Friday, March 27, 2009

Retro Old School Hardware

Back in "the day", computers were expensive. So people worked hard to come up with cheap computers to experiment with. Like the COSMAC ELF.

Powered by an 1802 (still manufactured by Intersil) (which, interestingly, was often used in spacecraft -- the large geometry and silicon on sapphire construction of the chip makes it relatively immune to radiation), the ELF
used (in it's basic configuration) 7-segment LEDs and toggle switches for display and input.

If you want to play with one, you can use a simulator (there are several available), or even buy/build a modern ELF.

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