Introduce yourself thread

Greetings to all. Computers became part of my life since early 1972 (or maybe late 1971?) while at the University, and of course they were the big blue Mainframes …, after that, came the Minis, the mid-range, the workstations, and… yeah, PCs plus the paraphernalia of Compatibles and the like. Greteful that I had the change to touch/use/play and “taste” pretty much all kinds of hardware AND software… settled on Linux since 1992 and the Open Source realm, and never looked back!
So, that’s me and here I am.

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Hi all! I came into computers in the mid-80s as a child, and my family’s first home computer was an Apple //c. It’s still around someplace, although I do not currently have it; sadly, I think all of the software for it is long gone.

After that I had no immediate and personal access to computers until a family 486 in the early 90s, on which I discovered Linux (having been a fan of Unix via books for some time, but without access to a real machine other than a dialup to a rather constrained University account), and I’ve run Linux as my primary system since '94. In those heady early Linux days I discovered multi-user systems, and used the //c and later a TeleVideo 910 serial terminal to provide a second head for my brother and I’s primary Linux machine, so we could compute side-by-side.

As an adult I’ve spent more time retrocomputing and learning more diverse architectures. I picked up a bunch of surplus SPARC equipment in the late 90s and early 2000s (and used them for practical purposes for many years), and I have a TI 99/44A just for playing. I also dabble in other retro-technologies such as vintage radios (I have a complete 1960-1962 vintage station; see it at kb8ojh.net - Station Information) and Teletype machines (see the teletype link from the above URL, or my YouTube channel).

I have a fascination with minicomputers and mainframes, and built a PiDP-11 last year. I have also recently purchased a large lot of real, vintage PDP-11 equipment that I hope to toy with over the next few months/years. (forum post)

I teach at a University, and I have the TV910 (hooked to a Linux box) and TI 99/4A in my office for students to play with, alongside some vintage calculators (including two mechanical adding machines).

Ethan

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Hello all,

I started with a ZX81, followed by an PET 2001 and and then a Commodore C64 - I still own this machines and some others i.e a complete CTM 70 machine.
Currently we are building a small computer museum in South Germany together with Hans Franke, who has a really huge collection. It’s a lot of work but it also makes a lot of fun to build up the rooms for the public and to restore all the old machine with their different technology.
You can follow us on our blog about the new Computeum. Sorry - it’s currently only available in German language - but Google can help you to translate it…

So, see you in our Computeum.

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Hello all,

My name’s Mike, and my first home computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer, which I nursed from a lowly 4K of RAM up to its maximum of 64K over the years. I taught myself 6809 assembly language and even release a couple commercial programs for the CoCo before I moved on to my next computer, which was an Amiga 1000. I later upgraded to an Amiga 2000, which in turn had its share of upgrades (68030 coprocessor board, various other add-ons). Somewhere in there I picked up a Tandy MC-10 (Micro Color Computer) which had a Motorola 6803 processor. My idea was to set it up as a sort of “kitchen computer terminal” to a portable TV we had there. Of course today, the idea is kind of quaint, with tablets and Google Assistants and Echos filling that role.

Thanks for listening,

Mike

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Hello everyone!

As I have finally managed to set up a profile and even an icon, I may also introduce myself properly. May name is Norbert Landsteiner and some may know me already from the G+ Retro Computing and Computer History communities, which already describes some of my interests. Regarding retro computing, I first learned a language, which I never used on a real computer (in absence of a machine capable of it), but nevertheless has stayed dear to me over all those years, namely Algol 60. In reality, I gradually upgraded from 4-bits (Sharp PC 1211) to 8-bits – C64, at which points things became pretty normal, BASIC, a bit of Pascal, 6502, … On the way I picked up a strange love for the PDP-1 and a program, which it is best known for, namely Spacewar!, the first digital video game. From time to time, I also engage in one of the half-yearly RetroChallenges.

Glad you here to read this, too,

Norbert

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Hello, world! Amen Zwa, here—another refugee from Ed’s Retro Computing G+ forum. I’m grateful to Ed for setting up this new forum.

Like many of my ilk and era, I began programming in the early 1980s. I was raised by a VAX-11/780 and a 4.2BSD, on a steady diet of LISP and C. These days, I work with functional programming languages in AI and DSP. I’ve attached a collage that describes my computing heritage.

Cheers!

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Welcome, welcome, welcome! It’s good to see some familiar names as well as some new names here. Now that we have the Histories category, anyone who feels like telling a longer story or a specific anecdote, or maybe following up on something mentioned here, please feel free to start a thread over there.

(Or, just reply here or start a Discussions thread - it’s more important that we have the interesting conversations than we worry about organising them.)

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Wow, lots of people here already!

I was born in 1974 and got my first exposure to computers when my dad brought home an IBM 5150 from work (IBM) in 1981 or '82. I learned BASIC sitting on his lap. In fact, I’m typing this on a Model F PC keyboard right now, because since my parents were divorce I associate the sound of this keyboard with him working from home on weekends or during summer vacation, because that was when I spent time with him.

The first computer I had that was “mine” was a VTech VZ200 re-branded as a Diamond Systems Smart Alec Jr, which I still have, though the screen just has garbage on it if I turn it on. For my 10th birthday my mom got me a Commodore 64 with a 1541 disk drive, a monitor, and a Commodore printer. I used that machine well into high school, as well as a Tandy 1000 with an 80MB hard drive my dad bought from a coworker, then later a PS/2 model 80 he bought from work, which we upgraded over time with a 486 dx2/66 “Lightning” processor and a 1GB “Spitfire” SCSI drive and controller. That machine ran OS/2. I used that until '95 when bought my first computer for myself, a Pentium/200 that I put Red Hat Linux on. I’ve used Linux as my primary OS ever since.

I gave away or tossed most of my C64 peripherals along the way, but I still have the machine itself, though it doesn’t come on. I’ve tried replacing the PLA, but that didn’t help. I do plan to try to fix it as I have the free time available (I have 2 kids). Meanwhile, I bought a working C64 off of eBay that was originally owned and modded by Ferd Schutzler, as well as a C64 monitor. I use it with a Pi1541 drive emulator.

I also have a Tektronix 466 analog storage 'scope, though I still need to find probes for it.

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Hello, Harry.

– Charles

Hello,

My first use of computers was the BBC Micros at school. Secondary school also had an RM 380Z and by the time I left, a room full of Apricot PCs. At home I had a BBC Master 128, and later Archimedies 310 and acquired a few more Beebs and another Arc as school retired them. The Arc remained my main machine until the late '90s, when I finally got a PC.

About ten years ago I got into vintage synthesisers and this led to a rekindled interest in my Acorns. I’ve dusted them down and had a play around and will eventually get around to making a MIDI interface for the Beebs. I’ve also brought a Mac SE/30 to allow me to edit samples on the Emulator II sampler.

Kevin

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My first recollection of computers? Me drawing my kid doodles on two-tone perforated paper, I believe the term in English is tractor-feed paper, which my dad has brought home from his work, where he programmed miniframes/mainframes with COBOL. I actually recently received an old drawing of mine from my uncle while he was cleaning his attic; on the backside there was something that I now recognized as a crash dump but from a system unknown to me: but with 10 minutes of Google dive I was pretty certain it was a COBOL abend message from an old IBM system. My father confirmed this. I also remember visiting my father’s office and seeing the walls filled with daisywheel printer printouts, and tape reels.

My first own computer was a Sharp MZ-721, a Z80 system with ROM BASIC. And lots of borrowing and taking over of friends’ other 8-bit micros. BASIC, assembler, Pascal, Forth. Then various programmable calculators; CP/M at school. Then in university running into Unix and C, and there was no hope for me anymore. Amiga. The multitude of Unix workstations and servers in the 1980s and 1990s. Computer science and software engineering. Programming languages in general.

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Hello everyone!
Marvin here, another expat from G+

My computer history got started with a Schneider CPC 464 (a German rebrand of the British Amstrad) somewhen in my teens. Started with the excellent Locomotive BASIC which greeted you on screen when starting the thing. Then discovered Z80 assembly and an interest for programming languages. Implemented a Forth compreter in Z80 assembly just for the fun of it.

Later my father got another Schneider computer for his electrician business, a Schneider PC1512 with two 5 1/4" floppies and a set of four(?) colourful floppies with MS-DOS and GEM operating systems. I later pimped that device by topping up the RAM to 640k by buying RAM DIL chips and inserting them into the sockets provided on the motherboard. And I replaced the 8086 with a NEC V30.
On that device I discovered Turbo Pascal 3.01a (IIRC) which somehow (cough cough) found its way into my floppy box. I later got a properly purchased TP6 as a present from my parents (still got it in the basement). TurboVision anyone? Took me several days to understand the semantics of virtual!
Later moved on to C++ on PC, did an apprenticeship as Elektromechaniker at the university in Münster (where I discovered a disused PDP-11 in the basement), afterwards got an university Diplom (also a thing of the past now) implementing a Scheme interpreter in Java using the Mathematics departments Sun workstations running Solaris.

Since then mostly software development on the PC platform in C++ and Java.
And since the RPi happened also on ARM :slight_smile:

Marvin

Oh, and look what I found in the basement:

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Ah ha - the same book! Remarkable! Welcome, one and all, good to meet you and hear your stories.

Hey CAC! Imagine running into you here :joy:

How’s the patreon thang going?

H

Came here the long way… Commodore PET 3032 > Sinclair ZX81 > Sinclair QL > Risc PC > PC > Mac.

I now design retro hardware. I have shelves and crates of retro components waiting for a schematic - I tend to buy hundreds of last run components just before the price shoots up. I have $25,000 of dual port SRAM, for example.

Currently working on a re-implementation of the Sinclair QL.

Wow, that’s quite the stock-in-hand - welcome. A great journey, from 8 to 16 to 32 bits - I’m sure Archimedes counts as retro, so Risc PC surely does too. It’s probably not very well-known, which makes it extra interesting.

Just signing up here after the G+ debacle.

I have made an Enigma Simulator or two…

Here is a list of projects:

And the Enigma Simulators:

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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.

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Hi all

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 :slight_smile: 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!

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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. :wink:

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.

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