Video

6809E was the basis of CMI's FAIRLIGHT V.

Has anyone built an ARM based version of this computer.

very nice! have you ever thought about trying to recreate the ultra-rare Movement Drum Computer 1 ? - which is based on the nascom 2 platform

Loving your prestel service on my BBC B and may have crashed the weather service a couple of times. Sorry. Everyone i have shown it has been fascinated. Thanks for all your work on it. Wonderful video about this almost mythical "system" computer too.

Nascom 1 was a gift from my brother, 2 weeks wages for the buffer card and memory board for me.

Ha! Its funny that you should show a 40+ year old radio for a 40+ year old data system.

Brilliant!

Very interesting, and with a nice dash of humor. 🙂

Hi !! Greetings from Argentina !!!!!!! How can I use two Baofeng BF-999 and two arduinos to transmit and receive data over-the-air ?? Thanks !!!!!

Fantastic project! I just stumbled on it, but now have a Telecom (Australia) Computerphone connected via an asterisk softmodem. Thanks for your efforts!

Could LORA be an alternative for creating a network? How do you serve the viewdata, so not the client? I especially need insight in how stuff was encoded. I know it basically sends out Teletext like pages, but I found out that the special characters were encoded with escape characters, which were also used to be able to send program blocks. As teletext only sends 128 characters (7-bit), the upper 128 bits from program bytes needed a special treatment.

I can't help noticing that the seller of that nuclear power plant on eBay was one John Nuke-em...

Do you know how programs were send since teletext only allowed 7-bit characters? I have the idea that the characters ¼,¾,‖,½ and █ trigger 2-nibble characters to transmit the entire 8-bit byte. So 0-31 and 128-255 are encoded behind these special characters, and that ‖ is the space. I cannot find a specification for it though.

Very cool!

great vid please do an update

I'm afraid once the generation that has a nostalgic memory of wanting these systems but not being able to afford them pass on, no-one is going to be interested in system that is a 1000 times slower than a cheap mobile phone.

Fantastic video. Really interesting build and a very good point about museum preservation can mean taking machines and putting them in a glass box never to be touched.

Thanks for the video, a real trip down memory lane. I only ever saw pictures of the System computers in magazines. My first computer was an Atom, which I expanded all the way to a disk system. I did build a Richard Russell board at work, which was the Z80 prototype for the BBC Micro. That was before Acorn showed the BBC their Proton, which became the model A/B. I have enough electronics projects on the go, mostly RF related, so I shall steer clear of the vintage computer, modern builds, as it looks highly addictive. Glad you have found a support group though. Good luck. Nick.

very good and very funny!

Solid content as always!

Great video, love your style.

13:42 its like the Theseus ship, just keep replacing all parts, now do you have a new ship or its the old one ? I say its the old one because the "form", aka, the abstract interconnection of components is what makes the thing, not exactly the specific atoms that make the actual parts. The soul of the machine is the form and function, not the atoms and parts.

The only Acorn machine I have is an A3200, never saw the 8-bit machines except a BBC once at school. So this was great to watch, plus your natural comedic timing and delivery is a bonus!

I had an Acorn Atom in the 90s, from the local recycling centre. (which was an Aladdin's cave of "retro" stuff back then. We had over 70 computers and consoles from there at one point. It got a bit out-of-hand. lol) Included with the Atom were some DIN 41612 cards built on stripboard. One of them had a Dallas RTC chip on. I think another was for interfacing to an RTTY modem, so likely a HAM enthusiast owned it originally. Sadly, in a bizarre twist of fate, the whole lot got run over by a Land Rover. :( 5:36 - If only it were that easy. lol

Ian McCollum, in one of his videos, brings up very similar points regarding donating collections to museums, allowing collections to be split up, and comparing with selling. Good points all around!

Entertaining and educational. And likely one of the more complex programs ever written for the old 81!

The "Unboxing" bit made me spit out my coffee...wasn't ready for that. Great video!

I love how this keeps escalating. These things can really turn into never-ending hobbies.

Hilarious! thanks

Programming principles apply here, premature-optimization is the root of all evil!

I'm almost afraid to ask whether the rack size is metric or imperial !

What does or doesn't make something original is a bit tricky. It feels like it has to come from the original manufacturer to be original, otherwise it's a clone or replica. What I do know is my lack of room is preventing me figuring out how to build my own. Although I did have a lot of fun building my RC2014...

tres amusant

the rack itself costs more then a complete pc. engineering a complete system is not easy at all if you mush account for the final price.

Great to see somebody who really knows what they’re doing .Back in 1976 here in Calgary Alberta Canada I went to the first computer Shop in the city called believe it or not The Computer Shop anyways to make a long story short it would cost me about $4000 to build some kind of S 100 kit computer and my older brother talked me out of it but that didn’t dissuade me. I ended up taking a computer science degree and spent probably close to 30 years working with main frames, PCs and other paraphernalia.

Interesting, and boy are you keen. I followed the glasstty bit and was pleasantly surprised, especially seeing the old Telecom branded colour monitor from a computerphone. I used to work in a repair lab fixing them. I did have one of those screens, but disposed of it long ago, however I still have a few black & white units. I downloaded the Viewdata client terminal software, it worked straight away, now I'm kind of interested in setting up a server..... I will have to try and find the software for my old Tandy TRS-80 model 1, that I used to access the Australian version (well I think I did that), a challenge due to lots of incompatibilities. They were fun days, until Telecom jacked up the prices to the blazes and basically killed it.

I look forward to the video of where you have a half-rack full of Acorn System 3s + one System 2. Personally I wouldn't stop at genuine non-original cards though. I'd also build some non-genuine original cards for the system, maybe a z80 expansion card that lets you run Spectrum software/games. That said, if I had the money to do all this, I'd probably just opt to build an entirely custom Eurocard based computer running Forth.

Absolutely fascinating and a presentation style I feel very much at home with! Also an unboxing video to end all unboxing videos!

Excellent. I've only warmed to Acorn in the last few years (especially after Micro Men movie). I was always a committed Nascom fan (built mine in 1980 at the age of 19). I love Z80 assembler and I've always found 6502 code a little nausea inducing. One of my first jobs was fixing Microtan kits and building Acorn Atom kits (my boss was saving 40/50 quid by buying kits and I could build 2 in a morning and only cost him 30 quid). My Nascom still exists and is partially working but not used since about 1985 when I got my first PC.

This is just wonderful and awesome in every possible way. You've got yourself one more subscriber! Cheers from Sweden. :)

Brilliant video! You got me laughing on the floor with the boxing and unboxing of all the pcbs 🤣It was a pleasure meeting you at the Dragon meetup, and I'm happy to see my big, shiny head around 10:10 XDDDD Cheers!

Enjoyable video. Great work. Do you have a link to that hole drilling service on eBay? Sounds handy for some nasty fiddly stuff.

Nice rack! (Sorry) 😂

Darn I thought you were gonna actually hook up some temperature sensors or servos to the thing like would be in real life.

I still have my acorn system 1, bought in 1979, in my lab.

At 9:44 is that a 100 mm by 160 mm prototyping card with a DIN41612 layout on one end? If so where did it come from please?

Bugger! There was a Control Universal keyboard on eBay only a couple of months ago. The seller had on idea, but I recognised the black atom case.

Fantastic I have been looking for a video on the Acorn or Microtan rack. I've been looking at racks for a z80 project but they are silly money

I can't say I watch many (or any) unboxing videos... but I can still say, with certainty, that your's are the best ever!