First Computer Archive

  • An Interview with Mike Davey about his Homemade Turing machine

    An Interview with Mike Davey about his Homemade Turing machine

    Posted on April 5, 2010 | No Comments
    There's something about geeky DIY projects that strike a nerve with the Internet. Case in point, the homebrew Turing Machine built by Mike Davey. He had no ulterior motive than to make something satisfying for himself, and literally overnight he was an Internet sensation. The video has been watched almost two hundred thousand times, and he's been in contact with the blokes at Bletchley Park and the Computer History Museum. I spoke with Mike by email and telephone recently to learn a little more about the man, and his creation.

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  • Giveaway: 500GB G-Drive mini external hard drive

    Giveaway: 500GB G-Drive mini external hard drive

    Posted on December 8, 2009 | No Comments
    Everyone needs more storage. But why spend the cash an external drive when we're giving away a sexy 500GB G-Drive mini? It's small, has both USB and Firewire interfaces, and sexy like it's big brother I just reviewed.

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  • Buffalo announces world’s first 12x Blu-ray burner (and it’s USB 3.0, too)

    Buffalo announces world’s first 12x Blu-ray burner (and it’s USB 3.0, too)

    Posted on November 26, 2009 | No Comments
    USB 3.0 is just around the corner (kind of), and the first computer hardware manufacturers are getting ready to deliver products supporting the new standard (even though there were some backlashes along the way). Last month, Asus announced the world's first USB 3.0 + SATA 6.0 PCI-E card. In May, NEC said they're going to release the first USB 3.0 host controller.

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  • DIY Lunar Lading Computer

    DIY Lunar Lading Computer

    Posted on July 21, 2009 | No Comments
    Here's a project for a rainy year: a DIY Apollo Guidance Computer with 4K RAM, 32K words of ROM, and a 1Mhz processor. One John Pultorak built his own replica in 2004 and released the plans to the world, giving us a glimpse into what was essentially the first pocket calculator on the moon.
    The Apollo AGC itself is a piece of computing history, it was developed by the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory and it was a quite amazing piece of hardware in the 1960s. It was the first computer to use integrated circuits (ICs), running at 1 Mhz it offered four 16-bit registers, 4K words of RAM and 32K words of ROM. The AGC mutlitasking operating system was called the EXEC, it was capable of executing up to 8 jobs at a time. The user interface unit was called the DSKY (display/keyboard, pronounced "disky"); an array of numerals and a calculator-style keyboard used by the astronauts to communicate with the computer.

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