The Sol-20: The Beginning Of A Modern Looking Computer

[@chancewolf3739]

That was our first computer in high school, and had been there a couple of years before I got there in 1981. The SOL had the Helios II 8" floppy disk drive and the Diablo printer, and as the printer was *not* the dot-matrix type - it remained the go-to machine for doing English essays and the like even after we got the 8K Commodore PETs and later on the dot matrix printers for them. I loved the SOL. The games were crude (as per 'Robots' here in the video) but it was a solid machine and didn't feel like a toy, which the early Commodore stuff did - although it won in the graphics department. The only problem I remember having with ours was the Helios drive would go down about weekly - and from what I understand that wasn't an uncommon complaint. One day I'll find one within my price range.

[@donvedio]

I build a Sol as soon as I saw and advertisement in Popular Electronics . Fun to assemble, but switched to an Apple II when it came out. Very fond memories of the Sol....

[@gbisaga]

This was my first computer that I bought in high school in 1977. My dad paid half for it. I loved this machine - built the kit, learned to code with it - but I threw the computer and the manual out when I got my first Mac 128K in 1984 (after sitting on the waiting list for several months). Owa tagu siam.

[@RobertDeloyd]

I remember when the Sol-20 first came out and I wanted one so bad

[@wa4aos]

Thanks for the intro. A good friend of mine has 2 of these from his fathers estate. I am going to be checking them out soon for functionality. I got started with the Heath H8 back in the 70's and later was an FE for Digital Equipment Corp for years. Loved the PDP 8's back in the day !!!

[@mojoblues66]

The Sol-20 was the first real Homecomputer i.e. it would come fully assembled with a ROM and a keyboard and a TV output. It was very sophisticated but was quickly made obsolete when the Apple // came out in mid 1977.

[@jeffnay6502]

We have a lot of the same systems. I love the SOL-20 Terminal Computer. It is one of my favorites.

[@SuperMurrayb]

Thanks for posting this video about this important machine. With a base price of $1800 it was too expensive for home use, [In 1978 the MSRP for a new Toyota Corolla 2 Door Liftback was $3,388]. Was the Sol-20 primarily used by small businesses?

[@timberwofe333]

Awesome video, I just realized that an S-100 based single board computer I had in my collection was in fact a Sol-PC board, the board from the SOL-20! The person I got it from had it since 'new' in the late 70's, he was a Engineering major and I was lucky enough to be the recipient of a lot of his older stuff before he moved when he retired including this fantastic piece of computer history. Since what I have is just the main board itself with the personality module - I don't even know where to start to refurbish and test this thing out, do you?

[@BilalHeuser1]

I remember seeing the SOL Computer at a Central Florida Computer Society meeting, probably sometime in the late 70s.

[@knmonlinemedia]

Somehow I ended up on the weird side of the internet, found out about Sol20 computer on instructables. I had to see it in action

[@bowserwars]

I've never heard of this computer. It looks great

[@bodoelsel]

Great video. Never heard of this computer before.

[@amagilly]

I hear that Chase (and Berzerk) were inspirations for the game Robotron.

[@jeffnay6502]

Sorry I missed the live Premiere. How did it go???

[@alanflima]

Lindo.. great

[@jamesoloser6149]

i heard of this computer its my grandpa's