I remember my parents ordering and me building a computer from a kit
at sometime around 82-84, Maybe a little earlier

I remember very little about it.
We ordered it from a computer magazine, I think it might have been the
computer magazine's project because I remember them listing all the com
ponents and plans for the motherboard, wirings etc or offering the whole
thing as a kit.

The system was to be 16 bit, and had (for the time) very fancy sprite
graphics capabilities, with up to 15 (I think) objects able to pass behind
or in front of one another ie the screen was like 15 slides stacked one on
top of another, at least I think that was it. I seem to recall it had 32k RAM too

And that is about all I can remember about it. I played with it for a few
months, but it was very advanced for me so I never got far and when my
parents bought an Acorn Electron for my brother I sold it (to my maths tutor!)

If anybody can remember anything else, or point me to a site I will be very grateful,
sorry there is so little to go on

mark

PS all this was in the UK, but I seem to remember the computer
magazine or kit supplier being US based.

FWIW I already tried old-computers.com and obseletecomputersmuseum.org

Sounds like an origional Acorn Atom
You might wanna try this link: http://www.howell1964.freeserve.co.u.../Atom/Atom.htm

Thanks for the link vdemuth. Alas it wasn't the venerable Atom. As I said it was a home project type thing from possibly a US magazine.

mark

The only kit I remember from the time was for the Timex Sinclair, but I don't think it was a 16-bit machine. Sold in magazines here in Canada for $99. But I'm foggy there too...

Might have been a Zenith HeathKit computer. I always wanted to build one of their Hero robots, but the optional arm was really expensive -- resisting the temptation to say it cost an arm and a leg.

It may have been a Heathkit. I once owned a Heathkit 8086 portable that somebody else built from a kit. Heathkit is an American company.

http://www.heathkit-museum.com/

-----------------------------
Steve Stites

Many thanks for the links, lots of cool stuff there unfortunately *sigh* the thing I am looking for is not there.

The finished product looked quite large, and had the keyboard built in, but I remember actually clipping all the keys onto the keyboard

<back soon>

I am most grateful to everyone that posted in this thread, I found it.

I was totally wrong in the first info/specs, the machine was the "CompuKit 101"

links:

http://www.sli-institute.ac.uk/~bob/...uk101whole.jpg
http://www.compukit.org/
http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/uk101.htm

mark

for closure:

http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/ukwhat.htm

mark

On the subject of early 80's home computers - the Sinclair ZX81 (in Britain) with it's 1k RAM - how things have changed over the last 20 years - nowadays "common" to see 1gb RAM.