Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)

Dick Smith’s Wizzard-ry 8 (Bit)
leadedsolder.com

I'm a developer who got burnt out after a few years

I currently work at one of Dick Smith’s former competitors, Jaycar

It’s utterly bizarre working in such a company. The sheer range of backgrounds of the people you work with is immense

I’ve met genuinely top of their field “between grant” astro-physicists and kids who wouldn’t pass Year 12

It’s what I imagine working at RadioShack was like in the States, pre-mobile-phone-shoved-down-the-throat shenanigans

The amount of proper engineering still done sourced with a 50-200% mark up in Australia is insane to me, but must make sense to someone?

Also: the amount of life threatening work some customers are willing to undertake themselves confounds me. Even though I can show countless examples of people within 200km causing their, and their family’s demise

LOL. Good one, mate.

As someone who grew up with the Dick Smith Electronics Fun Way 1 & 2 books, which were dog-eared and well-loved way into the 90's, it tickles me to no end that HN occasionally gets articles about this utter genius.

And, as a retro-computing enthusiast it is very fun to see someone making the effort to produce a Wizzard clone. These were very much a 'crossover' type of device, where you could just use it to game, or learn to program - and it was definitely one of those 'make or break' situations - you either gamed, or you learned to program. A friend of mine had one - but he never programmed, because he hated the keyboard... whereas me, with my Oric-1 out there in the bush, had no access to any software - so I had to learn to program, whatever my issues with the chiclet keyboard.

As a curator for a retro-computing museum, of course I'm biased but I think there is definitely a market for re-imagined 8-bit computers.

Kids really benefit from digging into these systems and learning how the CPU really works, and 8-bit computers provide a really useful interface to this technology that isn't too overwhelming. We've built systems in the modern era that are so complex and overwhelming - returning to the simplicity of 8-bit computing really makes it a lot more accessible.

I for one welcome re-imagined 8-bit computers being released to a new and eager market. I am constantly being asked where to get one of the machines in the museum collection - systems like the Fenix256 (another re-imagined 8-bit machine) and the MEGA 65 are very welcome new additions to this market, but we need to scale up.

I could sell 4 of these machines a week, without even trying - categorically, kids go through my museum exhibit, playing with the old machines (we emphasize having access to the old machines, which still work, for people to have direct contact with the experience) .. and end up asking me where they can get their own. I'd love to have the MEGA 65, ZX Spectrum Next, Fenix256 .. and maybe a reinvented Wizzard? .. to offer them on their way out ..

Can you expand on this ? Do you mean their deaths, or some sort of economic suffering?

I actually find 12V worse. People then try to run mains equipment off it with high amperage and correspondingly high heat, causing fire and…