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Welcome to old-computers.com, the most popular website for old computers.
Have a trip down memory lane re-discovering your old computer, console or software you used to have.
There are actually 1246 systems in the museum.
SHOW ME A RANDOM SYSTEM !
 LATEST ADDITIONS
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 BANDAI TV Jack 5000
The TV Jack 5000 from Bandai released in 1978 is one of the first cartridge based system from Japan.
It's the equivalent of european and american systems like the Hanimex SD-050, Acetronic Color TV Game, Prinztronic Micro 5500, SHG Blackpoint, Binatone Cablestar, Radofin telesports, etc. There have been tons of systems like these.
The TV Jack 5000, like all these systems, use cartridges based on General Instruments chipsets which offers different games on each chip. That's why all these sy...
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 OLIVETTI A5
Olivetti introduced a mainframe about 1960 which was called ELEA, then in 1965 the Programma 101 - which was probably the world's first real desktop computer. Then a little later they introduced the Audiotronic range of "office computers". The first was the A770, which was replaced by the A7. The A5 was the desktop version.
The Olivetti Audit 5 or A5 was largely an electro mechanical computer. It printed via a golf ball typewritter mechanism at the astonishing speed of 16 character per second...
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 TRIUMPH ADLER TA-1600
The TA 1600 system was introduced in 1983 at the CeBIT (which was only a part of the "Hannover-Messe" by that time). TA showed a few sample applications and the 1600 family in general.
Triumph Adler's hardware included also the 1600/20-3 which was supplied with a permanent-swap-HDD-unit. This unit had a memory/storage capacity of 2 x 8 MB (Winchester technology).
Triumph Adler said the system (the 1600) will fit the demand of medium-sized businesses, due to the facts that these companies w...
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 MIDWICH Microcontroller
Called the Midwich Microcontroller, this British computer was developped to provide a small desktop micro capable of running other equipment throug a variety of interface cards.
In 1979 an Italian IC manufacturer designed and began to sell a single board micro system that could be expanded to a full system with a VDU, discs, etc. Called the Nanocomputer, it was manufactured by SGS Ates and one of the distributors in the UK was Midwich. The Nano was somewhat expensive and suffered from a numbe...
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 RADIONIC Model R1001
This is an extremly rare TRS-80 Model 1 clone, based on an other clone: The Komtek 1 (from Germany).
It's equiped with a Level II basic and powered by a Zilog Z80 cpu.
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Contributors : Incog...
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 BASF 7100
The BASF 7000 systems are professional computers from Germany.
They seem to be based on the Microterm II Intelligent Terminal by Digi-Log Systems, Inc.
There were several models in the 7000 serie....
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 PERTEC PCC 2000
PCC 2000 is a professional computer released in 1978. It was designed in 1978 by Pertec, the company which merged with MITS by the end of 1976.
The PCC is conceived as a monobloc machine, where the display and two 8" floppy disk drives are built-in the main case. The mechanical keyboard offers separated numeric and editing keypads.
The system is powered by an Intel 8085 microprocessor and offers 64 KB RAM. The whole thing was apparently delivered with an extended Basic language, which has...
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 TERTA TAP-34
TAP 34 is a self design of Terta company from Hungary. Primarily it was designed as a terminal for big computer systems but it was also able to process data alone. The main integrated circuits were assembled in the USSR and in Hungary by Tungsram, but several parts were imported from other countries.
The built-in monitor was a DME-28 monochrome CRT made by Orion. This company was famous for its televisions in Hungary and the other KGST countries.
The floppy drive attached to the compute...
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RANDOM SYSTEMS
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 NEC TK 80
The NEC TK 80 is a 8080-cpu Training Kit (hence the "TK") computer sold at the end of the 70's. It is considered the first japanese home-computer. It was firstly aimed at technicians, but it met a great success with first computer hobbyists. It was often sold as a kit.
The systems is directly programmed in machine-code through the hexadecimal keyboard. There are 9 "function" keys on this keyboard : RET, RUN, STORE DATA, LOAD DATA, RESET, ADRS SET, READ INCR, READ DECR, WRITE INCR.
Informatio...
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 YASHICA YC-64
This is a classic MSX 1 computer made by Kyocera and sold by Yashica. Kyocera didn't sell any MSX computers under its brand name, but conceived a few like the Philips VG-8020 and the above for example...
The Yashica YC-64 is somewhat original as it is red!
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 ATARI TT 030
The Atari TT was a kind of a super Atari STe. As the other Atari computers, it was very long awaited. It was presented as a competitor of the Macintosh and was one of the first to offer a huge graphic resolution (1280 x 960).
The first TTs had a 16Mhz CPU. A small daugther card was supplied later to use a 32 MHz CPU, then all the TTs were shipped with a 32 MHz CPU.
It had a lot of extension connectors (like VME, VGA or SCSI) ...
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 NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR Introkit
Launched in 1976, the Introkit appeared to be very popular. It was the first affordable all-in-one computer everyone could acquire to know a bit about computers.
The basic version was really minimalist: one SC/MP (or "Scamp") microprocessor, one 512-byte ROM containing a monitor program and 256 bytes of RAM for user's programs.
The system was designed to connect to a Teletype - the CPU had serial In and Out pins, but very few hobbyist could afford this massive and expensive equipment. N.S....
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 ATT PC 6300
The PC 6300 was in fact an Olivetti M24 sold under the ATT brand.
Launched a few months after the presentation of six new UNIX super-micro and mini ATT computers (march 1984), the PC 6300 was the first ATT system to be IBM PC compatible. It represented the low-end system of the ATT products.
But the PC-6300 (and the Olivetti M24) was an excellent PC compatible system, twice faster than the IBM PC XT computer thanks to a real...
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 EPOCH TV Baseball
The Epoch TV Baseball is an early japanese video-game released in 1978. It is a stand-alone system, as it can play only one game: baseball!
Indeed, baseball has always been very popular in Japan. It was logic that it inspired first videogames there.
The game can be played by two players, one launching the ball and the other manipulating the bat. There is a detachable controller with only one fire button, and all the other controls are on the system itself.
It is interesting to note that...
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 WORLD BOOK Tutor Vision
In 1989, INTV Corp. signed a joint business deal with World Book Encyclopedia to manufacture the Tutorvision. The Tutorvision was basically just a modified version of the original Intellivision Master Console except it's exterior was gold coloured, the buttons on the keypad are bubble-style and not flat like the INTV III version, it featured a power-on LED, the original two circuit boards were now merged into one with the chips all dated 1988-90, and the lo...
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 OHIO SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGER 4P
When the C4P was launched, Ohio Scientific said that it was a giant step in the world of the home computers. It was twice as fast as an Apple ll or Commodore Pet and more than three times as fast as a Tandy TRS 80.
However, despite its technological lead, the C4P and other Ohio Scientific computers always suffered of a lack in efficient software and attractive handbooks. For this reason, very few third companies built cards and peripherals for the Challenger series. So, the C4P didn't withstand...
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 ACORN COMPUTER BBC Master AIV
In 1986, the 900th Anniversary of the Norman Domesday Book, the BBC and
the National Curriculum, amongst other UK bodies, endeavoured to
produced a 20th Century equivalent. Recently the Domesday project has
had renewed interest, as the sense of producing such an ambitious
undertaking then storing the results on a strange, and now forgotten,
format has been called into question many times since!
For old-computers.com readers, the interesting bits are not terribly
interesting - but ...
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 INTEL SDK-85
Each time Intel launched a new microprocessor, they provided simultaneously a System Development Kit (SDK) allowing computer company ingineers as well as university students to introduce them to the new processor concepts and features.
The SDK-85 was a complete 8085A (5 for 'first 5 Volt microprocessor') microcomputer system on a single board including ROM and RAM memory, a 24 key hexadecimal keyboard, a 6 digit LED display, I/O connections and an expansion area allowing...
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LATEST COMMENTS
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AMSTRAD PCW 8256 / 8512
I''m trying to sell my father''s old PCW8512, with printer and several disks. It still works, I understand. Any tips on where to sell such a thing?
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AMSTRAD PC 1512
I am looking for DOS 3,2 on 5,25"disk for Amstrad-Schneider 1512 HD
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BINATONE TV Master MK IV (model n° 01 / 4974)
I have a number of these devices including Mk4 , mk6, mk8 and mk10. I also have a number of other first generation consoles :) great fun but trying to get a TV which works with them nowadays is difficult.
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SCIENCE FAIR Microcomputer Trainer
Sorry to double-post but... Duncan, that video of yours is certainly interesting! Kind of weird but I suppose instructive to have the user, some naive kid, have to wire up stuff like the display, that should be connected permanently.
Then again... there were only so many I/O pins available. Were there any experiments in the manual with connecting up to other circuits? Did it come with other components? Maybe a tie-in with the other Science Fair kits would''ve been good. So you could connect the computer to other circuits and have it do... stuff. Since it is a MCU trainer and that''s what they''re supposed to do. If you wanted to really learn programming you''d be better off with a BBC Micro or ZX Spectrum with an assembler and a decent book. "ZX Spectrum Machine Language For The Absolute Beginner" by William Tang was great. Started off explaining memory locations as cardboard boxes with numbers written on bits of paper in them. You know the drill! But pretty quickly moved to writing real programs and interfacing with the operating system.
This little box of tricks is a great curiosity but to be honest I think would have disappointed a lot of kids. For less money you could get a box that''d let you control relays and read switches from a computer in BASIC or machine code. The BBC and Commodore machines had built-in user ports for just that, the BBC even having an ADC!
You''d be able to get a lot more done, and learn more about the subject, like that. Of course you''d need the computer too but you''d want that anyway for the games!
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SCIENCE FAIR Microcomputer Trainer
Tor, I imagine the LEDs aren''t labelled in binary for two reasons. One is simplicity and user-friendliness. The other is that the TMS1000 didn''t expose it''s bus to the outside world. Only a few I/O ports, like an Arduino or other microcontroller, since it is a microcontroller.
Sounds like this thing ran a sort-of "emulator", interpreting a program written in a very terse binary format. Could a TMS1000 switch to running code from RAM? I don''t think it could since RAM is 4-bit and I think code was 8-bit. So that would leave storing the program in RAM and interpreting it.
It''s fair enough, it still gives an impression of machine code programming, and is probably less mind-bending than the TMS''s own ASM would be! 48 steps! Just enough for 1 or 2 loops to do a bit of beeping.
A user couldn''t program the TMS series. Instead your company, that was making an alarm clock or calculator or whatever, would write the program in a text editor on a minicomputer or mainframe. Stacks of cards are mentioned although hopefully that''s just as an abstraction!
Then your programmer and TI would work together to ensure it would work, and test it on a software emulator. Eventually, when it was ready, TI would make a mask and produce you a few prototype chips with your program in the ROM, real immutable ROM.
If that went well, it went on to production and off come your thousands of chips!
The chip was like many MCUs intended for calculators, etc, in that it had some support for LED or VFD displays built into the hardware. So you wouldn''t have to bit-bash as much as you might with a modern MCU. OTOH a modern MCU does very well at bit-bashing, with onboard timers, counters, and a high enough clock speed to be able to do all that.
I wonder about stuff like Astro Wars and the many other VFD home arcade games of the early ''80s. As well as the LED and LCD ones. But VFD mostly cos they were so interesting, and produced the best display for a game.
Were these 4-bit? Must''ve been hell to program! Or at least you''d need to be very methodical and keep everything organised on paper, doing actual coding in small blocks that fit to the plan. Or did they use 8-bit MCUs? Were PICs about then?
Some of the early LCD games I think would''ve worked as custom state machines. And there were dozens of cheap ones where the gameplay was identical, only the LCD was changed, from aliens to horses and cowboys.
The early Nintendo programmers, I think Gunpei Yokoi, RIP, talked about re-purposing calculator chips to produce Game And Watch. Each screen element was a unit that would otherwise have been a segment of a 7-segment number!
Anyway... interesting machine!
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RANDOM SOFTWARE TITLES
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 game - shoot them up - space
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game - golf - sport
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game - 3d - 3d (real) - roller coaster - vector graphics
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game - platform
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game - jungle - pitfall - platform
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game - hockey - sport
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game - kendo - martial arts - sport
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game - naval battle - shoot them up - submarine
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game - car - racing
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game - dodge
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game -
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game - fencing - middle ages - pirate
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game - mind games - shanghai
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game - shoot them up - vector graphics
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game -
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RANDOM ADVERTS
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