I'm a sucker for anything Olivetti but this one is extra special because it was the first personal computer with a built in floppy drive. The display is the thin strip of LCD next to the logo, and with a built in printer this thing is a glorified typewriter (which isn't meant to be an insult, Olivetti made THE typewriters)
The floppies were interesting too, proprietary 2.5" disks with no sleeve, making the origins of "floppy" much more obvious:
Something a little different today, two retro music oddities from Yamaha.
The 1987 Yamaha SHS-10 (aka "Sholky") and the 1990 QY-10.
Two very different marketing directions (the 'rugged' leather for the QY-10 has a lot to say) but both can run on batteries and both have MIDI support. Combining them makes a surprisingly capable portable audio workstation for the price of a single cable and a quarter kilo of AAs.
Although the Sholky isn't part of the Portasound family it still uses the same OPL FM chip you might know from the SoundBlaster 16. The QY-10 is more of a 'rompler' and uses a bank of samples for each instrument. A really great example of how quickly tech moved in the '80s and '90s.
Unfortunately my Sholky only runs off a power adapter right now so I need to do some repairs to get it portable.
Repair pics under the cut.
First off, here it is in one piece.
I love how the text is facing in every direction, just a really fun design choice. As the keytarist you can read all the buttons but the audience gets a nice big logo to enjoy.
There's no conductivity between the battery terminal, even after cleaning off some battery goop with vinegar, so it needs to be opened up and checked closer.
Inside we have the main PCB. The big chip on the green side is a gate array, the sound generator is the second smallest chip on the beige side.
This is what it's all about, the Yamaha 2420. Apparently a variant of the 2413 aka OPLL. If you've ever enjoyed the classic FM MIDI sound of a SoundBlaster 16 this is the source. I've literally built an entire desktop computer just to control this single chip before but that's for a different post.
Close up on some of the other chips. We've got some Mitsubishi CMOS RAM (smallest chip), a Yamaha ROM, and a Yamaha CPU (largest chip). I couldn't find any info on the two Yamaha chips other than a fantastic circuit bending write up:
Many thanks to the author Christian Windler Oliver. Apparently also the "teachmaster" of Logologie, the first cyberage religion. The details are mostly in German but I'll need to explore that further...
In the meantime my Sholky runs on mains power so I know the issue is somewhere near the battery terminals. Testing conductivity pretty quickly reveals the terminals are the problem and now that they're out of the case I can see the corrosion was much worse than I thought.
Some sandpaper, more vinegar and alcohol and it's back in working order! Taking out the PCB ended up being pointless but at least I got to see the main sound chip.
Quick reassembly and here it is hooked up to the QY-10. Only three years apart but two very different aesthetics. Also, both were released before the General MIDI specification was published in 1991 so it was a nice surprise to find the Sholky's was already on the right channel to control the QY-10's lead instrument.
The whole "everything is flat and thin" UI design trend is bad enough, but y'know what just makes it worse?
The lack of consistency.
That's the Windows 10 Settings application, the Windows 10 "Open File" common dialog, and GitHub Desktop.
I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss when buttons looked like this across the board, and those that didn't were the outliers. Now your application is the outlier precisely when it does use the OS-native buttons.
Don't get me wrong: the exact same thing applies to all the other controls.
I wrecked my copy keeping it in my cesspit of a 1998 Suzuki Baleno because you could put it in the CD player and hear the Half-Life soundtrack. Ripping audio off CDs wasn't tricky I just thought it was cool to pop that disk in my car.
No one manufactures 3.5" floppies anymore, half of mine are from someone who cleans up and repackages second hand ones. At some point they'll all be gone and this might be the only way to keep using certain machines.
Those long gone days when customising Windows meant more than disabling the in-built advertising. Even up to Win 7 you could even disable Aero and go back to this level of personalisation.
At VCF East XX, former Commodore engineer Bil Herd gave me a handful of old chips from his storage bins. These are mostly 6502 family parts, meaning I'll find uses for them in my various projects. Those two in the middle that say SAMPLE and PROTOTYPE are the coolest of the bunch, and I'm gonna put these to work. Thanks, Bil!
Start Me Up: 30 years of Windows 95 - @commodorez and @ms-dos5
30 years ago, Microsoft introduced Windows 95 and set the standard for graphical user interfaces that is still in use today. We will be displaying all major versions of 95, from one of the Chicago Beta releases, through the final update from 1997, on a wide variety of hardware from a number of prominent manufacturers. Come experience what made Windows 95 a household name, play some games, and see what made computing accessible and easy for everyone.
MS-DOS5 and I started planning this one in 2023, because we knew the anniversary was coming up and we wanted to give such a significant milestone in computing history the credit and spotlight it deserved. Computers and software come from both of our collections, with the exception of one desktop on loan from the Glitchworks. All of the 90s CRTs were on loan from our friends Sark, RadRacer203, and CJ.
The result was 18 feet worth of exhibit table, filled to the brim with copies of Windows 95, and associated software. We had computers running Chicago Beta 73g, RTM, OSR 1, OSR 2, and OSR 2.5 arranged in order to show the full life cycle of Windows 95 from 1993-1997. We also had companion software like Plus!, various versions of Microsoft Office (all from MS-DOS5's extensive collection), 95-specific games (from Microsoft and third parties alike), as well as training software. We included a number of important books about Windows 95, an era-appropriate network hub tying most machines together, a dot matrix printer, 90s mousepads, and even some big tractor-feed banners printed from one of the 95 machines.
All told, it was the most elaborate exhibit either of us have ever done, and the results were better than I could have imagined. That was a blast to put together, and super fun to show off at VCF East.
