this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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World’s first desktop PC randomly discovered during house clearance (www.pcgamesn.com)
submitted 9 months ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] prenatal_confusion@lemmy.one 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

That does sound rather ominous. The world's first in something should have a lot of information on it on the intertubes. It's old, it's nice,but the first?

It looks like a flat screen and not like crt, unless it is using some lights and a mask to display fixed characters.

Rather compact

Edit: first desktop computer featuring a single chip as a CPU

https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/q1.html?m=1

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 27 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's not a graphic display. This is what it looks like in operation:

It's basically a dot-matrix, apparently using some form of plasma? From a closer look at the grid

I think it might be like a Nixie matrix like this one:

But older, less refined.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That red dot display reminds me of something I saw in the late 70s but can't recall what. Was it commonly used on other devices?

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

While I was looking for information about the display I found a lot of references to similar ones used in pinball machines

so maybe that?

Today they've mostly been replaced by LED panels.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

That is probably it. Thanks

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 9 months ago

I wanted to know what OS powered them. Probably a custom one by the manufacturer? Which I can imagine I could find with a bit of web searching but I'm too lazy for that.

[–] RollForInitiative@feddit.de 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I wonder if there is a video or anything somewhere showing one of these in use? Or in general more information, sounds like an interesting piece of history.

Searching for Q1 microchip computer or Q1 personal computer etc. didn't yield anything.

Edit: Found one directly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZCW9paOjs, and another video which looks to contain some more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB3V_Q9wQ-M

[–] alessandro@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 months ago

The default question wasn't made, so I'll make it:

"but it does run Doom?"

[–] WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 months ago

that looks like a cyberdeck