Is Microsoft BASIC Hidden In This Educational Child’s Toy?

November 30, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 24 Comments

The VTech PreComputer 1000 is a rather ancient toy computer that was available in the distant misty past of 1988. It featured a keyboard and a variety of simple learning games, but does it also feature Microsoft BASIC? [Robin] of 8-Bit Show and Tell dove in to find out.

Officially, the PreComputer was programmable in a form of BASIC, referred to by VTech as PRE-BASIC V1.0. Given that the system has a Z80 CPU and there’s little information in the manual about this programming language, [Robin] was suspicious as to whether it was based on Microsoft BASIC-80. Thus, an examination was in order to figure out just how this BASIC implementation worked, and whether it shared anything with Microsoft’s own effort.

We won’t spoil the conclusions, but there are some strong commonalities between VTech’s BASIC and Microsoft’s version from this era. The variable names in particular are a strong hint as to what’s going on under the hood. The video is worth a watch for anyone that’s a fan of early microcomputer history, BASIC, or just the weird computer-like devices of yesteryear. We also love the idea that the PreComputer 1000 was actually quite a capable machine hiding behind a single-line LCD display.

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Absolutely Everything About The Coleco Adam, 8-bit Home Computer

November 30, 2023 by Donald Papp 23 Comments

[Thom Cherryhomes] shared with us an incredible resource for anyone curious about the Coleco Adam, one of the big might-have-been home computers of the 80s. There’s a monstrous 4-hour deep dive video (see the video description for a comprehensive chapter index) that makes a fantastic reference for anyone wanting to see the Coleco Adam and all of its features in action, in the context of 8-bit home computing in the 80s.

The Adam aimed to be an all-in-one computer package, targeting a family audience for both education and gaming purposes, with a price target around $600, a pretty compelling pitch.

The video is a serious in-depth look at the Adam, providing practical demonstrations of everything in various scenarios. This includes showcasing commercials from the period, detailing the system’s specs and history, explaining the Adam’s appeal, discussing specific features, comparing advertisement promises to real costs, and giving a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the system. All of the talk notes are available as well, providing a great companion to the chapter index.

Manufactured by the same Coleco responsible for the ColecoVision gaming console, the Adam had great specs, a great price, and a compelling array of features. Sadly, it was let down badly at launch and Coleco never recovered. However, the Adam remains of interest in the retrocomputing scene and we’ve even seen more than one effort to convert the Adam’s keyboard to USB.

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A Flasher Mac, 25 Years Later

November 28, 2023 by Jenny List 6 Comments

Apple Macintosh computers of the 1990s came with a system ROM containing an Open Firmware implementation and the Mac Toolbox required to start the operating system. In many cases this was on a SIMM-like daughter board, and it would have been a true ROM that was unable to be reprogrammed. This is not the end of the story though, and [Doug Brown] set out on the trail of a Flash-based ROM module allowing the firmware on these machines to be updated.

The trail was warm thanks to an Apple developer utility found on a secondhand Mac prototype, allowing ROM flashing. A little disassembly allowed a list of valid IDs to be made, and this info coupled with a bit of reverse engineering from online photos of a real Apple Flash ROM from the ’90s allowed a new board to be created with four Am28F020 chips. He can now flash at will, with such oddities as running ROMs from different machines with the “wrong” startup chime. It’s an interesting little piece of 1990s Mac trivia, settled.

This isn’t the first time we’ve peered at Apple ROMs, indeed some of the older ones had plenty of Easter eggs hidden within.

PicoGUS: For All Your ISA Sound Card Needs

November 21, 2023 by Julian Scheffers 23 Comments

Sound cards used to be a big part of gaming machines in the 90s and 2000s but have largely gone extinct in the wake of powerful CPUs doing the sound themselves. Sound cards were expensive back then and, because the good ones weren’t very common, are expensive still for the retro gamer. But if you don’t need the real thing, [polpo] has you covered with his RP2040-based ISA sound card.

The PicoGUS, as he calls it, primarily serves to replace the Gravis UltraSound with modern components at a low cost. It uses the RP2040’s PIO to attach to an ISA bus and the RP2040’s dual-core power to synthesize the audio for its primary target, but also the AdLib (OPL2), CMS/Game Blaster and Tandy 3-Voice. [polpo] sells the PicoGUS on his Tindie store, but since it’s open source, you can of course just make your own.

Although “work-in-progress”, the PicoGUS is very useful to the right person and a perfect demonstration of how the RP2040’s PIO can be used to interface with almost any type of protocol.

Of couse, that’s not the only way to use the PIO, you can also create a CAN bus or even add another USB port.

Zork Zcode Interpreters Appear Out Of Nowhere

November 21, 2023 by Julian Scheffers 27 Comments

Some of our readers may know about Zork (and 1, 2, 3), the 1977 text adventure originally written for the PDP-10. The game has been public domain for a while now, but recently, the interpreters for several classic 1980s machines have also appeared on the internet.

What’s the difference? Zork is not a PDP-10 executable, it’s actually a virtual machine executable, which is in turn run by an interpreter written for the PDP-10. For example, Java compiles to Java bytecode, which runs on the Java virtual machine (but not directly on any CPU). In the same way, Zork was compiled to “Z-machine” program files, called ZIP (which was of course used in 1990 by the much more well known PKZIP). To date, the compiler, “Zilch” has not been released, but the language specification and ZIP specifications have, which has led some people to write custom ZIP compilers, though with a different input language.

For more on the VM, check out Maya’s Zork retrospective. (And dig the featured art. Subtle!)

Of course, that’s not the only type of interpreter. Some programming languages are interpreted directly from source, like this BASIC hidden in the ESP32’s ROM.

Wandering Through Old Word Processors Yields A Beast

November 18, 2023 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

The world once ran on hardcopy, and when the digital age started to bring new tools and ways of doing things, documents were ripe for change. Today, word processors and digital documents are so ubiquitous that they are hardly worth a thought, but that didn’t happen all at once. [Cathode Ray Dude] has a soft spot for old word processors and the journey they took over decades, and he walks through the Olivetti ETV 2700.

In the days of character displays and no multitasking, WYSIWYG as a concept was still a long ways off.

The ETV 2700 is a monstrous machine; a fusion of old-school word processor, x86-based hardware, and electric 17 inch-wide typewriter.

With it one could boot up a word processor that is nothing like the WYSIWYG of today, write and edit a document, and upon command, the typewriter portion could electronically type out a page. A bit like a printer, but it really is an electric typewriter with a computer interface. Characters were hammered out one at a time with daisy wheel and ink ribbon on a manually-loaded page using all the usual typewriter controls.

While internally the machine has an x86 processor, expects a monitor and even boots MS-DOS, the keyboard had its own layout (and even proprietary keys and functions), did not support graphical output, and in other ways was unusual even by the standards of the oddball decades during which designers and products experimented with figuring out what worked best in terms of functionality and usability.

Nowadays, we see AI-enabled typewriter projects and porting vintage OSes to vintage word processor hardware, but such projects are in some part possible in part thanks to the durability of these devices. The entire video is embedded below, but you can jump directly to what the Olivetti ETV 2700 looked like on the inside if that’s what interests you most.

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The masks with which the Intel 4004 was fabricated

Supersize Your Intel 4004 By Over 10 Times

November 17, 2023 by Julian Scheffers 23 Comments

A PCB covered in discrete transistors with light shining through it — This is quite a bit bigger than the original 12mm² die.

The Intel 4004 was among the first microprocessors and one of the first to use the MOS silicon-gate technology. In the decades long race to build bigger CPUs, it’s been mostly forgotten. Forgotten that is, until [Klaus Scheffler] supersized it over ten-fold!

The project took about 2 years to complete and re-creates it faithfully – all 2,300 transistors included – enough to run software written for the Intel 4004. But the idea for this project isn’t unique and dates all the way back to 2000, so what gives? Turning a bunch of masks for silicon fabrication into a schematic is actually harder than it seems! [Tim McNerney] originally came up with the idea to make a giant 4004 for its “35th anniversary”. [Tim] managed to convince Intel to give him schematics and other drawings and would in return make an exhibit for Intel’s museum. With the schematic straight from [Federico Faggin], software analysis tools from [Lajos Kintli] and [Klaus Scheffler] to actually build the thing, they did what [Federico] did in one year without CAD, but in two with modern tools.

The full story by [Tim] is a lot longer and it’s definitely worth a read.