Out shopping with SWMBO earlier, I assumed my usual holding position in front of the magazine shelves and was surprised to see 'MK14' on the front of a magazine, which turned out to be the May 2024 issue (issue 314) of Linux Format. Inside there's a four page article which first covers the history of the base machine and briefly mentions the cassette interface, VDU and an (unknown to me) 4K RAM / 16K ROM extension card. It then looks at various ways of using an MK14 now: Buying an original (considered too pricey). Emulation, software, as in Doug Rice's online emulator, emulation, hardware, a ..read more

I am looking for information on a number of STE bus boards from companies such as ARCOM, DSP Designs and GMT Electronic Systems, specifically the following: SC09 and SERCOM4 from ARCOM SL800 from DSP Designs 1021 from GMT Anyone have any info on these heritage boards, any help would be much appreciated ..read more

I have a batch of Arcom ELAN 104NC boards I am having trouble with, they will not boot to the ROM BIOS. Anyone got any info or experience of these boards ..read more

Hi I'm a new member so I'll say hello first. I've been an electronics enthusiast since the mid 70s, built my first radio when I was eleven years old and started using computers at sixteen. I'd like to buy some vintage component to build my own variant of the Transam Triton, which is the very first computer that I used. Obviously it's not going to be easy to get new old stock components and I'm not going to be able to test used parts as soon as I bought them. So, any buying advice please ? Thanks ..read more

I wonder if anyone has tried the Parallax Emic 2, I have always wanted a Dectalk system, partly because of its historic significance and partly because frankly in 40 years its never been bettered - but of course they're silly expensive. The Emic 2 uses the DECtalk text-to-speech synthesizer engine (5.0.E1) and sounds to me exactly like the original Dectalk hardware, with all the familiar voices like Perfect Paul, Frail Frank, Rough Rita and more. Its not cheap, but a fraction of the price asked for a 40-year-old Dectalker. I'm very tempted but first wondered if anyone had tried an Emic? Ta ..read more

Modes, please move or delete if this isn't a question for the forum. There's a lot of knowledgeable folks here and I'm hoping someone could help me with a question I have about RS232 signalling. I have a PC with a usb-to-rs232 cable connecting to a PIC configured as a UART. For what it's worth, the cable is made by 'DriverGenius' and called a USB to serial adapter. It sends and receives data fine at 115200 baud with no flow control, but I want to be able to send large-ish chunks of data to the PIC without loss (it's part of a project to create a EPROM programmer for strange devices like the ..read more

I see the last time this device was mentioned was back in 2022 so I though I'd share my recent fun and games. I picked up three INS8073s a while back, still have two of them. I had some boards made up from a design I found online and with some modifications to the circuit I have it up and running. Apart from Phil_G's PICL I've not done much with earlier SC/MP stuff but looking at recent developments here the instruction set seems to be quite different. NIBL tiny BASIC is located on the chip from 0x0000 to 0x09FF. I've added 32k RAM from 0x0000 to 0x7FFF. The original design had 2k from 0x1000 ..read more

There were recent posts in other threads recently about problems using FRAM in place of battery backed SRAM or Proms with retro computers. I thought I’d start a new thread with some issues found in the datasheet for FM18W08, attached for reference. I think these would also apply to FM1608, FM16W08 and FM1808. Note the W indicates a wider voltage supply range 2.7v to 5.5v. 1. The address is latched on the falling edge of chip enable, so on the INS8060 the chip enable should be qualified with write enable or read enable, and not only the address lines. 2. Although the read or write cycles are ..read more

Those here will know how intertwined the people in the early British computer scene were like Acorn's link back to the Mk14 with Chris Curry setting up and Nick Toop providing the Eprom programmer to create the Acorn System 1 PROMs... You may also remember the name Geoff Phillips who ran the MK14 user group and kindly uploaded what he had to archive.org: https://archive.org/search?query=Mk1...lement+and+add Well today I came across Part 1 of a YouTube interview with him that mentions his MK14 time as part of how he became involved with Tangerine and the Oric among others... https://www.you ..read more

A friend brought these around, His just 3 year old daughter played with these then explained it all to his Grannie! No connection to the author.... John. Attached Thumbnails         ..read more