One day I was cleaning the workshop (does not happen very
often) and came accross some old stuff that brought back a lot of
memories. Although this is all rather personal and probably not very
interesting to most people I thought it might amuse some friends. And
it is a part of history, even if a small part.
Ignition point...
This was the computer that (for me) started it all. A friend spent a
year in the states and brought back this issue of Popular Electronics.
After that there was no going back, I was hooked for life. Now there is
a whole web site dedicated to Cosmac Elf
Fueling the fire..
Some time later, probably next year (1978), I read from a local
(Finnish) magazine (EU= Electronics News) about some local activity
around the Cosmac. It appeared that some guys were way ahead of me and
had actually managed to put together a Finnish version of the Cosmac,
called Telmac. And not only that: instead of being content with the
orignal amazingly hi-res graphics (32 x 64 pixels) of the Cosmac they
had actually created a character terminal that was able to display an
awesome 16 lines of 64 characters. It was around this time that I, for
the first time, saw Jankke in a local radioshack
called "Yleiselektroniikka" on Annankatu 24. He had just received a
keyaboard from Jameco and was displaying to some friend and I was
enviously peeping behind the shelvs.
Telmac
So as soon as I had scraped the money I got myself one. I was realy
short on cash those days, I think I still owe some money to a friend
for some of the parts! Anyway, memory was hugely expensive in those
days, I could only afford 1 KByte (yes, that is 8 x 1024 bits!) in the
beginning. It cost about 80 FIM, which at that time was more than a few
months allowance from my fathers pocket.
Through Telmac I got to know Kaj
who was instantly transposed the the category of geniuses, because he
could fix my Telmac! He happened to know that the first production
series of the Telmac kit had a missing trace on the A5-address line,
and therefore you could not enter programs longer than 16 bytes. I
could make the RUN-LED blink but nothing else.
The original Telmac could run some impressive (I was 15 at the
time)video games writen in
CHIP8
language in just 1 kB of RAM including the
interpreter.
In the end this bady had 12 KB of RAM and a 2 KB monitor
software on EEPROM and you could program it using a 4 kB Tiny-BASIC
interpreter.
There is not much on Telmacs in the web but I managed to find
something .
DOS for Dumm..eh Telmac
Some friends and I put together a 5 1/4" disk drive controller and I
wrote a TRS-80 DOS look-a-like disk operating system for it. To have
almost instant access to a disk space of almost 60 kB (IRCC) was a huge
improvement over the C-casette storage we had.
(A side note to vent some old grudge. Way, way back, some
polytech students borrowed my master copy of the JKNDOS diskette (and I
was fool enough to let them have it) and never did return it. Shame on
you, may your Windows crash no-end.)
Enthusiasm mounts
As usual enthusiasm mounts and before you know user groups are popping
up everywhere, only to die sooner rather than later. We had one in
Finland and the Swedes had to have their own too. I have one good thing
to say for the 1800UC and that is that I got to know
Chrisse. I knew a Swedish guy from the 1800 Klubb:
Göran (IRCC): drop me a line if you read this.
What Might Have Been..
Sometimes one wonders what might have been. Here we have a letter from
a dear friend describing a computer that would have had all graphics
display, 64 kB of dynamic RAM, multiple floppies, a math co-processor.
The leter is dated -82, Hell, at that time some guys in California were
dreaming up the Lisa and Macintosh computers. So you maybe reading the
home page of could-have-been Steven Jobs or Bill Gates! Or maybe not,
but I just can't help thinking of what might have been...
Let the Games Begin
Afore mentioned friends and I also tried our hand in the computer game
business and published a C-casette full of games for the Telmac. The
games included an adventure style Alien inspired fantacy game and some
adapted all time favourites from foreign computer magazines. In those
days having access to this or that book or magazine was a great thing
(yes, my child, we had no web...yes child, I understand it is difficult
to comprehend how we lived, but we managed, just).
Influential Stuff
This particular book (a collection of magazine articles realy) had a
powerfull influence on me for several years. It seems that I'm not the
only one; I only have half ot this magazine left but
these folks have it all.
Asimov?
Well, not realy inspired by Isac (though I liked his books a lot),
these robots clearly are inspired by Creative Computing.
From RCA to ABC
After Telmac (based on the RCA 1802 cpu) I got involved in a user group
formed around a scandinavian computer called ABC-80. (In those days
everybody thought they could make computers and money with them). The
user group published some news letters and the editorship of the news
letter was passed on like a ticking parcel. (Child, take my adice,
never, ever get involved in any kind of club activity).
Personal
As I said, this is bound to be somewhat personal. This ones for Esa
Suutala, not because I remember him well, but because a mutual friend
Juha Koivisto now works for me. What a small world.
Much Later
Much later friends and me got involved in rebuilding Macintoshes. Who
could have afforded to pay plus $4000 for a computer, any computer?
In Memoriam
Before closing this chapter of history I want to pay tribute to an
in-memoriam friend, the Byte Magazine. Especially in the pre-PC area it
was a wonderfull source of information and inspiration. And even in the
area of PCs and MACs it managed to maintain a balanced view of not only
of the two main stream computers but of computing as a whole. Most of
the things that became important in computers I first read in Byte
while PC World and Mac World were comparing bits and bolts and nursing
their hatred for the other camp.
Just to give you a taste of the magazine contents: this
particular volume published the source code along with a very
informative article for a complete tiny Pascal compiler that could be
used to compile it self and so bootstrap any micro into highlevel
programming! And as if that wasn't enough for one volume they threw in
several articles about computer chess programming for a good measure.
Based on those I wrote my first Pascal compiler and chess program.
A
re-incarnation of the byte still lives, just, on the virtual
world, but somehow it does not feel quite the same.
As I said, this is bound to be somewhat personal. This ones for Esa
Suutala, not because I remember him well, but because a mutual friend
Juha Koivisto now works for me. What a small world.
