Headstart's PC With The Weird GUI "OS" [Explorer]
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- This is sort of one of the most underwhelming machines I own - insofar as it's actually pretty good, it just packs in a really half-baked software idea, that could have been good if it was... finished?
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:30 Hardware overview
13:30 Getting started
15:25 Bootup / OS
17:13 The GUI (Bulletin Board)
28:36 Market position
30:45 Software / hardware demos
34:47 Cost cutting
35:53 Mono graphics background
39:08 Mono graphics demos
Mono graphics defect
46:15 Mono CGA emulation
47:20 Nonstandard graphics
49:42 Conclusion
50:40 Who made it?
51:53 Outro - Věda a technologie
![1000ft of ANALOG HD video over a single cable?! [AHD/CVI/TVI]](/img/n.gif)
FOOTNOTES / CORRECTIONS:
First, in re: the video chip. I did have the machine open, took a bunch of photos, looked up every chip I could and got nowhere. Somehow (I can't explain this) I completely missed the chip RIGHT NEXT to the video port, a Yamaha v6366. It's documented (www.sampson-jeff.com/temp/v6366.pdf ) and appears to genuinely be a weird little gadget that would have required a custom driver. It appears to actually be intended for laptops, which makes sense this late in the decade.
Second, in re: my speculation about the provenance of the design: I decided after finishing this video to revisit the PCB. I did in fact open the machine and look at the board, but got very little info out of it; several of the chips were dead ends on google, and the markings on the board didn't go anywhere either. However, I've checked again, and I have a new lead.
The board is prominently marked "CADAC", and when I searched for that while writing the script, I included terms like "PC" and "computer" and got nothing useful. Today I tried "cadac pcb" and wouldn't you know, it turns out that CADAC is a Dutch board design house, founded about two years before this PC. I have no more info than that, but IMO the coincidence is too strong to ignore.
I assume, 100% of the time, that any clone made before the late 90s was not designed or built in any western country, because the clone market led the electronics industry in exploitation of cheap overseas labor. There are rampant examples of this, including cases - which I scripted, but chose to cut from the video because I couldn't provide solid, visual supporting evidence - where major manufacturers like Dell and IBM simply stamped their name on designs from Taiwanese ODMs, utterly unaltered, and then ran ads in American magazines boasting about their brilliant design and engineering minds, while describing a machine they had zero input on.
So I just assumed this was a similar case, but, Dutch company, Dutch designer - it feels like this was genuinely designed in the Netherlands. Who knows though, maybe a Taiwanese ODM designed it and contracted a Dutch board house to make the boards. Either way,
Third, in re: the refresh rate: MDA is 50Hz, not 75. I was vaguely remembering VGA textmode's 70Hz and thought it had inherited it partly from MDA. I planned on double checking, but while shooting B-roll I had my shutter at 50FPS and was still getting really bad raster roll. I had to adjust to some weird off-speed like 48fps, so my gut was saying "sure enough, feels like some in-between value."
Fourth, in re: the keyboard: Something that's always missing from my comments on keyboards, which I should do better about, is that in the 80s very few people had "proper" "modern" typing experience. Typing was not that common a skill to begin with, and with the PC having basically the only keyboard that you could conceivably learn to touch-type on the way we do now, people simply weren't using keyboards the way we do. Typing on a typewriter, even an electric or electronic one, is very different than on a PC-style keyboard.
All the same, when the PC came out, all the publications praised it's keyboard; they recognized that it was phenomenally high quality and set the bar for microcomputer input, which - to my mind - means pretty much all the manufacturers would have known that that was the peak and were aiming substantially below that mark. So even knowing the context, it's always bugged me that they cut that particular corner so sharply.
Apparently this little monster can do 320x200x256 with the right DAC, though it's not VGA-compatible (for one thing, it seems to be 9-bit color configured as 3-3-3--8 shades of gray per channel--rather than the VGA's 18-bit color). As for the other chips, the Acer chip near the CPU seems to be an XT-on-a-chip (similar to the Faraday FE2010).
@@lee4hmz Of course, the CGA and EGA monitor standards only supported 16 colours in total--red, green and blue either on or off, and an extra "brightness" bit to double the number of colours. So, you'd also need to hack a different monitor adapter in, which all seems a lot more work than is worth it!
@@d2factotum Yeah, at that point you'd be better off shoving in a 8-bit VGA card.
The Yamaha chip you have listed as being the chip does support the Tandy video mode of the MC6845.
Huh, i always assumed the original IBM clones were mostly reverse engineered/ designed in the West. I'm pretty sure commodore's IBM clones were designed in Germany (board Layout etc ) and produced in Germany and hong kong...
I love the idea that CRD just has someone entirely dedicated to holding an Apple II and handing it into frame when necessary.
apple was never the idea here, Philips LOGO was, the turtle OS !
Someone’s idea of the perfect job though.
Hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure that is their job
@@jakemedeiros3929 what?
That’s their partner. She helps make the videos sometimes
@@joearnold6881fairly certain that's his girlfriend
I get the strong suspiction that the Headstart GUI came into existence the following way:
Developer: "So, I put together a quick dummy as proof-of-concept with some rudimentary functions. If you greenlight it, we can start doing proper work on it."
Executive: "No no, it's fine as it is. We a have a deadline to keep."
Much like my suspicion of how the "email" functionality in Lotus Notes came about. Some sales-droid probably asked the development group to knock together a couple of sample Notes Apps, and the customers thought it was a *real* app.
Could be worse, could be the Arthur GUI, written as a BASIC mockup of a desktop.
(Then again, Arthur's GUI had the ability to change the palette, which this didn't. And, an 8 MHz ARM2 is a hell of a lot faster than a 9.54 MHz 8088.)
Come on, be fair. Compared to the Headstart GUI, the Arthur GUI was a marvel of functionality. :)
Developers and engineers are never completely happy, there are always tweaks that "need" to be done. At some point, you have to shoot them all and go into production. The success of a product depends on how realistic the development deadline was.
@@SenileOtaku oh man lotus notes was a clusterfuck.
Knew someone at IBM during its heyday
Speaking as a software engineer, the onboard graphical shell strikes me as a passion-project of a programmer working for the company that made the computer, and he convinced his boss to make the project official.
Also, the limitations in the apps sound more like the development project ran out of time to go to market and they just had a minimal set of checkboxes to tick as far as functionality go in order to ship it. As in, "yes, we'll include this, but it also needs a word processor, and we need to start manufacturing the ROM chips in two weeks"
A kind of TempleOS?
@@8BitNaptime If TempleOS came out in the 80s, we would all be running TempleOS VX 2022 or whatever, and Windows would've been a footnote.
@@kargaroc386 And there would not be luminescent African-Americans that spy on you anywhere.
This. First thing I thought of tbh. That thing had a weird sort of heart
That MDA text demo really does look beautiful, between the chip's resolution, the CRT display, and the crisp bitmap font. Kind of sad we basically lost bitmap fonts to the DPI race...
@34:15 My suspicion is that the headstart "gui" was written using BIOS calls whereas Windows - with all its layers - was running in straight machine code and writing directly to the frame buffer, which was, even in its roundabout way, much faster. BIOS calls would have been easier to work with and had less compatibility worries but can be very inefficient.
@@VidaDigital This is very likely the problem. The BIOS API is simple, least-common-denominator, one-size-fits-all code. It does nothing particularly well, except work on anything. There would be a huge amount of overhead just calling the same function over and over to draw a character on the screen, one pixel at a time.
I constantly use the old-school pc font pack for all my text editors and terminal emulators (EverexME 4x6 is what I currently use)
@@zulc22 i dont see any everexme 4x6 fonts. did you mean 5x8??
I think the loss of bitmap fonts probably was caused more by the desire for good looking print output. In day to day use of the computer you don’t really need the variety we have or the degree of scalability.
I think the mouse pointer says "Do This!" because they wanted the user to know that they are supposed to use the pointer to tell the computer to "Do This" lol.
Many Turbo XTs used pressing Ctrl, Alt, and the minus key on the numeric keypad to switch to normal speed (4.77 MHz) and Ctrl Alt + to switch to turbo speed (9.54 MHz). Some also supported Ctrl Alt * to select medium speed (7.16 MHz). And that graphics chipset most likely uses the Plantronics ColorPlus standard for what HeadStart called "extended 16-color CGA". The 8-Bit Guy's Planet X3 is one of the few games which supports it.
It was such a weird quirk of the x86 platform starting with the IBM PC as a reference model that over/underclocking was a built-in feature. Even later in the 286 era you'd get "turbo" buttons despite no longer aiming at that particular set of frequencies. My 286 at the time flipped between 10 and 12 Mhz for absolutely no discernible reason. Maybe a handful of games would run too fast at 12 and be playable at 10, but if they were expecting lower you were still boned.
@@mademedothis424 That was probably more for expansion bus compatibility. 10 MHz was the maximum that many ISA cards could reliably operate at. 12 MHz was really pushing the limit. 386 and later boards fixed the ISA slots to a maximum of 8 MHz regardless of CPU speed.
@@vwestlife Hm. Interesting. That machine was outputting VGA graphics, but I genuinely have no idea out of what. There was also a serial port and a hard drive, besides both types of floppies, so there must have been multiple controllers, but I don't remember a bunch of ISA cards, and I did open it pretty often. It was a pretty late 286 AT clone, though, so who knows what was going on in there. I was certainly too young to know.
@@mademedothis424 he was using an adapter to convert the signal to VGA. He showed that at 14:45. It wasn't outputting VGA. It was CGA and MDA signals.
@@SeeJayPlayGames CZcams threading is trash, so I don't blame you, but you misunderstood. I wasn't talking about the PC in the video, I was talking about my own 286 in response to VWestlife above.
Holy crap, I had this PC as a kid at my grandmas house! I was recently feeling nostalgic, and tried looking up PCs of that era hitting dead end after dead end. Randomly, this popped up in my feed, Thanks CZcams algorithm! I seem to remember the Turbo toggle being a key combo, but I never used it.
I suppose it isn't in the attic or something?
I'm from the Netherlands. My parents got me one of these brand new way back. It was my first PC after previously only using (Atari) basic Home computers. I can confirm that the name was definitely Headstart Explorer, and i got it complete with a monitor and a plastic standing shelve that you could slide the computer in with the keyboard folded. Sadly my parents had no clue about computers and to save a few bucks they bought the cheapest model with Hercules graphics. A friend down the street got the CGA version and at first we couldn't figure out why many of our games would run on his, but not on mine. Eventually we learned that it had to do with the graphics and with a few software tools to emulate CGA i eventually got most if not all to work.
did the page 2 work fine on yours? at least, as far as you could tell?
@@vriska222 Don't really understand what you meant with "page 2" but as far as i can remember everything worked as intended. However the novelty of the GUI wore off in about a day. I never really used any of it in a useful way.
There's something about watching a video on old computer technology that makes me go "Wow the Hercules card is a really cool and useful thing, I need to have it!" Before I realize I'm in the future and everything it solved is a non issue with modern hardware.
Great video CRD!
100% me too!
I was amazed to find out Hercules is still with us, they just pivoted to audio at some point
Me too! I was like "wow, I really need this Hercules card!" and then I remembered that it's 2022 and I don't own any retro PC.
But nothing on modern hardware matches the beautiful glow of a nice amber monitor.
@@NuntiusLegis This is true, I'd love one of those monitors.
Tandy's DeskMate GUI is *way* more usable and functional on an 8088 or 8086, although it's not entirely built into ROM -- you do need a floppy disk or hard drive to run most of its applications.
I feel like *surely* they could have matched the performance of deskmate - which was, if I recall, custom character graphics instead of bitmap - even within this limited space if they'd tried.
@@CathodeRayDude I could see that- deskmate could have all been custom fonts. That might explain why I couldn’t run it on a generic pc clone when I tried… I distinctly remember just getting no video and having to hit reset!
I had the Tandy 1000TL. Still feel spoiled to this day by how it booted dos 3.3 or deskmate from rom. I remember it having some nvram(?) settings, you had to run a utility off a floppy to get in there and set stuff like what it booted into and what kind of floppy drives were installed. We got a hard drive into it via a scsi card
@@hyvahyva The "no video" might have been because unless you have a "Tandy/PCJr graphics" compatible card it might be trying to do something the generic pc clone couldn't, even with an EGA or VGA card as they were separate modes.
@@CathodeRayDude Personal DeskMate II (which is what your 1000HX originally came with) does operate in true bitmapped graphics mode, although it isn't as intensely graphical as other GUIs because it was designed to be fully usable without needing a mouse.
I used Deskmate, back in the day, when I was in college. Boy have we come a long way since then.
I think it's amazing how much depth and research you go into. Thank you
Wow I can only dream of 95 likes on my videos and I get them here for a comment.. Love it
Seems no one has commented this yet - HP’s monochrome text was even better than MDA. It had a half-pixel offset data bit for smoother curves in letters, and many decent scientific symbols in the ROM. But it only really showed up on HP’s scientific instruments and data terminals, such as the HP-85 (marketed as a calculator). Though their first DOS-compatible (not PC-compatible) machine used the same text output. And from an aesthetic standpoint I prefer the bitmap font they designed for it too.
Hey, young 'un! 😉And I mean that with the utmost respect and admiration, because you taught me a thing or two in this video. No, that's not right; you taught me a lot in this video, particularly about graphics systems. For example, I took a computer graphics programming course my senior year of college (1987), and when I tried to show off my final project to prospective employers during my first job search, I could never get it to run; all the program would do was hang. And since this was at a time when PC-DOS was the OS running on most business computers, that meant issuing the ol' three-finger salute to recover. While I had learned all sorts of cool stuff about graphics programming, I knew zero, zip, nada about graphics hardware. My graphics classwork was all done on a TI graphics computer, which was an 8086/8088 IBM clone from the early to mid 1980s. I knew it ran MS-DOS, but I have no idea what graphics adapter it had, other than it wasn't CGA or EGA, and it was too early to be VGA. After watching your video, I started wondering if it was some sort of Hercules variant, but it might've been some sort of proprietary TI graphics adapter. The fact of the matter is that I never encountered one of those TI graphics computers again, and unless I do, I may never know for sure. But you got me thinking about it again.
Speaking of Hercules, I was aware of the name at the time, but since I was working in dull, boring corporate IT positions, I never had any reason to learn more about their products. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity; even though it's a bit late to matter, it's still fun to know. Your demo also reminded me of a special project that dropped in my lap while I was working for a bank. There was someone who needed to run some sort of vertical market Windows software, and at the time, that meant Windows 2.0 running on an IBM PC/AT. I don't remember if she had to suffer with CGA, or if we were able to snag her an EGA-equipped PC/AT. I mostly remember how clunky and borderline unusable it was.
You were mostly right on the money regarding how uninspiring the IBM clone market was in the 1980s. Actually, there were two schools of thought in the clone market at the time: the Build It Cheaper than IBM school, which included my first computer, and the Build It Better than IBM school. But the latter school only had one member for most of the 1980s: Compaq. As you know, Compaq wasn't known for its eye-catching designs, although as part of the consortium that brought us EISA, they showed some innovation under the hood. They mostly traded on high quality and performance. When I bought my first PC, I really wanted a Compaq Deskpro, but the $10k+ price tag was far too steep for me. Oh, well.
Regarding the staying power of the 8088-based computers, I chalk that up to one thing: memory. More specifically, the memory architecture from hell that Intel built into the 80286. The 8088 could address up to 1MB of memory, the last 384kB of which was functionally useless, at least to MS-DOS. The 80286 could address up to 16MB of memory, but only when running in so-called Protected Mode. Most x86 software couldn't run directly in Protected Mode. It was theoretically possible for them to do so if the CPU's Protected Mode was used to create multiple virtual Real Modes, but MS-DOS wasn't a multitasking operating system. (You probably know about OS/2, which was supposed to solve that, but, well, that's a whole other novel!) To make a long story not too much longer, the wacky memory usage of the '286 mostly meant that the CPU's primary advantage over the older 8088 was that it could run a bit faster, pretty much as you said in the video. I think of it as an opportunity missed for Intel, among others, because the upshot of it was not just that the 80286 was borderline irrelevant, but it also meant that even after we had 80386-based PCs that theoretically solved the memory limitations, the staying power of 10 years of MS-DOS at that critical time meant that we were still using MS-DOS based applications, with all their limitations, on our fancy '386 and '486 machines well into the 1990s.
Anyway, cool PC (or at least cool-looking PC) and terrific video.
It's interesting to look back and play armchair quarterback with the PC design. Like, what would you change to make it scale better into the 386 era, while still being competitive and with no foresight beyond what existed in the early 80s?
The computing industry had had the rug ripped out from under so many times when the next version of a machine broke compatibility with existing software. This was such a problem, IBM was stalwart about making sure everything ran on every generation after the PC itself. I think this held back the potential for newer hardware more than it needed to.
For example, I think one thing I would've done differently is enforce A20 support. IBM's "compatibility at all costs" stance enabled the bad habit of pretending that the 21st bit of memory addressing didn't exist, because it didn't on an 8088. Writing to 1MB + 1 byte would just wrap back around to 0MB + 1 byte, and so some software was written (sloppily, IMO) to take advantage of that. I would've held firm and asked the prominent developers to issue patches to resolve any wrap-around bugs, then released the AT with the assumption that 1MB + 1 byte went to address 0x100001. Instead, we ended up with a decade of various workarounds to selectively gate A20, and finding out _which_ workaround had been employed could be a real PITA.
I feel like this form factor deserves a second chance, i could fix him.
On a somewhat related note, I'm surprised there aren't more successful alternative laptop designs directed at heavy typers. The literary crowd. I'm thinking e-reader type screens, great keyboard, and a compact and quite sturdy design.
@@cloudycolacorp sure, but many consumers are tech/gadget enthusiastic and care more about some thing being right for them in several other ways than price wise. Absolutely nobody *needs* the latest iphone, but millions throw money at apple because they desire it.
I honestly miss the microcomputer style as well.
There's the Raspberry Pi 400, and apparently Apple attempts to patent the wedge form factor, so there might be a modern Mac-in-a-keyboard coming.
@@peppigue there was a Kickstarter project called the Hemmingwrite that was a sort of e-paper typewriter word processor that intentionally lacked any sort of online connectivity so you could focus on writing, I honestly don't know if it went anywhere.
This PC looks function-wise like a electric typewriter replacement. The Canon typewriters from the 90s had similar features. The flippable keyboard is a feature that is very handy on a secretary's desk. You can think of it as a sophisticated typewriter like the "smith corona pwp" line, the "Brother wp1" or the "Canon Starwriter" series.
Vendex is a name used by the "V en D" chain of department stores for electronic products. They aren't around anymore now, but even when they were the Vendex brand wasn't used often. I think we had a microwave from them for about 15 years
I still have a microwave combi oven from that brand, thanks for the story, now i know where it’s from, the thing is almost as old as i am
@@vrzn most likely the same as we used to have. :-)
V en D / V&D / Vroom en Dreesman
Hah I haven't been back in years, I didn't have even an idea that V&D was gone. Such a strange way to hear such old news!
I am not a tech guy, retro or otherwise, but I find myself drawn to your videos. So much time and effort is put into each episode. Honestly, I've been binge watching your videos for several days now. Your style, humor, and knowledge are compelling and fun to watch. Definitely earned a subscription. Thank you for the documentary-level content. Your channel stands out as a you tube gem!
Many turbo enabled BIOS'es had shortcuts for enabling turbo. I remember one of my much later 386 systems switching turbo with ctrl-alt and plus/minus on the keypad. Give that a shot :)
Seconded. I had a turbo XT that used ctrl alt +
Yes, I remember many clone PCs being able to switch Turbo this way, as well as via a Turbo switch.
The Tulip legal clone BIOS was used, deal trough Philips and Tulip.
Your dedication and commitment to the public domain is to be commended.
You've made me want to contribute more to wikis and the archive.
Just in case you run out of ideas (or this idea seems interesting enough): what about telling the world a story about 2K-capable CRT computer monitors? They completely undeservedly fell into obscurity, although in many respects they still surpass the LCD of the 2022 release. This is the unique technology to which LCD crawled only in the late 2010s, and in terms of latencies - only by about 2020.
At my house, for example, there is a Sony GDM-F520 decommissioned from the printing house in the mid-2010s - a 21-inch flatscreen beast weighing 35 kilograms (I had to change the computer table, the old one just buckled under the weight), capable of producing 2048x1536@90fps. And I will say that in terms of comfort of use and visual quality of the picture, it has no equal, even among expensive monitors. It's like it has built-in HDR, or I'm looking at an AMOLED picture, I don't know.
P.S. And yes, this is my main and only monitor since 2014. For about 20 years of total worktime, no signs of wear of the cathode ray tube have been noticed at all.
Those are cool the FW-900 is my holy grail but I'd still get something lesser, I just gotta find it
The lack of features in the word processor makes me wonder if it was somewhat oriented around text-only printers (albeit with a few escape codes at least), the feature set matches up pretty well with the average cheapo daisy wheel printer other than italics.
Yeah, that's a valid point, though since there are no driver or model options I don't think it could communicate *any* of the font decorations, it would be limited to plain ASCII, so it feels like they'd go even further if that were the case
@@CathodeRayDude The majority of daisy wheel printers, especially by this point in time, all used most of the same escape codes derived from the Diablo 630 primarily so I would be kind of curious as to whether it sends any of that info if you try to print.
@@CathodeRayDude many programs at that time actually just reprinted the line twice for bold and did underlining in the same way. You then didn''t need any knowledge of control codes for any specific printer as they all could do carriage returns and normal printing (spaces for characters that you didn't want to change).
The writing combined with the personality is top tier. The zooming jump cuts had me laughing harder than I should. I can’t even imagine how much research this took.
Hercules cards were very impressive for the day and remained useful for years. A computer lab I administered had PCs configured with dual video cards, one VGA and one Hercules compatible. The monochrome monitor could be used as a secondary display or status panel by DOS apps that supported it. Very handy and relatively inexpensive since the cards and monitors had been repurposed.
That's very interesting, could you name DOS apps supporting it?
i always love your videos!
1. i never knew the hercules graphics card was originally designed in order to support thai! i lived in thailand and laos for almost the entire 90s, and did pc maintenance and repair as an after-school thing for most of it. the hercules (or compatible clones) card was very common there even into the middle of the decade. many had been modified to piggyback a second character rom onto the first, with a switch added to the back to select between ascii and thai (or lao, which is very similar) character sets.
2. your brief mention of monochrome displays having a sharper image due to no shadow mask suddenly clarified why the white phosphor monochrome vga display (also from philips) we had in the early 90s had a much higher image quality than the later colour monitors. (i guess that image quality is why next initially went for monochrome with their workstations too.)
3. oh brother, that monochrome display is sweet!
I feel and love your passion and enjoyment of vintage tech obscurities so much. You content is just always a heartwarming trip. Thank you!!
I've seen four of your videos in the "recommended" list over the last few days... and I'm intrigued. I like the variety of topics and the retro space. Thanks for your work and for sharing it! +1 happy subscriber!
Dude, I've only been subscribed for a few days after looking for some info on how Terminals used to work back in the day, but holy crap did I get so much more than I bargained for! Once in a blue moon do I find a channel that so fully grabs my attention and has this level of production quality. Keep up the great work, I feel like there's so much awesome stuff I can learn from this channel, and so much that I already have!
You are very well-spoken and considered of speech. Your delivery is smooth and your script is excellent. I appreciate that you don't claim knowledge you don't have and offer it when you do. I'm a computer nerd with my roots in an Atari 1200xl (as my first real computer). Bravo Zulu.
It really seems to me like some of the shortcomings of the Bulletin Board GUI are probably due to limitations of ROM space. Memory was expensive back then, I would assume ROMs were equally as expensive.
Maybe many features were left out purely because of lack of space.
Another amazing vid. Always pleasantly surprised at the sheer amount of info you cram into these vids. Well done!
Very fascinating. I love this obscure history and evolution stories of these obscure systems. 👍 great work! The new studio is looking and sounding great too!
It seems to me like the person who designed the GUI had used the Amiga as an inspiration. The colors and the styling of the buttons seem similar to Workbench 1.3.
I also thought this, the font and buttons (especially the radio buttons) are very early-Amiga like.
52 min video from CRD = 52 minutes of my day where I experience pure joy
Man I love these deep dives into weird bits of kit that I never even knew existed and now totally want. Keep it up, CRD, this is some A+ quality content.
Mate. I just EAT your videos, I love how you tell stories and explain things. It’s just so satisfying you deserve way more views, you’re so interesting ! I’m glad I found your CZcams channel ! 🙏
If the extended CGA is Plantronics compatible, it should work with Planet X3.
MDA is 50Hz not 75Hz, the reason you may be getting 75Hz out is the MCE to VGA likely outputs the higher frame rate for compatibility as most Monitors don't support 50Hz. The reason 50Hz doesn't flicker on a proper monochrome monitor, especially the IBM ones is the persistence of the phosphor allows the phosphor to glow after the electron beam moves away. Ever phosphor has persistence, however the ones used in some monochrome monitors are a bit longer than color monitors.
Oh dangit, I could have sworn - I was probably thinking of VGA textmode, which ran at 70Hz. And the thing is, I was thinking it might be 50 due to the long persistence phosphor, but when I went to adjust my shutter speed to eliminate roll I was still getting it real bad at 50fps, and ended up having to use some weird off-speed like 48, so it really felt like it wasn't an even number. I'll put a footnote up; wish I'd gotten it right to begin with though. Thank you for the correction!
@@CathodeRayDude I don't know what I'm thinking of, but I thought there was something at 72 or 75Hz as well. I know VGA text mode is 72Hz, and 75Hz was a common VGA+ refresh rate, with supported drivers and monitor, but I could've sworn something earlier had used a higher rate as well. Hmm.... Mandela Effect in full effect. haha
YT just suggested this video. I wonder why I haven't discovered your channel earlier. This is one of the most organized/structured, comprehensive and informative video I ever say on such a topic..... so I subscribed ;-)
I slept in and missed school today, so lucky me, now I have something to do.
Love these in-depth looks you do on stuff like this. Hardware and software archiving is hard but fun. Great stuff as always.
Having used several early non-Windows/Mac GUI desktop interfaces for PC and microcomputers of the 80s, This “Bulletin Board” GUI on this machine seems like a lesser version of Tandy’s Deskmate GUI/integrated software system. Deskmate had many of the same features but did it better in come respects from my memory on similar PC hardware. The GEOS used in the Apple IIGS and Gem Desktop where better in some respects too though I’m sure licensing costs played a role in why these where not used here. Also, some GUI’s for the C64 and similar specked micro’s from others where really very barebones due to the limited hardware specs of those machines. Apple Macs ran much better hardware then this PC clone so they had a much better GUI of course, Still I imagine this computer could possible run a more decent GUI like Deskmate or GEM OS. I fact, it would be interesting if you could get a hold of a copy or either or both of those OS’s which are currently archived as abandonware on net if you search for them and I believe have versions such that fit on one or more 720K floppies that maybe you could test out just for fun to compare and contrast to the built-in GUI.
Love your content. I got way too excited when I saw you upload this - we had one when I was a kid (it was terrible and I mostly just waited my turn to use the Apple 2 because this was unusable). But I actually am pretty sure that the form factor was also used by IBM originally in their electronic typewriters (the injection molded chassis could have been a clone too that is - just of an electronic typewriter) since I still have my old typewriter (and if my memory serves me right - it was nearly identical to that machine which I haven’t seen since about 1993).
But speaking of buggy UI’s: since the YT app added all these extra buttons, clicking “like” made it hit “dislike” and I had to touch the iPhone screen to the left of the “like” button to fix the problem
I had to do a double take at 5:32. This is why I love your videos. They're extremely well researched and you obviously love the topic, but it's the constant little humors like that that make it unique.
Wow, great vid! I liked the video details, the load speed of the MDA graphic you created was so slow that it brought back memories. My guess is that by this time the market was saturated with discount machines.
I noticed in the MDA text demo @39:54 that some of the letters actually overlap, like the C and M in CMD or the A and V in NAVIGATE... was this a standard feature or is something extra going on to pack the characters closer together?
maybe an artefact from his video converter.
More corner cutting perhaps.
...what on EARTH. I didn't notice that! I have no idea what's going on there! Whoa! That's going straight into the MDA monitor so I *have* to assume the graphics chip in the PC is generating that. It has to be an oversight in the MDA circuitry.
It looks like all the letters are cutting into eachother slightly, it could just be like some stylistic kerning maybe? Or perhaps the monitor isn't as wide as the card expects?
Interesting form factor. Reminds me of Amstrad's PPC512 and 640.
Another great video, always happy to see your stuff on my feed.
You’re back! I needed this so so so bad! Hope all is well!
2:35 - interesting that they went with the "disC" spelling instead of "disK" for a floppy disk expansion port.
For a second I dabbled with the thought of an external CD drive. After all, it's manufactured by a Philips subsidiary. Then I realized there would be zero use for it at the time.
disc/disk wasn’t really an established nomenclature at that time - laserdisc and compact disc were often called “optical disk” in press at the time too. The “C is optical, K is magnetic” sorta/standard came about by the 90s.
@@kaitlyn__L wait what?? I never knew that… I feel a tad bit dumb now. I just used disc for the shape and disk for anything data related. Thanks
@@natelax1367 it was a big moment for me too when I saw the various uses in the press too! Since I was the same as you. I bet if you looked you could even find some older publications calling a frisbee a disk!
The form factor was a great idea, if only the software had been finished it definitely would have succeeded more...
i'm only a few minutes in, but having the camera hand you machines to show off, stroke of genius. Good use of rule of thirds; thou has earned a subscriber.
First vid of yours I've watched and gotta say
You got real nice cadence to your speech and a very clear voice.sounds passionate and engaging
I'd say the ST-High video mode on the Atari ST was comparable to MDA in crispness. It ran at 640x400 1bpp at a 75Hz or so refresh.
If you liked this one, try an Atari PC-1 some time.
wish i had some offscreen arms to hand me old computers whenever i mention them
Another great video. I honestly could listen to you all day!
Being from the era, it is weird to see old tech reviewed by a younger generation, viewing it from the lens of someone whose experience has benefited from the lessons learned from that past era. There is a more commentary than information. It is nice to see the comments section providing that.
I use to have one of these OMG been hoping someone would do a video about it. was a great little PC. the OS isn't like anything I ever used before or since. I use to write short stories on it and played games like battle chess and other games like that. it wasn't the easiest thing to find replacement parts for. well for a 12-year-old me it wasn't. the mouse port isn't a standard PS/2 style if memory serves me right. our original mouse died on us and nothing we found would work. but I do remember there was a keyboard button combination that let the arrow keys move the mouse pointer around. I think it was the alt key or something like that. that was almost 25 years ago. fun memories. I wrote all this before watching the video, now I am gonna jump one the nostalgia train.
the 2 games I remember playing the most on it was Battle chess and a solstice like game. I can't remember the name but it was that style. and we had some flight simulator game but I remember it running better than what yours did. It had the hard drive option but no extra ram. :( the hard drive icon was just a 3d cylinder. IDK who pick the icons for the OS but it was unique and something I have never forgotten. I have never been a fast typer and this computer was charming in many ways. It's been years and it's long gone now.
Atari ST could do 640x400 mono on a high res monitor. Looked fab AND could do graphics.
Loving the studio setup man!
that brother monitor reminds me of my grandmother's computerized typewriter. so crisp & warm.
These were definitely second-fiddle in the late 1980s and the Apple II ruled
You could’ve give me 10,000 guesses and I wouldn’t have guessed who made this comment
I can't believe it, It's the chocolate rain legend
Not in Europe and for sure not in the Netherlands, I have seen exactly one Apple II in the Netherlands in my life, that was in my school (in 1986), the teacher said it was already outdated by then and we needed to study on IBM XT clones. I had no previous PC experience so I had no idea, now I know it's the 16 bit architecture of the XT vs 8 bit of Apple. In those years it was for sure not settled yet, that the IBM system with PC DOS would win, there was room for alternate platforms. Since most soho companies didn't even start using PC's or automatization yet which would tie them into one vendor. We had to learn the PC using (Ashton-Tate) Framework as a GUI, before Microsoft Windows even existed.
Apple sucks balls!
Apple II was pretty cool but, in my opinion, it's no competition to the IBM PC or decent clones as far as specs go.
Not fully thru the video, but before I forget, I wanna address the commodore 64s kb. It wasnt bad.... except how far up it was. I firmly believe my decade of typing on it is why my wrists are so fucked up. I finally, after like 8 yrs of pain, made a shelf that lowered the computer an inch, and that helped alot. the actual KB wasnt back at all to type on, its just that it was like 2 inches too high. Plus nobody knew that was gunna fuck up a generations wrists.
The irony is, there was ergonomics legislation in the early 80s mandating low profile key switches - which is why IBM’s beam spring and ALPS’ tall switches disappeared. But then these home micro manufacturers put those lower-profile switches… just as high up off the desk as the high-profile terminal switches of the 70s were 🤦♀️
I never had problems with the C64, but I used the more ergonomic C64 C longer than the original "breadbin". - I got really bad wrists from using a slim notebook for a while - took months to heal, and I never touched a notebook again.
This was a wonderful deep dive, thank you Gravis.
Love this kind of content, especially since the machines are still working!
Loved that Keyboard Rant, definitely not suited for 10-finger touch typing we're used to in the 2000's, but more like the Typewriter like stiffness. I didn't mind the Commodore 64 keyboard as a child, but as an adult that uses regular Cherry MX-switch mechanical keyboard, revisiting it really showed me that I never want to use it again. (The split cursor keys aged terribly)
I never felt the need to learn fast typing, because I only type my own thought results. Thorough thinking is slow, typing it down with 2-4 fingers usually is fast enough. I reactivated my C64 about two years ago, mainly for recreational programming, and have no problems with the keyboard whatsoever.
I need that Do This cursor :)
So much nostalgia! Our family had one of these, sitting right in the living room. Bought it in 1990 at a V&D store (which ran a Vendex computer department), without a hard disk and just the amber monochrome CGA/Hercules display. Oh boy did I use it a lot. I learned development on this machine, first with GW-Basic, later with Turbo Basic, followed up by Turbo Pascal 5.5, and later Turbo C++ 3.x, with some 8086 assembly in between. Had loads of fun, despite the machine deteriorating over time; ball of the mouse missed a chunk because the dog got hold of it, the keyboard was freezing at random moments where all three lock lights would turn on and no keys registered, mostly fixable with a good smash on the top right of the keyboard... Good memories!
Just found this channel last night and I love it. Reminds me of watching tech tv as a kid.
The GUI 'GEOS' on the C64 has miles more functionality and speed than the headstarts gui... what a mess
You had to load GEOS from disk, and I remember it way slower that this GUI. A better comparison would be the GUI which came with the Final Cartridge III - very basic functionality, but usable, and starts like a flash.
The reason for the lack of features is simple. The GUI is in ROM and ROM chips weren't cheap.
Mario Bros is also in a ROM. It's no excuse.
At least it has some usable features starting fast from ROM, saving loading stuff from disk for simple tasks.
Gotta admit, when your videos started popping up in my feed, I thought you were just going to be off-brand LGR. But damn, have you proven me wrong. Currently bingeing your channel, looking forward to following along from now on!
Vendex was a brand of the Dutch "Vroom & Dreesmann" chain of department stores. Vroom en Dreesmann -> V en D -> VenDex. It was also the name of the holding company. Parts of it, like the pc department, were sold to other companies. The stores went bankrupt in 2015 because hedge funds and mismanagement.
I'm glad i found your channel. Enjoyed everything so far!
....and I'm a 97s kid, so to me win 95 was the very oldest thing i actually used back then
Very intuitive on everything, such as marketing aspects and tech. Very well done..
WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS CHANNEL BEFORE? This is incredible. Going to binge videos woop wooop
An absolute delight, as always!
Great trip down memory lane. Thanks CRD
6:06 TYSM for showing the HX. Seeing that Computer again brings back Childhood Memories of playing Nightmare on Elm St. and King's Quest III on it
Can confirm - at the time we bought a (used) Compaq 386s/20 in the early 90's, another machine we were considering was effectively an XT clone. The proliferation of CD-ROM and the Internet in the mid-late 90s, and with them the demand for multimedia capabilities, finally made the older generation PCs obsolete.
This was my first 80XX PC when I was about 10 years old. Previously it was a TI-99a. I think my dad and I pushed this thing about as far as it could go (which wasn't terribly far), but it introduced me to BBS's, BASIC and LOGO programming, and DOS. I think we abandoned the built in GUI after about a year. I loved this old thing. Thanks for making this video!
ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE PRESENTATION!!!!!!
Okay, I laughed my ass off at the calculator demonstration. I'm glad to see that you're not above meme-meta, despite being so goddam well put together.
A very weird machine, indeed. Thanks for taking the time to share it with us!
This video was in my recommended. Cool, and thorough. Subscribed!
EDIT: I guaffed at the patreon plug. Self-deprecation is the best (worst?)
I'm 47 and remember those days. Towers were not yet common though, at least here in the UK. They were only used on the most powerful machines that I would see in computer shops, while I usually saw desktop PCs.
Great video! Congrats!
Great video once again! 🔥🔥🔥
1988’s Amstrad PPC512 / 640 models had a more sleek (luggable) form factor with a suite of utilities. The LCD screen was useable but it fitted into the “use power and a monitor at the destination”. People did use them on the train. Whilst not completely IBM compatible, I can see why Sinclair’s Cambridge Z88 had a following, being way more mobile.
The Half-Hercules card was a thing. That's probably what's going on with this computer. Hercules was so nonstandard that there wasn't even a standard BIOS call to enter hercules graphics mode, rather a series of numbers had to written to port locations on the graphics card in order for it to go into graphics mode AND back. Somewhere I even have a "Hercules" card that only has 1/4 of the standard memory, and when in graphics mode it will only work on the top half of the screen. Presumably a slightly different set of numbers were meant to be written to the ports on the graphics card for a 640x200 or 720x200 2-bit display. I wrote a couple games that supported Hercules graphics back in the day, using Borland TurboC, but no one really downloaded them off my BBS to speak of. I can see if I can find them if you like.
@13:08 at that time, most turbo buttons didn't actually change the speed (the machine would need multiple clock crystals plus switching logic which would make it prohibitively expensive). The disabled turbo button would insert additional wait states for RAM and other operations, which would give you an effective slow down by constantly interrupting the CPU even though internally it was still working at its rated speed.
*That* I did not know. First I've heard of it, but yes, it makes sense, changing actual clockspeed on the fly seems hard.
Supposedly this is common. I dunno, it's really hard to tell what actually happens with a turbo switch. But, I think that kind of chicanery was more common on 386 machines and beyond.
On the PC/XT, the CPU was run at 4.77MHz because IBM could use common (=cheap) clock crystals designed for use in NTSC video circuits (14.318MHz) and divide it down by 3. Dividing by 2 would yield 7.159MHz, which may explain 7MHz clones. Selecting between the two would be pretty trivial with a simple counter IC.
If you wanted to run at 9.54MHz (just under the 10MHz speed rating of various 8088/8086/80286 chips), the also-common 28.636MHz would allow /3 to 9.54MHz, or /6 to 4.77MHz, making a 2x turbo mode really simple without affecting the ability to use the clock for the ISA bus and cards with NTSC video out (like CGA.)
My first PC was 386SX clocked at 25 MHz, and I'm pretty sure it was running at either 12 or 16 MHz with the turbo off, I remember quite vividly that the BIOS was reporting a different clock when booted with turbo off.
And I was very stupid back then, thinking that "turbo" means some kind of overclocking that may damage the machine when overused, so I kept it disabled most of the time...
@@kFY514 Oh man, that's tragic! haha
Re: The BIOS -- that could be, but some of those MHz readings were based on quick calculations. It would run some bit of code and time how long it took, then compare the results with a table of known CPU benchmarks, and pick the closest one.
Very few designs were actually capable of determining the _actual_ clock speed.
@@nickwallette6201 Now that you mention it, you're absolutely right. Inserting wait states and turning off cache was introduced with 386's while 8086/8088/v20/etc. and 286's actually did switch the timer and underclock the processor with the turbo button. This was easier to do when simpler CPUs were basically directly attached to the ISA bus. Starting with the 386's there was all this chipset logic in the middle, and clock multipliers, etc. - I just saw some tests on the vogons website which show how influential turning off cache and inserting wait states was back then.
I like the idea of an integrated GUI with simple programs built in. In 89, my experience with word processing and other software came with my job, the USAF. Our first computer, in 1987, used in my job was a Zenith 248, a 286 with a 20mb hdd, which was the successor of the Z-100 (In 1986, the US Air Force awarded Zenith Data Systems a $242 million contract for 90,000 Z-100 desktop computers.). Any GUI we had came with the software, which included Wordstar, Lotus, etc. At the time, we rarely used Windows 2.0. I often edited the autoexec file to automatically load Wordstar.
I have grown to LOVE your videos. In depth and wonderful- while I know you love lots of tech, I particularly love your retro computer topics. I wish YOU would cover ACTUAL bulletin board systems, or which there are STILL hundreds on ANSI, Amigafont, C=64, Atari and other BBSes still rolling strong. Mine is 2o fOr beeRS and can be found easily… telnet bbs guide. I would LOVE your coverage of this worthy topic!! (You can show many systems connecting to their BBSes- emulation or on hardware. I will help!)
TBH I wasn't around for the BBS era enough to have a feeling for it and every time I've tried to look into it, it felt like... well, it felt like trying to make a documentary on _the internet, as it is now_ . The subject is just massive, and totally alien to me, so I feel like I couldn't really do it justice.
@@CathodeRayDude All good; theres already a current CZcams BBS doc 'Back to the BBS' - I'm always clamoring for more coverage but understand its not yer thing. :P Thanks for your other coverage!! Love it.
I've heard some lore that the complex glyphs of East-Asian languages was a key driving factor in the development of high density graphics displays. I've assumed it had merit. It sounds like @41:35 may be the source of that. We also used Hercules Graphics Cards extensively in my early career, so I wouldn't be surprised if the lore came with them back then and I just forgot.
@34:58 Totally agree. That being said, I believe you can turn the computer on with another key pressed to change the boot speed from fast to slow. I used to work at a retailer that sold these in the early 90s. Now that I know more about their history I realize they must have bought old stock for cheap and resold it here in Latin America, although I don't recall if they had Spanish keyboards ...
Wow, thanks for sharing!
Damn those 52 minutes flew by! S tier content as usual.
Nice adding machine tape number sequence. :D
Albeit 2 years late seeing this video, the sound the machine makes at boot is just gorgeous. After 47:42 the recording is pretty clean and the way the floppy drive access sounds like as if it was coming out of a synth along with the splash screen at the same time makes me wonder it could/may have been made as a dedicated start-up sound.
There are definitely some weird choices here, but it’s totally fascinating to see the ways that they had to optimize these things to be pushed as far as possible with all the technical limits. Reminds me A LOT of the Tandy computer I had as a kid.
This reminds me of the Amstrad PPC 512 from the late 1980's, I saw a few of them here in the UK. With a similar folding out keyboard, it was designed to be a luggable and had a small built-in monochrome LCD Display.
Ah yes! The PPC 512 has been a beige whale for me for a while, although the chances of ever getting one are low (and I bet it won't work by now.) It's hard for me to get info about UK machines compared to US ones so stuff like this tends not to come up on my radar.