Welcome @ArduinoEnigma I hope there are still more people who have yet to join up here - we’re over 128 signups, and we have 64 active members. Of course with G+ vanishing, anyone who didn’t make a note might have trouble finding us here.
If anyone knows anyone who might be interested in joining up here, please give them a heads-up!
And anyone who is here, please do post new topics - the setup here turns out to be a bit more conversational than social media, but each conversation does need something to start it off.
I’m very pleased to see that the Retro Computing Saga goes on! I was Member in the G+ Community. My Name is Benjamin, I live in Switzerland and are working as Software Devloper since 1982. I’m now 54 … and counting I like to read about Retro Computer Stories, my first Computer was a VIC-20. Today, I still own some old Devices, a C64, a ZX81 and some Computers not well known like the CASIO PB100 and the HP95 LX. I love to code this Devices in Pascal and BASIC!
Hi all. I got the computing bug when the ZX Spectrum was launched, although I quickly moved over to the BBC Micro, as it was clearly the superior machine.
I’m a journalist and, at the time, was working on photography magazines. But in the run-up to the launch of MSX machines in the UK I got a gig as deputy editor of MSX Computing magazine. I quit that to go freelance, writing for a variety of computer titles, including being the main news writer for Acorn User, where they eventually crumbled and gave me a job as deputy editor. That lasted about 15 months, until some time in 1988, since when I’ve never had a proper job.
I freelanced on a lot of computer magazines in the late 1980s/early 1990s, writing reviews and features for titles such as Personal Computer World, What Micro?, PC Magazine and too many others to remember. (Some of these reviews are now on my blog, below).
Then, at some point, I switched over to corporate publishing, editing customer magazines for the likes of IBM (PC, RS/6000 and AS/400 divisions), Informix, Sybase, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and more. I gave up most of that stuff about 10 years ago, since when I’ve gone back to journalism, with nearly all my work being in cyber security: I’m editor of two technical journals in that area.
For fun, I have a BBC Master Turbo and mess around with other retro machines mostly via emulators. I also blog about my journey learning electronics, robotics & retro stuff at Machina Speculatrix.
Welcome, Benjamin, and welcome, Steve. What a marvellous variety of experience we have here. Maybe it’s time for a thread to show off our favourite things.
I’m one of the guys that lurked the Google+ Group, and would even post once every few years! Glad to see the group, at least in part, successfully migrated.
I saw Ed’s post over on 6502.org and signed up. Finished discobot’s challenge just now.
A compressed presentation:
Electronics and digital education back in the seventies
Started on AIM-65 somewhen around 78-79
At the same time I used a mini (paper tape, core memory, tty) at school, got my key so I spent many weekends there.
Started working with ND minicomputers from around 1982, and also Apple II and clones at the same time (all part of the job). Z80 too. I wish I had been quick enough when the nice Basis-108 (Apple II clones with 128KB RAM and built-in Z80, dual Apple-CP/M systems) were dumped.
Unix, and, from '92, Linux experience, up to the present.
Main interest is ND computers. I’ve got a 16-bit one at home (wish I had the 32-bit one too), and I wrote emulators for them. Still not fully complete though.
As for micros, I’ve done much more 6502 assembly programming than Z80, although I worked more with CP/M than Apple DOS.
I lived in the US (Virginia) from 1970 to 1975 (ages 8 to 13) before moving back to Brazil and really wanted to build my own computer. But the information in the encyclopedia was too superficial and the books I found in the library were so bad they set me back instead of helping. The $29 “Digital Electronic Computer Kit” from Radio Shack (really just switches, wires and lamps) helped a little, while I missed the revolution happening on the other side of the country.
My father went through a series of programmable calculators in the second half of the 1970s and I learned programming on them. Later, magazines allowed me to learn Basic and 8080 assembly though I didn’t have any machines to see if my programs would actually work. For my high school science fair I designed a video game around the Signetics chipset (also used in the Emerson Arcadia 2001 and other consoles) but ended up building the reference design from Signetics modified for PAL/M by Ibrapi instead. Right before the fair they gave me two game ROMs, which saved the demo since I was unable to find anyone to “burn” EPROMs for me.
In 1980 (my first year at the university) I got to use the Burroughs B6700 and my father was given an old 6800 development kit that the local Motorola office was throwing away. I developed a customer database on my uncle’s Fluke 1720A computer (a fun machine with a TMS9900 processor, bubble memory, touch screen in a sewing machine form factor) to get the money for the power supply parts for the MEK6800D2.
In 1982 I got a US Sinclair ZX81 but later replaced it with a TI99/4A. I had been building a Z80 computer (similar to the later MSX machines) and then a simple 68000 computer to develop software on. In 1983 I started a children’s computer project with the same chipset as the TRS-80 Color Computer, as shown in my album and higher resolution photos.
The basic TI99/4A was too limited for serious software development, so in 1984 I built my own Apple II clone using a board from Microcraft.
In 1986 I got a 128K Macintosh that I upgraded to 512K and in 1987 I reprogrammed the PALs in Unitron’s Mac clone to make it 20% faster than the original. I still have that clone and a few other machines.
Wow! I hope you feel motivated to post a thread about your Merlin series. (That 6800 dev board - I think I used something very similar, briefly, at university.)
The Merlin computers were only prototypes (there was one Merlin 1, three Merlin 2, an unfinished Merlin 3 and two Merlin 4) but as they were similar to the Tektronix 4404 from another thread I suppose they could be interesting to people here. Too bad the project log is in Portuguese.
I’ll either add information on the Tek thread or start a new one in the proper category.
Started on Spectrum ZX81, then 48, Commodore, Amiga, IBM PC… the rest is really history. My forte is to make devices connect to the internet that were never intended.
By the way, I think it’s time I introduced myself.
Hi, my name is Nicola D’Agostino and as many of us I was following the Google+ Group, where I met Ed (who let me know about this forum). I’m based in Italy, although I’m not 100% italian.
I started playing and experimenting in the 80s with ZX Spectrums and C64s lent by friends and relatives. After longing for years for a computer of my own, after a short stint with an old Olivetti M240, finally got my first Macintosh, an ill-fated LC630, in the early 90s.
Although I’ve used and owned MSX systems, Amigas, IBMs with SCO, Palms, Z88… and I love any and all kinds of software (I have a small collection of UN*X boxed media) you could say I’m mostly an Apple user.
I’m voraciously interested in the history of Infinite Loop and the people who worked there, and I’ve been writing about it for italian magazines and on my two twin websites, http://www.storiediapple.it and http://www.storiesofapple.net for more than ten years. And the more I find and learn, the more I want to know.
I can answer questions about the Unitron Mac 512 clone, but that should probably be a new thread. I got it in payment for redesigning the PALs to make it faster than the original. The analog board died, so I replaced it with one from a Mac Plus. Since I had to open it up to fix it anyway, I took some pictures: front, bottom, case and manual, motherboard, analog board and CRT and inside the case.
I say go for it! I read (and enjoyed) that web page some years ago and I would love to read more first-hand technical information about the Unitron clones.
First, thanks for this meeting place. I have been interested in computing since my vocational training in a steel mill in the early seventies. There were tabulating machines with plug boards and two computers: A Bull Gamma 30 and a Siemens 4004. Later, as a student, I used a Telefunken TR4. I then worked as a programmer for a german industry group with many different computers, dtmb was my nickname. Many pieces that have accumulated over the years have been left to https://www.computermuseum-visselhoeve.de/.
I like to read about Retro Computer Stories, my first Computer was a VIC-20. Today, I still own some old Devices, a C64, a ZX81 and some Computers not well known like the CASIO PB100 and the HP95 LX. I love to code this Devices in Pascal and BASIC!
