I've been here early on from the start of the forum so this is long over due. Always loved HW and SW but from a gaming point of view just kinda mild. I used to play on my girlfriend's Atari 2600 as well as hitting the arcades.
I have a lot of plans for the NABU with the parallel port driving SPI components and doing something with the other Keyboard IO line as well as doing a RC2014/RCBUS to NABU backplane converter. Stay tuned.
Pic below: Dec 1984 With new toy, IBM PC Jr. Woaah look at the 1970s wall paper! I could not afford the IBM PC 5150 or XT 5160. Still $1300 for the IBM Jr was still a chunk of money. Hindsight, the Tandy 1000 was a better intro PC clone for the same price. Looks like I'm in high school but I was 21 here. Always looked younger than I really was. I was working for Intel for almost a year here at this point. After Intel and Signetics, Micron, PMC-Sierra, HP/HPE etc I'm at a elevator controller company doing FPGA and PCB design work with some SW sprinkled in there too. (PIC/STM32) Alot of release test SW from Micron period until now.
Greg
New Old User
New Old User
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LeoBinkowski
- Posts: 168
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:23 pm
- Location: nabu.ca
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Re: New Old User
Welcome Greg,
Your pic and PCjr story are cool additions. I remember when we got an IBMpc JR at NABU. I just couldn't understand why IBM, which had the greatest of key again on a keyboard, released that chiclet keyboard as if it was a Z80 Spectrum or something.
It was weird, because the PCjr was more capable than the regular IBM pc. It was if they made a keyboard so babies could chew on it.
Leo
Your pic and PCjr story are cool additions. I remember when we got an IBMpc JR at NABU. I just couldn't understand why IBM, which had the greatest of key again on a keyboard, released that chiclet keyboard as if it was a Z80 Spectrum or something.
It was weird, because the PCjr was more capable than the regular IBM pc. It was if they made a keyboard so babies could chew on it.
Leo
Re: New Old User
Nice picture. I don't have a single picture of me back then at my computer - maybe because I would have said to anyone who wanted to take my picture, "Get lost! Can't you see I'm busy?"
I remember wallpaper like that. It always drove me crazy - as if it's one of those "spot the differences" quiz. I'd notice the repeating patterns and try to look for differences.
I remember wallpaper like that. It always drove me crazy - as if it's one of those "spot the differences" quiz. I'd notice the repeating patterns and try to look for differences.
Re: New Old User
Yeah, I didn't like too many pics of myself being taken as I was always self conscious about it for some reason. My mother must of snuck up on me. The wall paper is long gone. Well that wall is gone too as the new buyers took two walls in the kitchen out to make the kitchen and dining/living room one big room. People want open rooms now and not compartmentalized rooms of yesteryear. It only took my wife and I seven months to clean out 47 years of stuff to get it ready for sale last year. Rescued our Apple II Plus in the process. Having fun with that in addition to the NABU.
I eventually bought a memory sidecar and a after market hardrive unit for the Jr. I had the 300 baud modem card that plugged into the dedicated slot for it. I don't remember if that came stock or not. Yes, the first release of the Jrs had a chicklet keyboard and then the improved keyboard as you can see in the pic. Defiantly not the heavy clicky keyboard. My guess was cost. If I remember right the floppy was a little slower in performance than the std PC as I think the floppy controller didn't have DMA connected. I got a 286 clone system in 86/87 to replace it.
Greg
I eventually bought a memory sidecar and a after market hardrive unit for the Jr. I had the 300 baud modem card that plugged into the dedicated slot for it. I don't remember if that came stock or not. Yes, the first release of the Jrs had a chicklet keyboard and then the improved keyboard as you can see in the pic. Defiantly not the heavy clicky keyboard. My guess was cost. If I remember right the floppy was a little slower in performance than the std PC as I think the floppy controller didn't have DMA connected. I got a 286 clone system in 86/87 to replace it.
Greg
Re: New Old User
My Apple II Plus went "missing in action". It never showed up after a move. The movers tried to claim it was never in the shipment. But... why did I have the Apple II drive and joystick?
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allinretro
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Mon Apr 03, 2023 5:37 pm
Re: New Old User
Hey, that is a great old photo. Classic debugging focus.
Here is a similar photo I pulled from our 1980/1981 School Yearbook. Our "Computer Lab" which shared a room with the full drum kit for the school band. There was one computer for about 300 students and I was one of a half dozen students that had any interest at all. I logged many, many hours on that old CBM untill I got my Apple II plus in 1982. I still have the II plus in storage and will have to take it out and get it running again.
Here is a similar photo I pulled from our 1980/1981 School Yearbook. Our "Computer Lab" which shared a room with the full drum kit for the school band. There was one computer for about 300 students and I was one of a half dozen students that had any interest at all. I logged many, many hours on that old CBM untill I got my Apple II plus in 1982. I still have the II plus in storage and will have to take it out and get it running again.
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LeoBinkowski
- Posts: 168
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Re: New Old User
What a great PIC!
The computer camp I worked prior to NABU was a bunch of Commodore PETs networked together with this module called a MuPET, that plugged into the IEEE interface on the back. It allowed a lab of 8 PETs to share one disk unit and printer, and actually worked quite well. We used 2 classrooms of them for the computer camp, another full of logic boards, and yet another that we had for anything else like games and such.
Just before the end of the computer camp, we were approached by Chris Wallace of NABU, and we were all offered jobs. Only 4 took them. I was the first.
The computer camp I worked prior to NABU was a bunch of Commodore PETs networked together with this module called a MuPET, that plugged into the IEEE interface on the back. It allowed a lab of 8 PETs to share one disk unit and printer, and actually worked quite well. We used 2 classrooms of them for the computer camp, another full of logic boards, and yet another that we had for anything else like games and such.
Just before the end of the computer camp, we were approached by Chris Wallace of NABU, and we were all offered jobs. Only 4 took them. I was the first.