Childhood memories. I had several of these Radio Shack X-in-one kits growing up, where you page through hundreds of projects and build them by connecting wires through little springs.

To be honest, I did not learn much circuit theory building these. But it sure planted the bug for being interested in electronics, and eventually computers

I was saying the other day on mastodon that I'd love to see these come back but as an arduino-compatible kit. Like microcontroller in the middle with the little springs instead of headers, then a bunch of components around it that you could wire up for projects.

Kits like these are where I got my start. I was stealing them from my brother by the time I was 7. The theory they tried to teach never really made it through to me, but they are where I learned the names of different components, their schematic symbols, how to read their values. I learned the truth tables for all the basic logic gates. I learned how to read and follow schematics, and even draw some of my own.

They were an excellent starting point, a sandbox for learning the basics.

These days, I still may not quite understand the theory, but all the projects I have built and shared here over the past several years were built on the foundation provided by these kits.

And I would have killed for one with a programmable microcontroller at its core.

They are already selling data to midjourney, and it's very likely your work is already being used to train their models because you have to OPT OUT of this, not opt in. Very scummy of them to roll this out unannounced.

here's some instructions for anyone who doesn't know how to opt out:

you will have to do this individually for each sideblog you have too, no way to do it for each account in one go

Have fun with your 25 bytes of RAM.  You heard me.

There was a time when a compact microcontroller development board was a novel concept.  The Parallax BASIC Stamp 1 was 1992′s answer to the problem. 

When I was a child, I used to daydream about all the things I could build if I had the things in the Radio Shack catalog (I mean, I still do, but I did then too).

This tiny microcontroller was high on my list.

Imagine the things I could build if I could program them to do things! Robots and submarines and alarms and cartoonish spy gear and ..

The possibilities were endless.

There was just one catch — programming required a computer, and computers were expensive.

I did eventually get a Parallax Propeller development board. It was long after Arduino had taken over that market segment and Radio Shack was closing all their stores.

... But it just wasn't the same.

This miniature board, with its 9V battery contacts and tiny prototyping area, just holds the imagination the way only something you daydream about as a child can.

Perhaps some day I should dig one up and finally build that robot I always wanted.

Normally I avoid posting ruined, destroyed machines because I find it too damned depressing, and I don't want to share that on here.

However, this is a case of a particularly uncommon and sought after SOL-20 machine, and it's probably fixable by someone who knows what they're doing. Metal cases can be stripped and repainted. Wood can be refinished, or replaced. Ruined case badges can be replicated. Plastic keys can be cleaned. Circuit boards can be de-funked. Circuits can be tested and individual components can be replaced. This machine will run again, in the right hands.

There's a whole community of folks who see this as a challenge worth tackling, and sharing that knowledge with others to preserve pieces of history like this.

There's a little demonstration some friends of ours did over the past few years to show just how much abuse some of these old machines can take, and still be brought back to life in skilled hands — or even not-so-skilled hands.

https://hackaday.com/2024/01/23/crusty-the-story-of-the-mac-se-that-could/

At first glance, the story of Crusty might sound horrible — intentionally exposing a functioning vintage computer to the elements? Buried for months, left to rot in a pond??

The point here is — even after all that, poor Crusty still powered up. Its CPU still ran code. There is still hope for getting it running again.

It just takes someone who cares enough to give it a shot. Someone willing to learn.

Under all that dirt in the original photo is still a beautiful SOL-20 computer. It still has lessons it can teach to anyone who takes the time to listen.

Just because it looks a little, well, crusty, doesn't mean it's beyond hope of repair.

If you've come across a machine like this that's seen some hard times and want to learn how to breathe new life into it, I would recommend checking out Adrian's Digital Basement on YouTube. [Adrian Black] has some wonderful deep-dives into the troubleshooting process — how to identify what parts actually failed, instead of replacing parts and hoping for the best — and he shows how to do it with cheap, readily accessible tools.

And if you get stumped or realize it's beyond your current abilities to repair, as @commodorez said there is a whole community of us who get excited at the opportunity to restore these machines and teach a new generation the lessons they have for us.

fun fact: in the UK, they used JANET Name Registration Scheme (NRS) through the 80s and early 90s, instead of the Domain Name System (DNS), which is what the internet works now. This is basically the same as how domain names work today... except they were BACKWARDS.

NRS started with the top level domain (TLD), then the domain, then any subdomains.

So if the UK has stuck with their old naming scheme and it had caught on instead of the american DNS, you'd be reading this on com.tumblr.www

This is something that's always bothered me about DNS. To me it just makes more sense for things to be ordered from least to most specific.

I guess it's a throwback from my journalism days, where news stories are written broadly to start, and add more specific details as the article progresses (inverted pyramid).

Dates in YYYYMMDD format sort easily with just a simple numeric comparison.

TLD.Server.Service formats the hierarchical information in the order we read it.

But now we have this horrible convention where we use DNS, which is ordered least-to-most specific, and then tack on a file path ordered most-to-least specific.

... and don't even get me started on American date formatting

Highly recommend buying your own domain and building a stupid little website

The eTower 600is was a particularly low-end model, shipping with only 32MB of RAM for $400* in 2001. I had the similar, but older and slightly less low-end eTower 566irx which shipped with 64MB of RAM for $800* in 2000. I'm betting they have the same motherboard, just different overall system configuration.

Can confirm — it was not a good experience running 98SE on it, and I'm sure ME would have been even worse.

But, with the max 256MB of RAM installed, it actually ran 2000 rather well. It also did well as an Ubuntu server in the v4/v5 days.

It didn't do so well with earlier releases of XP, but it's ok with SP3.

But yes, the "Never Obsolete Sleeper" has been done to death already.

* eMachines never actually advertised the real price of the system, just the "after rebates" price

seriously, though. i work in higher education, and part of my job is students sending me transcripts. you'd think the ones who have the least idea how to actually do that would be the older ones, and while sure, they definitely struggle with it, i see it most with the younger students. the teens to early 20s crowd.

very, astonishingly often, they don't know how to work with .pdf documents. i get garbage phone screenshots, sometimes inserted into an excel or word file for who knows what reason, but most often it's just a raw .jpg or other image file.

they definitely either don't know how to use a scanner, don't have access to one, or don't even know where they might go for that (staples and other office supply stores sometimes still have these services, but public libraries always have your back, kids.) so when they have a paper transcript and need to send me a copy electronically, it's just terrible photos at bad angles full of thumbs and text-obscuring shadows.

mind bogglingly frequently, i get cell phone photos of computer screens. they don't know how to take a screenshot on a computer. they don't know the function of the Print Screen button on the keyboard. they don't know how to right click a web page, hit "print", and choose "save as PDF" to produce a full and unbroken capture of the entirety of a webpage.

sometimes they'll just copy the text of a transcript and paste it right into the message of an email. that's if they figure out the difference between the body text portion of the email and the subject line, because quite frankly they often don't.

these are people who in most cases have done at least some college work already, but they have absolutely no clue how to utilize the attachment function in an email, and for some reason they don't consider they could google very quickly for instructions or even videos.

i am not taking a shit on gen z/gen alpha here, i'm really not.

what i am is aghast that they've been so massively failed on so many levels. the education system assumed they were "native" to technology and needed to be taught nothing. their parents assumed the same, or assumed the schools would teach them, or don't know how themselves and are too intimidated to figure it out and teach their kids these skills at home.

they spend hours a day on instagram and tiktok and youtube and etc, so they surely know (this is ridiculous to assume!!!) how to draft a formal email and format the text and what part goes where and what all those damn little symbols means, right? SURELY they're already familiar with every file type under the sun and know how to make use of whatever's salient in a pinch, right???

THEY MUST CERTAINLY know, innately, as one knows how to inhale, how to type in business formatting and formal communication style, how to present themselves in a way that gets them taken seriously by formal institutions, how to appear and be competent in basic/standard digital skills. SURELY. Of course. RIGHT!!!!

it's MADDENING, it's insane, and it's frustrating from the receiving end, but even more frustrating knowing they're stumbling blind out there in the digital spaces of grown-up matters, being dismissed, being considered less intelligent, being talked down to, because every adult and system responsible for them just

ASSUMED they should "just know" or "just figure out" these important things no one ever bothered to teach them, or half the time even introduce the concepts of before asking them to do it, on the spot, with high educational or professional stakes.

kids shouldn't have to supplement their own education like this and get sneered and scoffed at if they don't.

I have been actively fighting this problem in education for over a decade. I work as an elementary school assistant. Every year, I point out the kids’ skill gaps to their teachers and beg them to teach the kids how technology works. All but one of those teachers has scoffed and insisted that the kids will magically figure it out, and/or that their middle/high school teachers will teach them those skills.

Meanwhile, they are already expecting the kids to write competently in google docs on their ipads in 3rd grade. One classroom had 6 keyboards, for the entire class to share. None of the kids actually knew how to type anyway. All they know is hunt-and-peck. Because nobody is teaching them at school, and most of them don’t have computers at home. They only have phones and ipads.

They can’t google how to do things because they have so little knowledge that they can’t even formulate the questions to ask. They have no idea how much they don’t know. They don’t know that it’s possible to center the alignment in a word document by clicking on a button, so it doesn’t even occur to them to ask how to do that. I have seen so many kids literally press the space bar over and over to center a title.

They are assigned email addresses but they are not allowed to use them, except to log in to whatever apps their class uses. Most of them don’t even know that their “username” is actually an email address. The teachers want them to make power point slides and videos, but don’t teach the kids how to do that. They just assume they already know. When they are 8 years old.

I have been screaming about this for so long and no one is listening. Its exhausting and frustrating. I have done my best to reach as many kids as I can, but I couldn’t get to all of them. Even if I could, it’s still a massive systemic problem.

And it’s only getting worse.

I realize I'm not in a place to help solve this problem, but here's a bit of insight on how I was exposed to these and other skill sets in the 90s and early 00's:

We learned how to use a mouse in kindergarten and 1st grade, using a mix of KidPix and playing breakout. We learned typing from 2nd thru 7th grade in formal classes, on everything from Apple IIe's, to Macintosh Performas, and eventually PCs.

We learned simple word processing around the same time, eventually branching out to include spreadsheets and powerpoint in 5th grade continuing through middle school. In fact, word processing continued for quite some time after that, but I don't think we got any dedicated instruction in how that was done after a certain point. I remember even learning how to make a tri-fold brochure in 6th grade, in science class of all things. Other office suite software was continually a staple of assignments throughout high school, but formal training ended some time in middle school.

We were taught the LOGO programming language from 2nd thru 5th grade on various 90s Macs in software called MicroWorlds. We didn't realize that programming was the subject being taught, it was just "math" and it was fun (we were learning angles I guess). We were given the option of taking basic computer science classes in 6th and 8th grade, where we were taught the parts of a computer, and how to make simple websites in HTML from scratch. All written in notepad! We were also given a more formal computer science class option for 10th-12th grade, learning Java along with computer science principals and concepts.

I learned Photoshop from my dad. I learned more word processing from my mom. I figured out the greater web and most of my common Windows knowledge through personal exploration, but that's only because I was given the opportunity to learn on my own free time at home. I'm sure there were a few key instructions on how to dial up, and start a web browser, but after being show how to access my email, I was more or less left to my own devices.

I remember figuring out how to do really crude audio editing using Sound Recorder in Windows, cutting, splicing, speed adjusting, and combining clips to amuse myself. If you've never touched it, sndrec32.exe is a single-track recorder, it isn't meant to be a complex editor. Given a little time and patience, I figured that one out in middle school. I also recall using free time in middle school computer labs to make stop motion animations in Jasc Animation Shop with a friend of mine. We stored our work on a floppy disk, and unfortunately lost alot of our effort, teaching a valuable lesson in backing up files.

The most important skill I find isn't being taught is file management. Folder structure, directory navigation, and how to locate things is something I find has gotten harder. Cellphones, tablets, and even modern Windows strive to obfuscate these essential elements of computer use, and presume to find everything for you, never telling you where things actually reside on your drives. I'm not sure how you would teach this one, but I don't know how folks manage their own computers without mastering this aspect.

Without someone explicitly teaching me these skills, or giving me the opportunity to play around, I wouldn't be nearly as capable on a computer, and we're seeing the consequences of when that doesn't happen.

I've been working in technology for higher ed for over a decade now. Earlier in my career I heard a lot about "Digital Natives". Kids grow up with a tablet in their hands so surely they must know all about computers and technology, right? I mean after all they can do things on those tablets that we adults (i.e. Boomers) could never dream of!

"Digital Natives" is a myth.

Sure, there are a lot of children who do grow up with a tablet in their hands these days — a walled-garden device that intentionally hides its underlying structure, built to cash in on dopamine addiction, and constructed in such a way as to be nearly impossible to repair (both hardware and software). These children aren't learning how a computer works or even how to use one. They're learning how to use apps, nothing more.

The result is what we're starting to see: teenagers and young adults trying to enter a workforce dominated by computer conventions established roughly 40 years ago but with none of the skills required to succeed.

Eventually computer conventions will catch up to the new ones being established by the smartphone/tablet industry and people raised on tablets will be able to accomplish the tasks needed for their jobs. But the core problem will still remain.

The job field I think will suffer the most from this? Tech support. It's getting harder to dive into the core of a computerized system. Rootless operating systems with untouchable boot partitions and locked, cryptographically-signed bootloaders don't allow much room for getting to know how it all really works. All the current nonsense about generative AI eventually replacing tech jobs like computer programming ignores the fact that someone is still going to need to know how the system works when it inevitably breaks down.

I think people are finally starting to catch on. It's been a while since I've had to correct someone on the myth of the Digital Native. But I have little faith the problem will be resolved. Between hardware/software that is increasingly locked down in the interest of "security" and years of cuts to education budgets (in the US at least), I don't see any way that k12 schools could ever again develop the kind of computer literacy programs that existed in the 80's & 90's.

I finally uploaded my full gallery from VCF Southwest 2023. It includes far more than I posted here to tumblr over the past few months, so enjoy!

The Bendix G-15 from 1956, the world's first "personal computer." One of these cabinets weighed a literal 1000 lbs. and cost half a million dollars in today's money. Or you could rent it for the equivalent of $17,000 a month.

It was numeric only, you had to "talk" to it via a typewriter, and when you turned it off it 'forgot' everything. It used 'drum memory,' which used the same rust-covered-spinning-magnetic-thing technology all hard drives would continue to use until flash memory became a thing. But in the Bendix it looked something like this (one from a slightly earlier computer):

This computer is so old no one seems to have figured out what 'bits' it is. All I know is that drum thing "holds 2,160 words of twenty-nine bits." It can also do basic math problems in 270 microseconds. ...Which sounds fast, but that means it can do 2+2=4 in 27 thousandths of a second. Which is probably exactly how long it took your stupid brain to do that. For slightly more complex math, hiring a human mathematician at this time would be both cheaper and easier than dealing with this computer.

This is a "vacuum tube / diode analog architecture" computer, and it already had some kind of OS that meant you didn't have to know machine code? But that slowed it down even more...?

I have absolutely no idea how analog computers worked, or how anyone used one. There are tape decks on this thing, and it is plugged into a typewriter. Like I get the digital 1 and 0 thing, but I have no concept how you make light bulbs and blobs of germanium do that electronically.

But someone did, and this eventually led to you streaming Now That's What I Call Music! No. 86 on a Samsung phone.

So obviously all of this was a good idea...

Hell yeah, BENDIX G-15!

The Bendix G-15 is indeed a digital computer, despite the vacuum tube construction. The tubes are being driven within a digital domain, high or low -- no intentional in-between.

It is worth noting that there a significant number of diodes on board, which save significant weight, power consumption, and size. Here are most of the card modules on board that contain the vast majority of the logic. There are other diodes and vacuum tubes inside the chassis for other specific tasks.

The unit here in my pictures belongs to the System Source Computer Museum, which is currently being repaired by Usagi Electric. I visited him recently and took these photos.

See that large non-descript silver box? That's the memory drum. It's sealed in there for protection, the motor is behind it.

Here's the main interface: the typewriter. You don't interact with it the way you might think of with a teletype. Rather, certain keys correspond to different functions and different bit combinations. To my knowledge, only the alphanumeric-equipped units will let you type characters. The numeric-only units don't even used most of the keys. Most programs are loaded on by 5-level paper tape, encoded in something other than Baudot.

Anyway, BENDIX!

This computer is being a real pain in the ass right now.

If it's not one thing, it's another.

Keyboard wasn't working at all for a bit, and now it's working sometimes.

RESET line wouldn't work from the keyboard with the 74123 monostable in there to make it a clean pulse, so I had to bypass it -- pissed about that.

GFX toggle was not working at all, needed a pull-down resistor to fix that.

DEL line continues to interfere with the GFX signal, meaning if you press one, you toggle the graphics layer.

Just upgraded the CPU board to include a second 1702A ROM which is old enough to require -9V and 5V, but no ground signal? Fuckin. PMOS.

Now the additional ROM means the -9V rail is overtaxed by like... 3 things, and my bench supply for testing was like "nah, I won't push more current to keep the voltage within tolerance" so that's now I have to figure out a new way to deliver power for testing.

I've had to rewire multiple sections of it to enable different kinds of EPROMs to work, because of course none of this crap is straight forward. The documentation for how to implement it isn't all that complete either.

Computers used to be really hard to maintain, and I'm really getting a taste for that here.