I also suggest use of the PiDP panels for added flair. A PiDP-1 is in the making.
Hi @all,
Iām new in this forum. Iām Norbert and Iām living in Germany near by Cologne. My collection favorites are SIEMENS, SIEMENS-NIXDORF and FUJITSU-SIEMENS when its mostly related to SINIX, the UNIX variant from SIEMENS.
The first computer was a C64 ā¦ I assume, a lot of us starts with a C64ā¦ 
Iāve learned by SIEMENS āKommunikationselektronikerā - in English, I assume it could be something like āelectronic engineer in comunication- and informationtechnologiesā. In the meantime Iāve got a lot of computers from SIEMENS in my collection. The oldest SINIX System is a SIEMENS PC-X with SINIX 1.0 and the newest one is a RM400-C60 or 80. There are also some computers like a C64, a CBM610, a SGI Indigo2 ZX and a little bit of SUN.
Have a nice Day 
Norbert
2 Likes
Iāve been using computers since the late 60s.
Punched paper tape thru IBM cards thru floppy disks
thru Zip Drives thru USB drives. I started using BOS,
a British operating system in 1986, & I still use it.
When computers got fast enuf I switched from BOS
in native mode to a version running as a DOS
application. It tricks DOS into being multi-user &
multi-tasking (9 simultaneous screens). Using
DOS means the latest version of Windows I can use
is Win98 (the last with a DOS kernel).
Programs I run on it:
PMS+ (property management). The company is out of business.
BOS Finder (database) ā Un-updated since 1986
BOS Writer (word processer)
BOS Speller (spell checker)
Pluses:
- Itās fast & reliable.
- Security is powerful.
- The menu system is wonderful. It automates many
functions, & provides most of my documentation. - No fees.
Minuses:
- No support.
- Itās very obscure. I know no one else using BOS.
- I need to know both DOS & BOS.
- My version wonāt run on many new machines. So I buy up old DOS boxes.
3 Likes
Hello! I got my start using computers on the Apple ][ in the library, or school //es. Also used a serial terminal to the libraryās catalogue system running some kind of BSD-derivative in the early 80s.
First home computer was a C128 so my father could do Cyrillic and NT Greek and Roman characters on the same document with Fontmaster 128. A BBS I dialled got a Sun3 and timeshare on a T1 with an ISP, and turned into a large ISP in its own right over the 90s. A friend gave me a Leading Edge Model D, and that served me through middle and high school in the states.
I helped a friend who had a music education degree install Debian on his machine in '99, remotely. We used GNU screen to share the console once he got past a certain point, and heās still using a descendant of that initial install. Now heās a tenured professor of Computer Science at University of Minnesota, Duluth, where heās in charge of a well-preserved PDP-12 that the neurobiology lab kept clean and dry for 50 years!
You may have seen the āHELLORLD!ā video that I made for his YouTube channel, where I told the story of how we remotely debugged the scope display routines via videos of the console lights.
5 Likes
Hi, Retrocomputers, Started as a child building Xtal sets and simple TRF transistor Rx guided by father, a BBC engineer; A 3 year apprenticeship covered light and heavy electrical engineering from IF strips to massive radars. A year doing field servicing of these was followed by several years as a lecturer on digital computing from basic logic up to real-time operating systems, then a lifetime of developing, delivering, operating and finally advising on information security.
4 Likes
#Servus,
my name is Nils, some know me as netzherpes.
I live in the middle of germany and collect / tinker with old computers. My ācareerā started as a 14 year old with the C64, later the Amiga, and soon after my first PC.
When the big C started spreading I discovered Liu Gannings KIM-1 clone PAL-1 and was immediately on fire.
The original KIM is not affordable anymore and with this easy to solder clone kit you can have an identical substitute. I found @HansOtten s site and gained some experience in typing in programs from newspapers and so on.
What else to say about me?
I run a little gardening shop and love to hike with my friends. I have a couple of pets and some kids also.
4 Likes
Welcome, @netzherpes and indeed also welcome to @philp, @spacehobo, @Revolting, @Norbert-97801, @Vinicius_Riserio and anyone else Iāve missed!
2 Likes
Hi. Iām Martin and I like everything small and simple. My first computer was a ZX81 ā and I still like this little guy.
Iām also the initiator of the EmuTOS project, but stepped out of it around 2004 or so.
I just discovered this forum and will happily read along.
3 Likes
Hey all,
Just joined here. Iām using my MiSTerFPGA board to tinker with early 80ās IBM compatibles using the PCXT core. Currently developing DOSContainer, which is a tool to debug and build hard disk images based on simple YAML manifest files. Interested in learning as much as I can about early MS/PC-DOS and the way they interacted with hard disks of the time so my toolbox can be as accurate as I can possibly get it. Learning Rust on the back of this project as well.
Another part of the hobby is my C64 project of writing Leisure Suit Larry 1 for it. Thatās on the back burner for now but also still on my bucket list.
3 Likes
Hello My name is Porter however, I prefer to use pseudonyms because I like the level of anonymity that it provides me.
Iāve been using computers since the early to mid 1990s, as matter of fact I learned how to type on Mavis Beacon teaches typing on DOS. I can also remember that the first computer that my father bought our family was a Dell Dimension XPS of come model number or another.
My road to being an enthusiast started with my tear old unused Pcs apart from the age of 5 years oldf. The unique thing about me is that by the age of 10 or 12 years old I was maintaining and modifying computers.
By the time I was a raising junior in middle school I was exploring alternative Operating systems such as the GNU?Linux distributions and the assortment of BSDs.
2 Likes
Rich here. Iām a CS masterās student (but switched from another field) who recently fell in love with C. Now I want to see what itās like writing it on an MS-DOS prompt. I might not be as much of a seasoned veteran as some here, but I do have a fond recollection of dialing in to Earthlink, chatting on AIM, getting my first Windows 95 PC, and seeing Starry Night running on an old SE/30 Macintosh in my elementary schoolās library as a young child. I also plan on getting an old Performa Macintosh from my parentsā attic running to try my hand at writing some Pascal in the last release of Turbo Pascal. Looking forward to getting to know the community.
2 Likes
Welcome Martin, Bas, Chip, and Rich! Thanks for sharing a bit of background.
Maybe this is what you had in mind, anyway, but for the best experience with āC in DOS,ā I recommend running DOS prompt inside Windows 95 (or OS/2 Warp). I had a job in the '90s where I was writing C just in DOS, and it was terrible. Every time I accidentally referenced an errant pointer, the entire machine locked up. Ctrl-Alt-Del didnāt even work. I had to hit the Reset button on the computer and reboot. With DOS prompt inside Win95, DOS would still lock up when this happened, but I could just kill the DOS prompt window, and restart MS-DOS from inside Windows. Turnaround time was quick.
This is helpful! I was planning on running Windows 95 and choosing āRestart into DOS modeā for the full experience, but this should work just fine and give me an out if the whole thing locks up like you mentioned. Iāve jammed my Ubuntu terminal before running under WSL and it has been helpful to be able to kill that from the desktop environment when needed. Thank you for the tip.
Hi all, glad to be here.
Iāve just joined the forum but Iāve been aware of and occasionally checking it for some time.
Iām a longtime computer enthusiast and hobby programmer. I started playing with and programming computers in the early 1980s. This adventure led me to read about and experiment with many programming languages and environments, from Z-80 and MC-68000 Assembly to Lisp and others.
Although Iāve always been interested in the history of computing, I fell down the retrocomputing rabbit hole a few years ago when I learned 8080 Assembly, did a few related programming projects, and got a couple of CP/M homebrew computers. Around that time I also rediscovered my love for Lisp and joined the Medley Interlisp Project.
I worked in astronomy and space outreach and education, another lifelong passion.
5 Likes
Hi all, just found out about this forum after seeing a message by amoroso and Iām always willing to connect with more RetroComputing people.
Iāve been in the computer industry for decades, starting as a DEC Vax developer first in a brief stay as a tech support engineer at DEC Basingstoke and a slightly longer stay at Shared Medical Systems, also in Basingstoke.
In terms of Retro Computing Iāve been collecting for over 15 years, mostly obscure 8 bit machines and largely Japanese ones - although I also have a love for French machines.
I create some hardware solutions for retro machines, as well as repairing them and making some videos about them
5 Likes
Welcome, glad my post was useful.
2 Likes
Greetings everyone! It is good to have found this community. Around 1980 I built a computer from a kit based on the Signetics 2650 microprocessor. I used it quite a while as my daily computer, learning to program and extending it. It has been sitting in my attic for a long time, but recently I started restoring it. I love the 2650 microprocessor, and managed to lay my hands on a Signetics TWIN microprocessor development system. This is a far more complex machine, using a master CPU and a slave CPU, as well as several hardware modules for developing and debugging prototypes. I added an Instructor 50 and am Interton VC 4000 to my collection as well. All based on the Signetics 2650, of course!
I am working on restoring all these machines. Repairing hardware where necessary, collecting documentation and software, reverse engineering software when sources have been lost, etc. Have a look at my project at The 2650 Restoration Project if youāre interested.
I hope to learn general tips and tricks from you, and I would love to get in touch with other 2650 enthousiasts, especially if you have any 2650 documentation or software to share.
4 Likes
Welcome, Paolo, Johnny, and Porcupine, and thanks for sharing your stories. Thanks also to Paolo for the nicely worded post on mastodon which has proven to be an effective advert for the forum!
2 Likes
Interesting history. In 1979 I built a videogame for my high school science fair and used the same chipset as the VC 4000. I started out doing my own design but then was handed an example schematic by the Signetics representative in Brazil. Half of the design was an adaptation from NTSC to PAL-M, but ironically I was given a black and white TV at the fair.
Though I initially thought about programming my own game, the only information I was able to find on the 2650 was a datasheet that had a list of op codes on one page. At the time I was only familiar with 8080 machine language and this single table was not enough for me to figure out the Signetics microprocessor. Luckily the representative gave me to game ROMs (Pong style games and war games) a few days before the fair.
The school offered to pay back all my costs in order to keep the game for future students to use. Sadly the next year students just pushed it into a corner which destroyed it since it was a fragile group of wirewrapped boards connected with poorly thought out cables. If I had kept it and found more information then it might have been something interesting to build on.