Questions tagged [hardware]
Retro hardware generally: boards, extension cards, power supplies, peripherals. Use more specific tags as appropriate; use [case] instead for enclosures.
532
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Why was manual branch suggestion abandoned?
Once pipelined CPUs became common, a common issue arrived as a result of taking the wrong branch of a conditional jump, and thus needing to flush the pipeline. As a result branch prediction mechanisms ...
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What is purpose of the “CH” button and “CH” switch position on this calculator?
What is purpose of the CH button and CH switch position on the Omron Elite 8002 Taschen-Rechner?
(For those who don't know German, “Taschen-Rechner” just means “calculator”.)
The switch has three ...
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How did Apple IIc daughtercard expansions work?
I've been doing a lot of reading about the ways Apple IIc owners expanded their machines in the absence of the IIe's slots, and it's very intriguing stuff. The ones that I'm most curious about are the ...
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What was the first control display unit with selector keys around the display?
If not the first, then the one that became popular first (in any application; this is not limited to aviation systems).
A control display unit, CDU for short, is fairly common in aviation, perhaps ...
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What kind of graphics hardware did Nichibutsu's 1985 arcade game "MagMax" use?
The arcade game MagMax by Nichibutsu came out in 1985 and features for its time an impressive 3D scrolling effect which, in my observation, is not widely discussed yet, although it should be ...
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What was the price of a Winchester-Drive for the HP-85 desktop computer back in 1980?
I wrote my first computer programs in HP-Basic on a HP-85 desktop computer. The year was 1980 and we stored our programs on special "high-speed" cassette tapes. I remember proposing to buy a ...
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How was the real-time clock implemented in the original IBM PC and PC/XT?
I know that the IBM PC/AT added a battery backed real-time clock chip that independently maintained time whether the system was powered or not. I've also seen many of those big DS1287 clock chips on ...
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In what ways was the Soviet Strela computer "designed to function during a nuclear winter"? Or at least parts of it?
From Strela computer:
Strela computer (Russian: ЭВМ Стрела, arrow) was the first mainframe computer manufactured serially in the Soviet Union, beginning in 1953.
This first-generation computer had ...
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Quadram odd IBM PC card bracket
I came across an early IBM PC ISA realtime clock/calendar card made by Quadram called the "Chronograph" (picture). It's basically the same clock feature they incorporated into their ...
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Did the original Japanese Tamagotchi device really die *completely* (forever) if the digital pet died? [closed]
Ever since 1997, I've had this "factoid" in my head that the original release of Tamagotchi in Japan had no "reset" feature, and you could not remove the batteries to reset it ...
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How do I terminate an ISA bus correctly?
I am stuck by designing a 8 Slot 16 Bit ISA Backplane
Do I have to terminate an ISA bus?
My search results are:
No termination at all
Some homebrew projects use active termination for all signals
...
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2
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How many kinds of mass-producible ROM is avaliable before 1970? [duplicate]
Back in the days before mask ROM (when invented?) we got core rope memories, or Little Old Ladies memories, which required lots of human labor to build.
Were there any kinds of ROMs which were ...
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Why did the Rumble Pak for the Nintendo 64 require batteries when it actually apparently doesn't?
After watching this video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyJsOoQKRjQ
I'm wondering what the whole deal was with the batteries. Apparently, you can resolder the circuit board inside the ...
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Were there low-end eighties computers that used dual-ported video RAM?
Going through schematics of several home or small office computers of the era, I was wondering why almost none of them (1) used dual-ported video RAM. I understand that those chips were initaly ...
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Z80 - "LD (nn), dd" command cycle [closed]
For a university assignment, I have to describe and draw the command cycle of the LD (nn), dd command. To be exact, I was given this command:
LD (0x1000), BC
which I interpret as putting the low ...
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Did the PDP-8 designers consider a stack?
The PDP-8 was a remarkable exercise in minimalist computer design; some of the aspects of its design are discussed in detail at PDP-8 transistor count
One feature it did not have was a stack. Instead, ...
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What was the rationale behind 32-bit computer architectures?
Though today various power-of-2 word sizes seems to be the norm, back in the 50-60s multiple-of-6 word sizes was more popular and was required by Department of Defense(DOD) in particular.
36-bit ...
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How did the "Programmer's Switch" work on early Macintosh Computers?
The early Apple Macintosh computers (original Mac, Mac 512K, Mac Plus) all came with a "Programmer's Switch" installed on the side. I believe this persisted for a long time, with the switch ...
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How can I tell if my old PC supports > 137 GB hard drives?
I have an old PC from 1999 that has an ASUS P5A motherboard. When I power it on, it says ASUS P5A ACPI BIOS Revision 1011 Beta 005 and 05/02/2002-ALADDIN5-<<P5A>>:
I recently read that up ...
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Were any vacuum tube computers built with wire wrap?
I'm trying to gain some understanding of how early computers were built; as discussed in What accounted for the cost of ENIAC? the cost of first-generation computers was not necessarily mostly about ...
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What accounted for the cost of ENIAC?
I'm used to the fact that first-generation computers were very expensive, which I had always assumed was because they contained large numbers of vacuum tubes, each of which is a rather complex, high ...
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How many 6SN7 tubes did it take to store a bit?
One of the most important components of a computer is a circuit called a flip-flop, which has two stable states (that it can flip-flop between, hence the name); it is used for temporary storage of a ...
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1
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8088 CPU A16-A19 address lines go crazy with nop test after 0FFFF address
I'm building a minimal, minimum mode 8088 computer. I started with an 80C88-2 (CMOS, static variant) CPU. My configuration is really simple. One CPU, one 74HCT245 (DTR->DT/R) for the data lines, ...
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Could early computers use existing punch card machines?
In the early decades of the industry, computers used punch cards for data storage and transmission, partly because they were already widely used for pre-computer data processing; indeed, a major ...
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How many transistors in the CDC 1604?
The CDC 1604, released in 1960, was Seymour Cray's first supercomputer, and also one of the first computers made of transistors. (The IBM 7090 was released only the previous year.)
How many ...
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Were vertical monitor arcade games programmed differently from those with horizontal monitors?
Many classic arcade games like Pac Man (Namco 1980), Assault (Namco 1988), Mercs (Capcom 1990), etc, use a monitor oriented vertically. I assume that they used the same physical hardware, with the ...
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Hardware assisted Graphical User Interface?
I have read a fiction novel in which a manufacturer in the 80s provided GUI by adding a dedicated drawing hardware besides videocard or by extending videocard.
Fictional as it is, is this possible or ...
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How did the Altair ensure that the −5 V supply was the first connected and last disconnected?
The Wikipedia page for the Intel 8080 processor describes pin 11 as
The −5 V power supply. This must be the first power source connected and the last disconnected, otherwise the processor will be ...
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How were the popular CPUs of the eighties implemented? [closed]
With the ubiquity of FPGAs, I find it relatively easy to design an eighties-like CPU. But it's maybe too simple now, with so many ways to implement any given CPU unit.
What were the hardware ...
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What were the different RAM refresh techniques in the 80s
I've looked at some techniques that were used at the beginning of the eighties to refresh the RAM (CPU-based refresh for the Z80, or the use of the video circuit for computers that shared the bus ...
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How did the Apple IIGS automatically slow 5.25 inch disk I/O code for backwards compatability?
Apple II software often used hard-coded timing for 5.25 inch floppy disk I/O, for example to control the duration of each track step or the rate at which bytes are written and read from the disk. ...
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CPU frequency / memory wait states at end of the 80s
According to the advertisements of the late eighties, you could find RAM having an access time ranging from 120 to 80 ns (150 to 210 cycle times). A 386SX-25 could execute a typical register to ...
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What was the last personal computer to have the chips neatly arranged in rows and columns?
Once upon a time, the chips on the circuit boards of personal computers1 were arranged in a tidy grid pattern. Observe the board of the Apple ][+:
Or the Commodore 128:
Sadly, the zen of neat rows ...
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What was the first computer board to be wave-soldered?
The Wikipedia article on wave soldering does not give any information on its history. What was the first computer circuit board to use this process?
I am specifically looking for computers that were ...
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Which Mac models included a software visible DSP chip
Which Mac models included a DSP chip that could be accessed by regular application code? (e.g. not hidden inside the mouse, WiFi chip, disk read/write chip, GPU, etc.)
Did they ship before or after ...
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Were there ever plans published, or kits, or a machine made, for a noughts-and-crosses computer game which did not use electronics? [closed]
Were there ever plans published, or kits, or a machine made, for a noughts-and-crosses computer game which did not use electronics – using only wire, an electricity source, and light bulbs ?
. A ...
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How do I setup this Kickstart switcher?
I can not find any documentation for this Kickstart switcher.
It's labeled LS A9211-3 © FH 1992.
How must the jumpers J1 and J2 be set and where must the KB and RES lines be connected to?
I want to ...
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Config information on ancient 16-bit Multi I/O card
I need to build a retro machine so that I can access an HDD that required manual input of BIOS parameters. (Yes, I have that information.)
The only ID I can find is ES1O/4A 280695 which yields nothing ...
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What's wrong with SNES original controller's shoulder buttons?
This is probably a hardware-related question.
I have recently bought a total of 7 (seven) different original SNES controllers from different sources, all of them being somewhat used but mostly ...
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When does an IBM-compatible PC keyboard controller dequeue scancodes?
There is a not-unheard-of technique in DOS software to detect certain keypresses (like Ctrl+Break) by intercepting the keyboard interrupt (IRQ 1) and reading the scancode directly from the keyboard ...
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How would toggling a bit in the POWCNT1 register cause hardware damage on the Nintendo DS?
From GBATEK, writes to a certain I/O port for power management may damage hardware:
4000304h - NDS9 - POWCNT1 - Graphics Power Control Register (R/W)
0 Enable Flag for both LCDs (0=Disable) (...
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How did the Nova 1200 divide so quickly?
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova
The Nova 1200 executed core memory access instructions (LDA and STA) in 2.55 microseconds (μs). Use of read-only memory saved 0.4 μs. ...
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Why was the VT05 resolution 72×20?
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT05
the VT05 presented the user with an upper-case only ASCII character display of 20 rows by 72 columns.
At first glance this seems a reasonably natural ...
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Modern heat sinks for Commodore C64/C128
The VIC-II and SID chips in the C64/128 are prone to over-heating and are rather expensive to replace nowadays. Some other ICs in these machines may have the same issue.
An unmodified machine includes ...
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What to do with stone age x86 computers? [closed]
Not sure if retro is proper place... I have two old notebooks with x86 processors in the 100s range of MHz. While nostalgics might appreciate them, I'm wondering if there is any proper point in ...
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What was the DRAM refresh interval on early microcomputers?
Dynamic RAM is denser than static RAM, but needs to be refreshed every few milliseconds to avoid losing data. How many milliseconds, exactly? If the answer has changed over time, then I'm interested ...
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3
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1
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Did the Nintendo S-SMP really contain 3 million transistors?
According to http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=S-SMP
The S-SMP (perhaps: Sony - Sound & Music Processor?) is the audio CPU used by the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It consists of ...
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1
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Player 1 / Player 2 input for Space Invaders
According to the Computer Archeology page on Space Invaders, port 1 presents "player 1's shoot/left/right" input to the CPU, whereas port 2 presents player 2. Playing around the code in an ...
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Why did the Vic-20 need special chips for I/O?
The Vic-20 used two 6522 VIA chips for I/O. I asked why it had two of them but thanks to a comment from Bruce Abbott, I now think that wasn't quite the question I needed to ask.
What I really need to ...
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