"Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the Minix OS - a cousin of Linux [I beg your pardon?] - running on his homebrew minicomputer, today at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. Magic-1, built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA."
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Member since:2006-10-08
"Personally I think it's a much cooler project to restore one of the minicomputers that this thing resembles, like Robert Krten has: http://www.parse.com/~museum/pdp8/pdp8i/index.html "
I like these ones: http://www.parse.com/~museum/misc/index.html
I've resored robotron computers (built in the GDR) for a museum in Schwerin, northern Germany, many years ago. This really was fun, and hard work, because you barely find information material on this very special topic, but still very interesting. Toying around with relay based "computers" was cool, too. If you wanted some real basics (not BASIC), the U880 based Polycomputer 880 - http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/poly880.htm - and the Lerning Computer 80 - http://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/lc80.htm - were a good point to start. But they are not x86 and don't run a specific known OS such as Minix.
When I get some time, I'll try to revice an ancient dec VT-101 terminal that's still waiting in the cellar, waiting for resurrection, waiting for better days... can wait some more... :-)
Member since:
2005-11-01
It does certainly bear a resemblance (intentional?) to some of the PDPs (especially the LSI-11), but I don't think I'd call it a minicomputer. For me, that term brings to mind images of the VAX and AS/400.
Personally I think it's a much cooler project to restore one of the minicomputers that this thing resembles, like Robert Krten has: http://www.parse.com/~museum/pdp8/pdp8i/index.html
To each his own, of course, but Harry Porter's electromechanical monstrosity is still my favorite homebuilt computer. The convenience of SSI and MSI TTL ICs be damned, he built a tribute to the venerable Harvard Mark I (okay, he used an SRAM IC... I can't blame him for that):
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/index.html