Collaborate Disseminate
There are all kinds of technology that appear through the ages that find immediate success, promise to revolutionize the world, but fade to obscurity almost as quickly. Things like the …read more Continue reading Magnetic Bubble Memory Brought to Life on Heathkit
Sometimes, hacking is just for the pleasure of diving into the secrets of old hardware. That was very much the case when [glitch] and a friend started hacking on some …read more Continue reading Old Barcode Scanner Motherboards Live Again
It’s safe to say that the Altair 8800 is one of the most iconic, and important, computers ever created. The kit-built machine is widely regarded as the first commercially successful …read more Continue reading Altaid 8800 Puts a Front Panel in your Pocket
To say the Heathkit name is well known among Hackaday readers would be something of an understatement. Their legendary kits launched an untold number of electronics hobbies, and ultimately, plenty …read more Continue reading VCF East 2021: Preserving Heathkit’s 8-Bit Computers
There was certainly no shortage of unique computers on display at the 2021 Vintage Computer Festival East; that’s sort of the point. But even with the InfoAge Science and History …read more Continue reading VCF East 2021: Novasaur TTL Computer Sets the Bar
The early history of microprocessors is a surprisingly complex one, with more than one claimant for the prize of being the first, and multiple competing families. That the first commercially available part was the Intel 4004 is a matter of record, but it’s fair to say that few of us …read more
Continue reading Back To Where (For Most Of Us) It Started, The Intel 8080
While doing research for our articles about inventing the integrated circuit, the calculator, and the microprocessor, one name kept popping which was new to me, Federico Faggin. Yet this was a name I should have known just as well as his famous contemporaries Kilby, Noyce, and Moore.
Faggin seems to have been at the heart of many of the early advances in microprocessors. He played a big part in the development of MOS processors during the transition from TTL to CMOS. He was co-creator of the first commercially available processor, the 4004, as well as the 8080. And he was …read more