Other names Voja Other name Voja | Nationality Serbian Website www.voja.rs | |
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Full Name Vojislav Antonić Known for Design of Galaksija home computer | ||
Vojislav "Voja" Antonić (Serbian Cyrillic: Воја Антонић, [ˈʋɔja ˈantɔnitɕ]) is a Serbian inventor, journalist and writer. He was also a magazine editor and contributed to a number of radio shows but he is best known for creating a build-it-yourself home computer Galaksija and originating a related "Build your own computer Galaksija" initiative with Dejan Ristanović. The result of this initiative is, perhaps, his crowning achievement – he encouraged and enlightened thousands of computer enthusiasts during the 1980s. Mr Antonić donated many of his personally initiated creations to the public domain, whenever they related to the common people or a fellow engineer.
Contents
- 1976 Conways Game of Life
- 1981 Sport event arbitration system
- 1982 Alarm system
- 1983 Galaksija
- 1999 Engineers assistant
- References
1976. Conway's Game of Life
After reading a book on Z80 microprocessor motivated Voja Antonić to create something with it. His first creation with a microprocessor was Conway's Game of Life machine that shows its state using 8x8 matrix of red LEDs. The machine reportedly worked flawlessly almost continuously since creation to at least 2006 (time of writing of this article).
1981. Sport event arbitration system
Prior to the Winter of 1981/1982 Skiing Federation of Serbia timed the competitors using regular stopwatches and hand signaling. Upcoming Balkan competition required this to be improved and more precise and the skiing federation contracted Mr. Antonić to create a system for precisely timing each competitor.
The result was a small, battery powered computer packed together with liquid crystal display, printer and keyboard in Samsonite suitcases. Over the years five different models were built, named from "Arbitar" to "Arbitar 5", and were used for many years.
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1982. Alarm system
Design of alarm system at Elektronika inženjering.
1983. Galaksija
In 1983 Mr. Antonić learned of the interesting way to have the CPU generate video signal, without the use of specialized video circuitry. He thought of this as a good idea for an inexpensive, "build-it-yourself" computer. "Galaksija" (pronounced Galaxiya, meaning Galaxy) was featured in the special edition Računari u vašoj kući (Computers in your home) of a popular science magazine of the same name, published late December 1983 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
Voja Antonić essentially released Galaksija to public domain and never required any compensation for it. He wanted it to be a project anyone can undertake and received only the compensation for writing the magazine article itself, not the computer.
Initial estimates were that between 100 and at most 1000 Galaksijas will be built. End result was at least 8,000.
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1999. Engineer's assistant
In 1999 Voja Antonić created a logic analyzer, probe, serial interface receiver and frequency counter device based on Microchip Technology PIC16F84 microcontroller. It eventually became Microchip's "application note 689" (AN689) but was subsequently removed. Although the work was published, compensation for his efforts, Microchip in-circuit emulator "MPLAB-ICE 1000" was never sent to Mr. Antonić. Microchip claimed that it was prevented by ongoing sanctions against Yugoslavia.
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