Let’s get physical Apple II Heathkit Motorola 6800
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Let’s get physical<br>A throwback story for an increasingly virtual world
Andrew Sniderman 🕷️<br>Feb 07, 2025
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Cross-posted by TechTales
"I think Goto 10 readers will like this TechTales post from Andrew about the Heathkit ET-3400."<br>- Paul Lefebvre
Let me tell you about the first computer I laid eyes on. It was a marvel but it was not mine and I was jealous. It was Michael’s. Michael was the new kid in my 5th grade class at Gardner Street Elementary School. I knew most of the kids in my class - I started Kindergarten at Gardner Street. Michael had just appeared.<br>Gardner Street Elementary is cradled in the heart of Hollywood. Known for students like Michael Jackson and Famous Amos (not him, his kid), it’s a cozy little school sandwiched in a surprisingly quiet neighborhood, a block below Hollywood Boulevard - before you hit throngs of movie theaters and tourists, and a block above Sunset Boulevard - after you pass through thickets of clubs and bars. It was two blocks away from my house.<br>You remember that kid in elementary school that made you a little nervous? Was a bit off? You wanted to be their friend but they also kinda scared you? That was Michael.<br>Michael’s family rented the rundown house on the corner across the street from the playground. I walked by it everyday on my way to school. I wondered when the busted basketball hoop precariously dangling from a single heroic screw on the garage would come crashing down on the dingy Buick that lived in the driveway.<br>Michael’s grooming habits were, well inconsistent, and when you caught his eye under the greasy mop of dirty-blond curls, he had a crazy look.<br>But Michael got this computer and it was the hot topic at recess. Personal Computers - PCs - hadn’t been invented yet. The Steve’s - Jobs and Wozniak - were working hard in a garage up north somewhere on the Apple II, but it wouldn’t come out until later that year. Computers were industrial equipment holed away in the basements of business and government. They weren’t for kids. There was a growing hobbyist market, but the kits were expensive.<br>How did Michael, my unstable 5th grade friend rooming in the ramshackle rental, afford such a thing? Well, Michael was an entrepreneur par excellence. Part of the lucrative Maps to Stars Homes gang. Armed with a hand painted plywood sign taller than him, Michael was in the crew that manned corners up and down Sunset Boulevard selling dubious tri-fold maps revealing the secret homes of the rich and famous.<br>Michael’s spot was Sunset and Curson, just down the street from my house. Waving a fat yellow stack of maps, tourists would swerve over to the side of the road, pull up to Michael in wood paneled station wagons and … KA-CHING!
Virtual Michael<br>Michael spent his star hustle money on a single board kit. The Heathkit ET-3400 was a beaut framed in the finest chunky textured blue plastic. A tangle of chips and cables, it was crowned with 6 glowing red LED displays, each showing a single digit, mounted above a chonky hex keypad.<br>It had a Motorola 6800 8-bit processor, 4K of system memory (read only or ROM) and 512 bytes (!) of memory for programming (RAM). Little did I know I’d build a broken version of this a few years later.
The impromptu Gardner Street Elementary Computer Club was formed. After school we’d jam into Michaels small bedroom sprawled across the bed sharing the floor with dirty clothes and … the Heathkit ET-3400.<br>We’d play Lunar Lander. You were a pilot trying to land safely on the moon. We found the program in a magazine and keyed in the list of machine code. It wasn’t a lot - there’s only so much you can fit in 512 bytes!<br>The lander starts 500 feet above the moons surface with a full tank of gas. Gravity pulls it down at an increasing speed of 5 feet per second. You control the landers descent by entering the thrust (0-9) on the keypad. After each turn, the computer displays your resulting altitude, velocity and remaining fuel. Land safely - you win. Run out of fuel or hit the surface too fast, you crash.<br>When you crashed - you always crashed - all the LEDs would flash red.<br>That bundle of chips and wires, lights and clickety clackety keys was a wonder. It couldn’t have been more tactile, more … physical. There was no internet, there was network, there were no interfaces to other systems. Michael’s Heathkit ET-3400 existed only in his room and only for 5th graders invited in to get close enough to touch it and see the LEDs flash.<br>This would all change.<br>Once the Personal Computer went mainstream, Local Area Networks sprung up connecting PCs together with wires run over ceilings and down walls. The first one I setup was aptly named LANtastic. Mainframes and Minicomputers already had the concept of dumb terminals spread throughout a building wired together or dialed in via modems and phone lines.<br>Then we got the...