[HN Gopher] Bit-banging a BASIC Birthday
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Bit-banging a BASIC Birthday
Author : debo_
Score : 107 points
Date : 2024-08-19 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thingswemake.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thingswemake.com)
| pvg wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240819124125/https://thingswem...
| in case of site flakiness
|
| the repo linked in the article:
| https://github.com/joshsucher/mts-70
| max-m wrote:
| The Blog was hugged to death, but https://archive.is/1FrpD got
| through.
| michaelmior wrote:
| Very cool! I can't imagine how this wouldn't be one of the best
| gifts ever received.
|
| s/heartiness/hardiness/
| sgt wrote:
| Very impressive!
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| s/Basic/BASIC/ (HN's title autodestroy strikes again)
| deivid wrote:
| Amazing! I love projects that bring some new features to classic
| hardware; I did something similar for my dad's 50th birthday[0].
|
| [0]: https://blog.davidv.dev/posts/revamping-an-old-tv-as-a-gift
| Pompidou wrote:
| A 50 years old man is indeed a classic piece of hardware.
| bitwize wrote:
| As dodgy as the early Tandy stuff's reputation was as
| "TRASH-80s", it's no surprise that OP's dad loved them. Back in
| the day, Tandy machines really did deliver value for money. Of
| course once you popped them open, their manufacturing-design
| issues would be revealed. There were bodgewires all over the
| place because of last-minute issues found after the PCBs had gone
| to manufacturing. And the ones with built-in CRTs had issues
| wherein the cathode of the CRT was DANGEROUSLY CLOSE to the main
| PCB. If you weren't careful cracking that puppy open -- zappo!
| Fried motherboard, possibly fried you!
|
| For these reasons, and possibly also to hide their shame and
| embarrassment and make extra scratch on service calls, Tandy
| equipment often had one of those "Warranty void if seal is
| broken" stickers on it, which are now illegal to enforce even in
| the USA. They also used to seal the screwholes with Glyptal to
| prevent unauthorized tinkering; this so incensed my dad that he
| called all the way up the chain to the president of Tandy Corp.
| to make them stop (and also drilled through the Glyptal to get at
| the screws).
|
| But when it worked, it was solid, not to mention cheap. Great
| stuff for hobbyists and even small businesses.
| ansible wrote:
| This is an interesting and fun project, I was glad to read
| about it.
|
| It was a bit of a bold move to base this on a Model I. That
| system had an unreliable expansion interface, limited memory
| options, and emitted a lot of EM interference.
| codewritinfool wrote:
| >And the ones with built-in CRTs had issues wherein the cathode
| of the CRT was DANGEROUSLY CLOSE to the main PCB. If you
| weren't careful cracking that puppy open -- zappo! Fried
| motherboard, possibly fried you!
|
| I'm curious which model this was. The Model III was the first
| all-in-one model I had experience with, and the between the
| motherboard and the CRT neck was a piece of flat aluminum. The
| biggest danger was potentially snapping the neck off, but there
| was no danger of touching the mother board. Model 4 was the
| same configuration. Even the Model II had a metal plate between
| the CRT and any circuit boards.
| jonjack wrote:
| respect the buc-ees shirt
| anonymousiam wrote:
| The author mentions that some programs have made sound with the
| TRS-80 by using tight timing loops that access the bus(es), which
| create a lot of RFI that can be received by a nearby AM radio
| tuned off-station. The software loops can be timed to produce
| musical notes that will be heard (along with much static) on the
| radio. Looks like he used the cassette outputs directly for sound
| in this case.
|
| I noticed that the video link on his web page was not a
| hyperlink. His video is here:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JD9sXwgHMfc
|
| I never owned a desktop TRS-80, but I repaired one once after a
| friend of mine inadvertently put 120VAC on the internal 5V power
| bus. About 1/3 of the chips were blown.
|
| He told me how he blew it up: The Condor power supply he was
| using to provide +/- 12VDC needed for the RS-232 EIA voltages to
| drive his modem had the input (line voltage) present on a the
| same terminal strip with the +/- 12VDC output terminals. After a
| few beers, he had dropped some metal object (bottle opener?) and
| it momentarily bridged the 120VAC and one of the 12VDC outputs.
| The line voltage found its way through one of the 1488/1489 EIA
| converters, and onto the 5VDC bus. That was enough to let the
| "magic smoke" out of about a third of the chips.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_smoke
|
| I do still have a TRS-80 Model 100 in a closet somewhere.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100
| wang_li wrote:
| I may be getting old but it may be that the enjoyment dad is
| going to get from this is less than if he'd spent this amount of
| time with dad instead of making a doodad for dad to futz with.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| A Whopping 32k on an expansion card! Triple the memory expansion.
| This is like going from 32Gs to 96Gs, because 64Gbs was just not
| enough.
|
| "a 48 K machine would have been a very unusually powerful one for
| 1978." After 1978, it was almost the standard.
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