Savage///Chats

General Forums => Vintage / Retro Computers => Topic started by: Chris Savage on Oct 16, 2026, 11:13 PM

Title: PICOSMAC - Back to the Past (Nuts and Volts Magazine)
Post by: Chris Savage on Oct 16, 2026, 11:13 PM
PICOSMAC - Back to the Past (Nuts and Volts Magazine) (https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/picosmac-back-to-the-past)

This is a story of a nostalgic, useless, but fun project that spiraled out of control; a lesson in the lost black art of machine code from the bygone era of code written and debugged on square ruled paper, from an era of hand-drawn schematics and actual manual tape-out of chips.
Title: Re: PICOSMAC - Back to the Past (Nuts and Volts Magazine)
Post by: granz on Oct 17, 2026, 05:54 AM
Very cool. I actually had one of these VIPs, along with an Ele II. I also still have one of the COSMAC 18S020 evaluation boards (and it worked last time I tried it, several years ago. ;) )

The name, Picosmac, reminded me of the project that implements an original Mac computer on a Pi Pico (https://jcm-1.com/product/pico-micro-mac-v4/). I bought one of these, and it is pretty cool, however I still need t build up the HD image on the SD card.

That Picosmac is another cool project and also reminds me of the Kimuno (https://obsolescenceguaranteed.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-uno1802-cosmac-elf-for-15-in-parts.html) - an emulator for the Kim 1, as Al Williams (from Hack-A-Day) wrote a COSMAC Elf emulator for that KimUno (https://obsolescenceguaranteed.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-uno1802-cosmac-elf-for-15-in-parts.html). I need to me careful not to dive into that Picosmac as I still have too many projects on the front burners (and several more on the back burners. ::) )