A vintage computer you've probably never seen before!

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Sorry for the delays in production! This was put together on a single day while the studio space was somewhat clear and the reno hammers stopped. Now that the reno is over I can get back to the greenscreen effects I need to finish the second part of the hard drive testing series!

[@bigallan1365]

No worries great video and I very much like the longer format! Great to see these more osbcure pieces of tech up close and not through grainy photos on defunct sites. Keep up the great content. - Al

[@subtledemisefox]

@@bigallan1365 I agree! I'm also looking forward to the next part of the hard drive testing

[@pikadroo]

The reverse of the inflation calculator is that when my house was built in 1972, in my area, it only cost the person who bought it $20,000.00 to purchase. The company who built it probably only spent 10k. It’s now ‘worth’ 300k 😂

[@frogz]

HOW DO YOU MINT A NFT FOR "house"???

[@monad_tcp]

No need to put worth is quotes, the fact that lots of demand and no supply makes anything expensive is implied. That's not even inflation. It's funny you can have 14TB HDD for $80. But they made million units nowadays. Meanwhile, no new houses or space to build them. The funny thing is that I bought an acre of land far away from downtown city when there was nothing when I was 14. Now that the city grew, I can extract rent from people that can't afford it. Funny isn't, that's whats demand does. The house I grew up downtown is worth $400K now that downtown is packed full of buildings. My grandfather bought it for pennies, just like I did when I was 14yo. Imagine the future when land is going to cost $10M, this is neofeudalism.

[@eric_d]

@@monad_tcp Where are you getting 14TB drives for $80? I can't even find a 10TB for under $249 anymore! I bought 2 of them for $99 a piece a few years ago, and I wish I had bought a lot more.

[@snootgame]

​@@eric_dserverpartdeals is a magical place

[@matchrocket1702]

I did a conversion for that $2,695 disk drive in 2023 dollars. That drive would cost $13,769 today. No wonder they are as scarce as hen's teeth.

[@sunnohh]

For one small payment of more than a used late model civic you too can have a primitive drive

[@cruftist]

The SOL dealership where I shopped never had the Helios on display, it was too expensive to even keep in stock. I really wanted one. There is one prominent national journalist who bought an early SOL+Helios and Wordstar, to write his books. He was way ahead of the curve and wrote essays about well this newfangled "Word Processing" worked, and other authors just didn't believe him!

[@PebblesChan]

The Australian microbee was inspired by the SOL machines so much so that the Target & Trek programs were the first programs released for it. In SOL tapes can be read in by the microbee.

[@TonyHamlyn]

Wow, Microbee, used those in tech drawing in early high school. But those Sol20 look awfully like the UNSW Electrical Engineering PDP11 consoles that I was always told were made by previous students. The key layout is very familiar to me. This was in 87,88 (when I saw them, they certainly looked late 70s vintage!) were eventually replaced by 68000 based graphical Apollo systems.

[@gordonbrandly4352]

At 16:55 you were wondering about the printer, and I'd be willing to bet a rather large amount of money it was something like my old Diablo 1300 series OEM Daisywheel printer, though I've never seen a white one before. My own unit was all black, and the OEM interface was 12-bit parallel with lots of extra control and status lines to deal with. In my case, I happened to actually use a Processor Tech 3P+S to control the printer from my IMSAI, and I even found a way to shoehorn a driver for it into WordStar 3.3's limited customization space. It served me extremely well for many years until I could finally afford a laser printer. Come to think of it, the computer store I worked for in the early 80s was - I think - briefly a dealer for Processor Tech. If so, that might explain where that OEM daisywheel printer originally came from. I bought the printer from them for cheap since by the time I came along they had no computer to hook its completely non-standard interface to. (And by the way, a quick update on my Central Data 2650 work: over Christmas I scanned every relevant piece of paper I could find, and I just recently finished OCRing all that prior to sending it on to Bitsavers and/or the Internet Archive. I haven't passed those PDFs on to you yet because I want to organize all the CD 2650 stuff I've found online in previous years and eliminate any redundancies. But if you get the urge to proceed with working on your own CD 2650 before I finish that task, let me know and I'll be happy to send you my PDFs.)

[@osgeld]

Dealer in TN, things are starting to come together. Being "on the spectrum" I remember sometime in middle school so very late 80's early 90's we went to a school for "evaluation" with my parents .... they had at least 4 SOL 20's in the classroom, and I was already fascinated by anything computer related by them, so it was a real struggle for me to stop trying to figure out what these things were (even then I knew they were before my time)

[@markbanash921]

A totally enjoyable video that focuses refreshingly on the technology and the engineering of the computer without having a lot of distracting and superfluous graphics and back stories.

[@Donnie_M.]

Usagi Electric just did a series on the Wang and may be able to inform more on the Wang Palo Alto Basic Plus cassette. He did say he was looking for some software that was hard to come by for it.

[@Mueller3D]

The keyboard connector looks like a 20-pin header, so the proper connector for it would be an IDC-20 ribbon cable connector. They are not difficult to install onto a ribbon cable; a vise makes quick work of it, but it can also be done with pliers and patience (squeeze a little bit at a time as you move up and down the connector).

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent, interesting, and informative. I believe you are the SOL expert. Well done, and thanks for sharing

[@vwestlife]

For comparison, in 1978 the Pontiac Firebird had a base price of $4842.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

That makes sense. I guess I'm so used to cheap computing the idea of potentially choosing between a computer or a car is just totally alien to me. :)

[@Di3mondDud3]

And used cars up to 20 years old have always been a norm.. these computers were worth what some families TWO cars were. It’s crazy.

[@RaymondHng]

I once had this Sol-20 microcomputer. It had a modem and two floppy drives and was used as the backup computer bulletin board system to the Northstar Horizon computer.

[@AppliedCryogenics]

I bet those 3-ring binder slick-sheets smell almost as amazing as the electronics.

[@davidgari3240]

The "special" thing about the Persci dual floppy drive was that they SHARED read/write heads on a voice coil actuator which was scary fast. Imagine a speaker coil that could transition from first track to last in a blink. Rotational latency and single-side disks (

[@jeffnay6502]

I love the SOL-20 and the documentation that comes with their boards. Precise and to the point. I think that WOZ must have gotten at least some of his ideas from the all-in-one SOL-20. As they are similarly shaped and have just about everything you need on board and still allow for expansion.

[@wrongmouse1658]

If you are run into a reset issues with your Sol 20: You have a faulty electrolytic cap in the reset circuitry. I think you will need to replace C13 (15uf cap), next to D7. Page 2

[@bayo7]

Didn't know there were variations of the classic Sol 20, great video!

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Yep. Why would there only be one variant? That would leave no way to torture future collectors.. :)

[@bayo7]

@@TechTimeTraveller Right. We wouldn't want collectors to be able to save money at some point...

[@themax4677]

I wonder if the John Down you mention at 40:49, is the same one I used to work with at the FAA Tech Center at Atlantic City Airport. He was definitely the right age and had a wealth of knowledge for all sorts of things. He was my mentor there as I was the only other person in help desk crazy enough to want to disassemble and repair the fleet of LaserJet 5si/8000s and Color Laser Jet 45xx. Those color carousels were a treat to clean! Also Artoo is a common nickname for R2-D2. I think it is even canon. It's used heavily in Star Wars Clone Wars.

[@cruftist]

Very nice! I recently restored my old SOL-20, it has a rare "Graphic-Add" card that piggybacked on the motherboard, giving it low rez monochrome graphics. I wish I could find a modern S-100 card that could store a virtual CP/M file system on flash memory or something that would run in my SOL.

[@dangerotterisrea]

You are an absolute madman, so good thank you for making these videos!

[@dangerotterisrea]

The hand written and drawn documentation and original cassettes are pure gold, this stuffs been around since I was born in 81 and its amazing its all survived

[@chasonlapointe]

NIce, an hour long TTT video is the perfect way to spend my lunch break!

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I confess for a while I've avoided doing videos like these, due to complaints about length and how the KZbin algorithm savages you if you don't hit 40% or so average viewing time. But I think I'm letting go of those worries and returning to the theme of just wanting to share history, things I've learned and commune with people who might help me learn things myself. I have gotten some complaints about the length here but there's really no way to compress this kind of thing coherently without glossing over a lot of stuff.

[@chasonlapointe]

Maybe once you have a video complete you could cut it into episodes for those who do not have much attention span...

[@Symplegades]

Price-wise, you're not far off. According to the BLS Inflation Calculator, the kit version would be about $8500 in 2023 dollars, and the assembled version comes in at just under $11k. And it's a good thing I was sitting down when I realized that the assembled Sol III is over $28,000.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

That really seemed obscenely expensive to me. I can't see your average hobbyist spending that. I'm wondering if that package was geared more at business or institutional use.

[@Symplegades]

@@TechTimeTraveller Almost certainly aimed at business, but that makes it seem kind of odd they'd offer it as a kit. I can't think there were ever that many business owners who would be inclined assemble their own computer system from a pile of parts. Price-wise though, back in the late 90s I was doing IT work during that period where a lot of businesses were computerizing or at least installing networks for the first time, and I helped install a lot of small business systems that almost certainly ran into the $25k - $50k range (if not more) by the time you added the cost of the server(s), router, switches, printers, etc. So maybe it's not that out line. And while I know a couple of guys that have probably spent north of $30k restoring a car, yeah, that's still a *lot* for a hobbyist.

[@PWingert1966]

I actually used them when they first came out in a local computer store. I am old!

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I wasn't old enough to buy tech until mid 90s... was just too much money for a teenager doing dishes. It blows me away what these things cost when I was a little kid.

[@PWingert1966]

@@TechTimeTraveller My Apple II+ with twoi floppy drives and a monochrome monitor was $3156.50 here in Canada. That's about $2K in US dollars.

[@Arivia1]

Not sure if you're aware, but those manuals are actively decaying and need treatment ASAP. it's in particular the staples - you can see it with the TREK-80 manual in particular, where the iron is rusting and it's ruining the paper. get a standard staple remover, remove them carefully, then you can replace with archival-quality staples OR buy archiving-quality folders to keep the loose pages in. If you remove the staples now (and possibly any other binding connectors like those rings in the ALS-8 manual, look for rust stains), they'll be fine. great video as always! was trek-80 licensed from cbs/paramount, or was it just kind of handwaved off at the time?

[@Arivia1]

to be clear, i'm being urgent because you describe yourself as a collector who wants to keep stuff in good shape and I'm not sure how much you know about paper/book preservation. it's your possessions, do whatever works for you of course.

[@cyberblah]

27:33 Weird coincidence that the Chinese restaurant I liked going to about twenty years ago was, about 25 years before that, the location of a SOL dealer.

[@ristopoho824]

42:22 That's just how they spell them in the books. That's just how it's spelled when a character says it aloud. ..just checked, they spell it like that in the movie script too.

[@PCBWay]

Impressive!

[@retropalooza]

I love the colors electrical techs used in the primitive days

[@DShadowWolf]

1024 "words" on an 8080 is 2048 bytes -- for the SOL-20 they did things in mainframe/minicomputer language and for the "SOL PC" they did it in microcomputer terms.

[@osgeld]

we still use pink bags in 2023 at the place I work at, though they are a bit stronger in color, I have some from 10 years ago that are almost the same shade... I guess the coating fades to a point

[@frogz]

holy crap i think i scrapped 1 of these when i was a kid, i wonder if i still have the board!!

[@kchalu]

Is that "Feels so Good" in the background?

[@pikadroo]

Just in time for breakfast❤😊

[@roran60]

How to archive those tapes ? And do you archive them ?

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I usually will make WAV files and then see if they are archived and if not submit them to appropriate sites like archive.org or bitsavers. But I think most if not all of these are archived already

[@douro20]

I believe the device marked Nitron is a gate array? It's a company I never heard of before.

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I think it's a character generator but I might be wrong. They used either those or Motorola MC6571 I think.

[@douro20]

@@TechTimeTraveller You could be right, but from what I could gather their primary product line was mask programmed gate arrays.

[@reinoud6377]

What made the machines so expensive those days? I presume the CPU and RAM were relatively expensive but still I wouldn't expect it to be that expensive especially for the kit version.

[@wrongmouse1658]

“***DANGER*** Will Robison ***DANGER***” Do not plug a S-100 Card into the vertical card slot backwards! I did that once and it cratered 20 chips on the mother board that took me a bit to replace the chips. Will not talk about the 16k memory board that I was testing. The Sales technician at the Bellevue Byte Shop (1977). Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Have an Altair 8800 SN: 221732K My retirement project

[@ChrisJackson-js8rd]

for context a new car would have cost less than that computer at the time the pricing suggests to me that perhaps home users/hobbyists were not the original intended market for the sol

[@TechTimeTraveller]

I think that's why the gentleman that sold me this PCB-only version didn't buy the full Sol-20... was just too much money.

[@CollinBaillie]

I'm seeing weird frame-rate drops following each time you put an overlay image or video over the static overhead cera view. It looks like old school web cam footage (in frame rate, not resolution)

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Weird. My rendering rig is older and has been having some issues. I wonder if maybe I should try rendering just with CPU as I'm beginning to suspect my GPU is not up to snuff here.

[@bryede]

What is a solid state keyboard?

[@Lemon_Inspector]

It's a capacitive foam and foil keyboard, so there's no moving parts (except for all the moving parts) The original Keytronic one is, at least.

[@qwaqwa1960]

I'm debating selling my Poly 88. Any idea of its value...?

[@TechTimeTraveller]

It's been a while since I've seen one sell. Is it complete with the original keyboard? Probably is worth at least $500-$1000 if fairly original.

[@qwaqwa1960]

@@TechTimeTraveller Yeah, they're pretty rare on the Bay. Last I saw was an UNASSEMBLED! kit for $6k. Hmm. Complete with my own custom keyboard (Honeywell Hall effect!). For the $ you mention, I think I'll keep it :-}

[@qwaqwa1960]

@@TechTimeTraveller p.s., always wanted to port Sol's Target to it :-)))))

[@TechTimeTraveller]

@qwaqwa1960 Yeah take my estimates with a huge grain of salt.. I honestly can't recall the last one that sold. In the last few years certain things have gone way up. Only way to know for sure is at auction. Yours might get above my estimate being a one owner unit. There's points for that.

[@timlocke3159]

The first computer that had everything you needed to get it going was the Sphere 1: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_1

[@TechTimeTraveller]

Yeah I goofed there.. I meant to say 'one of'. Technically I think that title could belong to the MCM/70 although I don't think that was aimed at the masses.

[@jwoody8815]

Anyone ever tell you you sound simular to Adrian Black?

[@forbiddenera]

Lol @ 117 volts ac.. wonder if anyone ever panicked if their power was like 110 115 or 120 or measured hoping their 120 sagged just enough to hit 117 or something heh

[@Dong_Harvey]

I really hate that eBay has no interest in preventing snipe bidding, it is actually just as bad for the seller as well as the would-be buyers. But like they even care

[@TechTimeTraveller]

That would be cool - auction runs it's duration.. but if there's snipe bids it extends the clock a little until the bids stop. I'm not sure if it would drive prices into the stratosphere or if people would chill out a bit knowing an expensive endgame might be in store. If people couldn't put their bids on autopilot, would they even be present at the end?

[@Dong_Harvey]

@@TechTimeTraveller in my case, I lost a good bid on a lot of 3 Thinkpads because a sniper hit it in the last 15 seconds, eBay did alert me, but it didn't give me what that bid was, it gave me three options for a quick counterbud, but they were all less than the other guy.. What a scam. I just buy everything instantly, no sense in struggle

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

Love this very interesting... #MadLemon I am sorry that I didn't say hello but you were talking to a friend of yours and I didn't wish to butt in, I just hope that we can remain friends.

[@mrmelo7084]

Reminds me of my old Ohio Scientific.

[@pevkh8359]

Ever heard of a 10 minut Video

[@iroll]

A lot of people like podcast-length videos.

[@sophiacristina]

@@iroll I liked the video as it is. There is so much to cover, so i think 1h is perfect. Also, there is no need to watch it entirely in a sitting...

[@TheErador]

I believe the term 'Foxtrot Oscar' applies. You want a 10-minute video, you go away and make one.

[@medes5597]

Ever heard of an attention span?

[@escgoogle3865]

@@iroll Is there a RSS podcast feed of TTT? Long unboxing vids are great while gardening.

[@bohican]

14:30 The show that you are thinking of was Tomorrow with Tom Snyder (airing after The Tonight Show). Tom Snyder was a tech enthusiast and was immediately fascinated with the Sol 20 that Bob Marsh had brought to the show with him. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol-20#Release