Greetings and Thanks

[Dave7F]

I grew up with 8-bit computers in the late 70's and early 80's. It started in 1976 with an original blue face Commodore PET 2001 with the built in cassette and chiclet keyboard my father purchased at the 2nd West Coast Computer Faire in the San Francisco Bay area when I was 11. My father and I learned the BASIC language together on that machine. This also sparked a lifelong interest in hobby electronics as we made our own PCBs to create memory expansions and other improvements to that old PET. Over the years I would move on to a VIC-20, Atari 400, C64, a variety of associated peripherals, for some reason all 6502 based.

Eventually we entered that "16-bit" era on an original IBM PC 5271 provided to my father by his employer (yeah I know the 8088 isn't "really" 16 bit), but that machine could also run 24-bit IBM 370 mainframe code and had a version of IBM's VM operating system on it. My interest in that technology eventually led to a 40 year career with a core competency of IBM mainframes, but I did get a fair share of time on computers of lesser capability.

One thing that was completely skipped in my past was computers based 8080/z80 and CP/M. When I saw the NABU come on the retro scene in 2022, i picked one up as it seemed an opportunity to experience something I missed in what is now seen as "retro computing". Due to work, other projects, and health I didn't do anything with the NABU until yesterday, when I set it up on a table in my hobby room and connected it to Retronet.

I want to thank Leo and DJ for all the work they have done. Thank you gentlemen, this was an outstanding job of preserving what was clearly a technology that was underappreciated in it's day. I have had a thoroughly wonderful time this weekend filling in that gap in my 8-bit experiences, playing some games using AY-3-8910 and TMS9918 hardware, poking around in the "time capsule" that is found in some of the "cycle" files of the day, experimenting with CP/M a bit, and reading about the NABU IOS. I felt some of the magic I did playing with similar machines back in my teenage years. I just wish I could have still said, "Hey Dad, come look at this!".

[LeoBinkowski]

Hey, thanks a lot for the encouragement. I'm hoping to get more involved this year, and have at least one more VCF talk in Montreal.

Leo

[AGMS]

Same here, lots of 6502 code at the time, with only a bit of Z80 for a 1980 summer job at Dypix / Dy-4 helping do cursor codes for a serial terminal. I really only got familiar with Z80 when recently working on Nth Pong Wars for the Nabu (on hold until July 2025 when I have some time). Oddly it’s lots of fun working against the limits of a small slow system.