Home » RBC Forums » General Discussion » Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions (Hello everyone!)
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #4278 is a reply to message #4205] |
Sun, 04 February 2018 12:23   |
smp
Messages: 49
Registered: January 2018
Location: Bedford, NH, USA
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Hello everyone!
I'm Stephen Pereira, A.K.A smp. I've been involved with personal computing since I purchased my Altair 8800 kit back in 1976.
I graduated college with my BSEE in 1975. MSCS in 2002.
Retired in October 2016, and I'm loving every moment of it.
Notes from my past history:
In November 1976, I opened the first computer store in NH: Microcomputers, Inc. We sold IMSAI, Polymorphic, and Northstar kits, and assembled cards and computers. We attempted to sell complete systems into local small businesses. My partner and I operated until the fall of 1978, when we went broke.
I have (currently working):
Altair 680, IMSAI 8080 with JAIR-8080 CPU replacement running CP/M v2.2, HP-86B with HP-82900A Auxiliary Processor (A.K.A. CP/M System) and HP-9121D floppy disk drive, HP-110+ with HP-9114 floppy disk drive, HP-200LX, HP-41CL, HP Jornada 820, TI-74 BasiCalc, Apple IIC+, Apple IIGS (ROM 3), Tandy 2800HD, CoCo 3 with SDC, CoCo3FPGA, Heathkit H8, Osborne 1, Osborne Executive, Kaypro 2, Macintosh 512KE, Macintosh PowerBook 170, Macintosh Graphite iBook 466MHz (M6411), DEC PDP-11/23;
and (currently non-working):
(another) Kaypro 2, Heath/Zenith Z-110, SPARCclassic, a small variety of Macintosh desktop units.
Plenty of stuff here to keep me busy. I recently purchased a Tiny68K board from Bill Shen, and I'm having a blast playing around with it.
Thanks for listening!
smp
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #4389 is a reply to message #4278] |
Sat, 24 February 2018 10:47 |
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putnamelectronics
Messages: 3
Registered: February 2018
Location: Maryland, USA
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Junior Member |
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Hi Everyone!
My name is Jason (or on my YouTube channel, "Corneleous Worthington") I'm super excited to find this forum and like-minded people! 
Here's my computer history:
My first computer was a Commodore 64, but growing up I enjoyed playing with a lot of computers (it seemed like each of my friends in the 1980's had a different kind of family computer to use) A couple of friends had VIC-20s, a nuch had C-64s like me, a bunch had PC XTs and PC ATs (or clones), one friend had a Timex Sinclair/1000, etc. My dad was a speech writer, and I remember he used to bring home a TRS-80 Model 100 for work, and that computer was neat! At school there was a yearly field trip to a science center, that had Commodore PETs we'd program BASIC and LOGO on, and they also had Apple IIs. Later in highschool we had Mac Plus/Classics. So, growing up I came into contact with all sorts of neat/awesome computers! I used to love to type in games and programs from Compute! and Compute!'s Gazette, and I absolutely LOVED calling BBSs. Later, in the mid 1990s I hosted my own BBS, a Wildcat!4.20 single line system on a 386 built from dumpster-dive parts! Those were the days!
Currently:
I've been bitten by the electronics bug. Back in college, I got a job fixing circuit boards from pinball machines, video games, and juke boxes. That started a love of circuit boards, and lately, I've started designing my own. I designed a single board computer, called the "PE6502", which is very much like a suped up Apple 1. I talked about it on my YouTube channel (starting with my design and early breadboard experiments) and eventually, once I had boards made, people started reaching out to me asking if they could buy one! I wrote a really cool instruction manual, and started selling kits of this computer through my website (putnamelectronics.com).. I've been selling a lot of kits, and have lately decided to start designing/selling a sound-card add-on (SID compatible for you Commodore fans) I'm also going to start selling a full kit of the Zeta2 computer (from Sergey Kiselev, and thoroughly documented here on RetroBrew Computers forum, where you can also buy just the board I believe) so if someone wants to build one, they can buy everything they need in one kit. I promised Sergey I'd write a detailed assembly manual first, so that even a newb could build one and feel comfortable, so I'm working on this now. It will come with the ROM already burned with the awesome firmware made by Wayne Warthen, Douglas Goodall, and David Giles (RomWBW) which includes CPM, a monitor, and other cool features.
Other projects:
I'm restoring a broken Apple II+ I got off eBay. I've got the display capability running, but it looks like my keyboard encoder is blown up. I'd like to make a new one using off the shelf components (I'm thinking an Atmel or PIC microcontroller based system).. I could use some collaborators on this if anyone would like to help. My strong suit is hardware design and implementation. I kinda suck at software!
I also cloned the awesome Briel AltairMicro- I wanted to buy one, but Vince is currently not selling them. I sure hope he starts selling his awesome products again! I hear he might sell through ReactiveMicro? If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know! I've built my own, and it is fully functional, but there are a LOT of parts in this- I have no idea how he was able to sell these for a reasonable price. This was a really fun project though! What I'd really like to do is, design a front panel for use with the Zeta2, so that the Zeta2 computer can be mounted in the AltairMicro style case, and can have the panel be a fully functional interface (in addition to a real S100 backplane too, so old-school cards can be used with the new tech SBC Zeta2). Now THAT would be cool!
OK, sorry for the ramble, and I hope this didn't sound too much like a commercial! I'm just excited to be here and to talk to you guys!
Jason
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Please check out my YouTube page
to see my electronics projects:
https://tinyurl.com/corneleous
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #4636 is a reply to message #4408] |
Sat, 21 April 2018 22:41 |
ale500
Messages: 44
Registered: April 2018
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Hello everyone,
I'm Ale, and I love retrocomputers. I grew up with a Brazilian TK-85, Z80-Based and a discrete clone (no ULA) of the ZX-81. I have several half-done projects involving 68K (68000, 68020, 68040), Z(x)80s, and some on the drawing board for 8086, 80188 and K1801VM1 (Russian PDP-11 clone). I'm quite proficient with FPGAs what brings the dilemma: is something FPGA-based a "real" computer or not...
A Tiny040 would be great ! It would probably have to be a "double decker", the 040 is quite a large package at ~5x5 cm.
[Updated on: Sat, 21 April 2018 23:44] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #5124 is a reply to message #4636] |
Thu, 06 September 2018 06:42 |
scottie4442
Messages: 6
Registered: September 2018
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Junior Member |
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Hi everyone
I have been working with computers since 78. I started on an IBM system 34 doing COBOL and RPG programming. My first computer that I owned was a hand built trs-80 model 1, found out at the time that you could order the boards at the local radio shack and I got a copy of the model 1 technical reference manual. I collected up the parts and built it myself, my grandpa built me a case for it out of wood ( wish I still had that computer). I was an assembly language programmer for a long time, worked with z80, 8080, 8086, 6502, 6800 and 68000. I just got the boards for the zeta v2 and the z80-mbc2 and am working at finding the parts. I also own my original model 4p, had it since 87. I like to work in retro computer scene and tube audio equipment. Teach at the local community college, my program is computer networking, my main area of expertise. I also work on the side as a system engineer/administrator for a bunch of local companies.
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #6659 is a reply to message #2] |
Mon, 14 October 2019 14:27 |
protocall7
Messages: 20
Registered: October 2019
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Junior Member |
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Hi All,
I'm proto, a 33 year old devops engineer. I too missed out on many of the machine types discussed here -- my first machine was an 80286 in the early 90s. That said, I was exposed to the Apple II from a very young age at school, and worked my way through computers of the 286, 386, 486, AMD K5, AMD K6, Pentium, Athlon, et. al. families.
Since 2014, I have been working on the design of my first homebrew machine. It is Z80 based, sporting a 32K ROM, 32K RAM, bus buffering and decoding on-board, and several peripheral expansion slots. I am intending this machine to be a platform to develop the peripherals I will require to run a more full-fledged system. I am targeting CollapseOS for the first rev of this machine (I was previously torn between BASIC and a custom ROM monitor), and maybe a TinyBASIC ROM. The first set of boards should be arriving from China sometime this week, so I will probably have plenty of questions for the group as I start assembling and testing my design.
Hopefully with this first machine, I will be able to develop serial communications (via an SIO), persistent storage (I'm thinking CF Card, but I did pick up a couple of the WD1773's that norwestrzh posted about over the summer), an RTC, and banked memory. If I can get all of that functionality running, I believe I will have a fairly complete platform for running FUZIX.
I look forward to joining in the community, and the opportunity to learn and share information!
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #6669 is a reply to message #6659] |
Tue, 15 October 2019 05:26 |
jl28
Messages: 1
Registered: October 2019
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Junior Member |
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Hi all, glad to be here 
I've recently got the RC2014 bug having built the Zed Pro kit. I have a few PCBs for the Zeta V2 SBC on their way from the PCB fab too. I've been playing with electronics most my life, but lately it's mostly been limited to Arduinos, until I saw the RC2014. Prior to that I designed and built an 8051 SBC at uni over 2 decades ago. First computer was a TRS-80 MC-10, followed by a C64, Amstrad PC1512, generic 386SX33, DX2-66, etc. Picked up a few more interesting machines along the way such as a SPARCstation5, MicroVAX, VAX4000/705A (donated to a museum), AlphaServer 2000 (also donated).
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #6670 is a reply to message #6669] |
Tue, 15 October 2019 05:52 |
beb
Messages: 10
Registered: October 2019
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Junior Member |
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Hello to all members of the forum,
my name is Benoit, I am a 52yo french electronic engineer who has the chance to work almost everyday on systems based on old processors, like the 68020 or 68000, VME bus, G64/G96 bus, etc... I also work a lot in the domain of vintage synthesizers CPU boards (most based on 8085, 6809, 6303 and other 8 bits processors)
My first computer was a Camputers LYNX 96K, which is still working !
I am a FPGA specialist and my main activity is to develop FPGA based emulators of retro/obsolete chips. I work a lot on the MiST platform for retrocomputing but since a few months I am working in parallel to create a kind of "universal retro-CPU" board based on Terasic DE0 Nano daughterboard (able to switch between 6809/6502/Z80/8052 CPUs just by changing the FPGA bitfile). I also have the dream to build a vintage video adapter based on a FPGA model of the EF9356 video processor (but time is missing for now...
[Updated on: Tue, 15 October 2019 05:53] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #6689 is a reply to message #6688] |
Sat, 19 October 2019 00:14 |
athaphian
Messages: 1
Registered: October 2019
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Junior Member |
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Hi everyone,
Let me introduce myself.
Like many others I was too young to actively participate in the home building of computers. I was born in '83 and the first computer I felt I 'owned' was a 486 MS DOS machine, which I learned QBasic on.
I did have an MSX too, but without tape or disk drive it was a bit of a useless machine for me at that time. I recently sold it, since I was not planning to do anything with the machine anyway.
My father had build an Acorn Atom in the time before I was born and I can still remember him playing around with it before he upgraded to x86 DOS machines. He still has that thing somewhere in the attic.
Currently I work as fullstack java / javascript (and everything related from sql to html) developer for various companies in The Netherlands. I have been doing this for about 12 years now.
I have also been playing around with PIC microcontrollers (both in assembly and C), Arduino, Raspberry pi's and other stuff and now I have become obsessed with going the same route my dad took and build an 8 bit machine from chips and pcb's. Purely for educational purposes. I am already learning lot's of stuff by reading up on the technology.
For now I don't feel comfortable enough to design my own computer yet and have settled on building the Zeta v2 SBC, since I am very intrigued by the memory paging and chip select logic on that board.
I have sourced most of the hardware, but am still in the market for a Zeta v2 PCB. If anyone has them in stock, please send me a pm. I'd like to take one off your hands
Otherwise if I can't find any in the upcoming weeks, I might pull the trigger and contact a manufacturer and order a bunch myself.
-Athaphian-
[Updated on: Sat, 19 October 2019 00:15] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #6979 is a reply to message #6689] |
Sat, 01 February 2020 04:05 |
oldspark
Messages: 21
Registered: January 2020
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Junior Member |
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Hi guys,
I'm an 56 years old german, born in the eastern part of germany "behind the iron curtain".
I've built my first Computer out of chips around 1980 or so, it was an small Z80 based system.
Now an old man, I'm still playing with some computers, I own some (Mikro)-PDP11's, Microvaxes,
and old robotron Stuff, Z80 and 8086 Systems from the former GDR.
I've worked as system admin and Electronican in the time from 1989 until 2006 for different employers,
our university here in Freiberg where I was able to play with all kinds of big and samm Computers, was one
of them. Since 2007 I'm running my own business, developing electronics, build prototypes and repair
industry related electronics. I'm an Unix Guy, mostly have FreeBSD running since I love BSD since I had an
account on an russian PDP11/34 like system (SM1420) running 2.9 BSD.
An PDP11/83 running 2.11 BSD is still under my desk, ok haven't switched in on for a while..
Lat year a german buddy gave me two blank REH CPU280 Boards which I put together, both are running.
I've build a system with an REH IDE Interface and am 128MB "Disk on Module" Flash disk which is the cause
that I've registered here.
Kind Regards,
Holm
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #7701 is a reply to message #7699] |
Mon, 25 May 2020 07:28 |
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Hello! Considering how young I am (19 now, 20 years old in a few months), I might be a bit out of place on this forum but oh well!
As said previously, I'm pretty young compared to most of y'all, and also very inexperienced - I've rarely even had a chance to mess with hardware.
I have a Commodore 64 which I purchased earlier this year, in January, which was repaired by the guy I bought it from.
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #8108 is a reply to message #7701] |
Sun, 29 November 2020 13:55 |
phil_g
Messages: 29
Registered: November 2020
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Junior Member |
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Hi, I'm Phil and I'm 66 from North Yorkshire. I fondly recall the early microprocessor days of the mid 70s when if you wanted a computer, you had to build one and program it in machine code with LEDs and binary switches. I still have my own-design SC/MP microcomputer which runs KITBUG in its 2k ROM and 1k RAM. I scrapped my own much, much modified Nascom-1 some 20 years ago and have regretted it ever since - it literally went in the local dumpit site skip. I originally built the Nascom from a prototype kit for Lynx and its no exageration to say I owe my career to that board 
Back in the 70s I joined the recently formed 'Amateur Computer Club' where everything was homebrewed, this was long before BBCs and such, & later found the "ACC North-West" through the newsletter and used to drive over the Pennines every month to meetings held at Manchester Uni. After a year or so about 10 of us founded the ACC-Sheffield, but by then the commercial stuff was starting to push out homebrewing. I think the local group only survived a further year, then the ACC itself completely faded away from existence.
We started a homebrew computer group within BT and did very well for a few meetings, most were homebrew but one lad had a kit-built Sinclair Mk14 (much in common with my SC/MP) but it too petered out. Things changed so quickly and electronics was expensive. I'd been running a dialup mailbox/BBS on the expanded Nascom-1 for some time by then.
At work we found some scrapped ticket machines that had a Motorola 6800 inside, I pulled the processor boards, wrote a monitor for it and made a few development boards for the club, still have a couple here. It had a heady 1k of RAM, a hex display and hex keyboard.
By this time I'd assembled (from a Ferguson Big-Board, rather than built from scratch) a CP/M machine with 180k diskettes (! and I joined the CP/M user group which was mostly a library and disk-format-conversion service, I made a few modest contributions, custom BIOS stuff, bios extensions, Remote CP/M, and BBS s/w and a few Ham programs like RTTY, Morse trx, Mailbox, AX25 etc.
The CP/M User Group survived for a couple of years after the IBM PC arrived then that too folded - all the work was done by Derek Fordred and his wife, I think people took advantage of his good nature. I still have my CP/M box (its huge) but I've no idea if it still works - but no matter as I now have a Z80-MBC2 mini-CP/M board which is brilliant - smaller, faster and with more storage than the Fergy!
I like the idea of an accurate software emulation of the old gear, on a familiar, modern processor... I built one of Karen Orton's pic-based MK14 clones which works great, also her pic NIBL basic project, both of which use her SC/MP emulation. I've also an unbuilt-as-yet kit for the Altairduino which is a 100% cycle-emulation of the old Altair 8800, capable of running CP/M and hence a myriad of crappy software obsolescence, with a proper printed panel which faithfully recreates the look of the old rig. I'm so looking forward to assembling it and playing the original, text-only Star Trek game!
I'm going to call the Altair "Ralf" In the mid 80s Whiz Kids was my fave programme on TV!
Looking forward to more retro stories and projects
Cheers
Phil G4PHL
[Updated on: Sun, 29 November 2020 13:58] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #9262 is a reply to message #8108] |
Wed, 20 October 2021 14:31 |
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berzerkula
Messages: 15
Registered: May 2020
Location: Arkansas, USA
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Junior Member |
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Greetings,
William from Northwest Arkansas! I started with Kaypro II's, TS1000's, TRS80's (mostly from the Ham Radio club W0LF) and then moved onto XT/AT machines and pretty much everything in between up till now.
I've set my sights on some 6502 and M68K projects. So far all pretty well. I've had fun building the RC2014 and its add-ons, Ben Eater's 6502, Sergey's Xi8088 (that one was a doozy but fun), Rosco's M68K (still in progress but have it running and get serial i/o), and KISS-68030.
I can't leave this one out! The Single Board Relay Computer Trainer! http://relaysbc.sourceforge.net/ Now that one still has to be tweaked. Some relays may be having issues!
-- William
You feel a whole lot more like you do now than you did when you used to.
[Updated on: Wed, 20 October 2021 14:32] Report message to a moderator |
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| Re: Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #9948 is a reply to message #9573] |
Sun, 05 June 2022 22:50 |
cheshirenoir
Messages: 14
Registered: June 2022
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Junior Member |
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Hi All,
Greetings from Perth, Australia.
I'm 50, and the first time round, I started on the good old Commodore 64, then Amiga 1200, then onto a series of increasingly boring PCs. (I did have a brief encounter with a couple of S100 based systems at Uni, but never any serious contact.
I got into retrocomputing about 8 years ago when a friend gifted me an old Commodore CD32. Since then I have amassed an increasingly large collection of old systems, some common, some less so.
Last year I bought myself am Omega MSX2 PCB, plus the components and built myself my first kit computer, but I hope it won't be my last.
Next on the cards is I want to build a Sinclair Spectrum 128k compatible. I have been contemplating a Harlequin, but I'm open to suggestions. I feel it will nicely complement my Spectrum 48k.
Cheers!
John "Cheshire Noir" Parker
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