Self-taught tinkerer demos working room-sized Cold War-era supercomputer with vacuum tubes — takes 15 minutes to warm up and smells like burning dust, 8-bit design uses 460 recycled 1950s Soviet tubes

A tinkerer built an 8-bit computer from 460 vacuum tubes that runs software but needs a stepladder for repairs

The project, called The Tube Computer MK3, was built by Mike, a self-taught electronics tinkerer who recently documented the machine on Hackaday. It is the third vacuum-tube...