The first piece of kit I used to provide overnight support to my employer's batch suite from home consisted of a Prestel terminal. Very clunky and a pain if you didn't start the remote session in 80x24 resolution. Though it did beat driving 24 miles to Norwich to use the office equipment.

I love how abrupt you are, just telling it like it is! This looks heaps better than a breadboard pc!

It's 3am and I do suffer from insomnia, but am sorry to say this video was too interesting to help with that.

the humor is clearly on the level of monty python 🙂 keep up the good work

I love the humor

Entertaining as always John! See you soon.

Excellent stuff as ever, the wooden Nascom gave me a proper arf 😆

Like your humor!😊

Since you seem to like silly questions, can it run a nuclear power plant? We know the ZX81 could. Humour aside, I like your content and humour, even as a none native English speaker (even spelled humour correctly).

The amount of layers of setup for jokes, this was excellent! Good thing I also have battery-backed memory, kids these days would never get the ending! The only thing separating this undeservedly tiny channel from someone like Usagi Electric (still small in KZbin scale, but pretty notable for someone bringing up museum pieces, just like yourself) is camera and lighting ;)

The age old, and unanswerable riddle of the system 3 of Thesius. Eventually you just have to accept the quantum state. It is both the ship and not, simultaneously. And once you realize that, you follow Douglas Adams' advice and hang the sense of it and get on with things. ;)

That unboxing gag earned a sub for sure. Nicely done sir.

Woah! Back in the very early 1990s, I rescued a Ferret from a skip... never thought I'd ever see one again.

I am in the process of building a System 5 (or 3 or 4) clone myself. To save some money and rack space I am currently working on a CPU board with a 6502A and 128kB of ROM and 128kB of RAM. It will be possible to replace the MOS ROM by RAM so I can modify the original MOS or even load another MOS as well. But what I wanted to mention is that for the keyboard you can also use an Acorn Atom. I have written a small programme that reads the keyboard and puts the ASCII value to the output of its 6522 VIA. This way you have a System look-alike keyboard. I have been testing this on a real System 5 and it works fine. There's no need to damage the Atom, all modifications are reversible. Thanks for your video, it was a pleasure to watch.

Nothing wrong with using make. It's entirely period accurate, even for acorn machines: A friend of mine wrote a version of make in bcpl on his bbc back in the early 80s.

I understood very little of this but had a good giggle

What a beast!

I've got an original system 4, but it's not powered up since ~1995 last time it ran regularly was 1992. What checks would you recomend before powering it up? You mention 6809 Flex - I think I have a small three card rack with 6809 - it's connected to a "portable - all relative" BBC B.

The comment about taking your time and enjoying the journey of building a system is one that isn't made enough. Thoroughly enjoyed the video and learned something about early Acorn machines. Whilst I won't be building one, similar things exist for S100 systems and, if I don't find a Northstar Horizon soon, I'll be doing what you've done here, but for S100. I think a decade is enough time to be looking for one!

I love it when a @GlassTTY pops up in my feed. Never change. Ridiculously informative and humourous as always. Thank you!

Fantastic mate. Glad to see my Ferret helping out! 😁.. and you almost got me with the MARK!!!

Hi John. Great to see you back! I've missed your unique style of video. Unfortunately I can't make it to the Dragon meet this year so won't have the pleasure of discussing your machines in person 😔. Top tip about the 1" aluminium straps in B&Q 👍. I might get my mini engraver/CNC machine to have a go at cutting some without risking the expensive pukka fronts i have. Unfortunately my own 6809 machine has been on the back burner for a while due to family needs and other hobbies but this video has got me thinking about getting back into it. Have fun in Cambridge 👍

Thanks John - lovely explanations of all the options. Impressive - especially fond of the Prestel functionality ❤️

Fantastic video as ever John, I did laugh at the short circuit bits. Nice to see you've got your econet network up and running, with a level 3 file server no less. I've been go through those bits of pascal code you shared with me, and using them as a good guide to improve the compatibility with my own server.

In the spirit of being (hopefully) helpful, it is customary for uploaders of multi-part videos to list the other video parts in the description comments...

The Acorn System 1 was my first computer, back in 1979. I'm still in electronics, and of all my early computers (Acorn System 1, zx81, c64, amstrad PC) the Acorn System 1 is the one I kept. It's my my lab on a shelf behind me. Loved it, and will not let it go!

Why doesn't the guy who wants a way of cutting a rectangular hold in a panel then what about getting a CNC LASER Cutter.

Nice! great to see a follow up on your previous video! hoping to build one myself soon… -Elliot

6809E was the basis of CMI's FAIRLIGHT V.

Has anyone built an ARM based version of this computer.

very nice! have you ever thought about trying to recreate the ultra-rare Movement Drum Computer 1 ? - which is based on the nascom 2 platform

Loving your prestel service on my BBC B and may have crashed the weather service a couple of times. Sorry. Everyone i have shown it has been fascinated. Thanks for all your work on it. Wonderful video about this almost mythical "system" computer too.

Nascom 1 was a gift from my brother, 2 weeks wages for the buffer card and memory board for me.

Ha! Its funny that you should show a 40+ year old radio for a 40+ year old data system.

Brilliant!

Very interesting, and with a nice dash of humor. 🙂

Hi !! Greetings from Argentina !!!!!!! How can I use two Baofeng BF-999 and two arduinos to transmit and receive data over-the-air ?? Thanks !!!!!

Fantastic project! I just stumbled on it, but now have a Telecom (Australia) Computerphone connected via an asterisk softmodem. Thanks for your efforts!

Could LORA be an alternative for creating a network? How do you serve the viewdata, so not the client? I especially need insight in how stuff was encoded. I know it basically sends out Teletext like pages, but I found out that the special characters were encoded with escape characters, which were also used to be able to send program blocks. As teletext only sends 128 characters (7-bit), the upper 128 bits from program bytes needed a special treatment.

I can't help noticing that the seller of that nuclear power plant on eBay was one John Nuke-em...

Do you know how programs were send since teletext only allowed 7-bit characters? I have the idea that the characters ¼,¾,‖,½ and █ trigger 2-nibble characters to transmit the entire 8-bit byte. So 0-31 and 128-255 are encoded behind these special characters, and that ‖ is the space. I cannot find a specification for it though.

Very cool!

great vid please do an update

I'm afraid once the generation that has a nostalgic memory of wanting these systems but not being able to afford them pass on, no-one is going to be interested in system that is a 1000 times slower than a cheap mobile phone.

Fantastic video. Really interesting build and a very good point about museum preservation can mean taking machines and putting them in a glass box never to be touched.

Thanks for the video, a real trip down memory lane. I only ever saw pictures of the System computers in magazines. My first computer was an Atom, which I expanded all the way to a disk system. I did build a Richard Russell board at work, which was the Z80 prototype for the BBC Micro. That was before Acorn showed the BBC their Proton, which became the model A/B. I have enough electronics projects on the go, mostly RF related, so I shall steer clear of the vintage computer, modern builds, as it looks highly addictive. Glad you have found a support group though. Good luck. Nick.

very good and very funny!

Solid content as always!

Great video, love your style.

13:42 its like the Theseus ship, just keep replacing all parts, now do you have a new ship or its the old one ? I say its the old one because the "form", aka, the abstract interconnection of components is what makes the thing, not exactly the specific atoms that make the actual parts. The soul of the machine is the form and function, not the atoms and parts.