Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit) | Hacker News Reader

Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)

leadedsolder.com

109 pointszdw30 comments

>I asked Cheshire if he had something to test with, and he just smiled and sent me a Sonic Invaders cartridge. I’m pretty sure that’s how the song goes.

LOL. Good one, mate.

As someone who grew up with the Dick Smith Electronics Fun Way 1 & 2 books, which were dog-eared and well-loved way into the 90's, it tickles me to no end that HN occasionally gets articles about this utter genius.

And, as a retro-computing enthusiast it is very fun to see someone making the effort to produce a Wizzard clone. These were very much a 'crossover' type of device, where you could just use it to game, or learn to program - and it was definitely one of those 'make or break' situations - you either gamed, or you learned to program. A friend of mine had one - but he never programmed, because he hated the keyboard... whereas me, with my Oric-1 out there in the bush, had no access to any software - so I had to learn to program, whatever my issues with the chiclet keyboard.

As a curator for a retro-computing museum, of course I'm biased but I think there is definitely a market for re-imagined 8-bit computers.

Kids really benefit from digging into these systems and learning how the CPU really works, and 8-bit computers provide a really useful interface to this technology that isn't too overwhelming. We've built systems in the modern era that are so complex and overwhelming - returning to the simplicity of 8-bit computing really makes it a lot more accessible.

I for one welcome re-imagined 8-bit computers being released to a new and eager market. I am constantly being asked where to get one of the machines in the museum collection - systems like the Fenix256 (another re-imagined 8-bit machine) and the MEGA 65 are very welcome new additions to this market, but we need to scale up.

I could sell 4 of these machines a week, without even trying - categorically, kids go through my museum exhibit, playing with the old machines (we emphasize having access to the old machines, which still work, for people to have direct contact with the experience) .. and end up asking me where they can get their own. I'd love to have the MEGA 65, ZX Spectrum Next, Fenix256 .. and maybe a reinvented Wizzard? .. to offer them on their way out ..

Project described is very cool! Kudoz to Mike, the author.

Personally I'd never do a clone of an obscure system like that. Why? Clone a (once) popular system, and when it works, you've got a wealth of software to run on it day 0.

Including software useful during development like test ROMs, debuggers, assemblers, stuff that doesn't need keyboard input to show something (as mentioned in article), etc. And if that software comes as a known-good cartridge (or ROM), then if it doesn't work you know the problem is in the hardware.

When clone works, project could be interesting to many others.

Much value of any system is the library of software for it.

Obscure system limits your options a great deal here. Custom design means doing everything from scratch.

Exception would be a tweaked version of popular system. Where eg. you could 'correct historical mistakes', simplify design, aid programming in some way, add modern type video output, etc. Then existing software would either work, or be easy to port. Like between systems with same CPU and same video chip.

Either that, or use a similar concept as historic system, but then go all-in with modern features (much faster cpu, many MB's of RAM, high-res graphics, flash storage, modern OS, etc). If done right, such a system can still have that nostalgic, tinker-friendly feel to it.

I agree with you - but I think both the ZX Spectrum Next and the Fenix256 both comply with your last statement .. but with the added advantage that backwards compatibility (in the case of the Next) provides a plethora of existing titles - whereas the Fenix256 is just too damned cool not to write code for, from the get-go ..

They were nice shops. Before that in Auckland we had John Gilberts electronics. Dick Smith's increased the availability of what you could get by quite a lot.

How did that compare to the current Jaycar/Altronics/etc offerings?

I imagine a sleeping zombie

Up until, say, 2005 they were pretty similar to current Jaycar but, I think perhaps after an acquisition, they started selling branded audio/computers etc and the geeky stuff gradually became less prominent. At some point they got bought by Australian Woolworths. The shops began to look more like mainstream "electronics" shops than Jaycar does now. Then the whole lot came tumbling down. The DS name and domain got sold off to a third party but the bricks and mortar just disappeared.

When they went down the gurgler all the outstanding gift cards went with them (at least in NZ, Ozzie might have had better legislation), worth remembering that a branded gift card is an unsecured loan.

No, was bad in AU too, see https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-05/dick-smith-enters-vol... and https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-05/dick-smith-receivers-....

Thanks for the references. I had forgotten the sale from Woolworths to a Private Equity group.

I'm sorry this is bit off topic but I do think the description, within https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-05/dick-smith-enters-vol... , of what took place in the brief period between when the Private Equity group bought Dick Smith and when they floated it is well worth reading.

FWIW my experience of seeing this stuff happens is it only works where you have a company that non-institutional investors think they know and understand. In the case of Dick Smith it was a well liked and very visible brand within Australia. If the same financial engineering had been done to some obscure industrial group the Private Equity group would have had to rely on selling the shares to institutions and they would have been much more aware of what they were buying.

Here's the segment from the ABC piece ...

Private equity group Anchorage Capital bought Dick Smith from Woolworths in 2012 for an initial payment of just $20m.

Anchorage then "dressed the company up to look good for just one thing - to persuade people to buy shares," according to analysts from Forager Funds Management.

Anchorage "wrote down the value of the inventory, took provisions for future onerous lease payments, wrote down the value of the plant and equipment and liquidated a lot of the inventory as quickly as they possibly could to throw off cash," according to Forager's Steve Johnson.

The cash was then used by Anchorage to effectively make Dick Smith 'buy itself'.

The writedowns inflated profits, a key factor in enticing investors into the company.

For example: a stock item that may have been bought for $100 may have been in the books at $60 after the writedowns, which meant an extra $40 profit on every sale.

The writedown of plant and equipment lowered depreciation charges, also boosting the bottom line.

"But when they liquidated all that inventory to pay for the purchase price, they didn't replace it," according to Forager's Steve Johnson.

"And the new owners of the business, since it's been listed on the stock market, have had to put in a lot more money to fund the increase in inventory."

In Aus the Kogan acquisition was their tombstone. Dick Smith who started the company was a legend, it’s a shame. Jaycar is the best electronics retailer we have now.

I'd probably only correct that Jaycar is the best brick and mortar electronics retailer we have now.

I have fond memories of Dick Smith. My dad bought my first soldering iron, along with some soldering projects (I remember the FM Wireless Microphone from here https://ia801002.us.archive.org/3/items/dicksmithsfunwayinto... ). You could tell the people creating the kits were really keen to share their love of electronics.

You could buy loose components out of trays, and it seemed like they had a bunch more unusual adapters and gadgets that wouldn't interest a typical consumer. But they gradually became just a retailer for big brand items.

The Dick Smith Funway books were a gateway drug for this primary school nerd. They were so simple even a parent could participate. https://archive.org/details/dicksmithsfunwayintoelectronicsv...

Australian 80's hacker here .. Between Computer Age, TANDY Electronics, and Dick Smith Electronics shops, a budding early-80's hacker could get access to a lot of technology to sharpen their teeth. I had many great times getting kicked out of TANDY only to cross the street to DSE and continue my hacking .. ;)

I think we had a few Dick Smith Electronics shops in the US in the 80s. I seem to recall I went to one in the SF bay area when I was young.

https://www.retroist.com/p/1982-commercial-for-dick-smiths-e...

Nice, I didn't know that. In Australia they were a very welcome hang out for the neighborhood computer kids. A lot friendlier than the Computer Age folks, although I did get a lot more coding done in those shops ..

I started electronics as a youngster with the Dick Smith's "Fun Way into Electronics" sets which were really great. They came with a board you could screw into to link components, etc and general introduction to everything involved.

Internet archive has the books themselves archived: https://archive.org/details/dicksmithsfunwayintoelectronicsv...

Off topic:

I'm a developer who got burnt out after a few years

I currently work at one of Dick Smith’s former competitors, Jaycar

It’s utterly bizarre working in such a company. The sheer range of backgrounds of the people you work with is immense

I’ve met genuinely top of their field “between grant” astro-physicists and kids who wouldn’t pass Year 12

It’s what I imagine working at RadioShack was like in the States, pre-mobile-phone-shoved-down-the-throat shenanigans

The amount of proper engineering still done sourced with a 50-200% mark up in Australia is insane to me, but must make sense to someone?

Also: the amount of life threatening work some customers are willing to undertake themselves confounds me. Even though I can show countless examples of people within 200km causing their, and their family’s demise

> Even though I can show countless examples of people within 200km causing their, and their family’s demise

Can you expand on this ? Do you mean their deaths, or some sort of economic suffering?

Dozens of people in Australia die every year from their own 12 or 230V wiring

I actually find 12V worse. People then try to run mains equipment off it with high amperage and correspondingly high heat, causing fire and…

>Dozens of people in Australia die every year from their own 12 or 230V wiring

Do they? Your claim surprised me, so I did some digging:

Not from electrocution certainly, because as of a few years ago [1], there were only about 5-6 unintentional electrocutions in the home each year nationally, and that's all cause, not DIY electrical.

WRT fire, there are 4-5 deaths from preventable house fires annually caused by electrical faults (the leading causes being smoking and cooking) [2]. There is also a further ~1 death per year categorized as "misuse of electrical equipment". It's not clear into which category DIY electrical would fall, but it's not mentioned at all in the report.

[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/2c37bd48-ee08-43d5-be11-f69...

[2] https://www.bnhcrc.com.au/publications/biblio/bnh-5807

This makes zero sense:?

If you hook a 240V appliance to 12V DC it will draw negligible current.

Perhaps you are trying to talk about people using a 12V to 240V inverter to run AC equipment in a car or off-grid, but not using large enough batteries. What-ever, the end result will be a flat battery or blown fuse, so little damage will be done. No worse than any other 12V wiring in a car.

When I access https://www.jaycar.com.au/ from Europe, I get a 503 on every page (although the website says its a 404: "Great Scott! Page Not Found... It looks like the flux capacitor has overloaded and sent the page you're looking for back to the past.").

Interesting, I can access it from Germany. Maybe your ip is blacklisted or the server has a peoblem with your client.

The site seems “up” but showing the same 404 error page (Back To The Future - inspired) for most/all URLs.

The site is just down today (I can attest to this as I’ve been using their site to place orders most days for the past week – and to some degree the past few weeks – and only in the part 12-ish hours has it gone down).

I get a "website down" message, and a neat little space invaders game to play. Quite neat actually, all in a 24kb html file without external dependencies of any kind

Australian 80's hacker kid, high school dropout, tuning in .. DSE and Jaycar were a constant source of enlightenment for me as teenager. I distinctly remember the smell of the Fun Way 1 Electronics clearance basket, those delightful particle board layouts ..

What do you mean by life threatening work at Jaycar?

I’m a founder of an IoT product company, and whenever I’m in the middle of a new product build (including right now), I find myself visiting Jaycar frequently over several weeks. I’ve been there every day for the past 3 days. I have two branches within 20 mins of my house. It’s a Godsend. An engineer in Canada I’m working with loves that when he is looking for a part we need for a device we’re building, he can first see if Jaycar has it and if so I’ll be able to get it easily. I use Core Electronics and Mouser quite a lot too but have to wait at least a few days for shipping. Being able to get so many essential items at short notice or on the way to an installation job makes my work so much easier. It seems to be a rarity in the world these days. So, thanks to you and the team!

As an electronics engineer in Australia I don’t quite get what you’re saying about proper engineering - can you elaborate?

Are you talking about the markup on parts or how expensive Australian labour is? I assume the former since the average salary isn’t massive and US engineers do better? (Although there are ways, like consulting which is what I do!)

Dick Smith wasn't just about the electronics, he had a few other interests.

https://www.wildernessshop.com.au/products/balls-pyramid-by-...

https://dicksmithadventure.com.au/assault-on-balls-pyramid/

These days its is essentially fly-by only unless you can get research related landing | climbing permission.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqQrWWpcT0I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball%27s_Pyramid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJWq58_5QQ

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