Questions tagged [hardware]

Retro hardware generally: boards, extension cards, power supplies, peripherals. Use more specific tags as appropriate; use [case] instead for enclosures.

The term "hardware" encompasses components on circuit boards, physical input devices, power supplies, displays, and other devices that contain or are components that are capable of interfacing electronically with other components or devices. It does not include plastic cases, passive mechanical components (e.g. a laptop's hinge) or non-computing parts of a system (e.g. the glass pane of a CRT display), but it does include electronic systems that have mechanical parts (e.g. a floppy diskette reader).

This tag should be used for questions about hardware as defined in the previous paragraph. For enclosures and other cosmetic parts, use instead, perhaps together with .

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Was there a retro computer susceptible of being damaged only by issuing instructions at it?

The question 'Can a USR command damage a ZX Spectrum?' has led me to wonder if there was once a microcomputer that could actually be damaged by software. More specifically: Is there a case that a microcomputer, using its default shipped hardware…
mcleod_ideafix
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Cloning circuit boards for antique computers?

Would it be feasible to create direct clones of obsolete and increasingly hard-to-find motherboards and controller boards for vintage computers? Most of the early 1980s technology was either single side or double sided printed circuit boards, so…
Dale Mahalko
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What is known about the Wang VS series CPUs?

I'm trying to do research about the Wang VS series, and there's very little on these computers on the internet (as the company was effectively dead before the internet era, this is hardly shocking). I've stumbled across a scan of a sales brochure…
John O
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What computer first facilitated multi-precision arithmetic

While early microcomputers were often 4- or 8-bit designs, with larger word sizes coming later, that pattern did not hold for their predecessors. None of the earliest computers used a word size that was anywhere near that small. Even computers…
supercat
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What happened to exposed address pins/address bus?

This could be a question for the Electronics StackExchange, but I figured that if I couldn't find any info about it it might be more of a Retrocomputing thing. I've been poking around on Google and some vendor sites looking for a simple processor…
Architect
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What is the model of the cash registers used in Walmart in the mid to late 90's and very early 2000's?

What is the type or model of cash registers used in Walmart in the mid to late 90's and early 2000's? See this video. Note the strange sounds that Ann says is when the cash register is printing. Also note that I'm blind (no interview questions…
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Why should 2 CPUs ever share the same bus?

The complexity of the Sega Saturn's technically impressive hardware played a large factor in its downfall. It seems to me that one of the largest things that was difficult to work with was that the 2 Hitachi SH-2 processors shared the same bus and…
Retro Gamer
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How to implement bus sharing / DMA on a 6502 system

Was it possible for NMOS based 6502 system operate in the following fashion: while 6502 is not touching the bus one custom chip sets up memory read op, then two chips read the data off the bus at the same cycle. If yes what else beside a signal from…
Anton
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A different way to share the memory bus between the CPU and the Video

Considering the ZX Spectrum, part of the memory is accessible to both the ULA and the CPU, and the CPU is slowed down when it is using that area, so that the framebuffer can be read out. As I understand, some Amigas also have a region of memory…
Omar and Lorraine
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TMS9918 with shared memory

The TMS9918 video display processor was designed in the 70s to have its own memory connected directly to it, and provides an interface that allows the CPU to read or write the memory during cycles in which it isn't using it itself. Unfortunately,…
Jules
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Was it possible to send data over the phone-line without a modem?

Was it possible to send data over the phone-line without a modem? Clarification Was it possible to send data over the phone-line without a modem, either by connecting computers directly to the phone line, or, by connecting…
questiontype
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What would it take for a 6502 system to use an 8 bit ISA bus

I've built 6502 computer on an ISA card: To access the bus it decodes the following 6502address ranges $0200-$03FF mapped at I/O address $00200-003ff (IOR; IOW) $4000-$BFFF mapped at ISA address $04000-$07fff for memory access…
Carl
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Were there computers whose text touched( or came close to ) the overscan border?

QUESTION - . Were there computers whose text in text-mode, touched( or came close to ) the overscan border, and could this sometimes result in some of the computer-generated-display not being visible on some tv's / monitors? ? Time range -…
questiontype
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What was the first system to use flash or beep codes as a diagnostic?

It has long been the case that computer systems can signal serious faults using a series of beeps or flashes, where such faults occur too early in the boot process for them to be communicated in more conventional form. There is a long history of…
Flup
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Checking if RAM is functional

I'm trying to revive an old travelMate 518tx and I'm currently in the process of searching for bottlenecks. I want to check if the RAM sticks are still functional or not, but they're both very old, and I'm unsure how I can test them. Is there a way…
Bálint
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