The Easter Egg in the “Schrott-Tornado” at the Deutsches Museum
The Deutsches Museum in Munich (Germany) has a new art installation as part of the reopened Electronics exhibition: The “Schrott-Tornado”, a tornado-shaped sculpture made from scrap electronics. There is (at least) one item in it that is most definitely not trash.
Dissecting a Dummy Promo MiniDisc
Many pre-recorded MiniDiscs are rare and expensive. An extra rare special case is the dummy promo copy of Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous”, which we will dissect in this article.
Building the Tynemouth Mini PET
Commodore "Video Supergame 64" Bundle
The “Video Supergame 64” is a Commodore 64 bundled with a joystick and three games on a cartridge, sold mainly in Germany in 1988/1989. Here are some pictures.
Commodore “Magic Voice” Cartridge for C64
“Magic Voice” is an expansion cartridge for the Commodore 64 that can speak 235 predefined words. Here are some pictures.
Tynemouth Minstrel ZX80 Clone Kit
I have previously shown an unassembled Sinclair ZX81 Kit that could be bought in the early 80s. Today, it is possible to buy a clone of the ZX80 from Tynemouth Software. Here are some pictures.
C64 CP/M Cartridge
The cartridge that makes a C64 a “dual processor” computer: Commodore’s CP/M cartridge for C64 contains a Z80 CPU and comes with version 2.2 of the CP/M operating system. Here are some pictures.
Sinclair ZX81 Kit
Here are hi-res photos of an unassembled Sinclair ZX81 kit, with German assembly instructions.
Blue Chip BCD/5.25 Disk Drive
After previously dissecting the firmware of alternate C64 disk drives, let’s now look at the hardware of one: This is the Blue Chip BCD/5.25.
The Commodore IEEE-488 Cartridge for C64
Commodore 64 disk drives were usually connected through the slow serial bus. This article shows some hi-res photos of the Commodore “IEEE-488 cartridge”, which made the faster PET drives available for the C64.
Boxed MOS 6502 CPU
Back in 1975, you could order a boxed 6502 CPU directly from MOS in Norristown, PA. Here are some high-res photos of such a box and its contents.
Commodore MAX Machine
Here are some hi-res pictures of the Commodore MAX machine (aka Ultimax or VC-10), a stripped-down game console variant of the Commodore 64 that was briefly available in 1982.
The Commodore 8250 Dual Drive Floppy Disk
The Commodore 8250 was the high-end 5.25″ disk system for the Commodore PET, with two drives that could each fit 1 MB (4133 blocks free) on a standard disk. Here are some high-res pictures.
Prototype Commodore 232 and 264 Computers
Here are some hi-res photos of the Commodore 232 and Commodore 264 prototypes. The C-232 and C-264 were two1 of the planned models of the TED series, but neither shipped. The C-264 became the Plus/4, with productivity software preinstalled in ROM, and the low-lost C-232 was replaced by the even lower-cost C16 and C116 models.
Third Party Disk Drives for the C64: The "Technica"
I have previously analyzed the ROM images of some third party disk drives for the Commodore 64: The result was that most of them were just using the original binaries with some obfuscation, and some with some added features. This time, let’s look at another drive, the “Technica”, which is a little special in this regard.
High-Res Pictures of a MOS KIM-1
The MOS KIM-1 is a quite rare collector’s item today. So if you hold one in your hands, you better take some high resolution pictures of the board. Here they are:
Pictures of Apple Lisa 2 Boards
The Apple Lisa is a quite rare collector’s item today. So if you hold one in your hands, you better take some high resolution pictures of the boards. Here they are: