Restoring a Xerox Parc Alto

[stricklybojack]

.
The Alto was the computer Steve Jobs was shown (in the mid to late 70's) which gave him the idea to build the Macintosh.

Here, someone from way back in my past, is writing of his efforts (joined by others), to get one of these relics back in working order.

Ken is extraordinarily detailed, and extremely intelligent. His blog also contains numerous highly informative posts on Bitcoin if that is of interest.

I stayed up to the wee hours watching these videos of the work as it has progressed. I am not that much of a tech nerd but these guys are so amazing at what they do I had to watch. Scroll down to see 16 videos on the Alto effort. Enjoy:

https://m.youtube.com/user/mverdiell/videos
[this post was last edited: 11/20/2017-15:39]

Ken Shirriff's blog

Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever

www.righto.com

 

[joeekaitis]

They were never going to bring the Alto to market . . .

 

 

. . . but they still produced a 1-minute TV commercial for it, voiced by the legendary Alexander Scourby.  Xerox must have had money to burn in those days.

 

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[joeekaitis]

Speaking of Mr. Scourby . . .

 

 

The man behind that distinctive voice.

 

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[johnrk]

Scourby

did a great version on audio of our Holy Bible.

 

[tolivac]

Liked the sound of the old style keyboards on that Xerox and other machines from that era!Also they were neat to type on!Better than the Dell keyboard I am using now!Those older keyboards felt more like a TYPEWRITER than modern boards do.

 

[speedqueen]

Keyborards

What you need is an IBM Model M with buckling springs. They have that solid, clicky feel while typing.

http://https//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard

 

[dartman]

The Tandy computers came with a excellent clicky keyboard too if you can find one today. I started with Radio Shack computers and loved their keyboards. The earlier ones had a full sized ps2 plug and the newer ones had a mini. I think I might still have one around but I use cordless keyboards now and good luck finding one with decent action.

 

[cornutt]

Wow, a Diablo 33 disc drive. I haven't seen one of those in ages. It's a front-loading cartridge, holding a whopping 5 megabytes.