Questions tagged [hardware]
Retro hardware generally: boards, extension cards, power supplies, peripherals. Use more specific tags as appropriate; use [case] instead for enclosures.
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Which aspects of RF emission were TI unable to get under control?
The TI 99/4 (as opposed to 4A) was a computer killed by RF emission problems. From Wikipedia
Through the development period, several companies attempting to enter the home computer market were faced ...
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Are a Z80 address pins tristate?
I been looking at the Z80 CPU recently and am wondering how difficult it would be to wire one up. The thing I'm interested in is how to connect it to some RAM. In particular, I'd like to know if the ...
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Were there 3D accelerators built on discrete logic?
I wonder if there were 3D accelerators (that is, a device that calculates rotations, scaling, texturing, etc. for 3D points) built on discrete logic (7400 series, most likely its fastest variants, ...
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How much extra did a color RF modulator cost?
I've been doing more reading about the early 8-bit home computers, a fascinating era, in which the cost of the hardware was of course a constant, dominating constraint, and trying to understand ...
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Is there a technical reason why Datel Action Replay on PC required a card?
In the mid-90s, there was an ISA expansion card called “Datel Action Replay” that could be inserted into almost any PC-compatible machine (e.g. 80286). By pressing a button on a device (plugged into ...
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Analog to PWM for Analog input on Retro game controller?
On the NES and SNES a common feature on 3rd party controllers was "Slow-motion". It worked by repeatedly pressing and releasing the start button. Because many games simply froze gameplay ...
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What contemporary hardware was available for the development of Atari 2600 (or other 2nd gen) games?
The Atari 2600, along with others like the Odyssey 2 or Intellivision, were among the first programmable home game consoles. They existed alongside personal computers like the Apple II and Commodore ...
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Where can I find hardware details for the Philips VG-5000?
I'm interested in exactly what connectors the VG-5000 and what the pinouts are for them. Ideally, I'd like a full set of schematics for the machine.
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What is this large device labelled 'Telefunken Datenspeicher' and how does it work?
We found this device in our school. Does anyone know what this can do exactly, and how it could work?
We managed to input values into the bit storage on the top, but nothing more. Can we calculate ...
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Which S-100 systems supported both hard- and soft-sectored 8-inch floppies?
In the late 1970s to early 80s incompatible system software (i.e. MicroSoft Basic and CP/M 1.4) for S100 computers could be released in 8 inch, hard and soft sector, floppy disk formats. In that era ...
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When did the PC bus start slowing access to video RAM?
The PC architecture, from the original IBM PC onward, has always been designed around the idea that video memory will be on an expansion card. This was an unusual design decision; most 80s computers ...
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Atari SIO vs IEEE 488
When Atari was designing the 800 series of computers, they needed a way to connect peripherals. To comply with FCC regulations on RF emission, it needed shielded cables. To achieve low cost of entry ...
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Why must the Amiga 1020 disk drive be powered-on before and powered-off after the Amiga computer?
The Amiga 1020 was a 5.25" disk drive for use with the Amiga computer. Anecdotally, I suspect they are somewhat rarer these days because they were a less popular choice for a second drive back in ...
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What documentation was provided with the Amiga 1020 disk drive?
The Amiga 1020 was a 5.25" disk drive for use with the Amiga computer. Anecdotally, I suspect they are somewhat rarer these days because they were a less popular choice for a second drive back ...
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Gameboy Key Input Causes Crash
I made a Key Tester using the STDIO header included with GBDK. It works... Until it doesn't. All the keys register and print to the screen, except the Left(5) and Right(4) Directional Keys, which ...
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