Early 80's Pirate Computers

[constructivist6]

this is dope!

[tyebillion]

Funny how the hack247 website is no longer there.

[Pilotgeek]

I like this guy.

[Hotshotter3000]

I don't think it was illegal to build your own computer. It sure isn't right now. I don't think it's illegal to make your own hardware either.

[OK2BCK]

did he make the pcb and everything? i can't see how the heck he would do that, especially the ibm version. anyone knows?

[Morahman7vnNo2]

Those are true hackers.

[aido179]

This mus have been filmed through a frosted window

[homer4556]

people moaing about this and why? i would of bought it at the time half the price and a better home computer

[mefpazur]

Does what an Aplle do, only better... At half the price...

Some things never change lol.

[FUCKINGPOLCORE]

Perkins?old basketball playa of NBA league?;-)

[itsabomberscope]

PETER PERKINS FTW!

[hoooooooooooooooo]

This is why hate capitalism. All is about cut the cost to produce shitty computers. If you want to make something good. You have raise the price to absurb levels. This is why apple computers are expensive.

[Afroxec]

brotherman sticking it to the man!

[Thet3]

awsome guy!

[TGKDEBIAN]

that dude ROCKS MAN !!! i guess its dead now ajajajaj !

[nywlaw]

What ever happened to Pete Perkins? Dose anyone know what he is doing now?

[iTat1000]

@nywlaw He's probably the founder of TPB.

[SniperPIKACHU]

I dont think it is pirate. Let's say I but an mircocontroller (which is techniqually a computer) and put a power source circuit (which usually has a few common simple circuit configurations) then put them together with a keyboar and mouse. Use the MCU complier's provided library to wirte code to control the I/O. Using the IDE's library to write code shouldnt prevent the designer from selling them and that should be a standard like UART, SPI or I2C etc... let's say I sell it, is it illegal?

[FirestoneX]

Don't copy that ... umm... wait.

[thecooldude9999]

not piracy. cloning.

[BeatMakerTV]

Great video!

[TheTrueJBV3737]

lol first piracy was hardware.

[29riteshkakkar]

nice work,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,­,,,,,,

[layzergun]

YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A COMPUTER

[Llamarama100]

Are Apple happy about this? "I wouldn't be!" Most honest answer ever.

[DeadBeatBlast]

"Shut up whitey, my computers better, and cheaper."

[imafurryhusky]

Wow a pc that does more then the apple at half the price.... Has not changed...

[R33Racer]

@imafurryhusky To be fair it used to be the other way round 20 years ago.

[julosx]

@imafurryhusky You never used an Apple computer ever in your life, that's why you're ranting on the usual useless bunch of cobblers. Get one, use it and you will change your mind. Macs ROX

[imafurryhusky]

@julosx I actually used from imac 3g all the way to the mac book pro 2011... Still hate it with a passion!

[DancingMadRB3]

@julosx and cost and arm and a leg!

Screw apple

[MyWonderApple]

Stop complaining about how much macs cost or if they are useless, if you dont even macs, then why should you care. Just shut up let people who want to buy macs buy macs, and people who want to buy pcs buy pcs. Everybody just like what they like, I have a mac, i also have a pc, and even a laptop with ubuntu 10.10, learn to try new things, maybe you'll enjoy more than one operating system like I do.

[Fifty1stState]

@MyWonderApple I was at someone's office the other day and they were really saying how good and how much they loved their desktop, I asked what it was and they said a 24in iMac. What they loved most was that they were running MS Windows 7 and didn't have to use that crappy MAC OS!

See you can love a MAC for it's looks, but just as in life stick with Windows for the usability and compatibility it offers.

[MyWonderApple]

@Fifty1stState Your just like every other fanboy. Don't even bother replying back cause I wont waste my time even reading your comment.

[VonManavis]

@MyWonderApple

Wow, what a fascist statement. You shut your trap and if you don't like to follow a debate, well then...fucking don't. What's your problem anyway douche? U mad because some people can barely afford one computer, let alone 3 that you have? You live in a fantasy lala-land where everything is about the fucking experience. Well enjoy the experience and piss off. Craptard. You are the real fan-obsessed, and want the best of all worlds, for absolutely no reason.

[MyWonderApple]

@VonManavis WTF calm down, the only reason i have so many computers is because i spend all my money on them (which isn't much considering its just me, my sister, and my mom and we are on welfare) because of what i want to do for a living, work on computers, i'm only 16 years old. I am trying to learn as much about computers as i can. I don't even own a mac anymore anyway! So go to hell dude.

[VonManavis]

@MyWonderApple You are on welfare and spend money buying crappy old computers? You should be studying bitch!

[MyWonderApple]

@VonManavis How can i learn how to work on computers if i do not own any, for example the computer i am typing on now, i built myself

[madmax2069]

@MyWonderApple read computer repair books and other computer books, watch videos about how they work and how they go together. That's what i did even before i owned a computer, and when i did i could work on it and tell you just about anything you wanted to know about one.

[MyWonderApple]

@madmax2069 Already did that I read books and watched videos, now I'm on "step two" the hands on stuff. :)

[urizen1]

Pete Purkins = legend

[RET80]

This guy didn't know what he put together.

[TheEPROM9]

Shame modern PC's and MAC's are impossible to clone these days, the components have just got to complicated. If you want to clone you need a fully equipped factory. Other wise it would be cheaper and probably better made than the shit produced today.

[rovercrew]

@TheEPROM9 any PC that isn't made by IBM is classed as a clone.

[NOOBNUT08]

@TheEPROM9 What the hell are you talking about!? There are manufactores that make mother boards, CPU's, ram and case's to build your own PC.

[TheEPROM9]

@NOOBNUT08 What I mean is a chip by chip build, reqiering soldering ions and a vast amount of electronics knolage, not buying motherboreds and RAM, putting it all to gether and installing the OS. I've done that one.

[cakelover33]

dam pirates were badass back then. know we got nerds downloading halo :(

[ht448]

Wow 1kb of RAM

[GordonFreeMANness]

@ht448 It's a 128 K.

[ht448]

@GordonFreeMANness it was a joke...

[Spoksy]

That guy is awesome

[psyjax]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.

[MiracleKD18]

*Blue shirt, white fake/artificial-hair* This is illiegal you know!

[1337Shockwav3]

Without copying/cloning efforts like this Apple and the X86 would have never become what they did ... go figure. Instead we'd prolly have 200 types of different machines being largely incompatible to each other. While the "winners" of these battles probably aren't the best machines that were around, I'm glad at least some kind of standards got eastblished

[BillyJimmyLee]

n This IS Reverse Engineering! Man this guy rocks! Now, where can I find my Jimmy Hendrix or Julius Erving PC ? Corporates make profits and this guy sells to feed his family.

[BillyJimmyLee]

I also want a Julius Erving and a Jimmy Hendrix PC! This guy rocks! XD

[CssniperAus]

HAHA ask that question today and every computer techie will have a shovel ready to bury you.

[eltonlika91]

hi! does anyone know an 80s or 90s funny commercial/short documentary about two nerdy hackers who get an offer from some big corporation guys to make a program with specified criterias in a paper and they create the program smth like 2 minutes before the deadline by scanning the paper, and the image of paper gets read by a magic program that creates the program automatically by itself???

I saw it like 1 year ago but cant remember the vid title and cant find it.

[Metalfanseries]

Well, That was 80's Piracy, Right?

[RandomWad]

1:53 ... Owned

[jacksawild]

This is quality. It should be no shock that the 'latest greatest' hardware is purely a sales term. Unfortunately, people who call themselves hackers today seem to think it's got something to do with annoying others or stealing. Mankind hasn't got as far as it has by licensing or copyright, rather it is with the open exchange of ideas that progress is accelerated. Proprietary manufacturers and software houses hurt consumers with their greed. Stop dragging it out!

[plainlazy2097]

Pete Perkins is a legend!!

[bmw2go11]

THAT GUY IS FRIGGIN' INSANE!!!

[Keruaran]

>"are Apple happy about this?"

>"I wouldn't be"

lol, the guy is a legend

[OneEyedJack1970]

I don't think it was illegal. I'm pretty sure they were all using off-the-shelf parts, except for possibly the BIOS ROMs.

[PARINTELECOSMIN]

long live the pirates \m/

[localhbci]

LOL @ 2:00:

Interviewer: "Are Apple happy about this?"

Perkins: "I wouldn't be."

[cresidue]

Sadly, I remember when this stuff first came out. It's guys like this who revolutionized the PC industry. Thanks for the video.

[88xx88xx88]

he was a true engineer, you won't see these sort of guys now it's all rubbish now wish we could wind back Time

[Xezlec]

@88xx88xx88

Psh. You don't know any good engineers then. Building an 80s PC-XT from scratch is not hard. The thing is that now, the technology is so sophisticated that hobbyists can't play as much of a role in hardware. Everything is on-chip, and it's all about the chip. Now, software is more the hobbyist scene. Of course, there's still overclocking, and all those freaks who build liquid-nitrogen-cooled gaming boxes or whatever.

[Zantor135]

All the early computer companies copied what XEROX Park was doing anyway. The first MAC GUI was XEROX all the way.

[gunman5550531]

Copied Mother Board, later on Bittorent.

Man we've evoled so much since then.

[hididdlyho82]

What a clever guy!

[09112001NYC]

Hang on, is this the guy that started the IBM compatible PC that lead to Gateway, DELL, HP................"Is it illegal, I don't know!"

[odv000]

copyright and patents sucks!

it against progress!

just imagime how many resources (time,money...) was and continue wasting because of reverce enginering, independent developing, incompatible formats,hacking of different copy-protection system etc...

most important is at the end it all became hacked so it is only waste of resources!

greediness is only cause of it.

[bloodarowman3]

I agree, bro

[donjabroni]

So that's where Psystar got their insipration. :)

[itnt07]

epic comment....

[1337Shockwav3]

I wonder how he achieved the compatibility considering the ROMs ... I bet he either simply copied and adapted them, rather than carefully re-engineering and improving.

But yeah, independent developments rule :) Especially when looking at what happened to the ZX Spectrum in the UDSSR (albeit a bit delayed).

[MegaChugg]

plundered by the lesser? What does that mean, and did the Egyptian black man modify digital computers in the early 80's? Crucial questions that Im sure you'll agree need answers

[jojodangerfield]

the egyptian black man invented the computer. idiot.

[heatflash888]

@jojodangerfield no they didn't. moron

[seanmillerr]

that black man is so what the black man is about from the day's of the egypt black man untill we were plundered by the lesser

[Tr0ll1000]

Crank it up let see it work

00:29

"the big difference between a copied and compatible machine is its look" -- Whatever

00:54

"in this chip we have a saying whatever your mind can conceive and your heart can believe then you can achieve" -- Huh

Doubt it worked at all give the man enough time he will say my great granddaddy invented the stop light. Do you believe that?

Compare both boards side by side.

[LouigiVerona]

A person took a piece of technology and enhanced it. How can it be illegal? Only if the laws are written to be profiting large companies.

[pastageek]

As a matter of fact, LouigiVerona, a lot of laws these days are made to protect large profiting companies and stifle the little guy's creativity. Look at all the licences they make you get. I've heard of people having to get a licence to generate electricity. It is a magnet inducing a current in a coil. There shouldn't be a license for that.

[therealerf909]

hacking isn't illegal, as long as you don't make copies and sell them.

[mukatuna]

It's mostly not illegal. The Apple ][ was made from entirely industry standard components. The only illegal act here would be that if he copied and pirated the Apple ROMs.

The IBM PC clones where completely legal, because again they used industry standard components. And didn't copy the IBM BIOS ROM. The used a BIOS which didn't have any IBM code in it at all.

[hrford]

Does anyone make pirate PSP3's? lol

[rudeydudey05]

Why not, Apple and IBM have been stealing from everyone else for years.

[sstorholm]

Apple is notorious for stealing stuff, like the GUI which was originally developed by a Xerox Laboratory. Only difference was that they had Xerox's board's approval to do so. :D

[commodore256]

Apple didn't steal the GUI, Apple made a offer from Xerox and Xerox said it was OK.

[sstorholm]

Well, that's the board's approval right there. Dunno if they ever paid for it... :D Anyhow they were quite mad at Apple when Microsoft decided to copy it (the GUI)...

[Ryoga2K]

No, they stole it. XEROX actually sued but Copyright laws didn't let you sue after n number of years about the look and feel of something, I don't care anyway, computers have evolved amazingly because of people that thought how to market the Idea, the GUI or Ethernet networking wouldn't have got out of Palo Alto if someone didn't take a look, XEROX only wanted to make faster better and stronger copy printers and didn't care about the other stuff.

[vdven]

classic interview.

[ShadowRayzzz]

My keyboard has more MHz and more memory then this PC, lol

[BlackCow99]

Not really, IIRC a keyboard can only hold 16 bits of data for buffer.

[Axlzero451]

I'll bet you have not used linux before.

[nipperoid]

well nowadays all pc's are "ibm compatible"

[domdom111111]

Does anyone remembers the Coco 2 computers from Radio Shack?

[metasuperhyper]

I want one.

[th3toiletguy9111]

lol- is apple happy about this? "i woundent be"

[0dayNIHIL]

this guy is awesome

"I haven't got caught yet"

[psprog]

Yup, Tony Bastable from Database - all the episodes of this (and the follow up '4 Computer Buffs' are readily available on torrents..) Fascinating - I remember them from the time, and used to hate the fact that they'd go on and on and on about how cool it was to send messages to people 'through the phone lines' - none of us could afford though, as it cost some mad figure like £7 an hour, plus BT's phone charges! The internet's changed all that ;-)

[majortom321]

shit he stole it..

[kinmanyuen]

loooool

[Godgotron]

lol nice

[6stringplaya77]

ha you would never see this these days...

[drakio99]

is it illegal *i don't know* >:D

[3yE]

He really didn't know. It definately made some companies upset, but up to that point there were no court rulings on that. The hardware of those computers was fairly trivial, reimplementing compatible from scratch using off the shelf logic was apparently legal, as was ruled later.

Embedded software was a different matter, but up to then it was not clear whether it is copyrightable at all, as it was radically different to works of art, for which copyright laws were established.

[jci10]

I just busted out laughing when he said this!!

[rubiogomes]

HONDA?

[chilenoygordo]

"honda computers" hahahaa, wth is that?!

[supashoopa]

FUCK YEAH PETE PERKINS

[akaboy4life]

lol is it illegal. i dont know. LOl is it?

[jsl151850b]

I think at the time Apple took legal action against the clones that copied the ROMs exactly.

(It was something like an operation system, but in read-only memory.)

Copyright laws of the time considered that protected as much as a novel would have been.

Check out my Apple ][ and //e videos!

[VideyoJunkei]

Apple vs. Franklin....Our school has the franklins-cheaper!

[alizta]

It might actually have really been difficult say if it was illegal or not. If it was a copy than it would be an obvious case, but those are reimplementations.

[inricheetos]

They're compatibles

[alizta]

That is almost the same. Compatibles are even a weaker concept because they don't even imply identical hardware.

[weirdnetwork]

Is that ex-magpie presenter tony bastable doing the interviewing? (he did present a programme called database after all) if so it might explain the stupidity of the questions.

[aribenzane]

"Is it legal?"

"I don't know!"

[VidalAvila]

this guy is an oh original hacker

lol

[mahaoren]

This guy is so great!

[holyghostsoldier]

is it illigal? i dont know lol!!

[Lex5151]

What a man! His hands were gold.

[Jenisha1]

I just love the first question and answer.

"You copied it?"

"No"

so simple

[rudyiking]

He took something and made it better. Its just like the mousetrap, someone will always try to make a better one. As far as I know no one has gotten in trouble for trying to make a better mousetrap!!

[RainSanMartin]

Very funny.

[cybercow222]

well that`s the reason why u not have IBM under the desk

[xvendetta1]

lol Exellent

[jalland]

I want a pirated 8800 GTX!

[toresbe]

tunaegg, what the hell are you talking about!? You can't by a *non-cloned* IBM PC anymore, IBM sold their PC business to Lenovo! Apple is a different matter entirely, of course.

[offensivejerk]

Every PC is a clone of the IBM PC. IBM came up with the name PC.

[emmalinas]

ComedyCentral :D

[wisteela]

Superb!

[tunaegg]

lol, too bad they cant do it anymore lol