Today I'm gonna make you want to buy a book not just any book though. This is
possibly the coolest book any vintage computer collector could possibly get
Now this book was released in
1984 for a price of
20 bucks
That's kind of a lot with inflation that comes out to about
$50 today so
this wasn't a cheap book and I don't suspect you're going to have an easy time trying to get it after this video and
I'm sorry, but you're gonna want this book after this video. Now. The book is titled
Inside the Personal Computer,
an Illustrated Introduction in three dimensions, but what is it really well
It's a pop-up book
Creaks
And it gets even better because not only is it a pop-up book it's an interactive pop-up book,
so here on the first page, we have a full computer model here and it prompts us to insert a disc,
and close the door
laughs
and It has loaded a small explanation on the screen
The bottom disk drive has a flap but doesn't do anything. It's just a flat piece. So yeah, we have a
three-dimensional model of a computer that folds out of the book
That's pretty awesome
Now don't be put off by the fact that this is a pop-up book. It is not meant just for children
it actually does a really good job of explaining how computers work from the era which again is
1984 and it gives you a lot of useful information
for what you might need to know to use and troubleshoot one of these computers
So we can get moving on here and we can see that in this overview
It's going to tell us about the keyboard the CPU or all of the bits inside of the computer
It's going to tell us about the monitor. It's going to tell us about the disk drives the internal memory and ROM and
software. This book is just really good. So let's move on to the first example it explains:
The keyboard, now their first example here right off the bat with the keyboard isn't too
Totally accurate. Um, they say down here that the keyboards send out a series of pulses
to represent each key press.
Now while that would be true in later keyboards, like ps2 not so much in USB because that's a diff pair signal
It's a lot more complicated
Keyboards like this especially in their example computer here, which is something more like a trs-80 model 3
There well, they're showing it, you know sending out a series of pulses here
so if we press down the M key by pulling on this tab
We'll see that we get a series of off and on pulses now
what they're representing here is actually
an ASCII character for the letter M now,
There were some keyboards that had ASCII character codes that they would send like the Apple 1,
But that was far from the standard in the era
keyboards then and now both use
columns and rows to scan a keyboard
So after one column would be sent a signal, say hi
Another row would be detected as having a button pressed and it would know that between here and here that key was pressed
It the keyboard itself doesn't work by detecting pulses
I only mention that because it's actually goes into pretty good
Technical details of the devices throughout the book and that one's kind of inaccurate and how the internals work
But throughout the book it does give you some other good examples
Here it shows you how you can decode a binary number and see the different binary
representations of actual numbers now it doesn't have
Leading-edge zeros, which is kind of a strange choice
Because in computers you would always have a zero there but you know, they're trying to make this more understandable for the average person
Except again with that ASCII code where they have a leading zero for the different letters
Despite you know how they would actually be but you know, this is still really awesome
You have all these interactive parts that you can explore stuff
And over here finally, we have an example of a bit where we can turn off a light switch
This
I'll definitely forgive them for this
Inaccuracy because the whole book is just it's full of awesome fun examples like this that if you don't know how computers work
(it) Would really teach you a great deal. Now. Let's move on to the next page. There aren't actually that many pages in the book
This one explains how the inside of the computer is laid out and how different components of it work
Unfortunately, this is one of two parts of the book that for me don't work or in this case are just incomplete because there should
Be a small paper chip here that you're able to fold up and install in this
Socket but mine is missing that and unfortunately if I grab a real equivalent here, it doesn't actually fit
It's not the correct size which is kind of a shame because their CPU over here is the correct size. But ah, that's fine
I couldn't fit it in that if I wanted to anyway
Since it doesn't fold flat now this whole area of explanation is a bit
Heady and really technical if it were me I probably would have put this at the end of the book not on page three
But it does go into
Discussing how all the different parts work, (here) we have memory
We have the CPU of which we have a die exposed and I believe we can lift this
yeah and see underneath the logical blocks of how a
CPU would work and it does go into some boolean operators, but not many
you could have had some more examples of this probably could have had some papercraft examples of
Actual boolean operators like a NAND gate, you know that I could see that working. That would have been cool but
This looks plenty cool enough already
There might be some electronics specific pop-up books that I don't know about so they may have done something more like that
but yeah, we've got other stuff like ROM the input and output and
Buses which it does have a very clear example of a bus on here. I don't know what these slots would be
It's kind of interesting. But yeah the whole thing here. It does a pretty good job of explaining all this stuff. Yeah. It's pretty sweet
Alright on to the next page which is
the floppy drive
Complete with floppy disks that you can pull out and put in and latch into place
And if we take a look at the top we can open it up and see inside and see where the floppy disk goes in
between the top read/write head and the bottom read/write head and the spindle motor and just some of the
Circuitry in there how it might have a controller
Although you don't usually have a board on the top and the bottom but still that's that's pretty sweet
and just beside the full drive example
it has a little
Diagram that shows how the read/write head moves back and forth on the disk to read all of the different tracks on it
This is a kind of hard one to pull on mine
I don't know if it'd be better on other people's but still that said that's really cool
But that's not the only explanation of tracks down here. We have a full sized floppy disk
Well, actually it's slightly bigger than full size
That shows how different
Tracks are laid out across the disk and how you can have different sectors on there with the data
This thing's really cool. This is just a pretty fun page in general over here
It tells you how to take care of your floppy disk in to make sure to cover the right protect notch if you have
important data on there
it tells you that the two most common sized floppy disks are five and a quarter and eight inch in that three inch or
Three and a quarter inch disks are also coming along and then down here
It talks about hard disks and how they can only be between five and fifty megabytes.
Oh man, old computer stuff is just the best
Now the next page doesn't really live up to the pop-up book hype but it's still really cool
So here they're showing how a CRT works and a CRT pop-up
Like this really wouldn't have worked with how good this
Demonstration here is so here. They're showing you how I CRT drawers scan lines
We have an electron beam here. And as you pull this out the beam
should move along with the position where the pixels are now I suspect this was an
elastic string at some point in that it's tied to the
Movement piece in there and see if I can get it to work even close to right now
But I'm pretty it's it's pretty stretched out now, so it doesn't quite align with how it used to
Yeah, this should it should move down you can see it'll go all the way down maybe if I pull it a little tight here
That works there we go. So you just got I got a pull on it a little bit damn
yeah, you can see how it shows the electron beam moving all the way across with the display and
That's that's just really awesome
Although I will say they're showing it from the rear you can see how this has micro
Backwards the scan lines moving the wrong direction, but that's like a super minor criticism
I'll forgive them for that because they got this right
So this is an 8 pixel by 8 pixel character and it's actually only 7 by 7
Because they leave one pixel free for the space next to it
Definitely correct there
And the the book continues to just be cool
There's nothing interactive down here, but it does have this example of showing you how your computer can be used to do
multiple things and how it's not just meant for one task like any other appliance in your house and that
You can do so many things with it. So
Yeah, I just this thing's this is so cool. And
now for the final page in a hilarious coincidence
The only broken page on here the printer I can still
Manually get it to pop up though
But I do kind of have to hold it up there because this is let go down here. It doesn't move anymore
now for something that I think is just a really cool touch for a pop-up book and
I don't know how many opportunities you would have to do something like this for pop-up books
So it's probably isn't super common
But this tab over here moves the right head of the printer and when you pull on it
It makes popping sounds like the right head punching the characters on to this paper
And it just it does that
with little tabs
And a piece of loose cardboard in there kind of like a playing card on the spokes of a bicycle
Just really cool platen doesn't move at all but obviously I mean it's paper it's just the whole thing's
So cool as it is and here at the very end of the book we can see that it talks about some of the other
Types of printers you can get and man do I really fiercely want a plotter rack,
I got to get me (myself) one of those one day and it talks about how the operating system is
Really the control center for the whole computer and that really the computer doesn't do much without it and then it talks about
modems and networks
And for some reason they were compelled to show two examples of computers here dialed in with a phone holder
That have an internal and an external
Floppy drive. I don't know why they needed to show maybe that was the two kinds of computers in the day
although I know it really wasn't but that's all the book has to offer now and to finish the experience here is the
Full-back, I only showed you this part earlier so I could hide the pop-up book part
Even though I know the thumbnail is gonna have a picture of the pop-up book and you're gonna know coming into it
Anyway, it's still more fun to have the illusion that I'm doing a surprise in the video
But now you have seen inside the personal computer in
Illustrated introduction in three dimensions a pop-up guide. Well, that's pretty much it. There's what six pages in this book
It's not super long, but it was definitely way too cool not to share
I mean get all the little interactive parts in this thing. It's just it's it's awesome man.
I Couldn't have ever thought there would have been a book. That was so perfect for vintage computer collectors just as a total novelty
This thing's awesome
I'm definitely
Keeping this in very accessible places to be able to show anyone who even remotely shows an interest in old computers.
I was so surprised when I found this at a local bookstore. I picked it up
And at first I thought it was going to be some kind of like Haynes manual with the cutaway 3d views
This was totally unexpected for me
Well, I hope you guys got as much of a kick out of this as I did and I'll see you next time