Xerox Alto Restoration Part 16 - our disk goes down, the Alto connects to Google and draws fractals

[@AlanMedina314]

You guys are rock stars, I hope to someday have a fraction of your engineering and repair prowess. The entire series of videos has been a joy to watch, please keep making more. There is something appealing about taking old hardware and restoring it to its full glory and in this case exceeding its original implementation. The Alto was truly ahead of the game.

[@BrunoPhilipe]

I like how that table shakes violently when the disk drive seeks haha The whole series is awesome, Marc! Please keep making more videos!

[@TommyHelgevold]

There is something so satisfying about watching the Alto 1974 computer connect to todays internet, it's like the start of an revolution reaching its own predicted destination.

[@BenHelweg]

It's also funny seeing a machine that owes much of it's success and existence to the Alto sitting right next to it.

[@stephenfalken925]

skynet 0.1beta

[@GraySlicerAnimations]

@@stephenfalken925 I heard the public demo is coming soon :D

[@allen73RMX]

1973 not 1974

[@ih8tusernam3s]

This Ken guy is amazing, he's like a genius.

[@toinoi123]

The Alto connecting to the 'net actually bought a tear to my eye. Amazing feat gentlemen!

[@ForViewingOnly]

Thank you Marc, I loved seeing this, and I must now go and watch the entire series. This is what I call a proper restoration video, with real engineering skills. Compare this with the highly-subscribed channels that think cleaning the case with retr0bright is a restoration!

[@Gooberslot]

I have computers that are 20+ years newer that can't netboot. Impressive.

[@PilkScientist]

I think that's mostly because we all have such different BIOSes and stuff so it'd be hard to. All Altos fit into about three configurations, as they went over in... part 10 or so, and the boot is similar between them. Apple might have been able to pull it off but it'd boot slower and need internet just to turn on. While it's a good concept it's hard to make work in practice

[@mrjsv4935]

I'm born in 1974 and only recently discovered that there has been this amazing ahead of it's time computer with mouse, GUI, Ethernet and all, introduced already in 1973 according to wikipedia! And I thought my Commodore Amiga 500 was ahead of it's time :D Excellent job repairing this Xerox Alto, following this video series with great interest :)

[@123jstechservices3]

3 years before the A 500 the A1000 WAS indeed ahead of its time :-D

[@Justsquareenough]

I really enjoyed this series and watching you guys, thank you for documenting it.

[@joshdersch634]

If you modify the program to turn the display off while computing the Mandelbrot fractal, the program will run significantly faster (since the display microcode is essentially idle, leaving the Emulator task more time). Might be able to get it down to a mere half hour!

[@mmille10]

When I used software to compute Mandelbrot sets on my old Atari 8-bit computer, I used the same technique. You could turn off the display, and speed up computation, since part of the CPUs time was taken every 60th of a second to redraw the screen.

[@stumbling]

And then you could also "cheat" and just compute the top half and mirror it since the pattern is symmetrical. :P

[@stumbling]

This takes me back to writing my own draw functions for a variant of BASIC (DarkBASIC): the default commands would update the screen after every call, which made them horribly slow.

[@AshleyPomeroy]

The old Sinclair ZX81 had a similar feature - you could ask it to run in FAST mode, which turned off the screen refresh.

[@jasonmurawski5877]

Ashley Pomeroy the commodore 128 had the same thing, you typed FAST into the basic prompt and the screen went blank, you could type SLOW to make it go back again

[@scipanda4969]

Super cool. It's nice to see you use your awesome mechanical skills. On a sweet piece of technology. The network hardware/software is amazing too.

[@PeterCut62]

Amazing ! Literally back to the future for the Alto booting from the network via BBB interface. Very impressive !

[@TerryMcKean]

Only 45 minutes to calculate the Mandelbrot butt-print... that's very fast compared to back in 1996 when I first got into computers with my first computer which was an IBM XT with an IBM CGA monitor and nicely-clicky IBM keyboard and I found an example BASIC program in the 1994 PC Pocket Ref book which was a simple Mandlebrot Set demo. I loaded GW-BASIC and typed in the 5 or 6 lines out of the PC Pocket Ref and hit the 'run' button and it took all night for the XT to calculate and display the completed butt-print. ;-)

[@TerryMcKean]

Nowadays I run Linux and my favorite Mandelbrot Set zooming program is one called "Xaos"... I set it for 17,000 or so iterations and move the mouse-cursor over a desired spot on the butt-print and press and hold the left-click button and it smoothly and beautifully zooms in as long as the mouse-button is held, like travelling through psychedelic space...lol ;-D

[@danyboy1477]

Wow complete joy seeint that Alto netbooting!!!

[@MichaelRusso]

Excellent work guys! Your work is inspiring to say the least.

[@voidshell6273]

Master Ken!!

[@carlosdiaz4535]

Thanks for posting great videos, i learn a lot from them!. I started to get more interest on FPGAs because i saw you guys used one on some earlier videos, fantastic use case :).

[@gosha_x86]

Ken really deserves that master title. That connect to google.com.. It's not the easiest thing to do.

[@nameistunbekannt7896]

This machine was built in the 70s, but its soft-& hardware was built for the year 2030! Amazing..

[@nameistunbekannt7896]

Probably someone in 2030 went back in time, was not able to come back, but so he built a computer that suits his 2030s needs.

[@dronejunglistplatoon]

Incredible job guys! Amazing work and very very cool!

[@hubzcaps]

this is hella facinating and cool look at rhat seek arm cool dude omg u might be the only ppl with a functioning alto please continue this project and aplause for the network guy

[@ReneSchickbauer]

With multiple Altos networked, you could do distributed computing, rendering the Fractal much faster ;-)

[@samio3907]

Have you ever tried to connect the Alto to a bulletin board system (BBS) ? This could be fun 🙂

[@Frisenette]

You really should get Smalltalk up and running and do an extensive demo. I think that would be really shocking to most people how much more advanced it really was than any WIMP interface done today. Glacially/regally slow at times but a orders of magnitude better thought out and conceptually better than the watered down imitators that originated on the Lisa and Mac.

[@mikelmendioroz8210]

Very amazing stuff, especially on the ethernet.. I would love to see a video explaining the difference between the Alto's ethernet and the modern one (apart from the voltage, that is).

[@tsclly2377]

LOL.. the piece left after the initial repair, loved the games, Those games where hitting the barroom floors at about that time probably running off of the intel 8008.. love the telnet, but that Diablo, I remember from a time sharing terminal back in 1973.. the pretty much original dialup. Love the emulator. Recording all of this and the collection of records most certainly makes this historic en-devour with while and great for actually understanding computers.. I would say required course material after a basic or C first semester course..( CS104 Computer History - Required)

[@mikeswatches2480]

. . I love these videos . . excellent work being done . .

[@DoRC]

big repair job but really nice the problem was simple to fix

[@Maxxarcade]

This whole project continues to amaze me! It would be awesome to write a GUI web browser for that, regardless of how slow it would probably be. I did notice some retrace lines in the CRT at times. Is that a camera artifact, or something like G2 or brightness too high on the CRT?

[@pacifiky]

This is so impressive

[@paulbrantley5212]

We are not worthy. :-) That was way too cool for us youtube viewers. Simply stunningly cool! Would love to see an Alto up close in person.

[@123jstechservices3]

very very nice may i suggest you to separate the calculation and the rendering process in two distinct parts ? Also at the rendering level i'm pretty sure there is a better way to draw lines : Store the length of the line and the number of pixel to draw , Display first the shortest lines first drawing one pixel at a time and for the lines longer than 30 pixels use loops or delayed loops and draw into graphics memory ...

[@edgeeffect]

It can still draw The Mandlebrot Set faster than my old BBC Micro.

[@DandyDon1]

To think the carriage function and print head of Xerox-Diablo daisy wheel printers were made in a similar way to this also using DC 4 brush motors.

[@DandyDon1]

I always cringe a little when these types of HDs make strange noises. I've heard one too many Quantum q2040 43mb 8" drives with "iffy" spindle bearings sound strange too. I remember a certain Xerox 8000 gateway server at XBS Culver City which didn't like to be moved (even carefully) a few inches on it's castors. Lastly the Xerox Star Achilles heal....they never like to be separated from the hive and operate as standalone workstations for extended periods of time haha. The search for legacy OSBU South and BWS Hacks continues :o) Slow workstations around Xerox were common.... Up to 20 min for a 6085I to boot in the morning....then have it reboot once again while you are at Lunch to Paginate and recover disk space. Does the network interface which was bread-boarded and connected to the Alto's 3MB Ethernet card communicate with TCP/IP to the WAN?

[@douro20]

Did the 6085 draw everything in software? That was probably the biggest bottleneck on the Alto graphics-wise. It has no character generator per se; only a framebuffer which draws directly to the display.

[@DandyDon1]

As far as characters are concerned, I know that fonts could be installed and were sold as additional software applications. I also seem to remember that display fonts were separate from print fonts, at least when a Star Workstation was on the network. By this time (and with the 8010) XRX Interpress (Pre Postscript) was fairly well established. I'd really have to dig and read up on how graphics were handled internally. I'm sure others here will have the answers on the tip of their tongues... ;)

[@DandyDon1]

I should have added that there is a usergroup to discuss and answer questions about Everything Xerox OSD (Office Systems Division) here: groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/xrxosd/info

[@basicforge]

This is great guys! Good work! You wouldn't happen to have a Smalltalk disk pack? That would make an amazing demo!

[@CuriousMarc]

We do, see the Xerox Alto Demo video.

[@douro20]

I'm guessing that the disk drive starts up with an open speed control loop, and when the disk controller comes up it closes the control loop and brings the speed down to the proper operating speed.

[@CuriousMarc]

+douro20 Good guess!

[@TreyVaswal]

"I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then one day . . ."

[@filipmac1545]

It would be interesting to see if somebody could create some new Applications for the Xerox Alto, maybe a web browser.

[@stumbling]

I'm sure "Master" Ken is already on the case.

[@compu85]

Great progress! In the video it looks like you have the brightness / screen turned up too high on the monitor, there are visible retrace lines. Had you turned the contrast down to try and preserve the phosphor? This is making it very tempting to come out to VCF West!!!

[@CuriousMarc]

Yes, it was up too high by the time we took this. The monitor is usually dark at the beginning of the day, then brightens up as the contaminants gets boiled off the tube's cathode. We can't find a replacement tube...

[@compu85]

Ah that explains it. Too bad you haven't been able to find a replacement yet! Is it an oddball CRT? At least once it's been on for a while the picture is bright and clear :)

[@douro20]

They could send it to Lexel to get it rebuilt, but I don't know if the Y-Combinator wants to spend that much money.

[@nealelliott]

this is so cool! I'm humbled by the engineering knowledge that you two have. now that the Alto can netboot, does this mean that it's possible to clone disks, or generate disk images from historical Alto disks?

[@CuriousMarc]

Yes, although Carl's FPGA tool should be much faster at this. Almost there, next video hopefully.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@CuriousMarc We need to write a lightweight web browser for the Alto that can render the html.

[@bborkzilla]

I wonder when you'll be making carbon brushes for that motor like you did for the tape drive...

[@rickt1866]

Ken is a bad ass.

[@Kenbomp]

It should be slow means it's a good benchmark. Not bad for a very old system.

[@TheNovum]

Agree you guys rock..

[@AlainHubert]

Wow ! Booting off a network ? That was very advanced for 1974 ! Xerox executives had no idea how ahead of its time this machine (system) was. They could have been the Apple and Microsoft of today, combined into one company. We can only imagine what this system would have become some 43 years later... It took an extremely talented, innovative, and visionary team to come up with the Alto. Something missing from today's computer companies that are solely focused on profits instead of innovation.

[@123jstechservices3]

if fact the Xerox Alto impressed S Jobs himself. For the network boot just have to show the network device + the tftp stack to the firmware and boot just as it was a regular device ... boot bootp , boot tftp

[@eldersprig]

Don't forget HP and Adobe. They invented the laser printer as well.

[@michaelheinrich44]

@@123jstechservices3 Linux can do this also. I built a pentium 130 diskless x terminal by booting over bootp and tftp with linux from a linux server back in 1999. All it needed was to program an eprom for a ne2000 network card (they all had an eprom socket!). the tools are open source. I later (2002) replaced bootp by a 4 MB (yes, megabyte) solid state ide hard drive to load the kernel which then mounted root by nfs like before.

[@allen73RMX]

1973 not 1974

[@DavidHornblow]

Are the Diablo disks the inspiration for the Millennium Falcon?

[@televisionandcheese]

Yeeaaah more episodes!

[@simona625]

Could you create a part boot disk that only has instruction to full boot from network ?

[@blissx]

great video

[@525Lines]

Lithium grease doesn't dry out. Do you use that across the board in vintage computer hardware repairs that need oil?

[@davidchang5862]

Imagine something like the Covid pandemic happened globally in the 70s. I wonder how would people work from home without the Internet, www, broadband, VPN, Windows and mobile systems. The world is pretty much dead and nobody could do anything at all. 🤔

[@gabrielpfgm]

Came here just to watch it rendering the Mandelbrot set.

[@SudosFTW]

so in the spindle tests, why is the spare spindle spinning clockwise instead of counterclockwise like the other? polarity difference in testing?

[@CuriousMarc]

You get one chance out of two to wire it right...

[@MaxKoschuh]

astounding !!!!

[@MarquisDeSang]

Can you optimize the fractal drawing by flip copying the vertical half?

[@Vyseblues]

Okay, now you just need to run a version of Doom on it with the music and sound effects.

[@MaddTheSane]

I don't think the Alto has a sound card, only a beeper. I also don't know if the Alto has the horsepower to do Doom at all.

[@jecelassumpcaojr890]

I have seen videos with an Alto which had a music keyboard and could play multiple notes with definable waveforms, but I never found any mention of this in bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/alto/ including the lists of non standard peripheral options for the Alto.

[@jecelassumpcaojr890]

I found a video of the Alto playing music: vimeo.com/111334074

[@rocketman221projects]

DOOM was ported to run on a VIC-20, so it could probably be done on the Alto as well.

[@henson2k]

Any viruses for Alto yet?

[@CuriousMarc]

You bet, and a very famous one: the first known worm virus. It was written by John Shoch (he appears briefly on this video here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/p5_NpaGXZdmFnskm55s ). For his Ph.D. thesis on Ethernet, he wanted to test the newly invented network under stress load. He wrote a program that had to be loaded into each Alto, and made each machine send test packets on the Ethernet to generate a controllable network load. To simplify the deployment of his test code, he made it into a "worm". He actually is the one that invented the name, and this is the first known worm. The worm would discover other machines and replicate itself via the network until it reached every one. Which it did. But of course, one version had an unintentional bug in it, and brought down all the machines on the network one fateful day. John got infamous for that. John actually visited us and brought his original disk of the Worm program (says WORM in big on it). We have archived it. And by the way, the Ethernet was proven to perform extremely well under overload (which had been theoretically predicted, but not experimentally verified until John's pioneering work), which was a major reason for its eventual dominance.

[@henson2k]

Fascinating story!

[@jeylful]

Awesome!!!

[@Mossy-Rock]

Hi Marc, what is that piece of equipment you were using to power and test the spindle motor at increasing speeds?

[@CuriousMarc]

It's a lowly HP power supply, a bit modern and plasticky to my taste. But it has very precise voltage and current limit settings.

[@patton303]

Master Ken looks like an adult male version of the girl from Stranger Things.

[@mackenzierynebagtong8549]

I did connect to google but it only talks. Not just acces it.

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

guys do you have plans to replace the diablo disks with something that resemble a SSD like some SD card or CF card?

[@CuriousMarc]

Heresy! But yes, Carl is almost done doing such a tool, which we will also make available for the CHM and the LCM museums. We won't "replace" the beautiful Diablo disc with it, but that gives us a way to try Alto packs quickly and not need to make new original ones if one crashes.

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

excellent. and thank you for answer. it is a great series of videos.

[@hubzcaps]

netboot on a alto xtreme

[@LMacNeill]

Next up: porting Firefox to AltoOS. ;-)

[@gogolego7869]

tinkled pink hehe

[@Jdvc-yd5tx]

BeagleBoard, another Risc V. 🖋 🐕

[@chqara]

[@38911bytefree]

Tons of thing that Apple didnt invented ... another example of "the story is told by the winners" ... LOL

[@michaelheinrich44]

jobs never denied what he saw at xerox parc. Bill gates saw it too. But jobs was first to offer a product which was further developed in desktop metaphor

[@johnhillside9105]

A mathematical function.

[@papafrank808]

And this was the modern Computer of the World and now it is to slow

[@tomhardware2254]

What’s the big deal using telnet on a old machine? That’s how a lot of stuff was done before web browsers. Although not commonly used telnet can be done even at a windows command prompt. Who woulda thunk it.

[@CuriousMarc]

First time this was ever done over Ethernet - or more exactly, what would eventually evolve into Ethernet as we know it.

[@tomhardware2254]

Wtf is he talking about nonstandard Ethernet to the modern Ethernet? That makes no sense what so ever. This guy running the camera must not have any computer or networking experience.

[@CuriousMarc]

You might want to watch the other videos, or maybe Google the history of Ethernet. You will find that this is the machine on which Ethernet was invented/prototyped/demonstrated for the very first time. Modern Ethernet would eventually evolve from this, but this first prototype implementation is completely incompatible with the modern version we all know. Not the same bit rate, not the same packets, not the same CRC, not the same protocols, only 256 addresses (!), etc... It was actually a very large challenge to reverse engineer it and make it communicate with its modern offshoot. Some of the Ethernet inventors actually visited us to see their original machine, see in the video here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jpmsoJuNp5Zjobc .

[@tomhardware2254]

CuriousMarc you do realize their is other networking media used other than Ethernet on networks right? Also a network that needed to talk to another incompatible network is done with a gateway. They have been around a very long time. Not a new thing by any means. Just not commonly used now.

[@CuriousMarc]

@@tomhardware2254 Not sure I understand the hate here. I answered your provocative and foul-language question in detail, see above.