The Last Psion | AlexOne week until #RetroFest2025 Cambridge! I'm not exhibiting this time, but I will be there with a few choice #Psion devices, like some peddler of PDA contraband.
Anyone else going to be there?
RC2014At #Retrofest2025 earlier this year there was a discussion about books. Somebody recommended The Soul Of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Sadly, I can't remember who that was, but I'd like to thank them as I have just finished reading it and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I will also pass on the recommendation to anybody that wants to hear about the creation of a new Super Mini Computer by Data General in the late 70s. It looks like Hackaday recommends it too https://hackaday.com/2016/08/26/books-you-should-read-the-soul-of-a-new-machine/
Computeum VilshofenDas wir beim #Retrofest2025 in Swindon waren hab ich ja schon getrötet - jetzt gibts dazu auch einen kleinen Bericht im Blog:
https://blog.computeum.org/2025/06/03/computeum-auf-dem-retrofest-in-swindon/
Computeum auf dem Retrofest in Swindon
Letztes Wochenende waren wir auch auf dem Retrofest in Swindon in England vertreten. Mit unserem Four Phase System 70 Bedienfeld. Ich bin ja eh gerade in England beim Urlaub mit dem Narrowboat, also warum nicht übers Wochenende nach Swindon. Damit es sich lohnt hab ich das Bedienfeld und
Some of the highlights of #RetroFest2025 as filmed by @breakintoprogram here https://youtu.be/V_qpgc6c8B4?feature=shared&t=1867
(Although ignore the idiot in an #RC2014 shirt waffling on about Z80 kits 31 minutes in)
RetroFest June 2025
Sorry I didn't toot from #RetroFest2025 at the weekend. Even if I had Mastodon on my phone, things were way too busy to have kept up with social media anyway.
Had a fantastic time. My stall had the RC2014 Mini II Picasso kits confusing everybody. I was also using @Wintermute_BBS TMSnake game to lure people in (although I think I was being trolled with the high score!)
Lots of great people there, and some very inspirational conversations with a lot of them. Some wonderful exhibits too. Sadly I didn't get many photos, but I couldn't help buy make a visual pun on one of them.
Can't wait for the RetroFest sister event in Cambridge in November.
Amin GirasolSwindon may seem humdrum, but there's always Astral Travel for the more adventurous.
Here's another form factor I wish still existed - the lunchbox.
Adrian of Binary Dinosaurs is a character, and this machine is a gem. It's a dedicated word processor (those were a thing once upon a time - see the history of Wang Laboratories) and the UI is really well thought out. The screen is portrait and can display a full page of text quite legibly. The black line you see near the lower edge is the type head - it stays in that position, and scrolling winds the page past the type head. It's the opposite of a full screen editor, and very close to how you interact with a typewriter. There is a set of commands for listing the files on the disk. There's no hierarchical filesystem.
Stunning device, completely new to me. The chief dinosaur also graciously booted CP/M on it, using the Software Interface Layer disk and then CP/M.
Richard of http://www.dragondata.co.uk got to spread out across two display tables today, with a collection of unique Dragon prototypes. He was incredibly generous with his time!
I knew the #Dragon32 had a lot in common with the #TandyColorComputer, but I'd always assumed that was thanks to some kind of licencing arrangement. That's not the case! Richard describes the Dragon 32 as an "incompatible clone" of the #CoCo. Yet Tandy chose not to sue, because the CoCo in turn was a copy of the Motorola 6809 reference implementation!
Single-stepping an original #Altair8080 through a #BASIC program which renders the Mandelbrot set... on a #Teletype.
Listen to the Teletype slowing down for the calculations that require more iterations. Beautiful.