This seems like a good excuse for me to dig out my Rockwell Aim65. This is my first computer - it was the first single board computer to include an alphanumeric display and a printer - it was well before PCs, the internet and cell phones.

I still have extensive documentation on this computer and a system upgrade occupies an early entry on my bucket list of projects.

There are several things I would like to upgrade:

1. You can see in this picture that it uses an audio cassette recorder as its mass storage device. I would like to replace this with a digital audio recorder/player. This would likely be based on an arduino so I can add features that make it more suited to this particular digital file storage and retrieval task. Adafruit makes some nice audio recorder modules that will work with an arduino and I will likely include an LCD and some buttons.
2. This system has a massive hand-made linear power supply with 3 transformers delivering 5 volts @ 10A, plus and minus 12 volts @ 1A, (for RS232), plus and minus 15 volts @ 1A (for op-amps), and 24 volts @ 3A (for the printer). You can see some of the big heatsinks and capacitors and a couple of transformers in the second picture. The supplies still work, but I don't need all those voltages anymore and it makes the system huge and very heavy. So a couple of switching supplies will trim the system down greatly. Note the wire-wrapped backplane.
3. The system is packaged in a custom wooden crate with hinged panels for the tape recorder and the keyboard. It took a lot of work to design and build the crate and power supplies, but my skills and tools at that time weren't going to create anything very aesthetically pleasing. Although I seem to have progressed enough in my knowledge to figure out that some serious heatsinks were needed. So I want to revisit the packaging to see it I can't make it smaller and give it a look that doesn't make me cringe.

These upgrades are actually going to be 3 separate projects because with the supply chain problems I am having right now, I don't expect enough parts to arrive to complete all upgrades at the same time. I will start with the arduino digital audio recorder and see if I can get enough parts to build a tape recorder replacement.

This seems like a good excuse for me to dig out my Rockwell Aim65. This is my first computer - it was the first single board computer to include an alphanumeric display and a printer - it was well before PCs, the internet and cell phones.

I still have extensive documentation on this computer and a system upgrade occupies an early entry on my bucket list of projects.

There are several things I would like to upgrade:

1. You can see in this picture that it uses an audio cassette recorder as its mass storage device. I would like to replace this with a digital audio recorder/player. This would likely be based on an arduino so I can add features that make it more suited to this particular digital file storage and retrieval task. Adafruit makes some nice audio recorder modules that will work with an arduino and I will likely include an LCD and some buttons.
2. This system has a massive hand-made linear power supply with 3 transformers delivering 5 volts @ 10A, plus and minus 12 volts @ 1A, (for RS232), plus and minus 15 volts @ 1A (for op-amps), and 24 volts @ 3A (for the printer). You can see some of the big heatsinks and capacitors and a couple of transformers in the second picture. The supplies still work, but I don't need all those voltages anymore and it makes the system huge and very heavy. So a couple of switching supplies will trim the system down greatly. Note the wire-wrapped backplane.
3. The system is packaged in a custom wooden crate with hinged panels for the tape recorder and the keyboard. It took a lot of work to design and build the crate and power supplies, but my skills and tools at that time weren't going to create anything very aesthetically pleasing. Although I seem to have progressed enough in my knowledge to figure out that some serious heatsinks were needed. So I want to revisit the packaging to see it I can't make it smaller and give it a look that doesn't make me cringe.

These upgrades are actually going to be 3 separate projects because with the supply chain problems I am having right now, I don't expect enough parts to arrive to complete all upgrades at the same time. I will start with the arduino digital audio recorder and see if I can get enough parts to build a tape recorder replacement.

This is great Doug!

I hope you really start this project the AIM65 was my first computer too. Unfortunately, I have been stolen years and years ago. But I still have all the sources of the programs I developed, manuals and some technical documentation.

Enrico