Restoring vintage computers is the preferred task of lots of hardware hackers. Retrocomputing most likely makes you believe of house computer brands like Commodore, Amiga, or Apple however [Erik Baigar] is deeply into collecting early armed forces computers from the UK-based Elliott company. earlier this year he made a in-depth video that shows exactly how he effectively brought an Elliott 920M from the 1960s back to life.
It is rather amazing that the Elliott business already handled to in shape their 1960s computer into a shoebox-sized footprint. As computers had not yet settled on the typical 8bit word size back then the Elliott 900 series are rather exotic 18bit or 12bit machines. The 920M was utilized as a support computer for European area rockets in the 1960s as well as ’70s however likewise for navigational functions in competitor jets up until as late as 2010.
Opening up the innards of this maker exposes some exotic quirks of early electronics manufacturing. The logic modules consist of multilayer PCBs where elements were welded instead of soldered onto thin sheets of mylar foil that were then potted in Araldite.
To get the computer running [Erik Baigar] very first had to recreate the custom-made connectors utilizing a milling machine. He then utilized an Arduino to simulate a paper tape visitor as well as tons programs into the machine. An fascinating hack is when he makes the memory reading as well as composing audible by just putting a radio next to the machine. [Erik Baigar] completes off his presentation of the computer by running some traditional fundamental games like tic-tac-toe as well as a labyrinth creator.
If you would like to code your own fundamental programs on a lot more contemporary hardware you must inspect out this fundamental interpreter for the Raspberry Pi Pico.
Video after the break.