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      Build a shelf-size vintage computer museum made of paper

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 17 October, 2022 - 20:37 · 1 minute

    An example of eight papercraft vintage computer models designed and assembled by Rocky Bergen.

    Enlarge / An example of eight papercraft vintage computer models designed and assembled by Rocky Bergen. (credit: Rocky Bergen )

    Yesterday, a Winnipeg, Canada-based artist named Rocky Bergen released a free collection of miniature papercraft vintage computer models that hobbyists can assemble for fun. They are available on The Internet Archive in a pack of 24 PDF files that you can print out on letter-size paper and fold into three dimensions.

    Among Bergen's Barbie-size papercraft models, you'll find representations of classic computers originally released during the 1970s and '80s, such as the Apple II, IBM PC 5150, Commodore 64, Apple Macintosh, and even the rare Apple Lisa 1. You'll also find papercraft models of a few classic game consoles like the Sega Master System and the Nintendo GameCube.

    Bergen began creating the papercraft models in the summer of 2016, starting with an Amstrad CPC 464 he designed for a CPC fanzine. "I grew up with a Commodore 64 and have always been a fan of old computers and their industrial design," Bergen told Ars Technica. "I would love to have a huge collection of them, but it's not always practical for people to have a massive amount of hardware with them at all times."

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      39-year-old Radio Shack laptop gets new CPU, keeps original screen

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 23 September, 2022 - 20:13 · 1 minute

    A 1983-era TRS-80 Model 100 as action hero, exploding onto the scene.

    Enlarge / A 1983-era TRS-80 Model 100 as an action hero, dramatically exploding onto the scene. (credit: Radio Shack / Benj Edwards )

    Faced with a broken Radio Shack laptop from 1983, IEEE Spectrum editor Stephen Cass didn't throw it away. Instead, he pulled out the logic board and replaced it with a modern microcontroller so he could control the vintage screen. Cass wrote about his adventure in detail for Spectrum last week.

    Cass performed his operation on a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 —one of the first laptops ever produced—which features a one-piece "slate" form designed by Kyocera and released as the NEC PC-8201 in Japan. Its claim to fame was not only its small portable size (at 2 inches thick and 3.9 lbs), but having a great keyboard paired with its ability to run for up to 20 hours on four AA batteries.

    The Model 100 included a 2.4 MHz Intel 80C85 CPU, 8 to 32K of RAM, and an eight-line, 40-character monochrome LCD with no backlight. It doesn't sound like much compared to today's portable beasts, but journalists loved the Model 100 because they could comfortably write stories on the go using its built-in text editor. It also included Microsoft BASIC, a terminal program, and an address book in ROM.

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