Mysterious Intel 4004 CPU board collection!

[@johnpendleton1647]

Those "Black Helmet" things are early transistors.

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

Really? I've seen the old tin-can style quite a bit, but I don't think I've ever seen that style. Did that kind of packing have a name?

[@sebastian19745]

@@TalesofWeirdStuff Just search for old datasheets for that transistor number. Yes, they are transistors, I had some like that with golden legs. I had transistors with many weird packages like 5mm LED, square, rectangular, cylindrical with rounded cap and even hexagonal shaped with rounded cap. Most of these were also available in standard TO-18 package (like BC107) so I guess that there was a manufacturer choice of packaging and not a real standard.

[@beard78748]

Just came across your channel recently. It looks like it may have been part of Tempest. The military used it for cryptography starting in the 1950's and were at least used on USCG vessels in the early 2000's. I was an Electronics Technician from 2001 to 2006. I only worked on the equipment in school because it was very reliable. During the class most of the boards had metal covers and the instructor stated that they could not leave the room and if you removed the covers we could be charged with espionage. The crypto interface used punched tape.

[@tahrey]

I don't get how any / all of that would point to it being a 4004 based system, particularly one that's ended up in the wild being sold as junk like this. They'd probably incinerate it if they were disposing of the hardware at end of life. And a 4-bit BCD system is rather ill-suited to text cryptography, probably using 5-bit tape? Might well have just been discrete logic with circuits custom made for that one task, particularly if the heritage goes back to the 50s... more Engima-like than anything computerised. But if it was black-box like that it could have been anything. Maybe 8080 or 6800 based (or Z80 / 6502 if they were being cheap), as those got used for pretty much everything, would have been easier to use and program, be more suitable to the job, and offer far better performance.

[@johnbullpit9481]

Yep they are transistors. You could have had a look on the soldered side and see if they had 3 pins.

[@Magnedyne]

These Boards are quite interesting, perhaps these also might have come from a terminal. I’ve got a Terminal which is based on the 4004, however here there aren’t really the right components to support this theory, unless there are some missing boards. Dumping the Roms might give some clues, but without desoldering them that would be quite difficult. Otherwise some industrial controller is most likely.

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

I had thought about dumping the ROMs. The combination of needing to desolder them and come up with something that could actually read that kind of ROM... seemed like too much of a challenge. :( I have another weird "I don't know what this is" device (see kzbin.info/www/bejne/mZiQmn6iqpmEnpo ) that has socketed ROMs that I intend to dump.

[@Magnedyne]

@@TalesofWeirdStuff are you sure that’s the right link?

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

Yes... KZbin thought the closing ")" was part of the link, so it lost the time code. I fixed it now.

[@Magnedyne]

@@TalesofWeirdStuff could you provide me with detailed pictures of the board? I might actually be able to help you with that, I mainly collect early DIY computers

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

@user-ts5eh2db8r I can do that. Send an email to the address listed in the channel about page, and I'll send you a bunch of pics.

[@mineua]

Nowadays, instead of foil, you should use ESD-safe foam, it is also black and will perfectly replace the background. Also, I think it's worth putting a sign inside in an empty space so that others can appreciate what they see.

[@primus711]

Japanese use both so many cpus etc i got recently there were

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

I hadn't even thought about using foam... even though I have tons of chips in foam. The openings in the clips holding the boards in place aren't super large, so I don't know if foam would fit. It's worth trying! I don't like the way the foil looks in the display, and foam would definitely solve that.

[@tahrey]

Eh, I'd be wary of that. Foam tends to break down over time and become a horrible brittle dusty mess. Aluminium foil is basically stable, as it already has a protective oxide layer on top. Maybe somewhere makes it with a black anodised coating? Though, you only really need the foil to cover the pins on the back of each board, so it can be cut to size and not be visible from the front. Combine with some standoffs and a matt black backing panel?

[@rager-69]

To the extent that your lightbulb is connected to your network, yes it needs updates. It probably won't get them, unfortunately. A better question is SHOULD your lightbulb connect to the network.

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

How else will I adjust the brightness??? While we're at it... why not put my car's engine controls and the infotainment system on the same CAN bus. What could go wrong? :( Okay... old man rant over. :)

[@elektrokinesis4150]

the foil works better than an ESD bag if done right

[@edgeeffect]

This seems rather good... chatty not a lecture and full of information.... think I'll have a look round and see what else you've got.

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

It is, after all, _tales_ of weird stuff, not Professor Weird Stuff. 🤣 I hope you find more stuff that you enjoy.

[@MarcioR2]

🖤4004🖤

[@sebastian19745]

In old, really old books I saw that computer math was in octal. And also, octal numbering system was predominant with binary and BCD while hexadecimal was not very popular. I wander why, and if there were CPUs that used octal numbering system instead of binary or BCD.

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

In order for octal to really make sense, the computer would have to group bits in some multiple of 3 (because each octal digit represents 3 bits). I think there may have been some minicomputers that used 9-bit bytes and 36-bit words, but they were not common. Those systems are part of the reason the C rules about ranges of values and size of things are so goofy. Octal is a bit easier for humans because most people have at least 8 fingers. ;)

[@tahrey]

@@TalesofWeirdStuff There were actually a whole bunch of different machines that used multiples-of-3 (or more commonly 6) bit architecture. Having stuff that's 8-bit focussed is actually a later development in comparison. It's why IBM used 6-bit EBCDIC text encoding and such ... there were 12, 18, 24, 36 bit machines, and probably others besides. I think it was the PDP line that broke the mould with its 16-bit architecture (and use of bytes, with ASCII text taking up 7 of the 8 bits). (EBCDIC being a kind of upgraded BCD and Baudot mashup, related to but rivalling the also-6-bit Fieldata ... ASCII was intended as a common bridging standard for those and other mutually unintelligble character and digit encodings on different machines) Which is why octal got used a lot, as it fit nicely, and even persisted as notation into the early switch-panel micros like the Altair - even though they were 8-bit data and 16-bit bus, the switches were grouped in blocks of 3 (with the MSBs being just 1 or 2 by themselves), as thats what people were going to be more familiar with. Took a while for Hex to become accepted, it seems!

[@primus711]

Someone is lefthanded just like me nice

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

I had the very good fortune of being taught to write by another left handed person. I see so many lefties, who were taught by righties, just contort their hands in weird ways. It looks so awkward and uncomfortable. :(

[@primus711]

@@TalesofWeirdStuff im a engineer artist etc etc funny thing is with art using a mouse i can use either or They say lefties slant left when writing i dont im usually perfect straight unless cursive ofcourse that goes right slant