Sphere 1: The First Modern Microcomputer - Ben Zotto
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- Far from California’s homebrew counterculture, a visionary outside Salt Lake City created a fully integrated computer in 1975. Mike Wise’s scrappy company, with its sharp team and big heart, vanished only two years later, plagued by delays and other challenges. Sphere is today remembered unfairly as a footnote, but Ben will make the case that this early micro looked
firmly forward from the hobbyist world into serious computing. A historical and technical
presentation, including a demonstration of Sphere’s ambitious platform.
Slides can be found here: vcfed.org/wp-c...
A presentation at Vintage Computer Festival West 2022
August 7, 2022 at The Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA
What an incredible wealth of information and incredible historical study. I'm blown away by the quality of this presentation. I had searched for information on early 6800-based computers about a week ago and then was redirected to this via a Hackaday article and - wow. Incredible. Thank you all so much for keeping this history alive.
It's great how VCF is able to bring presentations by well researched presenters. It helps preserve the history!
Thank you for the kind words James. This project has been important to me, and the VCF does a great job finding and promoting this sort of history.
A Fantastic presentation on a truly Forgotten Machine! VERY well done!
Yes. Not a lot of people know (or knew) about this machine. Very interesting story. We are glad that you liked this video and appreciate your support for our organization. Please spread the word!
Finally, somebody decided to tackle Sphere. Good :)
It really rounds things out 😂
Yes. One of those not well known computers.
LOL! I see what you did there!
Such a great presentation! Really brings the era alive and connects some of these early innovations to the modern era of computing.
We are glad that you enjoyed it!
Absolutely fascinating detective work. I have really enjoyed your talk. Well done!
I applaud all the work that he did to research this machine.
Slides are now available here: vcfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Sphere_1_VCF_2022_Zotto.pdf
I think I remember seeing ads for it when I was reading back-copies of BYTE magazine but yes, it wasn't the one with the magazine cover dedicated to it. Thanks for sharing
We are glad to share. That is one of the Vintage Computer Federation's mission to preserver computing history through education.
30:39 man in glasses with a stripped shirt (in front) is John Shaw. Started as an assembler and then became a primary system tester.
Wow! Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
In the 70's electronics magazines here in Brazil had a tiny ads with a picture, a few specs a price and a name: "Sphere: a real computer." It was very expensive. i was about 9 or 10 but I wanted one. It is cool to see a video about that.
Wow! Thanks for sharing your story.
What a fascinating early machine! It seems like the 6800 was quickly sidelined in favor of the 8080, then the Z80 and 6502 (I imagine price was a huge factor there), and it's interesting to see what early micro companies were doing with it, even if they didn't go on to fame and fortune.
Yes! A very interesting story!
Been waiting for some time for this one!
👁️
Glad that we could finally have a talk on this one!
Great talk, thanks!
We agree. A very good talk! We are glad that you enjoyed it!
Great to see Ben cover this so we can learn. I met Ben summer ‘22 because my family inherited a sphere computer from a passing father. After posting on forums, we came across Ben. He spent a day in AZ as he combed through the hardware and manuals and various other items we had available. He ended up acquiring it, and it felt like the right guy to have it. Looking forward to the book.
Nice! We are glad that he told about this not well known computer. It's very interesting the story. Do you know how your father used the computer? Provenance is a important part of vintage computer historical preservation. We like to know how the computer was used by the original owners.
Ah yes. It came out at the height of leisure suit fashion anomaly and I remember their ad in Byte magazine with the guy in the leisure suit.
Pretty fun trip down memory lane.
Ah Dam he’s so animated for an engineer, Loving
Yes. I agree. A very good presenter. Very entertaining *and* informative.
Hey thanks guys !! 🥰🥰 Very fun project and I was happy to share it. Glad people have found it interesting.
The camera is not close enough, again. Nobody needs to see the back of all these heads, just the presenter and their slides. WHY??? This is not rocket science.
There were not enough volunteers to man the camera and the volunteer that we had processing the videos wasn't willing to put in the extra time. We are thankful for the volunteers that we have, but need more to improve the quality.
Slides are now available here: vcfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Sphere_1_VCF_2022_Zotto.pdf
What do you mean? I love back of heads.
Should the audience rush the stage, the camera will capture it :)
Did you ever try contacting Mike's widow/children for any memories or left over parts they might have lying about ?
I will send a message to Ben to see if he knows the answer.
Yes, Ben's research has included contact with family and friends of Mike's, and their recollections were reflected in this talk (and in more detail in forthcoming book). Mike passed away in 2002, and what few Sphere materials he had kept were given to institutional collections.
Intertec Headstart VPU-512 dual-processor 8086 and Z80 / dual-OS systems MS-DOS and CP/M in one box.
Thanks for the info!
Emulator is at sphere dot computer forward slash emulator.
Thanks for letting us know!