Now if you were to manufacture your own retro style computer...

[marcoguy]

As far as the innards go, why not have a switchable 5MHz/8MHz 8088, 30MHz 386, 1GHz P3, and a 3GHz i7, and give a button to each on the front of the case? That would be the most universal PC I have ever laid eyes on.

 

[barythrin]

I can't believe it, the still shot of space age computing and they have the one woman checking her makeup in the mirror.

 

[creepingnet]

Call me nuts, but I've always liked the Original IBM AT look and the First Wave of IBM PS/2's .... not the clone trash, mind u.

I actually have a secret blog that talks about modern machines based on the look/feel of vintage PC hardware...

I like the look of older cases in general so there's a bit of everything up there.
I had a more modern idea in mind as well, but for a retro-machine I think a 486 would be the happy medium. The bit I wrote deals more with the most modern archetecture.

 

[deathshadow]

To me it would really hinge upon what you mean by retro -- I'd probably draw the line of design at '84, which is when the 'game changers' were introduced... Affordable PC clones, the Mac, and early GUI's.

I always thought it would be cool to make the ultimate pre-PC era machine using the best of all the machines of the '76 to '84 timeframe...

For example start out with the Brutus of cheap home computer CPU's, the TMS9900 out of a TI... and instead of neutering it as they had done, actually give it the SRAM it should have instead of a crappy little 'scratchpad'. (though the 32k total memory limit is a bit of a pain -- map a port for rom swapping?) A close second choice for me would be the 6809, which was also "partly 16 bit" in a 8 bit era.

For a video chip, look no further than the VIC=2. 8 hardware sprites PER SCANLINE, 320x200 in 16 colors... You put a real processor instead of the anemic tired old 6502 behind it, you'd really have something.

Floppy drive would have to be standard/included... and I'd probably go with 80 track 5.25" -- I had a trio of those in two-thirds height on a Model III at one point... which at 720k a pop was 'absurd' storage for the time. I knew a few TRS-80 guys who had quartets of them in model III's with LDOS accessing them as 10 sectors per track -- they thought hard drives were a dead end since they had two megabytes of swappable storage vs. the 10 megabyte norm for a fixed disk at the time.

Of course, just to be different, I'd put Pascal in ROM instead of Basic... alongside a real 'editor' (that could do double duty as a WP). We rag on the Commodore "Minus 60", but the idea of in-ROM apps in that timeframe has some appeal.

From an aesthetics/layout/engineering point of view -- there is ZERO question in my mind about the keyboard. Buckling spring or NOTHING! Mind you, I'm sitting here using my i7 870 with 16 gigs of RAM and 7.5tb of disk space with a Model M (1993 case, 1987 board, 1989 mechanicals -- pieced it together from the best parts from three different ones)... so I'm a bit jaded on the subject of keyswitches. Honestly if I wasn't so concerned with it looking stock, I'd be modding one of my spares to work on my Tandy 1000 SX. I would also have a replaceable goretex or leather pad/rest in front of the keyboard. Some cheap doo-dads like leather trim go a long ways.

The case should be stamped SECC steel construction, with one twist... Chrome it. I just love the look of chrome.

I'd keep the keyboard separate from the system -- while I have a love of the all-in-one's, the difficult in expanding such systems was always a drawback unless you made them 'huge' like the Apple II... or you had the unreliable 'ribbon cable' approach like the TRS-80 Model 1. Expansion cards would be what in the PC era we'd call two-thirds length, the overall case size being about the same as an original tandy 1k -- so a bit smaller than a IBM. More than large enough for a pair of 2/3rd height drives, a decent power supply, a rather hefty mainboard, and five or more expansion slots. I would NOT integrate all that much into the mainboard, and may be tempted to take a queue from zenith/heathkit and S100 systems and make EVERYTHING socketed with the mainboard being a passive backplane... could even make it a mini-tower... not exactly retro, but it is a bit more sensible a design if you're not putting the system on the desk.

Did I mention it should be chromed?

Faceplate should be removable, all blockoff plates for empty bays should be pre-cut out and screwed on -- front and back. I would probably add standard faceplates the entire front-length even if there's not space for drives, to allow custom panels to be made for things like sound, temperature monitors, front facing ports, etc.

A standard joystick interface should also be included, and I would provide inputs for both analog and digital sticks -- digital would of course use the atari 9 pin plug (you'd be #DDD not to) which also allows for two 'paddle' lines, which could just as easily be an analog stick. Would be funny actually to make a controller for a retromachine using the 9 pin atari interface that has a analog stick on one side and a digital on the other, just like a modern controller. In terms of actually reading the analog inputs I'd follow the TRS-80 color computer's example and use a 6 bit ladder DAC (a few cents worth of resistors) and a comparitor -- wiring the pots to both +5 and ground, sensing off middle. Output 50%, compare... +/- 25%, compare, lather, rinse, repeat until you have a match... resulting in a maximum of 6 operations to read it instead of a endless loop. 0..63 is probably overkill for an analog joystick range on such a system.

STANDARD RS-232 and Centronics parallel would also be a 'must have' -- full capability on them too, no cheaping out on slow half-assed serial/bit-banging and none of that 'uni-directional' nonsense on the parallel. (Do you hear me Tandy?!?)

Another idea would use a bit later hardware... I always thought it would be cute to take the motorola 68K and Z80 pairing found in systems like the original Mac and TRS-80 Model 16, and mate them to a kick-ass video generator like say a Yamaha YM7101... could give it 64k of system RAM, 64k of video RAM, another 8k scratchpad dedicated to the Z80... little 2k startup ROM, something like a YM2612 FM chip for synth backed up by a TI PSG...

OH WAIT -- that's called a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive... Always wanted to add a keyboard and turn that into a real computer. You put a meg of RAM on that and give it a keyboard and fixed storage solution, it would have been a hot little computer for the time-frame... basically a big brother for the SC-3000.

 

[commodorejohn]

For example start out with the Brutus of cheap home computer CPU's, the TMS9900 out of a TI... and instead of neutering it as they had done, actually give it the SRAM it should have instead of a crappy little 'scratchpad'. (though the 32k total memory limit is a bit of a pain -- map a port for rom swapping?)

Well, that is 32K words, so 64KB, but you certainly could add more memory. (The TI-990 series had an optional memory mapper that doesn't look like it'd be too hard to reimplement, you could just use that.) I agree, the 9900 looks like a fantastic CPU for the time. I've been intrigued by the workspace notion; it seems perfectly built for fast task-switching, I'm surprised the TI-99 never saw a multi-tasking OS.

Of course, just to be different, I'd put Pascal in ROM instead of Basic... alongside a real 'editor' (that could do double duty as a WP). We rag on the Commodore "Minus 60", but the idea of in-ROM apps in that timeframe has some appeal.

I've always been kind of intrigued by the Jupiter Ace's including Forth in ROM - it looks like a good language for an interactive execution environment (Pascal is more of a compiler language, IMO.) (*glances around for Dwight*)

Another idea would use a bit later hardware... I always thought it would be cute to take the motorola 68K and Z80 pairing found in systems like the original Mac and TRS-80 Model 16, and mate them to a kick-ass video generator like say a Yamaha YM7101... could give it 64k of system RAM, 64k of video RAM, another 8k scratchpad dedicated to the Z80... little 2k startup ROM, something like a YM2612 FM chip for synth backed up by a TI PSG...

OH WAIT -- that's called a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive... Always wanted to add a keyboard and turn that into a real computer. You put a meg of RAM on that and give it a keyboard and fixed storage solution, it would have been a hot little computer for the time-frame... basically a big brother for the SC-3000.

Heh, I've thought the same, myself...of course, with the Sega CD you've got 512KB of RAM, all you'd need is the keyboard. (I think someone also made a homebrew IDE + RAM cart, once...)

 

[MikeS]

...I've always been kind of intrigued by the Jupiter Ace's including Forth in ROM - it looks like a good language for an interactive execution environment (Pascal is more of a compiler language, IMO.) (*glances around for Dwight*)

Then you need an AIM65; both Forth and Pascal in ROM, as well as BASIC and PL/65 (and an assembler of course...)

 

[deathshadow]

Then you need an AIM65; both Forth and Pascal in ROM, as well as BASIC and PL/65 (and an assembler of course...)

You know, as ex USAF and since it's made by Rockwell, I keep expecting that to have a rocket motor, fragmentation warhead and prox-fuse.... like a Air to Air version of the Maverick AGM-65. ESPECIALLY since while they lost the contract to build the AGM-65 to Hughes back in the 60's, they were still able to build them under license later on -- most notably for the USMC and RAF.

 

[RickNel]

I like the look of this Babbage Difference Engine (desktop model). No mains power required.
Original was abandoned in 1842 after the British Govt had spent UKpounds 17,000 trying to build it!
Looks like a job for a modern 3D printer.

 

[Goggles2114]

OH WAIT -- that's called a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive... Always wanted to add a keyboard and turn that into a real computer. You put a meg of RAM on that and give it a keyboard and fixed storage solution, it would have been a hot little computer for the time-frame... basically a big brother for the SC-3000.

Now I want someone to do this. I mean the Genesis and Clones can be had pretty cheaply. Hardware hackers havefigured out how to mkae perriferals for all sorts of systems. Why not have something for Ye Olden Sega? Sure now it'd be a curiosity, but having a cart that has a BASIC interpreter, or extra ram to go with a rom image for the basics, and a userport addon to give it an SD card slot (but it'd have ot be able to emulate the floppy load times of the day so it's not completely cheating. I say SD because that is the modern floppy equivilant and I really don't want to have floppies laying around that may or may not work. Then again if you gave it a drive that'd handle 1.44mb disks I think those are still being made (for who I dunno but yea.) This sounds interesting. Plus it has the same port plugs a commodore has so shouldn't you be able to cheat a bit on accessories?

Keyboard would be somewhat problimatic I thin kut.

Damnit now i went from wanting what amounted to a souped up Commodore in an Apple ][e Enclosure with card slots for added functionality, to wanting what you just described.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I kind of want to get a Replica 1 and make a chassis that looks like a hybrid of an Apple IIc and a modern Apple product. Solid Aluminum 'wedge', using the short-lived "short" USB Apple Keyboard as the keyboard. Maybe have a nod of retro by using a glass top over the motherboard. (Which would also look Apple-like.)

 

[Chuck(G)]

EMERAC from "Desk Set" would be nice to have:

 

[tux]

I'd love to re-manufacture the SGI O2 workstation of 90s vintage. I would bring the MIPS r5200 RISC processor up to today's standards in technology; increasing in speed, reducing in die size and multicoring. IRIX would get USB updates, the logic board would get SATA drive connections, the firmware would be updated for larger capacity DIMMS, Blue-ray instead of DVD and of course newer video chips for the on-board graphics. I would update the onboard video streaming hardware compression and sound. Also, I love the "Slab" spring-keys keyboards and granite mouse. For those not familiar with an O2, here's a video of one running through its paces.

 

[eeguru]

It makes me weep a little that I can do most of that on my phone now with a few finger swipes.

 

[Tor]

It makes me weep a little that I can do most of that on my phone now with a few finger swipes.

Yep. Most of that works as good as, or better than what the SGI demo does. But the one thing I haven't actually seen on a phone is the reflections (from the beginning of the movie), that's done in real time on the SGI and looks great today as well. And all of that worked back in 1993, on the Onyx which was quite a bit larger than that O2, but still..

And not to forget, my ARM-based phones all have a GPU with built-in OpenGL support. OpenGL came from SGI, it was their 'open' version of IRIX GL, and IRIX GL was the basis (together with SGI's graphics hardware) for their 3D software.

-Tor

 

[DOS lives on!!]

No, you do not any longer have a phone in your possesion. It's now a computer with a phone capability. Tempus Fugit, much too fast these days.