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Hey Everyone!

reject902

Member
Joined
May 12, 2010
Messages
26
Location
Chicago, IL
Hey Everyone!

My name's Andrew. I'm a 23 year old living just outside the windy city of Chicago. As far back as my parents and I can remember, I've always had an odd obsession with computers and vintage electronics (betamax anyone?). Their earliest recollection was when I was 4 years old; I cried (and rightfully so) when my parents decided to donate our old Apple IIe & Apple III to a local elementary school citing that they weren't going to be useful anymore. Needless to say, I snatched up the users guides for both and hid them in my toy box. To this day, I still have them. ;) After that, when my parents would start to want to "dispose" of our old electronics, I'd sneak outside and grab them from the garbage and hide them in our crawl space. Needless to say, eventually I was caught.. Not until I was in middle school tho. :p
However they decided to humor my weird hobby, and continued to let me keep accumulating stuff. My collection spans from a C64, C128, VIC20 and its toys. To a TRS-80 and a Osbourne. To a Macintosh TV (<-my fav) and a SE/30 and so on. Apple & Commodore have always been my main interests, with other odds and ends (like the Xerox 820) just kind of rounding off my collection. And then of course, the holy grail of my collection and soon to be the main "project": Lisa (and that girl is deader than a doornail).

I took pretty much a four year hiatus (culprit: bars) on vintage computing. Not even so much as looking at the ones that just sat unused, until just about a month ago. My grandfather who recently moved in with us decided that, he wanted to start to work on "projects" with me (being that he's pretty much homebound now) and asked if I still like to work on computers. Suddenly the spark went off again. First I dragged out the Mac TV. Showed it off and talked it up as being so unique for its time and rare blah blah. Then went to fire it up: dead hard drive. My heart sank. Then he said "well lets fix it". And we did.

And now here I am again. Scouring the forums and fleabay, looking to get my quirky old electronics fix!

So I'm sure you'll all start to see me commenting on and tossin' in my 2cents here and there. It's great to meet you all!

-Andrew
 
Welcome to the forums and it sounds like a great way to learn. Is your Grandfather computer or electronics savvy? Sounds like a great way to learn more though and especially having someone else along side you with an interest keeps that flowing. If you need some bonus motivation watch the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley ;-) It always makes me want to run out to the garage and tinker. Very nice of your parents to let you enjoy that. I know mine were ok with it but didn't like when the collection grew a bit so as long as I kept it kinda small they were ok with it when I was young. Now I have my own choices and own problems with storing the collection heh but it's still been fun.
 
Welcome aboard!

Best of luck with the Lisa. Those can be a bit cranky. . .
 
Yeah it sure will be a project! Nah, he's not too savvy about it. He does have a decent knowledge tho, more so of that era than today which is great. But I think its more or less him trying to take an interest to something that I have to kinda share with me while he's still around, seeing how we weren't very close when I was younger.

Now, my other grandfather (who sadly passed in '05 when I graduated high school) was an electrician and a "mr fix it" type. He was my buddy when it came to all those things. Come to think of it, that probably explains why I slipped out of that interest. He use to go to garage sales and flea markets with me all the time trying to help me build my collection and find more interesting gadgets to play with and fix up. I actually haven't been to a flea market or garage sale since I don't think.
 
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