Name: 1978's Raspberry Pi (MK14) - Computerphile
Uploaded: 2020-03-27T18:31:21.000Z
Duration: 13 min 29 s
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everybody knows about Sinclair on those eggs.

There's the lovely Zed X 80 and a lot of people know about this story followed in the next year, those x 81.

But there was a machine that went before.

It wasn't from Sinclair, as a company wasn't from Sinclair Research Company called Science of Cambridge on gets the M K 14.

And it looks exactly like that pretty basic stuff, not even case on this one.

You gotta realize this is a couple of years before I was excited to three years before it was locked.

So computing home computing personal computing was very much in its infancy, as you can say, and this isn't a great deal more than a calculator in some ways, but it's the beginning off everything in terms of Sinclair and what they would do later on.

And it's a nice story that goes along with it.

So as with many things, sometimes the story is not quite what you'd expected to bay.

If we take this magazine here computing today computing today, Number one was actually part of a T I electronics Today International, November 1978.

I'm so very, very early on, but in there is an advert for the M K 14.

This thing was £39.95 to buy us a present be 8200 and £50 in today's money, approximately taking into account inflation.

So 39 95 for one of these here, very early copy of personal Computer World 78.

But this guy's very happy, as you can see that it's based feds to K computer.

I wanted to spend less than £1000 my social cost me 950.

Yeah, £950 is about five and 1/2 grand in today's money.

Um, you know, and yeah, if you had that kind of money, you would be doing that kind of thing on the Picture Seed won theirs.

It's their price there, 1674 for that machine.

You know that these may seem we don't have to realize these were the microcomputer.

So mainframes and minis they were They were hundreds of thousands of houses by back then, you know, millions of pounds in today's money.

So these were, you know, relatively cheap relative being the operative word there, but very, very expensive.

Most people couldn't afford these these kind of things.

So Sinclair has always wanted to bring machines out the broke that price barrier, and not just by bit by a lot.

The NK 14 was obviously vastly cut down from any of those on the machines around there.

You had this very, very simple touch keyboard there and led display.

So basically a calculated display, you can only do so much.

With that it had 256 bytes of Ram because there's not even kilobytes 1/4 of a kilobyte so very, very limited room.

But then, you know, with a keyboard like that, how much data you really gonna type into these things?

You could take a bit further with an extra four bits as well, but you have to software program that.

But it was pretty limited, but it was a machine that you could buy for 39 95.

You could own this thing and you could write the code that you wanted to write.

So how did Sinclair and I'll say Chris Curry in the toy?

How did they come about with actually making this is a product.

Um, and hey, come up with an idea for a microcomputer kip and he saw the scamp design.

So we have to look at the main chip, the main ship in that there is the process, sir.

It's actually written sc slash mp and it stands for simple cost effective or one word microprocessor.

But they got known as this camp and it was here, an impressive little process made by National Semiconductor in Williams of this scene, the various designs out there.

This is a development system for the SNP and We also have quite rare intro kit that you could buy the this kit and make your own SNP based system.

National Semiconductor produce this so that people in the industry could make their designs around it, and they have something called a reference design.

So they had a circuit diagram in Williamson produced this board again based on that original design, took it to apply Bond Chris and said, I've got an idea for a product that you might be interested in making.

But as the story goes, we do have a video on YouTube channel, which is that interview with in Women so you could get this from the horse's mouth.

But he showed this to the guys and they were interested very much interested.

Sinclair was probably more interested in the future of this what it could become because it was very, very basic.

But Chris thought yes, this could be a product.

So they said, Yeah, this is interested in that.

That's an interesting thing, that we might be on the market.

But when they went to National Semiconductor and said, Okay, we want to buy a load of your scamp chips.

National Semiconductor settle what you do with those?

And they explained it and they said, Well, actually, you know, we've already got the reference design.

You know, we could supply you with those chips and reference design.

You basically just make that as a kid and sell it so, Chris, that's sort of go back with your tail between his legs and say to me and well, actually, you know, really sorry.

I know we should commit, but we're actually gonna go with National Semiconductor because they've given us a fantastic deal.

Job on this guy's invented a design for computer, but there's one already existing.

It was really based on the reference designs that national semiconductor.

But what it had done isn't foreseen this idea that actually, you know, the design is basically there.

You could build upon this, and actually, there's a lot of people that might like to make this kid so the it's the idea, the initial idea came from me and that this could be a product, so that didn't quite work out free.

And sadly, however, you know, he would then go on to write the Manu along with Rodney Dough.

There was money to be made in creating the manual.

So other books were produced about programming, the machine and that kind of thing.

I think we've got to go understanding microprocessors with M K 14 in Williamson of Rodney Del.

You can see that there are quite big similarities.

You've got the same chip, the original ceramic chip there, whereas these ones got the plastic dips, same kind of memory.

Then you have a display here and led display with a keyboard.

Well, that looks pretty similar to May, so you can see that progression on from the development gets through to the board that was finally produced and sold.

So this doesn't have the process or in it.

You have this prototype in area, so what you can do is you can put any components you like.

They're a wire them up and then to program it.

But you're bored into their You have different boards with different expansions ram or various other io, that kind of thing.

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1978's Raspberry Pi (MK14) - Computerphile

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