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Ten retro computer electronics kits you can build yourself

I’ve just started work on assembling the VT132, a DEC VT100 compatible terminal. I got the standalone board, but there is also a version as an add-on board for the RC2104 computer. Not knowing anything about this, it turns out it’s a kit to build an 8 bit Z80 based computer that has expandable card slots for other add-ons. I might look at building one of these next, but out of interest I wondered what other similar kits are out there for building reproductions of retro computers. I noticed it’s not uncommon for some of these to only be produced in limited quantities and it’s unclear whether they will be available again, but here’s a list of things I’ve found:

Wifi232 – an RS232 modem that connects to your wifi instead of a real phone line. This was only produced in limited quantities but is well known in retro computer communities as an easy way to get any old computer with an RS232 interface online. More info here. If you search around you can find a few alternatives and similar kits inspired by the original Wifi232.

IBM PC 5150 motherboard kit – no longer for sale, but an impressive kit to build your own reproduction of the motherboard for the original IBM PC.

Apple 1 reproduction kit. No long available from Briel Computers, but check their link for other suppliers who may still be making the kit.

RetroBrew computers – several kits for Altair/S-100 bus type computers

Altair 8800 kit – no longer available?

PDP-8 and PDP-11 replicas front panel kits and emulation using a Raspberry Pi by Obsolescence Guaranteed

Harlequin 128 – reproduction of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128

Cobalt 3 – a Atmega328 based 8 bit pocket computer

If you know of any others leave a comment!

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MS Flight Simulator World Update 2: USA

The release notes for World Update 2 look pretty extensive, adding plenty of additional detailed scenery areas. It’s interesting Davis Monthan AFB boneyard is one of the scenery update areas because I’ve been sitting on a collection of screenshots from flying over this area, so it will be interesting to see how much the scenery has improved. In the meantime, here’s some aircraft turned to stone and fused to the ground:

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AWS CloudFormation basics – part1

Collection of notes, templates and tips for building AWS CloudFormation templates.

The basic structure of CloudFormation files (in JSON):

{
  "Resources" : {
    "ExampleResourceName" : {
      "Type" : "AWS::?::?",
      "Properties" : {
        "Example" : "propertyvalue"
      }
    }
  }
}
  • Resources: the AWS services to be provisioned. There can be multiple repeating Resource elements in this section, to provision/configure multiple services in a stack
  • ExampleResourceName: a name for each resource being provisioned
  • Type: the AWS type for the resource, e.g. AWS::S3::Bucket
  • Properties: properties for the service being provisioned/configured

AWS CLI commands:

aws cloudformation create-stack --stack-name STACK-NAME
  --template-body file://template-file.json
  --parameters ParameterKey=example1,ParameterValue=value1    
    ParameterKey=example2,ParameterValue=value2
aws cloudformation list-stacks
aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name STACK-NAME

If your stack creates IAM resources, you’ll also need to pass:

--capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM

Otherwise you’ll see this error:

An error occurred (InsufficientCapabilitiesException) when calling the CreateStack operation: Requires capabilities : [CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM]
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AWS CLI error “The provided token is malformed or otherwise invalid”

Starting getting this error when running a simple ‘aws s3 ls’

An error occurred (InvalidToken) when calling the ListBuckets operation: The provided token is malformed or otherwise invalid.

My current version:

% aws --version
aws-cli/2.0.59 Python/3.7.4 Darwin/20.1.0 exe/x86_64

Downloaded latest version and upgraded and problem fixed. New version is now:

% aws --version aws-cli/2.1.3 Python/3.7.4 Darwin/20.1.0 exe/x86_64
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