Lmst

Das 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/

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)

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.

$The RC2014 stall in an exhibition hall. There's a blue tablecloth with the RC2014 logo on, and a stepped platform in the middle with different RC2014 models on it. The nearest monitor is showing the TMSNake game from Wintermute. Behind that is a bright LED representation of a Mandlebrot fractal. Towards the far end of the table is another monitor and an RC2014 in a Blue Box next to the Etch-a-Sketchy display.$

Top corner of the monitor that is running TMSnake. The text reads "Hi: 0420"

I don't want to talk about this one. It is a Thor Point.

(Literally, a finger pointing at a Thor computer)

A couple of Z80 machines with front panel switches / LEDs. Above them is a couple of sheets of paper explaining who Karen Orten was and a little bit about some of her amazing machines.

Swindon may seem humdrum, but there's always Astral Travel for the more adventurous.

#RetroFest2025 #Swindon

A grim looking 1980s building which is a shop front topped with a plastic window framed bay window on the second story and a peaked dormer roof on top of that, with white plastic shuttering. The sign over the shop front says "ASTRAL TRAVEL" in generic red plastic sans serif italic capital letters.

A view up a nondescript stroad in Swindon looking north. This street is just north of the train station and to the east of the historic works site. A zebra crossing is visible in the foreground. The buildings are two-story Victorian terraces, with shops interspersed among bay windowed residential houses with pitched tiled roofs and three pot brick chimneys.

Here's another form factor I wish still existed - the lunchbox.

#RetroFest2025

A front-on shot of the lunchbox. The screen is a tolerable colour TFT panel and the detachable keyboard is a compact layout with numpad and full-travel keys. The case is fetching grey with a black screen bezel.

The left side of the lunchbox, showing a set of full-height cards. From top to bottom: external SCSI; a mystery slot that isn't PCMCIA, but much taller, with a blue tab on the lower lip; RJ-45 and coax network; audio card with yellow, blue, pink, green and black colour-coded 3.5mm jacks and a joystick connector. The lowest slot appears to be free, with a blanking plate in it.

Dolch PAC62

RETROBYTES

Dolch made machines that typified the lunch box form factor of portable. It's nowhere near as heavy as a luggable, but like the luggables it did not have a battery and required mains power to operate. Its key feature was performance, as the mobile versions of Intel's processors for laptops did not perform anywhere near as well as their desktop versions.

·CPU: 2x Pentium 150Mhz
· RAM: 128Mb
·Display: 640x480
· Hard disk: 32Gb SCSI2SD
·Interfaces: SCSI2, Ethernet, Serial, Parallel, SVGA
· Bus: ISA, EISA, PCI

Sadly I didn't note the name of the chap behind Binary Dinosaurs, but he's 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.

#RetroFest2025

A photo of a very tall and imposing cream-coloured terminal with detachable keyboard. The monitor is portrait orientation, in the left half of the case. The right half contains two 8 inch floppy drives in vertical orientation. The keyboard is a large wedge with a nonstandard layout. There are no modifier keys where you'd expect to find control, alt and meta, and where you'd expect to find the home/end and cursor blocks, there are two vertical blocks of 1x5 and 3x5 keys. To the right of that is a numpad and another column of four keys.

BINARY DINOSAURS 1972 HOME COMPUTER HISTORY

CPT 8520

CPU: Intel 8080
RAM: 128K
Video: black-on-white full A4 page, plus top and bottom status areas
OS: Proprietary, later CP/M
Released: 1982
Media: 2x Tandon TM848-01 SSSD 8" floppy drives
Price: £unkown
Current state: working, which is why it's here.

CPT was started by Dean Scheff and Jim Weinhold in 1972. The initials stood for Cassette Power Typing. Their first product was the 4200 which was based on a heavily modified IBM Selectric typewriter with off-board cassette storage.

The 8520 here was released in 1982 and was essentially an upgrade of their first CRT-based machine, the CPT 8000. It's still a word processor,and you still drive it like a typewriter, but you can load and store pages onto the floppy disks via the drives which were known as 'Stations'. Qume printers were supported as standard.

In Europe the machines were marketed and sold by Bull of France.

The various options were controlled using the 'CODE' key which could tellthe CPT to load word processing or printing or disk maintenance routines, all while keeping your document in memory. The display board is a work of art but there's no space here to describe it.

CP/M was later supported by Compucorp Inc, who produced a 'Software Interface Layer' disk which loaded the CP/M BDOS code for booting the OS. One day I will get ZORK running on this machine.

© Binary Dinosaurs 2025 - binarydinosaurs.co.uk

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!

#RetroFest2025

The only working GEC Dragon "The Professional" in the world. There are a handful of other known examples, none of which work.

The machine is a sober mid-grey, with the rear part of the case raised to accommodate two full-height 3½ inch floppy disk drives. It looks very serious and professional. Sadly Dragon Data went bust before the machine came to market.

This machine, along with related marketing photos and graphics, was donated to Richard by the last managing director of Dragon Data.

A very early Dragon 32 prototype in a lighter cream case that the production version. The informational note reads "Pre-production prototype. No serial number. May 1982. Issue 1 mainboard".

Richard flipped it upside down for me yesterday to show me the place where the serial number would go; instead, it bears the initials of the designer, Ian somebody, who remains resolutely uncontactable, despite multiple attempts.

A Dragon 32 with the top cover off. It's a very neat layout. The 6509 is on the right hand side of the board, to the left of the peripheral bus.

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.

#RetroFest2025

And home from #retrofest2025 (despite cross-countrys best efforts)

Thoroughly enjoyed talking to everyone who stopped to chat! Hopefully I didn't bore too many people 😄

Day two, Sunday, #Swindon #RetroFest2025 at the #STEAMmuseum:

A Tadpole Sparcbook 3000XT running Solaris 2.6 and my favourite UNIX workstation-era graphical desktop, CDE.

In the months before the Great Dotcom Crash of 2000, the company I worked for had bought out a Silicon Valley start-up that was building a web-based mail client. It was a shambles, spinning up a long-lived executable for each client connection, but I remember being deeply impressed by the Tadpole one of the US developers brought with him to Ireland. It cost $10,000, he told us. That's $18,700 in 2025 dollars.

A photo of the Tadpole Sparcbook 3000XT displaying a CDE session with a file manager open and a few shells.

A close-up of the top-left corner of a terminal client running a shell and a file manager window.

Tadpole Sparcbook 3000XT

RETROBYTES

A Sun Sparc Station compatible laptop, running a custom version of Solaris 2.6, modified by Tadpole to allow the PCMCIA interface to work, manage power, and suspend/resume. The IDE interface for the internal HDD, was also fairly unique for a Sparc based computer of the time. Later UltraSparc models from SUN would also use IDE as opposed to SCSI.

· CPU: 170 MHz TurboSPARC
·RAM:32 Mb-256 Mb
· Display: 1024 x 768
·Hardisk: IDE 2.5” 3GB
·Interfaces: Ethernet, Serial, Parallel, SCSI, ISDN, SunKeyboard/Mouse, SVGA
· Bus: Sbus, PCMCIA

#RetroFest2025 was a hoot and I met loads of great people there. I did, of course, buy a couple of things including kits that @rc2014 had from himself and Tynesoft.

Watch out for videos of me building them on the PolarBear peertube in the near future!

The downside of the day was Swindon. You could not pay me enough money to ever go back to that place. It is the worst and most frustrating and confusing road system I have ever seen. It took an hour from near Bath where I live to get to Swindon then almost 2 hours to actually find the place. The only reason we did find it in the end was that when we gave up and started heading back we accidentally spotted the sign for the place.

Thankfully seeing lots of cool old computers and speaking to some really wonderful people finally settled my rage and I had a great time inside.

Due to me leaving it too late, had a brief but fun trip to #retrofest2025! Had an enjoyable chat about early Hornby controllers and had fun looking at all the wonderful demos and old tin.

An array of very vintage computers including some core memory, power supplies, etc

More vintage computers! Beige and CRT monitors as far as the eye can see

Dolo Miah und sein #BBC - der Bread Board Computer - auf dem #Retrofest2025 in Swindon.

Grüße auch an die Steckschweine
( @steckschwein_6502 )

Gerade im Cafe beim #Retrofest2025:

#Amstrad #NC100 heute immer noch genau so nützlich wie damals. Und ganz ohne Ablenkung durch Internet oder Klicky-Bunti :))

Ein Mann sitzt an einem Tisch im Cafe beim Retrofest und tippt einen Text in einen Amstrad NC100 von 1992.Kann alles was man so unterwegs zm schreiben braucht - aber ohne Ablenkung durchs Internet :)

Coming tomorrow: Acorn replicas, a super-rare Dragon Professional prototype, RC2014 systems, a PiDP11 or two, and probably more.

#RetroFest2025

More snaps from #RetroFest2025:

...and more to come tomorrow. I'm hoping it'll be quieter. There were loads of standholders I didn't get to chat to, including the RP2014 and PiDP11 folks and Eduard, who also flew over from Dublin, who's exhibiting his collection of Soviet-era calculators.

RISC machines running UNIX and X Windows.

Intriguing presentation frames for vintage chips and CPUs by Michael Shillabeer of https://geekyart.co.uk.

A gorgeous HP PA-RISC machine running CDE with HP's branding on the dock, matching the design of system front panel.

A wider shot of the room and the crowd. My apologies to folks at the edges of the frame.

Just had a wonderful day of intense geekery, bouncing between a packed out #RetroFest2025 at #STEAMmuseum and #MuseumOfComputingSwindon.

At the former, loads of familiar British machines, esoteric 8-bit machines and some 16- and 32-bit Workstations with now-extinct CPU families.

At the latter, a well-presented collection of early hobbyist and personal computers, again with a very solid showing of British machines, many of which you're invited to get hands-on with.

#retrocomputing #swindon

A view from the rear corner of the space at STEAM, showing the crowds this morning.

A wide view of part of the collection at the Museum of Computing. The museum was also busy; this shot was taken during a lull.

All set up for #retrofest2025!
For saying I couldn't bring much - it doesn't look too bad!

The main machine is the Macintosh Plus clone, which is online via the bluescsi V2 - and I've even brought a midi module and headphones!

The Unitron 1024 can be demonstrated on request!

A table covered with a black fabric cover.

There is a sign including a description of the system to the far left. To the right of the sign is the Macintosh plus clone (a small black acrylic box with a transparent sheet to show the gubbins) with a M0110 and M0100 original Macintosh mouse and keyboard in front. To the right is a teeny VGA monitor from packard bell, showing the system has booted up.

In the middle is my DosFox name tag.
To the right is a small beige box, with a set of headphones attached - this is a Yamaha MU10 midi synth with a pair of AKG headphones.

To the right of those is the Unitron 1024, with a single Macintosh mouse plugged into it - this is an identical box to the Mac plus, except it's in white and says "Unitron 1024".

To the extreme right of that is a floppy emu, and another information sign for the Unitron 1024.

Sods law. Meant to show an ITXPlus at #retrofest2025, and it was just delivered.

Ten minutes after I left.

I'm already on my train!

Anyone going to #retrofest2025 this weekend?

I'll be there showing off the Macintosh Plus as well as the Unitron 1024!

#retrofest2025

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