forums.nabu.ca

Yay, I'm honored to be the first to post a Welcome introduction to the group! I plan to post updates on my project progress and assist anyone struggling to get going!

My introduction to NABU began when I was born because my uncles, John and Howard, and my father, Ron, worked at NABU. Even my older cousin Peter (John's son) worked in the mail room at a young age. My memories of NABU are faint, being that I was so young - but I remember the brown-themed office, lab, and energetic staff. Most of all, I remember my fascination with playing Kiddie Park, which at the time was a version of Pit Fall that was easy enough for me to play!

When I was born, my uncle had purchased shares in NABU for me, but we can't seem to find the share certificate - my mom swears it's somewhere in a box in the basement, so there's hope. But, in the meantime, I will post videos and images of my father's share certificate and rare NABU documents.

I recall my father coming home from work and telling me how exciting the vision of the NABU Network would be. He explained how one day I could do my banking, order flowers, talk to friends, purchase flights, and more with the worldwide network. In retrospect, he was describing the Internet many years before the Internet.

I organized his belongings when my father passed and kept several NABU-related items. However, I regret not keeping hundreds of items - it was a difficult time, and I was not in the correct headspace to plan for the future while dealing with my father's death - and had no idea the NABU would resurface to what it has become today. My father would be honored to witness my involvement and the community built around it.

Links
- Complete list of software that I've made for the NABU PC: https://nabu.ca/software
- YouTube playlist that documents my journey developing for the NABU:


I want to share this video that I took while cleaning my father's belongings. You will notice many NABU drive controllers, I/O cards, and more.

Hi DJ,

I worked with your father at Richmond Road and certainly remember him as a dynamic and exuberant member of the NABU team - and totally committed to the dream that was NABU! Sorry to hear of his passing, and really at such an early age. Indeed, the original ranks are beginning to thin out at this point, many of whom provided memorable direction and guidance in my early career.

It's great that Ron left you a bit of a legacy there with his NABU collection, and clearly his enthusiasm has rubbed off on his son. I'm certain he would be extremely proud of your efforts in revitalizing the NABU vision.

- Nick

Wow, Nick. That’s so nice of you to say. After nabu, my father, uncle John Bobak and Howard Sures left to start Apple Canada. Following Apple, my dad moved back to Thunder Bay and started Selectomatic games. Which was the largest arcade distributor and amusement games in Canada for a while. He had to downsize considerably in the late 90s as the “arcade” wasn’t a trendy thing anymore. But he maintained games at bowling alleys, and jukeboxes/pool tables at bars. He also owned the rights to
Bally Pool League, which was quite a big deal for a while. He passed in 2014 at 60 years old.

His time at nabu was really important to him. I wish his death wasn’t so hard on me because I would have been in the right headspace to keep more of his nabu stuff. At the time it was difficult to sort through it all. It would have been the largest nabu collection. He had servers, hard drives, floppy drives, motherboards, keyboards, all sorts of stuff. There was a pile of 1600’s.

He had kept every news paper clipping about nabu from the very start. Howard Sures lost all of his nabu stuff due to a forest fire that took his home. He’s quite sad about that happening because Howard was also very fond of Nabu. From talking to my family who worked there, it was very influential on their life.

I made an hour long video the other day going through the news paper clippings. I have to edit it still and hopefully shorten it. I also have a plan to scan ever page. There’s over 100, so it’s more than I originally thought.

It makes sense that you said there was a local run of prototypes. Because when I was going through the news articles, it seemed the story changed often. Because there were a few “launches”. So the big and offical/final launch seemed to be end of 83 start of 84.

Nick wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 2:54 pm Hi DJ,

I worked with your father at Richmond Road and certainly remember him as a dynamic and exuberant member of the NABU team - and totally committed to the dream that was NABU! Sorry to hear of his passing, and really at such an early age. Indeed, the original ranks are beginning to thin out at this point, many of whom provided memorable direction and guidance in my early career.

It's great that Ron left you a bit of a legacy there with his NABU collection, and clearly his enthusiasm has rubbed off on his son. I'm certain he would be extremely proud of your efforts in revitalizing the NABU vision.

- Nick

Oh incase you’re interested, here’s my fathers obituary. My aunt wrote it so there’s a few things missing because it’s a brief summary. But nabu was mentioned: https://www.legacy.com/ca/obituaries/ch ... d=43170326

Thanks DJ. Really great to hear what Ron did after NABU. I thought he had gone over to International Datacasting for a while post-NABU. But really, I lost contact with everyone after moving to Toronto, other than running into John Kelly at a couple of events over the years.

I am really enjoying this "Back To The Future" experience, in the sense that NABU really represented the future at that time. Rediscovering the memories and the people that shared this NABU journey is terrific, thanks to you and Leo.

- Nick

Nick wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 12:42 am Thanks DJ. Really great to hear what Ron did after NABU. I thought he had gone over to International Datacasting for a while post-NABU. But really, I lost contact with everyone after moving to Toronto, other than running into John Kelly at a couple of events over the years.

I am really enjoying this "Back To The Future" experience, in the sense that NABU really represented the future at that time. Rediscovering the memories and the people that shared this NABU journey is terrific, thanks to you and Leo.

- Nick

I don't recall hearing anything about International Datacasting - if it did happen, maybe a short stint before Apple. Uncle John Bobak was the one who landed the Apple deal, I'm guessing from his relationships through NABU.

I'm not sure if i mentioned it in one of my videos, but my first Apple ][ was a clone in a NABU case. The crazy thing I didn't realize then is I used a NABU keyboard. That means my father would have created a UART to Apple keyboard adapter. When this happened in 1986-87, being 4 or 5 years old, it wasn't something I understood enough to appreciate.

When I think about it now, there wasn't such a thing as a microcontroller. I'm unsure how he did it if there was a CPU and rom, or what. But either way, it's impressive to think about today.