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EDUC-8

The EDUC-8, pronounced "educate", is an early microcomputer kit published by Electronics Australia in a series of articles starting in August 1974 and continuing to August 1975. Electronics Australia initially believed that it was the first such kit, but later discovered that Radio-Electronics had just beaten it with their Mark-8 by one month. However, Electronics Australia staff believed that their TTL design was superior to the Mark-8, as it did not require the purchase of an expensive microprocessor chip. The EDUC-8 is an 8-bit bit-serial design with 32 to 256 bytes of RAM. The internal clock speed is 500 kHz, with an instruction speed of approximately 10 kHz, due to the bit-serial implementation. The instruction set was a subset of the DEC PDP-8, though it was missing quite a few of the PDP-8’s instructions and some important flags. This was essentially an education machine designed to put people on a path to understanding how a computer worked and how to start programming what was at the time, a common computer in the market. The EDUC-8 has front panel lights and switches to program the computer. Unlike the MITS Altair 8800, the EDUC-8 included two serial input and two serial output ports at the back of the computer.…

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Article summary

The EDUC-8, pronounced "educate", is an early microcomputer kit published by Electronics Australia in a series of articles starting in August 1974 and continuing to August 1975. Electronics Australia initially believed that it was the first such kit, but later discovered that Radio-Electronics had just beaten it with their Mark-8 by one month. However, Electronics Australia staff believed that their TTL design was superior to the Mark-8, as it did not require the purchase of an expensive microprocessor chip. The EDUC-8 is an 8-bit bit-serial design with 32 to 256 bytes of RAM. The internal clock speed is 500 kHz, with an instruction speed of approximately 10 kHz, due to the bit-serial implementation. The instruction set was a subset of the DEC PDP-8, though it was missing quite a few of the PDP-8’s instructions and some important flags. This was essentially an education machine designed to put people on a path to understanding how a computer worked and how to start programming what was at the time, a common computer in the market. The EDUC-8 has front panel lights and switches to program the computer. Unlike the MITS Altair 8800, the EDUC-8 included two serial input and two serial output ports at the back of the computer.…

Key claims

  1. publication date: 1974 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the publication date is "1974". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1336095975

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.