💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~solderpunk › dtack-grounded captured on 2024-08-18 at 17:49:06. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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D T A C K
G R O U N D E D
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"DTACK GROUNDED" was the name under which, in the 1980s, the small company Digital Acoustics Inc. attempted to disrupt the nascent personal computing market with a minimalistic, high-performance deployment of the then new and exciting Motorola 68000 CPU, in the form of an co-processor add-on board for affordable and widespread home computers based on the 6502 CPU, such as the Apple II or Commodore Pet. This add-on board was substantially simpler and cheaper than the complex computer systems that Motorola themselves were trying to push the 68000 as the heart of. Actual, working DTACK boards were build and sold and shipped, but ultimately the endeavour was a commercial failure. What is left for posterity are the hilarious, no-holds-barred, equally irreverent and insightful newsletters which were written to promote the DTACK boards and the philosophy behind them, in which the none-too-humble "faithful newsletter editor" took pot-shots at just about every mover and shaker in the 80's computing industry. If you are interested in the history of personal computing, or in retro-inspired homebrew computer design, the DTACK GROUNDED newsletter archives are sure to entertain and inform. There's even a fascinating kind of analogue proto-DRM preserved here; assembly code listings were included at the end of each newsletter in the "Redlands" section, so-named because they were printed on red paper which did not photocopy legibly!
The archives here are reformatted but otherwise unedited versions of those available via the web at page of the EASy68K software:
DTACK GROUNDED Archive at easy68k.com
I'm rehosting them here without permission, but then again, easy68k.com are presumably doing the same without the permission of the now defunct copyright holder, and have been doing so for over two decades. And why shouldn't they, or I?