Stewart Marshall’s Computers

Even a computer as simple as an original ELF can be spiffed up!

marshall

Here, Stewart Marshall's machines sport toggle switches on vertical front panels reminiscent of Altair. Stewart describes his setup: “Here is a photo for the Gallery of two of my little front panel Elf machines which have Lee Hart's BASYS boards in them; (coffee cup for size). The top machine uses an external wall wart power supply and the bottom one has built-in 115v AC power supply. Also in the photo is a handmade replica of the old Oliver optical paper tape reader hooked up to the bottom machine to enter code from paper tape. I have a DSI punch tied to my Mac's serial port, with the CrossBow 1802 Cross Assembler for code work and a custom AppleScript drives the punch. The Elves have both serial and parallel ports and onboard EPROM space. I can use them either manually from the front panel, connected to a Mac, PC, or dumb terminal with serial cable, or running from the ROM in standalone dedicated situations such as security or driving a machine tool, engraver, etc. The front panel logic is also all Lee's design except for one modern chip substitution I made; and I used metal cases from old printer buffer and sharing devices.” 


© Dave Ruske 2001-2022, except where noted