80.

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.

So this came out in 1977 1937.

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.

This one's dated.

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 it sounds really cheap.

But really, it wasn't on Dyken.

Put that into context.

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

Same kind of erupt at the back.

We have a machine, for example.

The exit A sorcerer Brilliant machine.

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.

That's then money, not today's money.

That's even more expensive.

They were used in education.

They were used for research.

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.

Seven segment digits.

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?

How much did you need?

It was a bit process up.

Had 12 bits of dress bass.

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.

There was a guy called in Williamson.

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.

This is the scamp process, sir.

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

Two words presses in.

Only one with these days anyway.

SCMP.

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.

So we don't need your design.

Thank you very much.

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.

I'm writing on the books for it as well.

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.

Both of who?

Our trustees of the museum.

I should say so.

Yeah, from the original design.

And that's the kit that you could buy.

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.

The process is there.

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.

You would.

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

And you could program it and make it do what you want.

So this is the development system, And they gave you a ll The supporting material?

Yeah.

So the programming manuals there so you would have your manual on you would learn about the entire instruction set.

So again, you know what needs to be remembered here is that we are programming in assembly language in the machine code.

So you are typing in hex decimal numbers here that represent those commands.

So this time, Chris Curry was Science Cambridge and was really in charge of this product project.

So later on when Chris was Michael Interestingly, we have an acorn system.

One doesn't look that similar.

Same kind of calculated display.

Their ex keep out different chip.

This one uses a 6502 which would be the process of that.

Their next machines would use the BBC Micro, the handsome in that kind of thing.

But it just shows how everything starts somewhere.

So the system won't again.

A very rare machine starting very, very basic type in 70 language code in on Dhe even that, you know, you think that similar language would be a very high level language that a lot of people wouldn't do, However, if we take a look at home computing games programs on page 68 to life for the M K 14.

So here, where the program listing for the N.

K 14 and if you could see it, is the Assembly language code, but that's the hex that you would type in memory location.

Out of 20 you're typing C four, and that would be effectively L.

D X convoys going, Yeah, but it's not really a game is more of a simulation machine could play this kind of this basic game, and you could play other games on it.

Simple number games that you could do, try and work out what they this is.

Oh, there somewhere 81 1981 people were still writing code for the M K 14 that was released in 77.

So these things have a reasonable life.

I'm not sure if anybody did Thailand, but who knows?

Somebody probably did.

A lot of people wouldn't.

We're buying these things as the kit, so I have another thing over here to show you this is extremely rare.

Let's move that out there.

So if you'd ordered one of these things, this is what you get.

So this is an unboxing availing k 14.

This probably doesn't happen very much online.

This is completely unmade kit as it would have been delivered.

So part of this was the construction process in the first place.

Get in the manual in the circuit.

Diagram understanding.

What were the components do soldier and into their place on the board soldering.

All of these connections are gonna have me.

There are good couple 100 there.

So you'd sold all your components in place on if you've done it well, resistors their capacities and things Crystal.

If it doesn't, well, it will work on.

Do you could then start to program it really good menu with it.

That had we got greatest common divisor, software, postal, a digital alarm clock, random noise decibel to hex.

So you know, there are lots of things you could get it to do.

There's even a monitor listing there.

And interestingly, the chip had a name.

Bill.

You are.

So it had Cyril Communications actually built into the chip.

So it was possible interconnected, upto another divisive and see the output rather just needing to rely on that very, very small capital display.

So there's lots of things you could do a lot of this is just demo software.

Just to show you the ideas between behind programming how you can use memory locations.

So machine code.

What you're doing is you're saying, Take this memory location, move it into the process, sir.

Add something to it.

Move it back to a merry location.

Very, very simple step language.

So that was a different kind of programming at the bare metal.

You were talking directly to the chips.

Nothing in between.

So you knew every single instruction, what it was for him, why it was there till concerns ships directly.

So that give you a really good understanding off program computers.

And if you understood how to do this, you can apply.

That's pretty much the only process, sir.

The commands might change, but ultimately it's the same logical thinking process.

So, you know, you could type in those things those programs and getting to run.

But also it has to be remembered that on the output here.

You've got a poor exposing the address and date a bus and various control lines and things.

And you could then have it controlling other things.

This was kind of the Russian Province day.

You know, you had a dress, lies there you would put on a dress, Dakota, create yourself to my own space.

And that could be sort of address latch, database election.

You could then store data in and have a output or 16 hours oil.

Me wanted.

Same way input.

You could have a lacks that them red inputs.

So you've got to my own control.

So from that these things were there.

News for a number of purposes.

One we have in the collection is a machine overhit.

Vaguely looks a little bit like an M K 40.

We've got the same character to display their saying kind of hex pat, but this is used for medical research.

So this is just on m K 14 in a big wooden box.

See the n K.

14 down there, you can see the expansion ship.

We have a taping to face there, and then we have some other malarkey going on.

They're not quite sure what?

That if power supply, you can just plug.

It remains.

The power supply drops it down to about eight votes for the board itself.

On this was used for medical research and Charlene inputs and outputs.