Paper Models of Vintage Computers | Hacker News Reader

Paper Models of Vintage Computers

rockybergen.com

391 pointscameron_b74 comments

Such an amazing project. I used these as inspiration / reference for a set of analogue clay sculptures that turned into concrete / wax / resin casts a while ago.

I always meant to mail a set to rocky bergen as thanks. Such a fun chapter of my life. They took forever. I spent a lot of time with those wonderful paper models.

https://tombetthauser.github.io/computerbuddies/

I love that they even got the ridges on the top rear part of the commodore 1541 floppy drive, which have the nice property of resonating with a high pitched squeal when you drag your fingertips across them, annoying the hell out of your sister.

Wow, this brings memories... When I was a kid in ex-USSR, I've spent enormous amount of time gluing together things resembling PCs and some of the house AV equipment! Very crude, not alike the ones on these pictures, mind you.

My dad had noticed and bought me a real ZX-80 first, then some one of the ex-USSR PC knock offs ("Poisk-1" if that makes any sense to you), then the real DX-4 100 MHz PC!

Wild times!

I did the same thing when I was little. I used to draw computers, peripherals, keyboards, mice. Often based on what I saw in computer magazines, books or on television.

Beautiful work. Even more impressive is the fact that it looks like you didn't spend much time in the UK and you have some classic British boxes. Glad to see you did the "calculator" keyboard on the PET rather than the later more conventional keyboard. Would like suggest the ZX-80 and the Research Machines 380X. Some of the early Sun, Interlisp, Xerox, and SGI machines would be fun if you wanted to venture in an adjacent direction, as would a scale PDP-11. Very well done!

The paper model of the Mac 128K reminds me... Paper models (cars, emergency vehicles) were one of the first things I made on that original Mac. (I might've made a fake newspaper first.)

I had a HyperCard stack of paper airplane designs that I must have printed hundreds of times. A cursory search didn’t turn it up and I have no idea where it came from. Maybe it’s lost to time.

This is probably not the one, but here is something I came across that seems a bit more limited and different from the thing you are describing.

https://archive.org/details/hypercard_wingmaker1

This is a cool stack, thank you. It’s not the one I remember, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless.

For me, cassette mix-tape label inserts.

And for those wanting vintage models of paper computers...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDR_paper_computer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_...

Ok, there is GameCube as a “vintage computer”, I'm getting old and probably I should seek some kind of product that would die my beard gray…

When I read "vintage computers", I thought about the usual IBM 1401, 360s and DEC-10.

In fact he meant microcomputers. Getting old too, I guess.

I love these things. One project I'd love if some museum did would be to 3D scan important artifacts as precisely as feasible so we could duplicate them.

Of course, to make paper models we'd need to simplify those models a lot, but the possibility of printing replacement parts for irreplaceable computers would be an immense service to preservation.

Who could fund such a project?

The 5"1/4 floppy disk next to the Commodore 1541 disk drive with "Bruce Lee" manually written on it just cracks me up. I've spent countless hours on that game on the C64 :)

Beautiful work. They bring back fond memories of my first company after college. They had a computer lab available for after-hours learning/play stocked with a number of these computers including the Apple II, the IBM PC, the ZX-80, the Pet, and some weird computer by a company named Cromemco. Lost a ton of hours there.

Related: I released a few models of vintage computers to be 3D printed. Commodore PET: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4974963 and BBC micro: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4974343. I modelled basically almost any computer that was famous back then, but most of the models I gave to a friend of mine to print and sell over Etsy, during covid job losing drama.

Fantastic.

The Atari ST was such a beautiful machine for its time. It still looks great today, with those diagonal lines and that crisp gray color, among a sea of beige peers.

Love these, but wish they weren't posted to Scribd. I'd rather pay $0.99 each than have to sign up for whatever that product is trying to sell me.

The link at the top of the home page has them all for free - https://archive.org/details/amiga-500-new-art-ver1_202210/Cl...

Oh that is awesome, must have missed it, thanks for the catch!

If you like this, you may also like these:

- https://www.docubyte.com/projects/i-am-a-computer/ - https://www.docubyte.com/projects/guide-to-computing/

That is really cool! With the size of mini LCD displays these days, it might even possible to make one with a working screen. Ironically, microcontrollers are so powerful today, a tiny embedded board could actually be more powerful than the original.

and then play Doom on it , of course

Even an ESP32 is probably more powerful than every single one of those computers, with the exception of the GameCube. You can emulate NES games on that micro-controller.

Seeing these always makes me wish there were RPi enclosures that let you build working mini versions of these classic computers. There's something very comfy to me about the idea of playing a text adventure game on a tiny IBM 5100 or HP 85.

You mean like this?

https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11

Right, except for the models I'm interested in, and hopefully for less than $270.

If you're ok w/ 3d printing them, there are a ton of models on all the free model sharing sites of various computers... most wouldn't need much work to accomodate a pi or something even if they weren't originally designed for that.

If you want something actually nicely injection molded like the PiDPs (which are well worth the price imho, if you're interested in them) I don't know that you're going to find a better deal. I suspect it's too niche a product to scale to being economical at lower prices.

3D-printed would be fine, except those are just statues. Aside from mounting points and IO holes for the Pi, models for an actual enclosure would need to be subtly adjusted so the holes for the keyboard and screen match up with available off the shelf components to add in.

There are quite a few options that already accommodate a pi, if you don't want to customize... see my other comment upthread for a couple, but that's just the ones I happened to have bookmarked, there are a _lot_ of results if you just search for pi cases on thingiverse or something.

also from my bookmarks:

https://www.instructables.com/Making-a-Tiny-Mac-From-a-Raspb...

https://www.shapeways.com/product/GJTPZJ76S/apple-lisa-2-mac...

I bet these could be useful background props for low budget film makers. Sure, they aren't going to look like Hollywood sets but they would get the point across if someone needed to build a laboratory set on a shoestring budget.

These are so cute, and remind me of the cardboard fake computers furniture stores used to put on the desks they had out on display.

You mean the Enron dealing room? https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1542190/Enr...

This reminds me of the work of Thomas Demand, although he only builds the paper models for the purpose of creating a photographic image (and destroying the models after that).

https://flash---art.com/article/thomas-demand/

No PC Jr. :(

I loved my PC Jr. -- my first computer. Spent way too many hours on it, and the reason I do what I do today. Had a number of books on BASIC, and even upgraded the RAM from 128k to 256k (I may have even gotten it up to 512k)!

I had one of these too. The RAM upgrade was a game-console-style cartridge you plugged in one of two (I think) slots on the front of the machine.

Edit: oh, and I forgot about the infrared wireless keyboard. So snazzy. [1]

[1] http://www.computercloset.org/IBMPCjr.htm

I'm thinking mine was a hardware update, where the case had to be opened. I believe the company we bought it from did the upgrade.

There were two memory upgrades. The first was a card that plugged into the motherboard. The other one was an expansion module that plugged into the side of the computer (and multiple of those could be used). My PCjr had 384k of RAM, using both the internal upgrade and one sidecar.

I never bothered using the keyboard wirelessly. The cable was good enough and it saved on batteries. I was fortunate in that I had the revised keyboard, not the original chiclet keyboard.

As much as it was the slowest turd of a PC ever, I do have a soft spot for it since it was my first "real" computer. It would need to be running Crossfire on a cartridge.

I'm also sad to not see a ZX81.

And a TRS Model III but not a Model I?

These are simply adorable. I want to make this my weekend project.

Does anyone have tips for this? What cardstock should I use? Is there a particular weight that is best suited for projects like this?

If you want to do better than "copy paper" you could run heavier stock paper through a color laser printer.

In my poor, college days, I would have entertained chopping a manila folder to Letter size and running it through the straight-feeder of a Color Laser-jet.

I literally just printed on 220gsm card in a laser printer's feed tray today. Worked great.

Before I had a pack of card, I was indeed cutting up manila folders. I only had ugly colours (that's a rule for manila folders, apparently) so it wasn't ideal, but it worked well in a structural sense for what I was up to.

Amazing project. Scrolled to see if they had the Olivetti M24 machine in there. Would have been the ultimate nostalgia.

They don’t have to be just paper, you could put a Raspberry Pi Pico inside any of them.

Thinking of a model of an IBM System 360 now.

Is the depiction of Elite on the BBC Microcomputer correct? Afair, the models were all see-through wireframes.

Hidden lines were removed though only on a per model basis.

EDIT: But you don't have to believe me! You can visit https://bbc.godbolt.org/ and see BBC Micro Elite running in an emulator. Do a Shift+F12 at the BBC Microcomputer 32K prompt to boot the disk.

Also check out https://www.bbcelite.com/ (previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34852219) for all the code you can eat.

IIRC it did hidden line removal on the BBC if you had the second processor, and non-removal on a plain BBC.

I can't remember if the required 2nd proc for elite was a Z80 or another 6502 though; a part of my brain remembers it as needing the Z80, but that sounds like it'd be weird.

The amiga 500 looks much more like the 'rare' Commodore B128 (not a typo) to me for some reason.

I died a little inside when I saw the GameCube listed. Surprised it's considered vintage now.

No Acorn Atom. ZX80 or ZX81, or Sinclair QL. All that I owned before a PC. :-(

But these are awesome.

Can some recommend a printer that won’t break apart after printing on a cardstock?

First good reason I've seen to head back into the office 1 day a week, to load up the office Xerox with card stock.

I have a Brother laser printer that I got back in 2009-10 or something. It's never had a problem with cardstock, though I guess I've never thought about it. What problems do printers have with cardstock?

I have an hp 2055. alot crappier build than the LJ4+ it replaced

but aside from adding a little curl, its never had a problem with 0.02" card stock (what is that 125lbs? yes, stupid old units)

My wife broke the paper feeder on a HP deskjet while trying to print on a heavier photo paper and the OfficeJet failed even loading it.

OKI 3x2dn (the x in there essentially means the amount of paper trays). We had run thousands of A4 pages of cardstock through the thing printing atendee badges for our convention.

I'd love to see a behind-the-scenes about how these models are made.

If you like those, you'll love these:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/idf-set-1250made-by-ondra-alia...

Going from nostalgic innovative technology to war machines it’s not something I love. ‘Merica.

Disappointed; no KL10.

I would have gone personally for the KI10, but the KA10 is arriving: https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-10/c/XVM2BcrFHZI

It's been on my waiting list for years.

These are fantastic. Maybe it's time to try it out!

Great touch with baked beans next to ZX Spectrum.

Is that a reference to something?

Off-topic, but damn are googles and bings of today useless finding weird shit like this. Try searching some variation of "baked beans" and "sinclair spectrum". It's like every time I tried searching for a combination of <hugely popular/monetizable term> and <niche term>. It ends up ignoring the niche term. Pluses and quotes be damned, we'll give you ten million sponsored recipes for baked beans! What happened to the IDF part of TFIDF?

TRS-80 Model I???

would love to see an Atari 800.

Of course there's Alan Kay's cardboard model of the Dynabook.

>From: Don Hopkins

>Re: Wooden Dynabook model?

>I have a vague recollection of seeing a photo of a wooden model of a Dynabook. Or maybe it was chocolate.

>Was there really such a thing? Could you please point me at any photos and stories about it, if so?

>From: Alan Kay

>The original model I made was done in cardboard. I gave it to Jack Goldman, the funder of Parc.

https://donhopkins.com/home/DynabookModel1.jpg

>And here's a much later one I did for the Computer History Museum.

https://donhopkins.com/home/DynabookModel2.jpg

Alan Kay's Dynabook -- Rare NHK video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36NNGzNvjo

>In 1968, Alan Kay outlined the Dynabook, calling it a "children's computer." The device was never made commercially, but he made a model out of cardboard. In this 2002 Japanese Documentary (NHK Japan), he shows this model.

Alan Kay's papers:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060106124621/http://thinkubato...

A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages; Alan Kay - 1972 (PDF)

https://web.archive.org/web/20060209043851/http://www.mprove...

File:Alan Kay and the prototype of the Dynabook (3009206205).jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alan_Kay_and_the_pro...

Dynabook:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

American computer pioneer Alan Kay’s concept, the Dynabook, was published in 1972. How come Steve Jobs and Apple iPad get the credit for tablet invention?

https://www.quora.com/American-computer-pioneer-Alan-Kay-s-c...

Those remind me of the dummy computers sometimes seen in office furniture stores .

This is so cool.

ok I am firing up the xerox machine damnit

Beautiful!

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