25 Nov
2025
25 Nov
'25
9:53 a.m.
Built an 8080 barebones system in 1979 (or maybe 1980). Wirewrapped on
old 44-pin Vector boards that I redrilled by hand for the DIP sockets.
Initially 1K RAM, one 1702A EPROM, one parallel I/O port, an EBCDIC
keyboard from some piece of IBM gear, and a switches/lights front panel.
Video from a SSM VB-1B S-100 card to a surplus 9" CCTV monitor.
I keyed in WADUZITDO by hand once or twice... that's a neat programming
language in just 256 bytes.
Eventually I sold the VB-1B card and moved on to bigger and better
microcomputers ;)
Last year I pulled it out from under the bench and upgraded it to a
serial interface (for my ADM-3 Dumb Terminal), added a 2716 and an
updated monitor program.
I think I'll add WADUZITDO in the "huge" ROM space :)
On 11/24/25 21:38, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote:
Here's one: Cramer Intel 8080A Microcomputer
https://vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=819
Wire-wrapped 8080 system built to compete in the Altair market, and flopped.
" Cramer Electronics Incorporated started advertising this 8080 kit
microcomputer, the "Cramerkit", in late 1975 for $495 (or was it $1495?)
but none were delivered until the spring of 1976. The Cramerkit was
designed by Microcomputer Technique Inc. and was shipped partially
assembled. "
On Mon, Nov 24, 2025 at 10:04 PM Jon Elson via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
> On 11/23/25 22:13, ben via cctalk wrote:
>> Who has strange or one of a kind computers out there?
>> I have a 18 bit homebrew (cpld) with 256Kb ram and just a
>> bootstrap loader.
>>
> I built a 32-bit bit slice processor out of AMD 2903 and
> 2910 parts. See:
>
> https://pico-systems.com/stories/1982.html
>
> I did write a micro assembler for it and ran a few test
> programs. But, the work ahead of me (interfacing memory and
> an I/O bus, writing 360 microcode and coming up with a
> Pascal compiler and writing my own OS and editor, etc. was
> just too daunting and I gave up on it.
>
> Jon
>