Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever What would you say is the first microcomputer?1 The Apple I from 1976? The Altair 8800 from 1974? Perhaps the lesser-known Micral N (1973) or Q1 (1972)? How about the Arma Micro Computer from way back in 1962. The Arma Micro Computer was a compact 20-pound transistorized computer, designed for applications in space

Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever How many transistors are in Intel's 8086 processor? This seems like a straightforward question, but it doesn't have a straightforward answer. Most sources say that this processor has 29,000 transistors.1 However, I have traced out every transistor from die photos and my count is 19,618. What accounts for the 9382 m

Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever The 8086 microprocessor was a groundbreaking processor introduced by Intel in 1978. It led to the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and server computing. While reverse-engineering the 8086 from die photos, a particular circuit caught my eye because its physical layout on the die didn't match the surroun

Computer history, restoring vintage computers, IC reverse engineering, and whatever The 8-bit Z-80 processor is famed for use in many early personal computers such the Osborne 1, TRS-80, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and it is still used in embedded systems and TI graphing calculators. I had always assumed that the ALU (arithmetic-logic unit) in the Z-80 was 8 bits wide, like just about every other 8-