Hacker News Reader

Comment by adg001 | Hacker News Reader

As we are here, let me ask you what is the most vintage computer, or computer of historical interest, you still enjoy tinkering on nowadays?

View on HN

My Sharp MZ-80K[1] and BBC Micro Model B[2] are still in working order and I tinker with them from time to time. Recently I've spent a lot of time messing around with 1980s/1990s French Minitel terminals:

https://blog.jgc.org/2022/03/using-minitel-1b-as-serial-term...

https://blog.jgc.org/2022/03/voiding-warranty-on-1993-minite...

https://blog.jgc.org/2022/04/setting-up-and-running-mame-emu...

[1] https://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/back-from-dead-with-power-suppl...

[2] https://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/in-which-i-switch-on-30-year-ol...

Nice! And congrats on the care you put forward to keep those machines in good working order. In Italy we had a very similar videotex network called Videotel, whose terminals are still being resold on eBay. I was considering using one of those as a distraction-free terminal. However I still have with me a few Olivetti VT100 and VT220 terminals from the 1980s that would serve the same purpose very well, and have not enough space for everything. Thanks for your answer, and happy hacking!

The keyboards on the Minitel/Videotel terminals are nasty. As much as it's fun to use one for a short while for retrocomputing karma purposes, they are no fun for real work.

The mechanical keyboards on actual VT100/220 terminals tend to be much, much nicer and more robust.

Well noted, thank you for letting me know!

Got my hands on a 80286 the other week, and have been tinkering and having lots of fun, but forgot how painful and cumbersome things used to be; BIOS doesn't have a built-in menu but has to have setup run from disk, the 5 1/2 inch floppy drive doesn't read disks anymore because it's been bumped or something, thank god there's a 3 1/2 drive that works, but hold on it's not 1.44mb but 1.2mb so that causes its own issues trying to transfer things from PC, the hard drive is so small (20mb) that it can barely hold anything and so you have to make a decision if you want to sacrifice performance and install DoubleSpace/Stacker to compress the whole drive to gain more space etc etc :) another fun thing I learned is that you can use Hydrogen Peroxide, UV lights (and/or sunlight) and cling wrap and restore old discoloured computer plastic parts (keyboards, cases, drives etc) to new looking!

Aha, I know how does it feel! I have my first programs lost on a bunch 5 1/2 inch floppies, which, I know, will require some serious tinkering. I hope one day I will feel the urge to go after all of this.

I also have a collection of 8 inches floppies that belonged to my father. However in that case accessing them again would require some sort of "computational archeology". To begin with I don't even have any longer 8 inches drives... :-)

If you can find a group that does computer archiving they may be able to assist - especially if local.

Commodore 128. To the point that I've made a replacement PCB for it and have started reverse engineering the system specific ICs. It was my first computer and I really like how much of a frankensteins monster it is (6502 and Z80 on the same bus, two video chips, etc)

https://github.com/jgrip/open128

Kudos! It is wonderful to see how the computers from Commodore's age invite us to explore them in full.

One thing I'd love to see is a replacement PSU for the 128DCR. The flat 128 seems to have modern replacements, but I could not find one for the DCR.

I got a 128DCR as a thrift-shop find like 5 years ago, but it had an iffy PSU. I was lucky to find a surplus vendor with a cache of NOS units a few years ago. (If they had mentioned the word 'Commodore' on their product description, they would have likely long ago sold through, but it was mentioned on some old Amiga forum in passing) I'm sure you could bolt together two of those metal-cage SMPS units to provide the right voltages, but even a simple guide like "Buy models X and Y, and here's how you wire it to a harness" would be a useful resource.

It can be done for sure I've seen some designs for it. The 128DCR generates +5, +12 and 9V AC so pretty straight forward.

Small meanwell unit and a transformer should do the trick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQE-rmo8XM for example.

My 1st computer was a TRS-80 Model 1 and I recently acquired one which I will likely start restoring after the summer when I need some inside activities for my free time.

I have a Zenith Z-160 PC compatible luggable from 1984 which I restored and use frequently. I love that the floppy drives pop up from the top of the machine and that the machine is based on an ISA slot backplane rather than a traditional motherboard. I mostly use it to play old CGA games. It has a CGA composite output which I connect an external monitor to in order to enjoy the glory that is CGA color.

https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=465

Cool! While I never had the chance to work with Zenith Z-160 or a TRS-80 Model 1, I can relate! My first PC was an Olivetti M19 (1986), which featured, like the Zenith, an ISA slot backplane and CGA graphics. No hard drive but a couple of 5 1/2 inch drives. It was powered by 4.77Mhz 8088. [0] I never had more fun than with that tiny box. It was my first machine I used to connect in dial-up to BBSs too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_M19

Reply on news.ycombinator.com