Child of the 70s me, my first computer was a 48K Speccy. Progressed to a +3 (ooh fancy), then a BBC Master, which is my “spirit computer” (in the vein of spirit animals). Stuck with that way into the 16- and 32-bit eras, then went Archie.
Moved to the US in 2011, and foolishly left my collection of retro computers in the loft. (Plan was to only stay here 18months). Eight years on and…looks like we’re here to stay, Really need to go get the retro stuff. I miss my Master.
In my spare time I hack on emulators to scratch my retro itch. You can try them out in your browser (jsbeeb, for example). I’ve also spoken a few times about the process of developing that particular emulator: Emulating a BBC Micro in Javascript has links to videos and slides.
Nice to see some new faces and some familiar ones too. Also excited to see the FPGA folks here: I have a lattice FPGA knocking around somewhere and have got as far as flashing a light on and off on it
My name is Iakov. I live in Moscow, Russia. I remember myself from late 80’s - so in 2006 I began to collect vintage computers - friends have found a 486 Compaq Contura 430CX at the atticks and were about to trash it - I took it home and then relised that many computers I dreamed of or just heard about in my youth and childhood can be found now on somebody’s atticks or garage. Now have about 65 machines in collection - PC’s from IBM 5150 to PIII, AMiga 3000, Kaypro 10 and some macs from IIci to G4. By profession I’m a photographer. Here’s a video about me and my collection made by local TV chanel ) - Video about me …
thanks ! Amsoft floppies were used with Amstrad PC8512 - my dad took it home from his job around 1988 and it was lost in 1995 - when we bough a p1 (which I still have) - we gave the Amstrad to friends who trashed it later( On Amstrad I had no games, only Cp/m, Locoscript, Logo and Basic and some buiness soft…
Oh look, three months have passed since an introduction: anyone want to step up? Let us know how you got interested, or re-interested, how you sold everything, or bought everything back, what projects you have on the go, or have abandoned…
… or of course you can start a thread about a particularly memorable experience!
I have been interested in computing history for about 20 years now. It started with the computers that I grew up with (early IBM personal computers) and has branched out a little bit. I have also been in the industry for 27+ years and I am beginning to realize that some of the products I worked on professionally are going to be a part of computing history some day too. (The first AS/400s on PowerPC, the Cell processor, the BlueGene/L supercomputer, and firmware for “shingled” hard drives will probably be noteworthy in the next 20 to 30 years.)
My personal projects including trying to fully document the IBM PCjr and the mTCP TCP/IP stack and applications for DOS. I have been a moderator at the Vintage Computer Forum for 15+ years and three years ago I joined the board of directors for the Vintage Computer Federation, which now runs that forum. (It is a registered 501c3 charity.) Most recently I launched the Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest, which is about to have it’s third event.
When I get some time I’d like to explore the Kaypro machines I just purchased from my friend, port mTCP to them, and enhance my hardware hacking skills. (I’m predominately a software person so I have a lot of catching up to do.)
Welcome, Mike! And well done for helping to run a busy forum and for setting up a new VCF - I’ve never run an event, and shouldn’t even try, but I know it’s lots of work and it’s much appreciated.
I guess it’s about time to bump this again? I learned about this forum in the recent Retrocomputing Roundtable episode.
I’m probably on the left side of the Gaussian distribution of members’ ages (32), and the first computer I owned was a 386 running Windows 3.1, but I like old computers – currently my main interest is late-70s and early-80s hobby computers like RCA COSMAC VIP, DREAM 6800, ETI-660, ACE VDU, etc. I’ve always like to write software for machines that I can understand fully (homebrew games for Game Boy, Fairchild Channel F, CHIP-8 games), and I also like computers that are simple enough that I can understand fully on the hardware side. To that end I am currently writing an emulator for the DREAM 6800 (should probably try to build a physical one too).
I have been involved in computers since growing up in the 1980’s and 90’s. I used to spend a good bit of time on old Macs and SGIs. These days I don’t spend nearly so much time on retrocomputing, but I still have a decent old Mac collection ranging from the Macintosh Portable to the Powerbook G4. For more about me, check out my personal webpage and professional webpage.
I was an occasional user on Nekochan for many years, and am still bummed that they shut down. Mostly I am looking for a place to very occasionally post retro-computing related stuff. I also need to find suitable EE-related forum, but this isn’t quite the place.
Hi all,
first post here…
The first computer I’ve touched was a SPERRY UNIVAC 1100/80 at the university. So I missed all the 8 bit stuff because they appeared to me like toys and never bought one…
But during the eighties I build an homebrew 8085 SBC from scratch using a multimeter as only instruments. So I did a ROM emulator too to write programs by hand.
That “system” is still working and I wrote an article on that here:
Currently I like to design and build HW stuff, and sometimes this stuff are retro “projects” like this:
Hi, I’m David Galloway. My Dad was an engineer and he took a course on microprocessors around 1978 and gave me the trainer board that came with the course. A KIM-1. I used to be quite an outdoors type of kid but when I got the KIM-1 I was absolutely entranced and became and indoors type of kid…All I did was try to learn everything I could about this enchanting machine. The rest is history as they say and if you want to learn a bit more random things about me I have included a link to a podcast I did recently.
Hi everyone! I’m Kerri Shotts – a product manager at Adobe (Based in NY) during the day, and retrocomputing enthusiast at night. I grew up with both a Timex Sinclair 1000 and Commodore 64c – both of which I’m planning to restore to their former glory.
I’m also building Retroputer, an emulator for a machine that never existed, but intends to pay homage to the eight and sixteen bit machines of the 80’s and 90’s. It’ll probably never be done, but right now I’m in the process of adding a BASIC interpreter to it. I’m blogging about that bit, if you want to follow along. If you want to play around with the emulator in a browser, you can (link from the repo), although it’s always a little behind bleeding-edge.
Looking forward to chatting with all of you, and getting to know you!
Hi. Like many of you, I was introduced to computing with an Apple IIe. A close friend had an Amiga 500, a Sinclair QL, and even a Vectrex! I have a soft spot for ThinkPascal on the Mac.
I think the thing about retro computing that I find interesting is that I’m interested in design that is timeless. Hindsight gives us the ability to more accurately gauge which things really add value on a human level and which things were artifacts or hype driven but not really all that useful. I find a lot of computing today is driven by hype and poor design and some days I long for the consistency, discoverability and simplicity of some of the best systems from other eras (hooray for the Mac style guides and boo to today’s hamburger menus and overly flat design).
For the past few years, I’ve been working on and using a cloud based OS and have recently launched a couple of vintage themed variations based upon it: www.cloudretrocomputing.com www.cloudintosh.com
