Hi, I’m Jeff. I started off soldering circuit boards for $2.50 an hour in the 1970s when hardware was still built by hand in the US. Along the way I’ve worked on all kinds of crazy stuff including the Trident missile test program and one of Glen Culler’s computer companies…Glen was a true old-timer. More recently all software at work, but my retro hobby interests lie mostly in hardware construction. Currently putting together a retro-ish computer of my own design using mostly 74HC-family components. This is a pretty well-explored topic area I know, but there it is; perhaps I’ll post about it sometime. Nice to meet you all.
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Welcome, Jeff! We never tire of seeing retrocomputer designs, no matter how many we’ve seen.
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Definitely want to hear more about this computer you’re designing, and what OS it will run.
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Hi,
I’m Radiance32, my full name is Terrence Vergauwen.
I am obsessed with old HP MS-DOS Palmtops (the ones released during the early/mid 1990’s like the 95LX, 100LX and 200LX).
I recently (about 2 months ago) created a new YouTube channel completely dedicated to these machines.
I do game reviews on them, show how to open them and install upgrades, install exotic software and OS’es on them, and have even managed to get a full SCSI-2 bus with peripherals working with a 200LX 
I hope to make regular posts here with links to interesting, nerdy and educational videos about these beautiful pieces of nostalgic history, the HP DOS Palmtop.
Thanks for your time,
Radiance
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Welcome, and thanks for your new threads!
Great to see that we’ve had more than a dozen new joiners in the past month, and I see half a dozen have already joined in the conversations. So, this is to say welcome, to all, and to encourage you to post a bit of your story here, if you like - how you got into computing, back in the day, or how you got back into retrocomputing more recently, or which machines you are especially fond of, or what you like to do with the machines you have now.
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I was first a writer of software, and then a collector.
60 years ago, as a 7th grader, I read a “TutorText” book that taught machine language for a simple made-up computer using short lessons interspersed with multiple-choice questions. In 1966 I ran my first Fortran IV and assembly language programs using borrowed time on an IBM 7094. That led to an intern job with Jack Perrine at Athena Programming the spring and summer of 1967, which in turn led to a job at the Computer Center at U.C. Berkeley in the fall of 1967. There I worked with Charles Simonyi on CAL Snobol4 for the the CDC 6400, and with a larger team on the CAL Timesharing system for the same machine. In 1972, after graduating, I designed a microcoded (Digital Scientific Meta4) APL virtual machine for Berkeley’s Center for Research in Management Science, and systems software for minicomputers at a tiny software house for about a year. In 1974-1975 I worked with John Backus on functional programming at IBM San Jose Research, and then transaction processing with the System R team at the same lab. In 1976 I moved to Xerox and worked on the Pilot operating system for the Star office automation system. During that period, I purchased my first computer, an Atari 800. In 1981 at Tandem Computers I led a team building a prototype Motorola 68010-based workstation. During this period, I purchased my second computer, a Macintosh 512K “Fat Mac”. In 1985 I joined DEC’s System Research Center, where for the next 13 years I worked on a variety of projects including the operating system for the Firefly multiprocessor workstation, programming environments, a document viewer, and a recommendation system. In 1998, after Compaq had acquired Digital, I spent a few years at startups (Epiphany, a CRM company, and AgileTV, with a voice-based TV interface). Finally in 2003 I joined Adobe’s advanced development group, where my most satisfying contribution was coauthoring Elements of Programming with Alex Stepanov. My “retrocomputing” phase began at about this time, when the Computer History Museum recruited me as a volunteer and I began searching for historic source code, including Fortran 1, Lisp 1 and 1.5, Algol, and many others. After retirement in 2009, I could devote more time to this work.
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Excellent introduction and great story - thanks!
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I enjoyed reading your texts about the APL machine. I had researched reconfigurable computers of the past (such as the Burroughs 1700) but had not come across the Meta4 before.
I think the Meta4 was designed for IBM 1130 emulation. It was pretty fast.
Hi folks, I’m Pete, a software engineer of about 40 years. I started as a hardware engineer but quickly switched and haven’t stopped yet.
I persuaded my parents to buy me a CompuKit UK101 and built it and played around with at University, where I met other fans - one who wrote Defender for it over summer.
I build my own 6809 based machine which grew to have 64K of dynamic RAM, video and a floppy disk controller. It didn’t live beyond about a year or two, and I don’t have any pictures of it - but would love to build another 6809 machine again.
I joined Digital Equipment Co Ltd and was there for about twelve years, first starting on a DECmate (PDP8 based) word processor.
After DEC collapsed, I joined Sensaura and worked on 3D positional audio for about another twelve years.
After Sensaura got bought out by Creative, I joined Codemasters and became a games developer. I lasted about four years then found myself out of games for a while. I’m back in games now, as a tools programmer, working for a different company.
I love tinkering with Arduino, Netduino and various other bits of hardware in my spare time.
I’m a STEM ambassador and go into schools to promote STEM subjects - love talking about my long career as a software engineer.
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Hi Pete,
thanks for being one of the people who piqued my interest in the 6809 all those years ago. I’m sad to hear that your homebrew system has not survived. I do finally have a 6809 system of my own now, (see Home · nealcrook/multicomp6809 Wiki · GitHub and boards:sbc:multicomp:cycloneii-c:start [RetroBrew Computers Wiki])
Neal (another DEC refugee)
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Also a small intro of myself,
I found this forum when looking around after I took one of my special machines out of storage. This machine is quite rare so I found it nice when on the article of this machine (a Silver computer by DeGrafe) I found my own picture.
besides this machine I have some (more common) stuff like a C64, and a couple of game consoles. Once I collected them but gave that up and only have a couple of them left (Atari, colecovision, an original vectrex ect)
so currently I am playing with the silver. and writing some things to preserve this weird machine.
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Hi
Quick intro; homebrew & retrocomputer hobbyist. Designed and build several different SBCs and peripherals over the years since first Z80 SBC in 2006. All-in-one SBCs, ECB, S-100, PC/XT/AT ISA, etc. Have used many different CPUs but Z80 is my favorite. Enjoy KiCAD, FreeRouting, plated-through-hole PCBs, TTL 74LSxx digital logic ICs.
Current projects include
Z80 Modular Backplane Computer, single function per board system (aka nhyodyne)
Z180 upd7220 Graphic Display Controller all-in-one SBC (aka rhyophyre)
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Welcome! And welcome to other recent joiners too.
(If anyone has their interest piqued by one of the topics mentioned here, or wants to expand on something they mentioned themselves, I encourage them to start a thread for it.)
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Hello, I’m David. I started using computers long enough ago that all of my early (and not-so-early) computers are considered retro now, though I see many people here got started many years before I did. I started with Acorn machines (Electron, then A3000 and A7000+) before getting into Linux on PCs.
I’m mostly active in the stardot forums, though I have started following The Unix Heritage Society mailing list for insights into Unix history. I also drift in and out of the Plan 9 and Inferno communities on the 9fans mailing list and Inferno OS Google Group while I try to port Inferno to different bits of hardware.
Most recently, I started using microcontrollers to experiment with simple, low resource, computing systems. This seems to bring things full circle given that many early computer systems were similarly constrained.
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Footnotes to introduction due to new user linking limitations: 
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I came into this group thinking it was about 1980’s computer like the Apple //e and Commodore 64. Boy, did I get a surprise! I found a lot of interesting things about old mainframes and other computers from way back. I have a habit of posting things I’ve found elsewhere only to find they had been already posted here.
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Hi folks! My is name Perry and I’ve been into computers since discovering my high school computer lab. It was three walls of TRS-80 Model 1’s connected to a Model 3, used for file transfers and printing. I started out playing Star Trek but then someone told me I could cheat by hitting the break key and then GOTO a particular line number. This is when my fascination with computers really started. I was able to convince my parents to buy me an Atari 400 with 410 tape drive and got to work typing in programs from magazines and attempting to write games. I also taught myself 6502 assembly when I learned how much faster my program’s would run. I didn’t get very far with assembly at that time, but it did become useful later while studying to become an EE. I’m pretty proficient with it these days and have written a few games for various Atari computers and consoles. Now I find myself trying to recapture my childhood by collecting, repairing and programming old computers. I recently discovered a Monroe OC8820 in my father-in-laws crawl space. It’s going to be my next project once I have time to drag it home and check it out. One of these days I would love to acquire an Altair, but that will probably have to wait until I hit retirement and have the time to play.
Regards,
Perry
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Hi Perry, welcome!
Regarding the Monroe OC8820, we had once a thread on this:
and (the thread mentioned at the very start of the previous one):
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