Building The TEC-1G: Part 1
39The TEC-1 (Talking Electronics Computer) is an Aussie Z80-based single board computer (SBC) first released in 1983 by Colin Mitchell's "Talking Electronics" magazine.
https://www.talkingelectronics.com
Check out @EEVblog Dave's excellent series of interviews with the man himself!
https://youtu.be/kXWRLNq8OCU
A lot of people have fond memories of building this machine and there is still an active Facebook group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/tec1z80
Unfortunately I couldn't afford the kit back in the 80s, but always wanted to get one. There's always a lot of appreciation when someone brings out their TEC-1B that they built with their dad 40 years ago ... and still in perfect working order.
I won't rehash the history - check here for more info ... and most importantly ... the correct attributions of who did what!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEC-1
The TEC-1D boards were reproduced in 2018 and I managed to grab some. I did almost finish building it (surprise) but got distracted onto other things - one small difficulty for me was just trying to keep track off what add-ons I would need ... so many different boards were designed!
More recently @Markofalltrades has been busy bringing the machine up-to-date for its 40th anniversary with the TEC-1G revision. He was kind enough to send a beta board for me to build & try out.
They're still testing the boards, but so far they seem to be working quite well. Boards with the finalised design should have general availability in mid-September 2023 ... check out the Facebook group (or the TEC-1 channel on my DIscord) for progress ... Mark has posted some good videos showing it in action on the FB group.
There is planned to be an initial run of about 100 boards featuring the signatures of the original designers on the back of the board. After this it will go Open Source with the Gerbers, etc. available (these won't feature the signatures).