The Mystery of the Unitron

[@malcolmgibson6288]

I stumbled across this channel last week, and I am so glad that I did.

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Thanks for sharing! I have the Unitron computer with original Apple II style case. This computer is 100% compatible withr the Apple II on software and hardware. You computer has been modified as it should say UNITRON on boot up. Apple IIs and clones don't but out a high enough signal so capturing video can be hard.

[@MichaelAStanhope]

That keyboard looks like a BTC foam and foil variant, likely needs new pads on it to get it functional again.

[@RetroGamingNook]

You show me more unknown to me computers than any other channel. Thanks!

[@BrianBoniMakes]

For me the give away is the Ontario Hydro approval sticker on the power supply. I used to buy Unitron parts at a store called Parts Galore in Toronto. The early boards were just boards, have you lifted out the board? Early boards would have been hand soldered. Early machines would boot to "apple ][" and later ones would have changed that to avoid copyright problems. I wish you had a better view of the slot 0 board, it could be a number of things. Does it have a Z80 processor on it? The cases also came from Taiwan and the store where I saw they sold a range for other projects that were popular in the day like color organs and audio mixers. The early power supplies were notorious for blowing themselves up if you plugged them in without a load. I soldered more than a few of these boards myself back in high school. The very early boards were exact copies of Apple boards and did not work unless you had actual Apple masked roms. You can tell by popping off an EPROM and looking for a cut trace and a transistor underneath. The display is much more modern than the system. I used and recommended Rana drives. They had more tracks than the apple drives and could hold more data which was a big selling feature when Visicalc was all the rage. You could also run four of them which almost everyone who bought them did. That was fun, I hadn't thought about them in a long time.

[@Drop2DOS]

Great job love the shows folks kudos.

[@joysticksnjukeboxes]

I'm glad you said it looks like a hobbyist project box; that's what I was thinking. I remember seeing ads in BYTE magazine and such with computer boards that hobbyists could buy and assemble themselves, but I didn't know many who did that.

[@Mueller3D]

I'm not familiar with the Unitron, but I can answer some of your other questions. I remember the Rana disk drive from magazine ads back in the day. I believe that you could enable write protection by touching the area next to the LED. It was marketed as a more capable disk drive. The Microsoft card is obviously a language card (ie, 16KB expansion card), not a CP/M card. It plugs into the motherboard to get the DRAM I/O signals from it (RAS and multiplexed address lines). The keyboard is probably foam & foil, and probably requires new foam (you can get from Texelec). The monitor should have a color/BW switch on it to enable color. There is a potentiometer on the computer mainboard to adjust the video signal level; it might help with the capture card. You might want to watch more of Adrian Black's Apple II videos to gain more experience with this system.

[@sdsck]

Thanks for the shout out !! Very interesting and informative show today. Keep them coming !!

[@CDP-1802]

I have that exact same motherboard! I got it with some other junk and intended to strip it of its ICs but decided to just keep it instead, I plugged it into my Apple II plus’ keyboard and PSU and it worked fine, although I had to do a little rework on the speaker connector and the video jack. Will say though that it’s got to be the cheapest, flimsiest PCB I’ve ever worked with, the traces practically peel off like post it notes when doing any rework 🙁

[@Lilithe]

4:50 Ontario Hydro? That thing went through Canada! :D

[@jecelassumpcaojr890]

The Taiwan Unitron Apple II clone board you have and the Brazilian Unitron Apple II clone with the familiar case you showed a picture of are completely unrelated. The first few Apple II clones in Brazil had a very different industrial design since these small companies were afraid of what Apple would do. The local Unitron (who previously made lighting systems and is still doing so) decided to risk making their case look like the original. When they got away with it, a bunch of other companies started doing the same, with one calling their machine the "Elppa II" and then another just "Apple II". Later Unitron cloned the Macintosh, but this time making their case look like the original ended badly since Apple was able to use that to get the US Congress to block it.

[@Endzs768]

very neat, i often hear about these hobbyist built computers from the 70s and 80s but rarely see any that survived the test of time with out being stripped apart and/or junked.

[@MotownBatman]

Good Morning from Dryden, MI! with a Name like that is it a Transformer? LOL

[@bobalex6323]

There was a company in Brazil, also called UNITRON. They made AppleII clones. It was the first company that made a real working MacIntosh clone, back to 1986. It was the UNITRON Mac 512.

[@kenromaine2387]

When are you going to show some pictures of the Centurion MicroPlus on you channel. I was a engineer for Centurion for over 10 years and worked on the MicroPlus project. Is you MicroPlus a CPU5 or CPU6 system?

[@vintagegeek]

Hi Ken! That’s so awesome that you worked on the MicroPlus project!! I’m sure we will need your assistance and I’ve been in touch with Usagi Electric too…to be honest I still haven’t opened the case of our micro plus yet; we’ve had so many projects in the past weeks that I just haven’t had a chance. But don’t worry, as soon as I do I’ll get some pictures together. In the meantime, drop us a line at [e-mail] so we have your contact info if you don’t mind?

[@kenromaine2387]

@@vintagegeek I am the old guy in some of Usagi's video(s) helping him with the Hawk and other Centurion repairs. The Diag PROM Bd in the videos used to get the Centurion running was my old prototype Diag PROM Bd S/N 02.

[@wyldride]

Had a RanaSystems drive with the Apple Clone we got in the 80s (Golden ][ or Spiral ][ depending on if you looked at the badge or the startup screen). In fact still have it in my basement.

[@soupwizard]

9:37 "Catsup Terminated" really should become a meme

[@elbiggus]

The case reminds me a bit of the Sol-20.

[@randaldavis8976]

had a Rana Drive for my A.E. Line. Quad (?) density dual sided, If I remember right. Crossfire was a fun game.

[@Lilithe]

7:42 Is it PAL? The capture card is probably PAL compatible. The jitter might be so far out of spec the monitor thinks it's not getting the colour burst. (If it is NTSC)

[@douro20]

I forget who had another rather uncommon one called the AMI III which was a clone of the II Plus. The VTech Laser 128EX was perhaps the best of the Apple II clones: it was made to compete with the IIc and it had a few enhancements such as an ASIC which generated true NTSC colour video.

[@wskinnyodden]

No escape from Pandora's box!!!! AAAARRRRRGGGGGGGG HEEELP! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@asanjuas]

i know the unitron brand from the PC's that came with DR-DOS preinstalled, and curiosly are distributed in galicia(spain). Yeaah that's the same company i was thinking.

[@sdsck]

I also love the “Riddler” themed background !! Very fitting !

[@CB3ROB-CyberBunker]

there were plenty such 'universal' 'project' cases just like this one in the 1950/60/70s... with plenty of 'projects' and actual products based on them. not just microcomputers. although ofcourse it also fits a keyboard and mainboard :P but things like PA microphone stations, gate control panels, audio mixing desks, basically half your control room or studio usually ended up in one of these cases. not very 'unique'. if you're gonna build a microcomputer you have to put it in something... and this was just the obvious choice at the time i guess. (see back then there was no '3d printing' and for the first time these things were around there wasn't even plastic injection molding yet, so basically all electronics stores had a dusty pile of these things somewhere in the corner. (everything in those shops always was dusty for some reason ;) them having random selections of matrix keyboards also wasn't so utterly weird. :P some second hand even :P

[@brostenen]

I am so, gotta build a custom case for my ATX form factor clone of a Commodore64.

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi, i have one of those small nuc win-tv ( windows 10 2g ram and a 32gb ssd ) I have asked my panel shop to make a aluminum metal skin to cover a older HP keyboard that is more business style from XP days similar to that style ( they said the C64 breadbox was to hard for the beer and pizza money i offered ) The clone nuc will fit in the cover and it runs of a wall adapter to 3.5 mm power cord Video is HDMi and something else

[@Christianpreaching]

It's just not the case that it was the standard case. In this case somebody probably built the case incase you want to know

[@DangerousPictures]

at 8:35 there is a super annoying beep (probably from the CRT) can you please try to filter out crt noises from future videos?

[@michaelstoliker971]

RANA made drives for the ATARI 8-bit systems. Why not for Apple II?

[@HoJoGoGo]

This is an Apple II plus clone motherboard, the Microsoft card in slot 0 is a 16k "Language Card", increasing the system to 64k of RAM.

[@soupwizard]

That case looks like it borrowed design cues from the Sol-20 by the Processor Technology Corporation (1976-1979)

[@jecelassumpcaojr890]

My first guess was that the case was from an Ohio Scientific 4P or a Sol 20, but in both of these the wooden sides rise up straight and in this one the sides have a curve.