Scores of retro-loving nerds will gather this weekend at the Vintage Computer Festival to celebrate the 30th birthday of the Xerox Alto — the genetic Eve to today's modern PCs. The sixth annual ...

Xerox designed the Alto’s user interface around the three-button mouse that sits in front of its keyboard. The disk drive at the top of the cabinet takes a removable 2.5 megabyte cartridge.

Bob Metcalfe's originating ethernet memo included this rough schematic rendering. Courtesy Palo Alto Research Center and Digibarn Computer Museum 1973: Bob Metcalfe of the Xerox Palo Alto Research ...

The Xerox Alto predated Apple's Macintosh on American desktops, and likely inspired some of the Mac's popular features. Few tech historians credit Carl Clement, whose little company built the Alto.

The Alto used Ethernet to communicate with other computers (another innovation), and the restoration team made sure that worked, too — and not just so the two could talk to each other.

Also, Xerox gave Apple a look at the Alto in exchange for being allowed to buy 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock for a million bucks. Let's play a game of "pretend they held it till today".

In 1972, Xerox released an advert for the Alto, introducing people to the world’s first computer with a graphical user interface, mouse, and distinctive portrait screen.

The Xerox Alto, pictured above, produced only 2,000 units. Apple, by contrast, sold 100,000 Lisa computers. The Xerox Alto, pictured above, produced only 2,000 units ...

On the July 1, 1970, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center opened its doors. Commonly known as Xerox PARC, the research center was set up as a division of Xerox Corporation and was given the mandate ...

In the real world, components don’t work like we imagine they do. Wires have resistance, resistors have inductance, and capacitors have resistance. However, some designers like to take advant… ...

Posted in classic hacks, Fail of the Week, Repair Hacks Tagged alto, electromigration, fotw, xerox alto ← Hackaday Links: February 3, 2019 Recycled Piano Becomes Upcycled Workbench → ...