The Tech Time Traveller

12/01/2022

Latest video - kind of an unusual little z80 homebrew beastie.

This was one of those, 'oh, it's got 5 sec left, I'll bid it up five bucks, I won't win, and then I won' situations. It's a Z80 single board computer, it ju...

05/24/2022

Ah the memories. My Dad was a loyal IBM customer. We started our PC journey with a PCjr, which I loved.. but Dad did not. So we went to a PC, then XT, then AT, stuck with the 4 color Crap Graphics Adapter all the way. My dad got a T5100 like this one for portable use eventually which I dabbled with - there was something cool and otherworldly about the red gas plasma screen. One day, months down the road, whilst messing about with a mouse driver, I loaded it, and noticed a little 'EGA Connected' message. Stunned.. I grabbed the cable from our AT's monitor, which was actually a 5154 Enhanced unit. Plugged it in, switched to it and.. voila! 16 colors again! Never used the AT after that. It actually prodded my Dad into upgrading to a VGA machine later because he was getting fed up with having both computers effectively tied up, since the AT had no monitor to work with. This unit came from ebay for cheap.. its overall not in bad shape except the missing cover under the screen. The hard drive is a Conner peripherals 42mb IDE unit that seems to be suffering from spindle stiction.. I have to kinda shake it a bit to get it to spin up.. but once it does.. it works nicely! In honor of our long lost T5100 I've got Police Quest going here.. which was the first game I played after I discovered my amazing new 16 color capability.

05/08/2022

A New Video is Out!

https://youtu.be/VM4-qc0opuI

Is it a vintage computer? A terminal? A bomb? I didn't know when I bought this thing a few years ago (apparently I buy other people's garbage now?), but I...

04/04/2022

A recent acquisition - an Albert Apple II clone. Albert had quite a tumultuous ride and collapsed into insolvency after only a handful of machines were made. I'm grateful this one still works!

11/30/2021

The next video is almost ready. We're going over to the UK for this one!

10/27/2021

10/06/2021

08/23/2021

The Last Commodore Computer is now uploaded! A companion video showing my attempts to jog my 25 year old memory at using old DOS machines like this one will follow very soon.

Does this machine count as a real Commodore? Is it the last one to officially wear the badge? Could Jack Tramiel's deeply hidden inner hippie guru have saved the company (or joined the Monkees)? Let me know what you think!

08/08/2021

Our next video: The Last Commodore Computer?

08/03/2021

He's baaaaack... Mini Unfridging 2 goes live today!

07/18/2021

I got something that has given my Altair project a serious boost, special thanks to Theo in Australia! Video coming very soon!

04/11/2021

My latest video. Finally bagged one of my grails... sort of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPcRJal61xY&t=472s

Pretty much any serious vintage computer collector will have the MITS Altair 8800 somewhere on their want list, and I am no different. However, for years I ...

03/16/2021

Our latest video, about a small microcomputer firm that came up short:

https://youtu.be/uQSdw74xnrE

In 1974 Dr. Robert Suding and Richard Bemis of Colorado embarked on an adventure many pioneers of the computing industry attempted (and failed): to hit it bi...

02/06/2021

Something I'm really excited about is this rare Modular Advanced Design MAD-1 computer. At first blush, it seems to be the evil twin of the Mindset. It shares the same CPU (80186), similar modular design but appears all in black rather than white.

There's not a ton of info about MAD out there. I've heard they survived into the late 80s with more conventional machines but I cannot find anything about that. The MAD-1 seems to be rarer than rare. This one came from the estate of designer Chuck Colby. Regrettably the 'data module' with the twin floppies and power supply were not found, nor the keyboard or monitor.

Nonetheless a lovely piece and something I can at least potentially fire up one day with a bit of jury rigging.

11/02/2020

A new Random Bits video:

https://youtu.be/9x8g151y48o

#8080 This is the Microkit 8/16, a very rare Intel 8080/Motorola 6800 'development system' designed to facilitate programming...

10/11/2020

I was hoping this was a missile launcher:

https://youtu.be/-wc0XY2mZoc

Just a quick shot of this... thing I bought... Thought it was a well known vintage computer. And it almost is.. And yes, I will post the tapes here soon - go...

09/24/2020

Looks like I won't have to build that unbuilt Central Data 2650 board after all..

09/07/2020

My latest.

https://youtu.be/b-bFV8fHekk

Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter, introduced 47 years ago in the September 1973 edition of Radio Electronics, was a revolutionary innovation that cracked open t...

08/13/2020

Our latest: https://youtu.be/jMqnnQlj9Oo

This is the first of TTT's 'unboxing' style videos, or 'Unfridging'. I haven't been collecting a ton lately thanks to our collective situation, but I did sna...

07/25/2020

Recently I got my hands on a very rare soundcard that came with a very rare, very early Apple IIe. It is quite impressive for what it is!

https://youtu.be/xJ0icFaCgBI

I recently purchased a very early Apple IIe. In fact, apart from prototypes, it's the earliest serial number machine I've ever seen, 1320! And as a bonus, it...

05/31/2020

05/31/2020

https://youtu.be/383WtN9nnw0

This short '8BitBites' video will take you on a quick tour of a very homebrew / homemade Z80 based computer from (I think) around 1977 or so. Everything abou...