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Greetings from Hillsboro, OR!

gweber

gweber

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2007
Messages
13
Location
Arizona
I just came across this forum, and I'm happy there's other vintage computer enthusiasts lurking about!

I'm the creator & maintainer of www.web8201.com. I suppose you could say I have a keen interest in the "Kyocera" family of original notebook computers: NEC PC-8201A/8300, Tandy Models 100/102/200, and others. These machines truly represent the first laptop computers on the market, circa 1983. My website mainly focuses on supporting the NEC models, with many downloads & technical documents available. You'll find other information as well that is generalized to all of the machines. If you do stop by, sign the ol' guestbook. It's nice to know who else is out there.

For those NEC PC-8201A owners, my current project is coming out with a version of Ultrascreen100 for this machine. It'll give you a 60 column by 10 line display using a slightly smaller but completely readable font!

Anyway I hope to check in here from time to time, maybe offering some advice, or picking up tips here and there. I hope there's more of you out there!

Cheers,

Gary Weber
www.web8201.com
 
I had one of these NEC machines when they first came out. It was great!

I sold it for some paltrey sum in 1989 or so. :sad:

I wish I'd kept it! I've acquired a Model 100 now. It's a better known machine but I still love that mushroom colour scheme and the lovely cursor arrangement of the PC-8201A.
 
Great site. Thank you for creating this paeon to what is called the !st laptop under whatever name, including Kyocera and Tandy. Very cool. Are you also a member of the Tandy 100 group, if it still exists ? I used to check it out occasionally but never did acquire one of these legendary machines. Wow !!! I'm very impressed. A hearty very big welcome.

Lawrence
 
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> Great site. Thank you for creating this paeon to what is
> called the !st laptop under whatever name, including
> Kyocera and Tandy. Very cool. Are you also a member
> of the Tandy 100 group, if it still exists ? I used to check
> it out occasionally but never did acquire one of these
> legendary machines. Wow !!! I'm very impressed. A hearty
> very big welcome.

Lawrence,

Thanks for the comments! Yes, I am a member of the Tandy 100 group, officially known as the "Club 100 Mailing List". (Info on this: http://www.club100.org/list.html)

There's actually quite a large group of Tandy & NEC laptop users on this list. In fact, a discussion started there spawned a collaboration between two members of the mailing list, a hardware and a software engineer, to create a brand new complete memory subsystem replacement product for these machines called "Remem", which gives it 4MB of flash rom and 2MB of SRAM. Crazy, eh? It's amazing what people are willing to do in their spare time to enhance the lives of retro-computing enthusiasts. :)

Gary Weber
www.web8201.com



Retro-computers to date: NEC PC-8201A (several), NEC PC-8300 (several), NEC PC-8500, TRS-80 Model 100 (three), Tandy Model 200 (two), Tandy WP-2
 
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Yes, it is. Last year, I reverse engineered the Buffered Interface Cable for the earlier expansion interfaces of the Tandy Model I computer, changing the connectors from 4 rows of 10 to 2 rows of 20, effectively changing the entire layout of the board to get around copyright laws.

I did this because there is a dearth of these buffered cables and there are still a lot of the old E/Is around that can't be used without the cable. The breadboarded design worked perfectly so I spent a solid week doing the circuit board artwork.

I calculated that I would break even with an initial run of 20 selling at $50 a piece, assembled, in a case similar to the original one with, of course, a different label. If i could get advanced orders for more, the price would be less.

I shopped the futures around on e-bay for a $10 deposit (refundable if I didn't get enough orders) with the balance due upon shipping and got all of 8, I believe, advanced orders Some ordered a couple.

Suffice to say, I refunded the deposits (I had to fight with some people to take their money back) and that little experience certainly cured me of trying to recreate retro items. I had already started on reverse engineering a double density adapter for the E/I and was was looking at the 4 meg memory board for CoCo3.
 
gweber said:
> Great site. Thank you for creating this paeon to what is
> called the !st laptop under whatever name, including
> Kyocera and Tandy. Very cool. Are you also a member
> of the Tandy 100 group, if it still exists ? I used to check
> it out occasionally but never did acquire one of these
> legendary machines. Wow !!! I'm very impressed. A hearty
> very big welcome.

Lawrence,

Thanks for the comments! Yes, I am a member of the Tandy 100 group, officially known as the "Club 100 Mailing List". (Info on this: http://www.club100.org/list.html)

There's actually quite a large group of Tandy & NEC laptop users on this list. In fact, a discussion started there spawned a collaboration between two members of the mailing list, a hardware and a software engineer, to create a brand new complete memory subsystem replacement product for these machines called "Remem", which gives it 4MB of flash rom and 2MB of SRAM. Crazy, eh? It's amazing what people are willing to do in their spare time to enhance the lives of retro-computing enthusiasts. :)

Gary Weber
www.web8201.com



Retro-computers to date: NEC PC-8201A (several), NEC PC-8300 (several), NEC PC-8500, TRS-80 Model 100 (three), Tandy Model 200 (two), Tandy WP-2
Click to expand...

Your site has been up since forever. I just don't know what took so long for you to find these forums.

--T
 
Terry Yager said:
You've been around the net since forever, I don't know what took you so long to find these forums. Anyways, we're honored by your presence.
Click to expand...

I thank you for the warm welcome, and I'm honored to be here. As far as how long it took me to find these forums, all I can say is that the internet is a very, very big place. ;)
 
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