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
Welcome @amegahed and thanks for your introduction! (Welcome also to other recent joiners - please feel free to share a little about your retro journey.)
We’ve had about 40 new joiners since that last introduction, which is great - anyone like to speak up, about how they discovered this forum, how they came to computers, what their current retrocomputing interests are?
Hi folks! I’m a Python developer working on web services and machine learning, and also learning Go.
Got into computing aged 6 when we got a CPC464 and shortly afterwards my dad, who was a teacher, brought an RM Nimbus home every weekend for us to play with.
At the moment I’m doing something very silly: Re-implementing RM Basic as a 64-bit application that can run on Windows and Linux. There’s loads of people working on old interpreters but RM Basic seems totally dead and forgotten - I just felt sorry for it!
Tried running RM Basic on the MAME64 Nimbus but realised there was no way I could decompile and recompile it to add new features. So RM BASICx64 is like a self-contained emulator and BASIC interpreter in one. At the moment it can save programs, evaluate expressions, PRINT, GOTO and one or two other things. Next on the list are arrays, functions, subroutines, etc. Here’s a screenshot:
Please please please hit me up if you have any interest or background in RM Basic. All I’ve found so far are the manuals and, by decompiling the original executable, a shout-out to “Tim, Goat, Gerry & Co.”
Hello, my name is Kyle and I am a software developer.
My interaction with computers starts in the mid 90’s. The first computer I really remember was an AST machine running windows 95. I also remember using an IBM or IBM clone we got from my uncle but I’m not sure if that was before or after the AST machine. I used computers quite often at school and home. My first interaction with hardware was when my computer stopped working so I took it apart to see if I could tell why. I didn’t really know what I was doing then so we ended up taking it in to get repaired. My first sort of interaction with software was when I started doing some hex-editing for Half-Life 2/G-Mod model makers. The Valve model format had the path to the texture files written into it so if you wanted to have a separate model instead of just a replacement model you had to edit the data in the model file to change the path names. The trick being that you couldn’t add or remove characters, so the new path had to be the same length as the original. I also played with some 3D modeling at that time.
It wasn’t till university when my interest in computers really took off. I had to take a programming course as part of my first year and it just clicked. I built my first computer that summer and, apart from not understanding what thermal grease did, everything went well. I then majored in computers and have been working as a software developer ever since.
Through university and my later working career my interest in programming languages grew, especially older programming languages. I’m fascinated by the history of them and learning why things were did a certain way and how that influenced the things that came after. I own way too many programming books and I’ve been trying to work my way through them and learn as much as I can.
My interest in retro computing sort of comes out of that. I used an MS-DOS virtual machine to run Turbo Pascal and MASM and lately I’ve wanted to go even earlier. Recently I bought an old Pentium III based Dell, similar to one I had as a kid, and I’m using it to run Windows 3.1, OS/2 2.2, Windows 98 SE, and Windows NT 4.0. I’ve also recently bought an Altair 8800 Clone and a The C64. I’ve been using the 8800 clone to learn about 8080 instructions and plan to use it to learn about early versions of BASIC and CP/M. I want to do something similar with The C64 and 65XX instructions and Commodore BASIC. I’d also like to get a Spectrum Next if they come up for sale again and maybe an FPGA board.
I’m kind of trying to stay away from real retro hardware at the moment because I haven’t done a lot of soldering and I don’t really feel confident troubleshooting hardware. I’m working on a kit to build a 6502 based computer on a breadboard and after I’m done that I’ll probably try some soldering and then maybe look into getting some real retro machines.
Well, I’m not sure how coherent that is but hopefully it works as an introduction.
