Acorn System 1

First I soldered on all the chip sockets as I had all of them in stock. I also started soldering up the bubble LED display using the moduals I salvaed from the RS-232 cable tester. Also started populating the sockets with the chips I had in stock. A few logic chips & the 6502 CPU, idealy with vintage ones.

Then I started putting on the passive components. I was lucky enougth to find a crystal of the correct size & frequencey of 1MHz. As it runs on 5V I installed USB port.

Once the buttons & logic chips arrived they were installed. As the EPROM was also a vintage 2716 I had to get creative to program it. It needed 28V so I lifted that pin & disabled pin detect. I then injected the 28V externaly & programed it on my TL866II Pro & it worked.

The completed unit. Never have found all the chips required for the tape interface, not a big deal as I plan to never use the tape interface.

I used an 40 pin IDE cable to connect the CPU board with the user interface board.

What the bottom board looks like fully populated. The two empty sockets are for the un-obtainium ROM chips.

What the top board looks like "fully" populated.

The Acorn System 1 up & running. I know super exciting. The input is entierly in HEX. So you don't even program this thing in asembaly. But at least you don't program it in binary like some computers of the 70s.

Some programming on the train from London, because what else to fuck are you supose to do during your commutes. Glad I don't do commuting any more, purly wasted time. Use to be four hours of my life a day, gone, no way of getting it back.