Collaborate Disseminate
Unlike the today’s consumer computer market, the 1980s were the wild west in comparison. There were all kinds of different, incompatible operating systems, hardware, and programs, all competing against one …read more Continue reading It’s Spreadsheets All The Way Down for This 80s Handheld
Ever heard of Apollo Computer, Inc.? They were one of the first graphical workstation vendors in the 1980s, and at the time were competitors to Sun Microsystems. But that’s enough …read more Continue reading Apollo Computer: The Forgotten Workstations
[Thom Cherryhomes] shared with us an incredible resource for anyone curious about the Coleco Adam, one of the big might-have-been home computers of the 80s. There’s a monstrous 4-hour deep …read more Continue reading Absolutely Everything About the Coleco Adam, 8-bit Home Computer
Over Apple’s decades-long history, they have been quick to adapt to new processor technology when they see an opportunity. Their switch from PowerPC to Intel in the early 2000s made …read more Continue reading The Apple Silicon That Never Was
It might seem quaint through the lends of history we have the luxury of looking through, but in the mid 1980s it was a major symbol of status to be …read more Continue reading A Mobile Phone from 1985
80s-era electronic speech certainly has a certain retro appeal to it, but it can sometimes be a useful data output method since it can be implemented on very little hardware. …read more Continue reading Make Your ESP32 Talk Like It’s the 80s Again
For better or worse, this synthesizer was king in the 1980s music scene. Sure, there had been synthesizers before, but none acheived the sudden popularity of Yamaha’s DX7. “Take on …read more Continue reading Ken Shirriff Breaks Open the Yamaha DX7
While putting together a retro computer is a great project and can teach a lot about the inner workings of electronics, hooking that 70s- or 80s-era machine up to a modern 144 Hz 1440p display tends to be a little bit anticlimactic. To really recreate the true 8-bit experience it’s …read more
Continue reading Commodore 64 Mini Man Makes Matching Mini Monitor
The last Amiga personal computer rolled off the assembly line in 1996, well over 20 years ago. Of course, they had their real heyday in the late 80s, so obviously if you have any around now they’ll be in need of a little bit of attention. [Drygol] recently received what …read more
General Instrument’s AY-3-8910 is a chip associated with video game music and is became popular with arcade games and pinball machines. The chip tunes produced by this IC are iconic and are reminiscent of a great era for electronics. [Deater] has done an amazing job at creating a harmony between the old and new with his Raspberry Pi AY-3-8910 project.
[Deater] already showed us an earlier version of the project on a breadboard however after having made some PCBs and an enclosure the result is even more impressive. The system consists of not one but two AY-3-8910 for stereo sound …read more
