Brainiac clone?

[Floppies_only]

Gang,

As you may know, I have recently come into possession of a 1950's-era Brainiac computer (http://images.google.com/images?hl=...-1&q=brainiac+computer+kit&btnG=Search+Images). It has some corrosion and the manual has rust stains on it. I have decided not to build the kit, but rather to keep it in it's current state.

The Brainiac was an improvement on the Geniac computer, with six rotary switches instead of three. It is a very simple design that performs boolean logic decisions. It can play tic tac toe, and the manual comes with forty experiments.

What I am here to ask is if there would be any interest among the members of the Vintage Computer Forums in plans to build a clone of the Brainiac, which I would provide to interested members, and then I would re-write the experiments and distribute them.

I plan to build a clone of the Brainiac for myself, and I invite all of you to join me. Any takers?

Sean

 

[billdeg]

NOTE: My avitar for this forum IS the DC Comic's Brainiac

Although I would not be interested personally, what the heck, do it! I have found that if you do anything thoroughly and well tested "they will come" - I did not receive a lot of feedback either way regarding my History of Commodore Computers poster, but I made it anyway. To date I have sold a few hundred of them worldwide.

Shameless plug
http://vintagecomputer.net/poster_detail.cfm

Bill

 

[Druid6900]

Hey Bill, want to market the Tandy Model I Buffered Interface Cable I reverse engineered, proto-ed and did the re-design for?

 

[MikeS]

... or the beeper for CBM 8032 disk drive errors that I whipped up way back when?

m

 

[billdeg]

I don't charge anyone for posting ads for their sales on my site, please feel free to use the Blog for such purposes.
bd

 

[Floppies_only]

NOTE: My avitar for this forum IS the DC Comic's Brainiac.

[Grin] This is a perfect example of why the Vintage Computer Forums are so useful. After you told me about your icon when I PM'ed you about it I googled "brainiac" to get an idea of what it was. This led to checking eBay, where there was one for sale, in what looked like complete shape, for 1/4 the price of the one that was just loose parts in the box.

I informed my Mother that this year's birthday present was the item, I got it and it was totally complete. So I'm going to try to learn more about Boolean logic with my clone of the kit.

Aren't the VCFs great?

Sean

 

[billdeg]

I have mentioned this elsewhere, but the whole reason I even have this avitar in the first place was a letter I found in a Superman comic from the early 60's comparing Brainiac the villain to the Brainiac computer. See:
http://vintagecomputer.net/brainiac/superman_Feb_number167_mailbag.jpg

Transcript of text from article and a picture of the cover of the Superman more info and links on the middle of the left column here:
http://vintagecomputer.net/electronic_brain.cfm