8 ms·
Paper Models of Vintage Computers
- lisper 4y agoIf you like those, you'll love these: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/idf-set-1250made-by-ondra-alias-pips-rp-models-prmodels--853291460646201172/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/idf-set-1250made-by-ondra-alia...
- millerm 4y agoGoing from nostalgic innovative technology to war machines it’s not something I love. ‘Merica.
- magic_hamster 4y agoThese are fantastic. Maybe it's time to try it out!
- srott 4y agoCan some recommend a printer that won’t break apart after printing on a cardstock?
- smackeyacky 4y agoFirst good reason I've seen to head back into the office 1 day a week, to load up the office Xerox with card stock.
- acheron 4y agoI have a Brother laser printer that I got back in 2009-10 or something. It's never had a problem with cardstock, though I guess I've never thought about it. What problems do printers have with cardstock?
- convolvatron 4y agoI have an hp 2055. alot crappier build than the LJ4+ it replaced but aside from adding a little curl, its never had a problem with 0.02" card stock (what is that 125lbs? yes, stupid old units)
- srott 4y agoMy wife broke the paper feeder on a HP deskjet while trying to print on a heavier photo paper and the OfficeJet failed even loading it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dfox 4y agoOKI 3x2dn (the x in there essentially means the amount of paper trays). We had run thousands of A4 pages of cardstock through the thing printing atendee badges for our convention.
- bitwize 4y agoThese are so cute, and remind me of the cardboard fake computers furniture stores used to put on the desks they had out on display.
- cm2187 4y agoYou mean the Enron dealing room? https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1542190/Enrons-fake-dealing-room-revealed.html https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1542190/Enr...
- heleninboodler 4y agoI love that they even got the ridges on the top rear part of the commodore 1541 floppy drive, which have the nice property of resonating with a high pitched squeal when you drag your fingertips across them, annoying the hell out of your sister.
- harimau777 4y agoI bet these could be useful background props for low budget film makers. Sure, they aren't going to look like Hollywood sets but they would get the point across if someone needed to build a laboratory set on a shoestring budget.
- jader201 4y agoNo PC Jr. :( I loved my PC Jr. -- my first computer. Spent way too many hours on it, and the reason I do what I do today. Had a number of books on BASIC, and even upgraded the RAM from 128k to 256k (I may have even gotten it up to 512k)!
- heleninboodler 4y agoI had one of these too. The RAM upgrade was a game-console-style cartridge you plugged in one of two (I think) slots on the front of the machine. Edit: oh, and I forgot about the infrared wireless keyboard. So snazzy. [1] [1] http://www.computercloset.org/IBMPCjr.htm http://www.computercloset.org/IBMPCjr.htm
- jader201 4y agoI'm thinking mine was a hardware update, where the case had to be opened. I believe the company we bought it from did the upgrade.
- spc476 4y agoThere were two memory upgrades. The first was a card that plugged into the motherboard. The other one was an expansion module that plugged into the side of the computer (and multiple of those could be used). My PCjr had 384k of RAM, using both the internal upgrade and one sidecar. I never bothered using the keyboard wirelessly. The cable was good enough and it saved on batteries. I was fortunate in that I had the revised keyboard, not the original chiclet keyboard.
- s1mon 4y agoAs much as it was the slowest turd of a PC ever, I do have a soft spot for it since it was my first "real" computer. It would need to be running Crossfire on a cartridge. I'm also sad to not see a ZX81. And a TRS Model III but not a Model I?
- neilv 4y agoThe paper model of the Mac 128K reminds me... Paper models (cars, emergency vehicles) were one of the first things I made on that original Mac. (I might've made a fake newspaper first.)
- AntiRush 4y agoI had a HyperCard stack of paper airplane designs that I must have printed hundreds of times. A cursory search didn’t turn it up and I have no idea where it came from. Maybe it’s lost to time.
- codetrotter 4y agoThis is probably not the one, but here is something I came across that seems a bit more limited and different from the thing you are describing. https://archive.org/details/hypercard_wingmaker1 https://archive.org/details/hypercard_wingmaker1
- AntiRush 4y agoThis is a cool stack, thank you. It’s not the one I remember, but I’m enjoying it nonetheless.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoFor me, cassette mix-tape label inserts.
- rbanffy 4y agoI love these things. One project I'd love if some museum did would be to 3D scan important artifacts as precisely as feasible so we could duplicate them. Of course, to make paper models we'd need to simplify those models a lot, but the possibility of printing replacement parts for irreplaceable computers would be an immense service to preservation. Who could fund such a project?
- hemmert 4y agoBeautiful!
- jdontillman 4y agoDisappointed; no KL10.
- rahen 4y agoI would have gone personally for the KI10, but the KA10 is arriving: https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-10/c/XVM2BcrFHZI https://groups.google.com/g/pidp-10/c/XVM2BcrFHZI It's been on my waiting list for years.
- stuart78 4y agoLove these, but wish they weren't posted to Scribd. I'd rather pay $0.99 each than have to sign up for whatever that product is trying to sell me.
- thesh4d0w 4y agoThe link at the top of the home page has them all for free - https://archive.org/details/amiga-500-new-art-ver1_202210/Classic%20Computer%20Papercrafts/Amstrad-CPC-264-Papercraft-Ver-2/ https://archive.org/details/amiga-500-new-art-ver1_202210/Cl...
- stuart78 4y agoOh that is awesome, must have missed it, thanks for the catch!
- causality0 4y agoSeeing these always makes me wish there were RPi enclosures that let you build working mini versions of these classic computers. There's something very comfy to me about the idea of playing a text adventure game on a tiny IBM 5100 or HP 85.
- watmough 4y agoYou mean like this? https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11 https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/pidp-11
- causality0 4y agoRight, except for the models I'm interested in, and hopefully for less than $270.
- abeyer 4y agoIf you're ok w/ 3d printing them, there are a ton of models on all the free model sharing sites of various computers... most wouldn't need much work to accomodate a pi or something even if they weren't originally designed for that. If you want something actually nicely injection molded like the PiDPs (which are well worth the price imho, if you're interested in them) I don't know that you're going to find a better deal. I suspect it's too niche a product to scale to being economical at lower prices.
- causality0 4y ago3D-printed would be fine, except those are just statues. Aside from mounting points and IO holes for the Pi, models for an actual enclosure would need to be subtly adjusted so the holes for the keyboard and screen match up with available off the shelf components to add in.
- abeyer 4y agoThere are quite a few options that already accommodate a pi, if you don't want to customize... see my other comment upthread for a couple, but that's just the ones I happened to have bookmarked, there are a _lot_ of results if you just search for pi cases on thingiverse or something.
- timsneath 4y agoThese are simply adorable. I want to make this my weekend project. Does anyone have tips for this? What cardstock should I use? Is there a particular weight that is best suited for projects like this?
- JKCalhoun 4y agoIf you want to do better than "copy paper" you could run heavier stock paper through a color laser printer. In my poor, college days, I would have entertained chopping a manila folder to Letter size and running it through the straight-feeder of a Color Laser-jet.
- Oxidation 4y agoI literally just printed on 220gsm card in a laser printer's feed tray today. Worked great. Before I had a pack of card, I was indeed cutting up manila folders. I only had ugly colours (that's a rule for manila folders, apparently) so it wasn't ideal, but it worked well in a structural sense for what I was up to.
- TacticalCoder 4y agoThe 5"1/4 floppy disk next to the Commodore 1541 disk drive with "Bruce Lee" manually written on it just cracks me up. I've spent countless hours on that game on the C64 :)
- riidom 4y agoIs the depiction of Elite on the BBC Microcomputer correct? Afair, the models were all see-through wireframes.
- tom_ 4y agoHidden lines were removed though only on a per model basis. EDIT: But you don't have to believe me! You can visit https://bbc.godbolt.org/ https://bbc.godbolt.org/ and see BBC Micro Elite running in an emulator. Do a Shift+F12 at the BBC Microcomputer 32K prompt to boot the disk. Also check out https://www.bbcelite.com/ https://www.bbcelite.com/ (previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34852219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34852219) for all the code you can eat.
- NikkiA 4y agoIIRC it did hidden line removal on the BBC if you had the second processor, and non-removal on a plain BBC. I can't remember if the required 2nd proc for elite was a Z80 or another 6502 though; a part of my brain remembers it as needing the Z80, but that sounds like it'd be weird.
- foruhar 4y agoBeautiful work. Even more impressive is the fact that it looks like you didn't spend much time in the UK and you have some classic British boxes. Glad to see you did the "calculator" keyboard on the PET rather than the later more conventional keyboard. Would like suggest the ZX-80 and the Research Machines 380X. Some of the early Sun, Interlisp, Xerox, and SGI machines would be fun if you wanted to venture in an adjacent direction, as would a scale PDP-11. Very well done!
- winstonprivacy 4y agoTRS-80 Model I???
- sizzzzlerz 4y agoBeautiful work. They bring back fond memories of my first company after college. They had a computer lab available for after-hours learning/play stocked with a number of these computers including the Apple II, the IBM PC, the ZX-80, the Pet, and some weird computer by a company named Cromemco. Lost a ton of hours there.
- notjes 4y agook I am firing up the xerox machine damnit
- arnonejoe 4y agowould love to see an Atari 800.
- thundergolfer 4y agoIf you like this, you may also like these: - https://www.docubyte.com/projects/i-am-a-computer/ https://www.docubyte.com/projects/i-am-a-computer/ - https://www.docubyte.com/projects/guide-to-computing/ https://www.docubyte.com/projects/guide-to-computing/
- DonHopkins 4y agoOf course there's Alan Kay's cardboard model of the Dynabook. >From: Don Hopkins >Re: Wooden Dynabook model? >I have a vague recollection of seeing a photo of a wooden model of a Dynabook. Or maybe it was chocolate. >Was there really such a thing? Could you please point me at any photos and stories about it, if so? >From: Alan Kay >The original model I made was done in cardboard. I gave it to Jack Goldman, the funder of Parc. https://donhopkins.com/home/DynabookModel1.jpg https://donhopkins.com/home/DynabookModel1.jpg >And here's a much later one I did for the Computer History Museum. https://donhopkins.com/home/DynabookModel2.jpg https://donhopkins.com/home/DynabookModel2.jpg Alan Kay's Dynabook -- Rare NHK video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36NNGzNvjo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36NNGzNvjo >In 1968, Alan Kay outlined the Dynabook, calling it a "children's computer." The device was never made commercially, but he made a model out of cardboard. In this 2002 Japanese Documentary (NHK Japan), he shows this model. Alan Kay's papers: https://web.archive.org/web/20060106124621/http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook https://web.archive.org/web/20060106124621/http://thinkubato... A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages; Alan Kay - 1972 (PDF) https://web.archive.org/web/20060209043851/http://www.mprove.de/diplom/gui/Kay72a.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20060209043851/http://www.mprove... File:Alan Kay and the prototype of the Dynabook (3009206205).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alan_Kay_and_the_prototype_of_the_Dynabook_(3009206205).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alan_Kay_and_the_pro... Dynabook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook American computer pioneer Alan Kay’s concept, the Dynabook, was published in 1972. How come Steve Jobs and Apple iPad get the credit for tablet invention? https://www.quora.com/American-computer-pioneer-Alan-Kay-s-concept-the-Dynabook-was-published-in-1972-How-come-Steve-Jobs-and-Apple-iPad-get-the-credit-for-tablet-invention/answer/Alan-Kay-11 https://www.quora.com/American-computer-pioneer-Alan-Kay-s-c...
- Koshkin 4y agoThey don’t have to be just paper, you could put a Raspberry Pi Pico inside any of them. Thinking of a model of an IBM System 360 now.
- titzer 4y agoThat is really cool! With the size of mini LCD displays these days, it might even possible to make one with a working screen. Ironically, microcontrollers are so powerful today, a tiny embedded board could actually be more powerful than the original.
- paulpauper 4y agoand then play Doom on it , of course
- swimfar 4y agoEven an ESP32 is probably more powerful than every single one of those computers, with the exception of the GameCube. You can emulate NES games on that micro-controller.
- dfox 4y agoOk, there is GameCube as a “vintage computer”, I'm getting old and probably I should seek some kind of product that would die my beard gray…
- rahen 4y agoWhen I read "vintage computers", I thought about the usual IBM 1401, 360s and DEC-10. In fact he meant microcomputers. Getting old too, I guess.
- bhauer 4y agoFantastic. The Atari ST was such a beautiful machine for its time. It still looks great today, with those diagonal lines and that crisp gray color, among a sea of beige peers.
- pkdpic 4y agoSuch an amazing project. I used these as inspiration / reference for a set of analogue clay sculptures that turned into concrete / wax / resin casts a while ago. I always meant to mail a set to rocky bergen as thanks. Such a fun chapter of my life. They took forever. I spent a lot of time with those wonderful paper models. https://tombetthauser.github.io/computerbuddies/ https://tombetthauser.github.io/computerbuddies/
- jimbobimbo 4y agoWow, this brings memories... When I was a kid in ex-USSR, I've spent enormous amount of time gluing together things resembling PCs and some of the house AV equipment! Very crude, not alike the ones on these pictures, mind you. My dad had noticed and bought me a real ZX-80 first, then some one of the ex-USSR PC knock offs ("Poisk-1" if that makes any sense to you), then the real DX-4 100 MHz PC! Wild times!
- aquaz 4y agoI did the same thing when I was little. I used to draw computers, peripherals, keyboards, mice. Often based on what I saw in computer magazines, books or on television.
- 2dvisio 4y agoAmazing project. Scrolled to see if they had the Olivetti M24 machine in there. Would have been the ultimate nostalgia.
- opisthenar84 4y agoI died a little inside when I saw the GameCube listed. Surprised it's considered vintage now.
- pugworthy 4y agoAnd for those wanting vintage models of paper computers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDR_paper_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDR_paper_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_Computation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARDboard_Illustrative_Aid_to_...
- NikkiA 4y agoThe amiga 500 looks much more like the 'rare' Commodore B128 (not a typo) to me for some reason.
- zoom6628 4y agoThis is so cool.
- ofrzeta 4y agoThis reminds me of the work of Thomas Demand, although he only builds the paper models for the purpose of creating a photographic image (and destroying the models after that). https://flash---art.com/article/thomas-demand/ https://flash---art.com/article/thomas-demand/
- Animats 4y agoThose remind me of the dummy computers sometimes seen in office furniture stores .
- weinzierl 4y agoI'd love to see a behind-the-scenes about how these models are made.
- varjag 4y agoGreat touch with baked beans next to ZX Spectrum.
- arketyp 4y agoIs that a reference to something?
- avian 4y agoOff-topic, but damn are googles and bings of today useless finding weird shit like this. Try searching some variation of "baked beans" and "sinclair spectrum". It's like every time I tried searching for a combination of <hugely popular/monetizable term> and <niche term>. It ends up ignoring the niche term. Pluses and quotes be damned, we'll give you ten million sponsored recipes for baked beans! What happened to the IDF part of TFIDF?
- antirez 4y agoRelated: I released a few models of vintage computers to be 3D printed. Commodore PET: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4974963 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4974963 and BBC micro: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4974343 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4974343. I modelled basically almost any computer that was famous back then, but most of the models I gave to a friend of mine to print and sell over Etsy, during covid job losing drama.
- geekraver 4y agoNo Acorn Atom. ZX80 or ZX81, or Sinclair QL. All that I owned before a PC. :-( But these are awesome.