The EDUC-8, a DIY minicomputer design that came out in “Electronics Australia” magazine, was almost the world’s first in August 1974. And it would have been tied for the world’s first if inventor [Jamieson “Jim” Rowe] hadn’t held back from publishing to rework the design to expand the memory to a full 256 bytes. The price of perfectionism? Flash forward 50 years, and [Gwyllym Suter] has taken on the job of , but otherwise staying true to the all-TTL design.
He has all of his , but has also sent us a number of beauty shots that we’re including below. Other than the progress of PCB tech and the very nice 3D-printed housing, they look identical. We have to admit that we love those wavy hand-drawn traces on the original, but we wouldn’t be sad about not having to solder in all those jumpers.
If you want to dig more into the EDUC-8, or the that just nosed it out across the finish line, you can , or even . We wonder how many of these were ever made, and how many survive in the wild?.
