Basically, It’s BASIC

February 10, 2025 by Jenny List 36 Comments

The BASIC language may be considered old-hat here in 2025, and the days when a computer came as a matter of course with a BASIC interpreter are far behind us, but it can still provide many hours of challenge and fun. Even with our love of all things 8-bit, though, we’re still somewhat blown away by [Matthew Begg]’s BASIC interpreter written in 10 lines of BASIC. It’s an entry in the BASIC 10-liner competition, and it’s written to run on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

The listing can be viewed as a PNG file on the linked page. It is enough to cause even the most seasoned retrocomputer enthusiasts a headache because, as you might expect, it pushes the limits of the language and the Sinclair interpreter. It implements Tiny Basic as a subset of the more full-featured BASICs, and he’s the first to admit it’s not fast by any means. He gives a line-by-line explanation, and yes, it’s about as far away from the simple Frogger clones we remember bashing in on our Sinclairs as it’s possible to get.

We love it that there are still boundaries to be pushed, even on machines over four decades old, and especially that this one exceeds what we thought was a pretty good knowledge of Sinclair BASIC. Does this language still have a place in the world? We always look forward to the BASIC 10-liner competition.

Header: background by Bill Bertram, CC BY-SA 2.5.

How The Main Frame Became The Mainframe: An Etymological Dissertation

February 2, 2025 by Maya Posch 12 Comments

In his most recent article, [Ken Shirriff] takes a break from putting ASICs under a microscope, and instead does the same in a proverbial manner with the word ‘mainframe’. Although these days the word ‘mainframe’ brings to mind a lumbering behemoth of a system that probably handles things like finances and other business things, but originally the ‘main frame’ was just one of many ‘frames’. Which brings us to the early computer systems.

We have all seen the photos of early computer systems, which not only filled rooms, but which also tended to consist of multiple units. This was something which the designers of the IBM 701 computer seem to have come up with, to make it possible to transport and install computer systems without cranes and the breaking out of walls. Within the IBM 701 system’s internal documentation, the unit containing the core logic was referred to as the ‘main frame’, alongside the ‘power frame’, the ‘core frame’, etc.

From this [Ken] then traces how the word ‘main frame’ got reused over the years, eventually making it outside of the IBM world, with a 1978 Radio Electronics magazine defining the ‘mainframe’ as the enclosure for the computer, separating it seemingly from peripherals. This definition seems to have stuck, with BYTE and other magazines using this definition.

By the 1960s the two words ‘main frame’ had already seen itself hyphenated and smushed together into a singular word before the 1980s redefined it as ‘a large computer’. Naturally marketing at IBM and elsewhere leaned into the word ‘mainframe’ as a token of power and reliability, as well as a way to distinguish it from the dinky little computers that people had at home or on their office desk.

Truly, after three-quarters of a century, the word ‘mainframe’ has become a reflection of computing history itself.

Casio Calculator Gets New Keyboard

February 1, 2025 by Al Williams 6 Comments

What do you do with a circa 1985 Casio FX-451 calculator with a bad keyboard? Well, if you are [Poking Technology], you transplant the inside of the calculator to a new custom keyboard. There are two videos that cover the process in detail, which you can watch below.

The calculator has a unique design. It looks like a simple calculator in a wallet. But the wallet opens to reveal an extended keyboard with all the scientific features onboard. Unsurprisingly, the membrane keys didn’t survive over four decades. Disassembling the unit was a challenge. Soldering wires to the keyboard lines was further complicated by the fact that some of the lines are on the back of the PCB and pass through to the top under the main IC.

The new keyboard is quite a bit larger than the original, making this more of a desk calculator, but that also means you can use high-quality keys. We’d love to see a 3D printed case to wrap it all up, but the bare PCB look has its charms, too.

If you can’t understand how [Poking] can love a calculator so much, you probably never owned an HP-41C, either. Of course, our retro calculator dreams also include Star Trek.

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A New Case And Keyboard For The Timex Sinclair 1000

January 31, 2025 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

The Timex Sinclair 1000 was a sleek and compact machine, and the US counterpart to the more well-known Spectrum ZX-81. Timex may not have come to dominate the computer market, but the machine still has its fans today, with [skidlz] being one of them. That inspired them to craft a new case and keyboard for their beloved machine, putting a slimline twist on the old classic.

The new case finds some economies of size by eliminating the bulky RF modulator in favor of hacking in a cleaner composite out feed. In turn, this enabled the elimination of the channel switch that freed up more room. [skidlz] then designed a simple case using 2D laser-cut parts and dovetail joints, using superglue to assemble the individual pieces into a cohesive whole.

Meanwhile, the keyboard swap is obvious to anyone that ever used one of these things. The original was particularly unpleasant. In order to upgrade, [skidlz] decided to look to the compact Redragon K603 as an inspiration, giving the new build a longer travel and a nicer mechanical feel under one’s fingers.

The final result look great, and files are on Github for the curious. We’ve seen great work from [skidlz] before, too, in the form of this microcassette storage project. Meanwhile, if you’ve been cooking up your own retrocomputing projects, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Ancient Pocket Computer Gets A USB-C Upgrade

January 31, 2025 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

Remember the ZEOS Pocket PC? Perhaps you knew it as the Tidalwave PS-1000. Either way, it was a small clamshell computing device that was first released all the way back in 1992, and perhaps most accurately known as a DOS-based palmtop. Over at [Robert’s Retro] on YouTube, one of these fine devices was put through a repair and a modern upgrade program.

[Robert] educates us on the basics of the machine as he sets about the routine repairs so familiar to anyone in the retrocomputing scene. The first order of business is to clean up the damage to the battery compartment, which had suffered corrosion from leaking AA batteries. We get a solid look inside, and a walk-through on how to modify the device to run off USB-C power. It’s as simple as wiring up a small power module PCB and integrating that into the case, but it’s a neat mod done well—and it makes toying with the device much easier in 2025.

[Robert] has a cause he’s pursuing, though, when it comes to these old palmtops. He’s trying to identify the name of the oddball connectors these things used for the parallel and serial interfaces, and ideally, a source for the same. If you’ve got a tip on that, drop it in the comments.

Funnily enough, these things were cloned like crazy back in the day, so you might even find one under another name in your retro travels. They might be old, but somehow, it’s impossible for a piece of tech to feel old when you’re hooking it up with a USB-C port. We’ve featured [Robert’s] work before, too!

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Forgotten Internet: Giving (or Getting) The Finger

January 30, 2025 by Al Williams 27 Comments

Hey, you know that guy in accounting, Marco? If you want to find out more about him, you’d probably go surf LinkedIn or maybe a social media site. Inside a company, you might look on instant messaging for a profile and even find out if he is at his desk or away. But back in the 1970s, those weren’t options. But if Marco was on the computer system, maybe you could finger him. While that sounds strange to say today, Finger was a common service provided by computer services at the time. It was like a LinkedIn profile page for the 1970s.

Based on RFC 742, Finger was the brainchild for [Les Earnest]. From a user’s point of view, you put a few files in your home directory (usually .project and .plan; both hidden files), and when someone “fingered” you, they’d see some human-friendly output about your account like your name and office location, if you were logged in or not, and the contents of your project and plan files.

Modern versions may also show your public PGP key and other data. You could usually put a file in your home directory called .nofinger if you wanted to stop people from fingering you.

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Lessons Learned, When Restoring An Amiga 1000

January 30, 2025 by Jenny List 10 Comments

In the mid 1980s, there was a rash of 16-bit computers entering the market. One of them stood head and shoulders above the rest: Commodore’s Amiga 1000. It had everything that could reasonably be stuffed into a machine of the period, and multimedia capabilities the rest wouldn’t catch up on for years. [Celso Martinho] has managed to secure one of those first machines, and has shared his tale of bringing it back to life.

The post is as much a love letter to the Amiga and review of A1000 peripherals as it is a restoration, which makes it a good read for retrocomputing enthusiasts. He recapped it and it wouldn’t boot, the solution of which turned out to be a reminder for the rest of us.

The machine had a RAM upgrade in the form of a daughterboard under the processor, its pins had weakened the leaves of the processor socket so it wouldn’t make contact. So don’t forget to replace sockets as well as capacitors.

The resulting machine is much faster thanks to a modern upgrade with a much quicker processor, memory, and an SD card for storage. He goes into some of the other upgrades available today, all of which would have had early-1990s-us salivating. It’s fair to say that in 2025 an A1000 is more 40-year-old curio than useful modern computer, but we can’t fail to admit to a bit of envy. The Amiga holds a special affection, here.