Questions tagged [hardware]
Retro hardware generally: boards, extension cards, power supplies, peripherals. Use more specific tags as appropriate; use [case] instead for enclosures.
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Did anybody use PCBs as macro-scale mask-ROMS?
Early on, even fairly small ROM's were quite useful. For example, you could fit a minimal upper-case only font for a terminal into something like 256 bytes. And that's a scale that a human could lay ...
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Snack shipped with computer products [closed]
I remember that there was a company in the US that packed candy or snacks as a bonus in the shipping box with their products. They were well-known for this practice. I'm pretty sure the snack was ...
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Why does my Mikrolab randomly freeze and unfreeze, and what can I do about it?
I've started using my Soviet Mikrolab KR580IK80 (a clone of the Hewlett Packard 5036A) again, and I've noticed some behaviour which it used to exhibit but now it seems more frequent. Basically after ...
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Sending video to Telerate 9" Green Monitor [closed]
I found an old Telerate green monitor at a thrift store and figured I could run my computer output through an HDMI -> AV converter with no problem, or a Raspberry Pi composite output signal. Turns ...
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When did CMOS processors become the fastest?
The earliest CMOS microprocessors (RCA 1802, HP Stirling RISC, et.al.) were slower than contemporaneous NMOS microprocessors and Bipolar logic computers. (IIRC, both the 1802 and the 6502 could be ...
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I have old hardware; what can I use it for? [closed]
I have two old pieces of hardware: a DVD drive and a hard disk, both from 2004, which I would like to use.
I have a computer made for Windows 7, currently running Windows 98 which would probably run ...
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How did relay computers handle inductor flyback?
Many early computers were relay-computers. Like any other inductor, when the coil in a relay is shut off, the current through the coil continues to flow. This is a result of Faraday's Law of ...
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How can I repair a sketchy video signal on a 1977 Pong unit?
I bought a 1977 Gracia Color Video Game TVG 432 (not much to be found online), image from 20th Century Video Games:
And the unit works, but the video signal is kind of sketchy.
It is not very strong, ...
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Why was the VIC-II restricted to a hard-coded palette?
The MOS VIC in the VIC-20 and the MOS VIC-II in the C64 were capable of outputting 16 colours drawn from a hard-coded palette.
It's clear that the palette size was fixed at 16 colours as a memory-...
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VisiCalc V1.0 is not working on modern computer as expected
I am trying to run Visicalc on the modern laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen.2). I created bootable flash drives with DOS 6.22 and Free DOS, booted from them and ran visicalc (vc.com file).
All ...
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What was the last terminal to include a physical bell?
Drew asks:
… what was the latest terminal produced which rang a physical bell rather than beeping through a speaker?
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Maximum current a GBA Game Pak can continuously draw
The GBA (specifically model AGB-001) uses a boost converter to power the Game Pak with a stable 3.3V from its batteries. The SP and Micro models use a buck-boost regulator to generate that same 3.3V. ...
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Is it possible to view hardware-reported device identifiers on Windows ME?
On Windows XP and later you can view OS device identifiers for a given hardware component in Device Manager; those often include hardware-reported device identifiers, like PCI vendor/product ID pairs.
...
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Is there something like Retr0bright but already made and trustworthy? [closed]
I have long wanted to clean up some old hardware to make it look new again. It really bothers me that it's all yellowed and depressing-looking.
However, https://retr0bright.com/ wants me to purchase ...
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What did game programmers and journalists mean by a "hardware trick"? [closed]
Recently, I've been hearing a good deal about hardware tricks. For instance, the YouTuber Ahoy (see A Brief History of Graphics) mentions that some game programmers resorted to "hardware tricks&...
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How did the Windows 95 'Add New Hardware Wizard' work?
I remember when Windows 95 came out and the 'Add New Hardware Wizard' seemed almost magical! It was able to detect a large amount of hardware on the COM ports and automatically install drivers. It was ...
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Why does MOS 6502 require an external clock if it has an internal oscillator?
I have a trouble understanding how the MOS 6502 clock works. Possibly due to my extremely low knowledge regarding electronics in general.
According to the Wikipedia:
MOS would introduce two ...
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Fire button of Timex TC/TS 2068 Joystick
These pages wos and timex.comboios.info suggest the fire button of the Timex TC/TS 2068 joystick is read at bit 4.
Input:
bit D0: up (0=active)
bit D1: down
bit D2: left
bit D3: ...
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Was there ever a monospace display system (eg terminal) that used a vertical cursor?
Related to my earlier question about IBM PC cursors, I am now wondering if there has ever been a monospaced character display system (such as a terminal) that would've implemented a vertical cursor in ...
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HP Photosmart 620 stuck formatting SD memory card
I am trying to resurrect a 20-year-old digital camera, an HP Photosmart 620. The plan is to turn it into a third grader’s first camera.
It powers on just fine and can take photos using its limited ...
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Windows NT drive recovery without ERD or backups
I have decided to take on this project to help another company that has been using a Windows NT system to run some of their critical field equipment.
Unfortunately there is now an error which appears ...
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Was there a hard disk type that had a SMART overflow crash/bug?
A data center employee told me a story about 25 years ago, explaining why that data center took some time to assemble a RAID array. Recently, I wasn't able to verify the facts by googling, and I may ...
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Information about the Hollywood Hardware Graphics Card for Apple II+
I still have a Hollywood Hardware graphics card that I used in my Apple II+ back-in-the-day. It was my understanding that this was the graphics card used for the special effects in the first three ...
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What would it take for a 6502 system to use an 8 bit ISA bus
I've built 6502 computer on an ISA card:
To access the bus it decodes the following 6502address ranges
$0200-$03FF mapped at I/O address $00200-003ff (IOR; IOW)
$4000-$BFFF mapped at ISA address $...
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I found an apple IIe without a power supply where can i find one [closed]
I found an apple IIe without a power supply where can i find one also any tips on where i can find other parts for it. Btw i know nothing about Retrocomputers.
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What is the history and development of memory caching?
I have tried to research the history and development of memory caching online, but I find it hard to find good information. Many resources online would have you believe caching was introduced with ...
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Why audio of Prince of Persia (1989) produce in CPU rather than audio speaker? [closed]
I used to play this Prince of Persia (1989) in Pentinum III computer.
But audio of Prince of Persia (1989) produce in CPU rather than audio speakers.
Why?
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If I build a new CPU architecture, how would an OS like Linux know how to run it? [closed]
I am trying to build a CPU from scratch (from NOR gates) in an emulator first, then on breadboard. (Inspired by nand2tetris and Ben Eater)
Just trying to understand how things work.
Now, as my CPU ...
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Were there any enhancement chips that vastly outperformed the main CPU?
Were there any enhancement chips in officially-released games that were CPUs themselves and which ran the game code itself, relegating the role of the main CPU to that of a thin client?
To elaborate, ...
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Why do computer rooms no longer have raised floors? [closed]
As I understand it, computer rooms in the days of mainframes and minicomputers, commonly had raised floors, so that the space under the floor could be used for power cables and cool air.
I'm not clear ...
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Why 18 expansion slots on the Altair 8800?
The Altair 8800 had a backplane with 18 connectors for S-100 cards. Why was the number 18 particularly chosen?
It is fairly common for a computer to have the number of expansion cards be a power of 2,...
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What did the Big Red Button actually do on the IBM 4341?
Wiktionary explains the origin of the term molly guard:
Originally a Plexiglas cover improvised for the Big Red Switch on an IBM 4341 mainframe after a programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) ...
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Did any 8-bit disk drive screen off the hardware? [closed]
The Commodore 1541 floppy drive was a separate computer in its own right, with its own 6502 CPU. It was designed that way because they were basically copying the design from the Vic, partly due to a ...
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How long did plasma displays persist?
I'm reading a book called The Friendly Orange Glow, about the PLATO multiuser computer system developed by the University of Illinois in the late sixties, which is fascinating at several levels as a ...
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Why are symmetric bi-directional communication port cables not always crossover cables?
There are a number of bi-directional communication port standards in which cables are used to connect two identical ports, and usually those connect each pin of one port to the same pin of the other ...
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Simulating a 8085 using a Z80?
I am studying the replacement of a 8085 with a Z80 (I am aware that they are not pin-compatible, the solution is to be made in a board of new design rather than on the old board). The sole reason is ...
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Who were the market for those "speed up your computer" shareware applications back in the day? [closed]
In the Swedish computer magazine PC Hemma ("Home PC") from February 1997 (p. 68), they included a floppy disk with shareware programs related to "trimming your PC", as well as a ...
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When was fixed page size, flexible assignment bank switching patented?
The 8-bit microprocessors invented in the seventies, had a 16-bit address space. It didn't take long for memory demand to exceed this, with the result that bank switching was a fact of life for the ...
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Why was computer memory so expensive and scarce?
Computer memory used to be a limited and expensive asset for a long while (for example, in computers with 16KiB RAM or less, compared to the 2 MiB of my first PC (an Intel 486) in 1995 and current day'...
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Why do Game Boy Colors not want nickel-cadmium batteries?
This is a page from the manual for the Game Boy Color:
There is no explanation as to why this is, or how this can be, but it claims that one must not use rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries.
Why is ...
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Looking for an 8-bit microcomputer with a hardware-accelerated database
In some old video on YouTube a few years ago, I noticed a curious computer from the end of the 70s - early 80s. In the rack (half height), typical of minicomputers of those years, there was a 14" ...
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Did ancillary LEDs trade arcade game design for manufacturing cost?
Looking at the 1974 arcade game Speed Race, I notice that the cabinet includes ancillary LEDs to show the scores.
https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=wide-flyer&db=videodb&id=4056&image=...
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Did any 6502-based system with cycle-stealing memory access steal the first available read, rather than asserting READY three cycles early?
On the 6502, the READY signal may be used to extend read cycles indefinitely, but will have no effect if asserted during write cycles. As a result, many devices that need to steal cycles from the CPU ...
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How is a bus request initiated on the VME bus?
I am looking into creating a multi-processor "VME-like" system as a challenge and "because why not". I say VME-like because it probably wont be a strict VMEbus implementation, but ...
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How did the classic Macintosh come to use Eurocard connectors?
Almost all of the mainstream classic desktop computers that had internal slots relied on the card-edge type of connector. The classic Macintosh computers were one exception to this "rule" (...
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Does 10BASE-T need more sophisticated electronics than 10BASE5/10BASE2?
In a discussion on the history of Ethernet and 10BASE5, Stefan Skoglund commented Was 10BASE5 a mistake?
One reason why 10BaseT became possible is Moores law (and the same for the other designs after ...
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What was the first Ethernet hub?
An Ethernet hub is – well, Wikipedia does an impeccable job of summarizing what it is:
An Ethernet hub, active hub, network hub, repeater hub, multiport repeater, or simply hub is a network hardware ...
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Was 10BASE5 a mistake?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE5 gives a succint but vivid description of the physical layer of the first version of Ethernet and its subsequent replacement:
10BASE5 (also known as thick ...
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When did 5.25″ floppies exceed the capacity of 8″?
When 5.25″ floppies were introduced, in the mid-to-late seventies, they would have had less capacity than the older 8″ because, well, less area on which to store data.
On the other hand, being cheaper ...
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Why did the TRS-80 CPU have priority over the display?
The original TRS-80 had a separate bank of static RAM for video memory, so that there would be no interference between display and CPU when the CPU was just doing calculations in main memory.
When it ...
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