Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 13:38:15 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: hawkeyd@visi.com (D J Hawkey Jr) Cc: tlambert2@mindspring.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Oh my god, Google has a USENET archive going back to 1981! Message-ID: <200201082138.g08LcFS61637@apollo.backplane.com> References: <20.21dd4868.296bb1c2_aol.com@ns.sol.net> <3C3A810A.C616A903_mindspring.com@ns.sol.net> <200201081104.g08B4i309583@sheol.localdomain>
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:Unix!
:
:I've got _all_ the original CBM stuff for the VIC-20 and C-64, hardware
:and hardcopy. Even some aftermarket FDDs.
:
:I poked a _lot_ of stuff from Compute!, including the assembler, and
:have several of their wire-bound books, too.
:
:I've got the 6502 monitor and 300bps modem cartridges, and if I dig
:around, I'll bet I can find the breadboarded interface to an audio
:cassette player I built so long ago from a Byte article! I soldered
:"reset wires" to both machines' mobos, too.
:
:I've still got all software I accumulated on floppy (even some cool EA
:games, and MicroProse's Gunship), but I have no idea if any of it is
:still readable.
:
:Those were the days, my friends...
:Dave
Ah yes. By the time I was ready to throw my PET away the hardware
inside was so hacked up I don't think anybody but me could boot the
thing. I had replaced the character generator ROM with a RAM and wired
in a wire select to an unused bank, which meant the screen was spaghetti
on power-up until i LOAD'd a copy of the character set. I had the
machine language monitor extension rom. I had wired in an extra 16K of
dynamic ram, giving me 48K total (bank selected) (imagine piggy-backing
a bank of 14 or 16 pin DIPs on another bank and soldering each lead,
except for the select, to the one below). I had the NMI button hooked
up, of course, and I brought the TTL video lead for the monitor out
to act as a poor man's oscilliscope. The insides of that box was a
mess.
These days traces or so tiny and chip leads are so close together (not
to mention the 6+ layer boards!) that hacking a PC's hardware is pretty
close to impossible.
But it's funny... I never had a desire to hack up my C64's or my Amiga's.
I guess there enough fun things to do with them that hardware hacking
wasn't necessary.
-Matt
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