4 ms·

Perhaps an alternate ROM, memory upgrade, 80 column or lowercase board, graphics upgrade, or??? I wonder! Radio Shack (and Apple, for that matter) actually mad

Perhaps an alternate ROM, memory upgrade, 80 column or lowercase board, graphics upgrade, or??? I wonder! Radio Shack (and Apple, for that matter) actually made schematics for their computers available, enabling people to potentially repair or modify their own machines – and this was actually practical because of the discrete (and often off-the-shelf), through-hole soldered components. Talk about "right to repair!" Personally I'd feel a bit queasy potentially bricking a $2700 computer, but then again you could also possibly replace a component if you damaged it. I think Apple and IBM also included firmware listings. In general vintage PCs seem to be very hacker-friendly, and they're also simple enough so that you can understand the entire system. The closest thing now might be something like an Arduino or bare-metal programming on a Raspberry Pi.

smackeyacky 5y ago
Pi's are fun but they don't really have the spirit of those 8 bit machines. For starters it's way too powerful compared to those machines. Some of the machines had communities (offline!) who flat out encouraged hardware hacking, from simple things like piggybacking EPROMs and switching them with a toggle switch (as above) right up to hacking together sound processors. Often the documentation was non-existent so curious hackers would trace all the lines on whatever expansion was available and document it themselves. This was generally on the "also ran" computers (thinking specifically of the Australian Microbee) since expensive US things like Apple 2 or TRS-80 were mostly unaffordable here. If you want the real deal, the closest thing would be single board kit computers based around a Z80 or a 6502.
- musicale 5y ago
  There are a lot of Z80 and 6502 fans on HN - I seem to see articles every week or so that are connected to one or the other. There is definitely something appealing about the simplicity of 8-bit computing.

smackeyacky 5y ago

Pi's are fun but they don't really have the spirit of those 8 bit machines. For starters it's way too powerful compared to those machines. Some of the machines had communities (offline!) who flat out encouraged hardware hacking, from simple things like piggybacking EPROMs and switching them with a toggle switch (as above) right up to hacking together sound processors. Often the documentation was non-existent so curious hackers would trace all the lines on whatever expansion was available and document it themselves. This was generally on the "also ran" computers (thinking specifically of the Australian Microbee) since expensive US things like Apple 2 or TRS-80 were mostly unaffordable here. If you want the real deal, the closest thing would be single board kit computers based around a Z80 or a 6502.

musicale 5y ago
There are a lot of Z80 and 6502 fans on HN - I seem to see articles every week or so that are connected to one or the other. There is definitely something appealing about the simplicity of 8-bit computing.