Should you discover it troublesome to think about something good popping out of the last decade that gave us shag carpeting, lime inexperienced furnishings, disco music, and copious physique hair, then you’re forgetting about private computing. The machines of the time have been odd and archaic by in the present day’s requirements, however the Seventies did give delivery to now traditional machines just like the Apple I and Commodore PET. There was much more to see than simply CB radios and pet rocks!
The circuit board design (📷: Alexandra Bastet Stehr)
{Hardware} hacker Alexandra Bastet Stehr shouldn’t be sufficiently old to have skilled the Seventies firsthand, however is obsessive about the computer systems of the period all the identical. However 50-plus years on, and with many of those machines having restricted manufacturing runs again within the day, they are often exhausting to come back by. A jive turkey may lay down and quit, however Stehr was groovy sufficient to do one thing about this downside.
Emulation alone isn’t sufficient to scratch that retro itch, so Stehr designed and constructed a far-out machine to run the emulators on. Not solely is that this only a cooler option to compute, however it additionally supplies for energy administration, interfacing with exterior units, and SD card storage. And as you may count on, there are some blinkenlights and clicky buttons thrown in for good measure.
Groovy! (📷: Alexandra Bastet Stehr)
How does this groovy thriller machine work? Glad you requested. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi Pico improvement board, which provides it some good choices for emulation. Instruments corresponding to Pico_1140 and Z80-MBC2, as an example, enable the board to emulate machines just like the DEC PDP11/40, Apple 1, and generic Z80 architectures. However don’t count on a elaborate GUI. That is the 70s, man! As a substitute, you can see a pleasant text-based interface included within the mission.
The mission continues to be within the early levels of improvement, however Stehr is planning to finally launch the supply code and design recordsdata within the close to future. Kits may be obtainable quickly if you wish to save your self a while.
