retrocomputing
Discussions on vintage and retrocomputing
Nice. Thanks for sharing this story. Needing to contact manufacturers over the mail and asking for datasheets? Much more difficult than my first experience building my first computer, a 386.
I wrote to Texas Instruments and they sent me back a paperback book describing every TTL chip from 7400 upwards. I read it cover to cover and learned quite a bit about TTL logic back then. I used TTL as the glue logic getting everything going, as well as 68xx and 65xx series chips to cover all sorts, like ACIAs, PIOs and video controlllers.
The internet did not exist back then. Even though I worked for a large American computer company with their own private network (text only), still no internet as such. It was called books and libraries back then. Oh... and no Amazon either.