As some of you know, for the last few weeks I have been researching the first commercial transistor computer, Metrovick 950 (and it is based on the first transistor computer ever, making things even more interesting)
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As some of you know, for the last few weeks I have been researching the first commercial transistor computer, Metrovick 950 (and it is based on the first transistor computer ever, making things even more interesting).
I wrote the emulator for the computer, a simple assembler, and a handful of toys to get a grasp of the extremely frugal digital computing. What does it feel like to use a machine built on 250 transistors, operating at 200 operations per second or so? Can it display anime girls? (It IS a very important feature of any computer!!!) Is there even a point in such a computer?
I was hoping to write a long post about it, but my fatigue gave birth to a migraine (or the other way around), so the best I can do is to start a thread 🧵 It can be of interest for people who love computer history, want to know more about small computers of the 50's like the Bendix G-15 Usagi Electric has, and those who are thinking of building bit-serial computers.
The MV950 emulator repo: https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/mv950toy
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As some of you know, for the last few weeks I have been researching the first commercial transistor computer, Metrovick 950 (and it is based on the first transistor computer ever, making things even more interesting).
I wrote the emulator for the computer, a simple assembler, and a handful of toys to get a grasp of the extremely frugal digital computing. What does it feel like to use a machine built on 250 transistors, operating at 200 operations per second or so? Can it display anime girls? (It IS a very important feature of any computer!!!) Is there even a point in such a computer?
I was hoping to write a long post about it, but my fatigue gave birth to a migraine (or the other way around), so the best I can do is to start a thread 🧵 It can be of interest for people who love computer history, want to know more about small computers of the 50's like the Bendix G-15 Usagi Electric has, and those who are thinking of building bit-serial computers.
The MV950 emulator repo: https://git.sr.ht/~nkali/mv950toy
@nina_kali_nina Your emulator was shared on Lobsters:
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@nina_kali_nina Your emulator was shared on Lobsters:
@amoroso thanks for sharing the link! I believe it is a very niche project, but if other people like it, I'm happy
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@amoroso thanks for sharing the link! I believe it is a very niche project, but if other people like it, I'm happy
@nina_kali_nina You're welcome. I think being niche is part of why it's interesting: emulators of very early systems are rare.
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@nina_kali_nina You're welcome. I think being niche is part of why it's interesting: emulators of very early systems are rare.
@amoroso indeed! I know that mine is not entirely accurate (I mentioned the likely differences from the real machine in `errata.md`), mostly due to the lack of good documentation and real software for the computer. I hope to access the company archives one day to find more info about it and recreate the machine's behaviour faithfully.
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@amoroso indeed! I know that mine is not entirely accurate (I mentioned the likely differences from the real machine in `errata.md`), mostly due to the lack of good documentation and real software for the computer. I hope to access the company archives one day to find more info about it and recreate the machine's behaviour faithfully.
@nina_kali_nina And now the emulator is featured on Hackaday and OS News:
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/21/first-transistor-computer-reborn
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@nuintari thanks!
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@tef HOW
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@stefano You got this! 😎
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@stefano You got this, friend.
