VIC-20 The friendly computer

It’s been a long while since my last post on this blog. This boring era made of real time social things and dynamic digital networks full of contacts and followers (my optimal number of social interactions is far below the Dunbar’s number!) is eroding the time once devoted to write something more well-finished.

Anyway, a new post in the end, 5 years from my last one here. I will write again about retro-nerd-things and restorations I usually make during holidays, when I am far from everyday duties.

This year, also due to the home relocation we started months ago and which is still unfinished, I dedicated my time to fix and restore my first computer, yes the first one I have ever, ever had in my hands. All of my so long forgotten knowledge about it is deeply buried in the mist of my childhood memories, back to early 1984 if I am correct.

In that year Piaggio (my father then worked for them in a big bike dealership in Bologna) launched an ad campaign focused on a Commodore VIC-20 given away as a gift for customers purchasing a Vespa PX125. I can clearly remember those coloured boxes lying on the shelves, in the customer care area of BeMotor (the dealership’s name, today oriented in selling cars only).

Cray-1 - The home supercomputer

It took me almost a year to complete the Cray-1 project during my spare time. When I decided to build a physical copy of the first supercomputer ever, as faithful as possible, I found on the web a lot of inspiring examples (just like this one by Chris Fenton). In 1975 the 80 MHz Cray-1A was announced. Excitement was so high that a bidding war for the first machine broke out between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, the latter eventually winning and receiving serial number 001 in 1976 for a six-month trial. Since then, the Cray-1 supercomputer reigned as the world’s fastest from 1976 to 1982 ^(source).

My personal 1:8 Cray-1A was made laser cutting some plexiglass sheets after a careful drafting process of the main vertical framework, which originally hosted over 60 miles of wire with no segment longer than 3 inches, to minimize signal delays. Amazing! My Cray-1A is equipped with a Rasperry Pi 2 board (out of 12 possible parallel slots) running a customized Os: a dedicated I2C controller drives a 16x2 characters LCD blue display while wi-fi and bluetooth interfaces guarantee wireless connections.

New retro-arrival at TC Labs!

Destinata a Luisa non appena "revamped" alla versione 10.2.8, è arrivata una vera chicca Apple ad arricchire il retro-museo, un iMac G4 del 2002: la "palla", o "lampada"! Dotata di tastiera, mouse e diffusori originali: un oggetto di design davvero affascinante. Di seguito un po' di info tecniche...

SGI VW540 @ TC Labs

On january 11 1999, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) announced a new line of "desktop workstations for visual computing" which could take advantage of the power and flexibility of Microsoft Windows NT.
These workstations, the Silicon Graphics 320 and the Silicon Graphics 540, were custom-designed for high end "visual computing" applications such as video production, 3D medical imaging, Computer Aided Design (CAD), film and television special effects, and topography mapping. They were the first SGI machines hosting Intel Pentium III Xeon CPUs and executind an operating system different from IRIX.
A 540 visual workstation arrived some days ago at TC Labs, enriching our SGI TC Project collection. Now we have an Octane, an O2, a Fuel and of course the new VW540 beast. The system comes from Germany and, although in good conditions, has not any OS installed. This is the running commentary of how I tried to revive it from the ashes.