วีดีโอ

on card #2, the large chips with stickers are EPROMS, possibly with microcode for what looks like a TTL cpu card #4 looks like a 16 bit ALU or some sort

That OS reminds me so much of GEOS.

Any way you can rig this up to work with "WebMiniDisc"?

I used to run an Apple IIgs lab at the University of TN College of Education in the late 80s early 90's. They were used for teaching computer technology for K-12 teachers. The RGB Monitor was much clearer. One feature often not mentioned is that an AppleTalk (or PhoneNet) adapter could be plugged into the printer port and network the computers together to share Apple Laser Printers and share the same network as Macs at the time. You could also use a Mac SE (SE/30 Worked best) running AppleShare where you could not only share files, it would act as a boot server and the IIgs could boot off the AppleTalk Network served by the Mac SE/30. Some IIe programs could be converted to be run from the AppleShare FileServer. Also the Apple ImageWriter (Dot Matrix printers) could be plugged into either the printer of modem ports. (They where popular for PrintShop for making banners.) There was also an accelerator card (The Transwarp GS) that boosted the IIgs to 7 MHz and mac the OS faster than the Mac SE. The popular programs were, PrintShop, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, Appleworks, HyperCards GS (yes there was a GS version with color), and HyperStudio which was used heavily with several courses on it.

I have the same problem as you and i decided to open the amiga and change disk drive..or maybe conect external disk drive in the position of the internal disk drive....for me the amiga is not past, is present!!

I'm looking to buy one of these in the UK so hard to find

Very interesting... it would have been nice to see what all was inside the tower, however. :)

During the mid 90s, it was quite common for university PC pools to have built-in MD drives in all the machines, but this had nothing to with audio. Students kept their data, graphs, papers and presentations on data MDs so they could use them on any device when networks tended to be slow and network storage very restricted. Like floppy discs, but with 100 times the capacity.

I think one of the niche use cases MiniDisc lived on after it disappeared from the consumer market is indeed radio broadcast, doing the duties tape carts used to do in them olden days.

Very cool vid! Never knew about this computer

I would love to have a MD drive for a modern computer. I have so many MDs that I recorded with my portable recorder that I have not been able to make digital backups of into mp3s.

thats a killer piece of tech...i would like to play with that unit right now! i would love to have that! cool multimedia system!

Clint @LGR Will be so jealous. You have the speakers.

If only Steve hadn’t been so myopic and hurled the r&d into the IIGS. I would have loved to see the results.

The reason for the keyboard ports on the motherboard is so that you can switch out the Apple // motherboard out of it's case and fit the //gs motherboard in there. Apple actually offered this as an upgrade for people who wanted to keep their original Apple // case. Apple also sold a version of the Apple //e called the Platinum which had the //gs motherboard in it.

I agree that iconography is rather boring these days.

this is so dope !!!!! i got a lot of md's but use the player to record using platium md...Still prefer md over cd simply because of the protection, and the size. If sony was to revive mini disc in the future I'm sure it would be able to hold a ridiculous amount of stuff... 3d optical disc with lots of storage... that would be awesome.

It was popular in Japan and has it's own data format.

My brother had a Minidisc player what he used when working as a rural gardener, he'd spend his nights putting together the next day's mix discs by plugging it into the AUX out on our hi-fi and recording from his massive CD collection in preparation for going to work the next day. He'd've probably loved a PC like this, but again, would've likely been out of his price range. One warning, though: Pentium 4s are notoriously hot CPUs when running at 100% usage, might be a good idea not to run anything that might push the CPU too hard when combined with that amp.

1:29 we lived in Boulder during the early 90s (UK citizen, back in the UK now). Made that occasional trip to Denver too.

If i had money and saw a PC with a built in amp... I would have been all over it! My dad once had a great job in 1984 and bought a digital Curtis Mathis, J2572RG i think, that had its own built in amp for external stereo speakers! I would always brag on that TV (until it went kapoot 😭)

I have a whole bunch of Mini CDs and I can't figure out a use for them these days

In Canada, I never heard of MD until about 6 years ago. Now I have a bunch of them, I think it is a great technology.

A North American who not only used, but also owned MD! #respect :-) A Vaio with not just MD but also NetMD! WOW!

Interesting video, thanks:)

Oohhhh Baby Vaio was some Sexy Stuff Nobody Mid-Class could afford LOL

Checkout userlandia's presentation on the the apple iigs megahertz myth th-cam.com/video/UDUQEKxfGEw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=sreyBQSlugz9cESL It is very insightful regarding why the speed was not faster for production models

How I wish I hadn't sold my old 64 back in 1989 when I got an Amiga 500 instead.

this Video is in HD ! 🙂

what does tano stand for ?? thanks

You can run apple IIGS OS on 90s power macs I have it installed on a few have not figured out how to make disks run yet.

So great that you found this! Cromemco was a frequent advertiser in BYTE Magazine back in the late Seventies and early Eighties. I knew they were a big player but have never seen one in action before now. Can't wait till you have it working!

I believe that some of the plotters projected light onto photosensitive media. There would be an XY motion system and a series of aperture shapes and sizes that would mask off the light.

skunkworks' u2 program?

... so that's why "gerbers" are called "gerbers"... woah! Perhaps the "g" in "G. code" also stands for "Gerber"????

My father was a machinist at the Gerber Factory in Vernon Connecticut in late 60s and early 70's. He said they made Fabric cutters and plotters. He's gone now, sorry I don't have much info. Thanks for investigating this equipment!

I got a C64 for Christmas back in the 80's. I can honestly say it was THE BEST Christmas ever. Had a 50 game cassette with it by cascade. Great memories of going in Boots in St Helens (upstairs) and buying Mastertronic games.. Finders Keepers, Spooks, The Last V8 etc. And typing in programs only to get SYNTAX ERROR IN XX. Still got an original C64 & C64 Maxi!

The eeproms would be individually burned, likely by hand. So the labels indicate what code is burned in each and that date.

The non numbered board is likely the actual processor. The 6 chips at top would probably make the cpu, I see 4 eeproms in the lower right and under those probably the RAM chips.

On the gns 1-3 card, the eeproms are labeled L and U for upper and lower bits, so they act as pairs.

On the label, W.O. number would be Work Order number. Not sure about PT number

My first computer!! Had that cassette player!

This machine probably ran a photoplotter for plotting Gerber apertures onto film. For PCB production.

wow

The "plotter" likely cut ruby acetate(?) that was then used as a mask on photosensitive PC boards. The board would then be developed an then etched. Big bed type "plotter".

Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

'The Gerber format is an open, ASCII, vector format for printed circuit board designs. It is the de facto standard used by PCB industry software to describe the printed circuit board images.' This is still used today every time a PCB is designed/built.

the green card has Solder mask on it, due to its smaller tollerances and closer solderingpoints. the others are probeblely older, and did not make use of this. That colour is therefore the color of the board itself, just the bear PCB.

Most often the belt of the floppy drive needs replacement, which isn't too diffult a job, and these belts can also easily be sourced. Also, a PC disk drive can fairly easy be adapted to work in an Amiga. Regarding a taste of Amiga gaming, better try Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer, The Settlers, Worms, the Chaos Engine, Pinball Fantasies and Turrican 2. If you want to see what the Amiga is capable of displaying, try Agony, the Shadow of the Beast series, Elfmania and Fightin' Spirit.

The chips on the GNS-1-3 card that are labeled aren't microprocessors. MM5204 is listed as a 4096-bit EPROM. Either the other chips on that card are doing addressing logic for the EPROMs, or the card uses the EPROMS to do something similar to what a PAL chip does (another example of that kind of design would be the Apple ][ Disk controller card - except that the GNS-1-3 card would be a much more complex design; if it is in fact doing something like that).