some sort of self evident metaphor for life that would have been annoying.
The second floor was where our offices had been. The hot press of design deadlines has long since left this space, now all there is to see is the golf course out the window and a little camp fire someone had made. I got to show this video to Dave, including the view looking out his old office window, and we both smiled at the thought that it was now 35 years later.
Dave has since passed away, the world has one less wizard and as the video shows, the dragon has long since gone quiet.
While putting together a retro computer is a great project and can teach a lot about the inner workings of electronics, hooking that 70s- or 80s-era machine up to a modern 144 Hz 1440p display tends to be a little bit anticlimactic. To really recreate the true 8-bit experience it’s important to get a CRT display of some sort, but those are in short supply now as most are in a landfill somewhere now. [Tony] decided to create a hybrid solution of sorts by 3D printing his own Commodore replica monitor for that true nostalgia feel.
This build is a matching mini scale replica of the Commodore 1702 monitor, a color monitor produced by Commodore specifically for their machines. At the time it was top-of-the-line and even included an early predecessor of the S-Video method of video signalling. This monitor was modeled in Fusion 360 and then sent to the 3D printer for assembly, then populated with a screen with a period-correct 4:3 aspect ratio, required electronics for handling the Commodore’s video signal, and even includes an upgrade over the original monitor: stereo speakers instead of the single-channel speaker that was featured in the 80s.
While this monitor doesn’t use a CRT, it’s an impressive replica nonetheless, right down to the Commodore serial number sticker on the back. If you need a Commodore 64 to go along with it, there are plenty of possibilities available to consider like this emulated C64 on a Raspberry Pi or these refurbished OEM Commodores.
[retrohax] has provided vintage computer guidance for years, and part of that guidance is this: sometimes using paint as part of restoration is simply unavoidable. But the days of tediously color-matching to vintage hardware are gone, thanks to [retrohax] offering custom-mixed spray paints in Amiga 500 Beige, C-64 Beige, and ATARI ST/SE Grey. (At the moment only delivery within Poland is available due to shipping restrictions, but [retrohax] is working on a better solution.)
As a companion to making these vintage colors available, there is also a short how-to guide on how to properly prep and spray paint a computer case for best results that talks a little about the challenges in color matching to vintage hardware, and how getting custom paints mixed makes life much easier. Hackers may value making do with whatever is available, but we can also appreciate the value of having exactly the right material or tool for the job.
It’s not every day we see someone mixing custom spray paint colors, but off the shelf options don’t always cut it. Another example of getting specialty materials made from the ground up is custom plywood specifically designed for laser-cutting puzzles, something done because the troubles that came with off-the-shelf options were just not worth the hassle.
The Commodore Plus/4 was not loved by the marketplace after its launch in 1984. Despite its namesake feature of having productivity programs built in, its lack of compatibility with Commodore 64 software and oddball status meant that it struggled to find acceptance. However, like so many retro computers, it maintains a following to this day. [Drygol] had collected a total of eight neglected units, and set to giving them a full workover.
First on the docket is cleaning, and [Drygol] makes short work of disassembling the computers and removing decades of dirt and dust. Keycaps are treated with Retrobright to restore their original color. The black styling of the case means it gets a simple wash down instead, and then a rub with thin oil to restore the plastic’s original sheen.
[Drygol] steps through various popular hacks for the platform too, from 6510 CPU replacements for the often-failing 7501 and 8501, to SD2IEC card interfaces to replace the much-maligned storage original storage options. Damaged keyboard studs are replaced with hacked-up Amiga parts, while LEDs that are long out of production are swapped out for cut-down modern parts.
The impressive thing is just how much community support there is for an also-ran Commodore that never truly caught the public’s eye. Efforts are ongoing, too, with projects like THED aiming to reproduce some of the custom chips used on the platform.
Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys go down the rabbit hole of hacky hacks. A talented group of radio amateurs have been recording and decoding the messages from Tianwen-1, the Mars probe launched by the Chinese National Space Administration on July 23rd. We don’t know exactly how magnets work, but know they do a great job of protecting your plasma cutter. You can’t beat the retro-chic look of a Commodore 64’s menu system, even if it’s tasked with something mundane like running a meat smoker. And take a walk with us down MP3’s memory lane.
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
