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icon14.gif  Welcome to the new RBC Forum & introductions [message #2] Sat, 31 October 2015 21:21 Go to previous message
Andrew B is currently offline  Andrew B
Messages: 467
Registered: October 2015
Location: Near Redmond, WA
Senior Member
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Hello fellow homebrew computer enthusiasts! Welcome to the new RBC forum.

I'll be making a few threads to cover different topics, but I thought it might be fun to start the next phase of our group with some new introductions for everyone.

I'm only 30 so I missed the eras of the S-100-type compueters and the early PCs, but my the first computer my family had was an IBM 5150 that a friend gave us (formerly owned by someone who had worked at IBM's chip fab in Burlington, VT) It had all of the manuals and original IBM software, so it gave me a pretty good start on retro computers. We progressed through another used 8088 (an Epson Equity 1 with the full 640k and CGA) and a Northgate 286, before I finally convinced my family to buy a brand new PC. Even after we had a new family PC, the first PC I had that was just mine was a Packard Bell 486. So I've used a range of different eras of hardware.

The programming skills I learned in BASICA eventually go upgraded to QuickBASIC, then in college to MATLAB and Python. My work is as a mechanical/propulsion engineer designing/building spacecraft subsystems (there's some parts I built when I was at JPL on Mars right now with the Curiosityrover , and now I'm working on the new Dragon 2 crewed spacecraft at SpaceX), but I've gotten a lot out of the skills the original PC gave me in terms of not being scared to write some code to make a job easier or build a board to interface mechanical hardware to electrical hardware.

So far I've built the V1 Zeta+PartPortProp, John's 12-slot backplane for the 505-6058 chassis, the SBC-188, 4MEM, and Color VDU boards, as well as the Spare Time Gizmos SBC-6120 PDP-8 SBC (I'd love to bring a 6120 board into the fold of our ECB bus!Wink. On the S-100 side I just finished Ant's 18-slot backplane and I've got a backlog of the S-100 boards to build a new-build S-100 system. I also distributed the run of 65 of the 6x0x-ATX-6U boards all over the world. I've got a vintage Vector Graphic MZ that I spent a lot of time getting running again - finally got ahold of the matching Mindless Terminal this fall.

Andrew B.

[Updated on: Sun, 30 September 2018 14:38]

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