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After the Class of '86

@barythrin - I started using micros while still working on a PDP-11. The lab I was in got a Cromemco Z-2 (S100 CP/M machine) and interfaced it to the PDP.

In 1980/81 I got a small inheritance which would allow me to buy my own computer; I had just about narrowed the choice down to an Apple II with Z80 CP/M card when the Osborne came out. Cost was about $1000 with nearly that much value in software included (WordStar, SuperCalc, DBaseII) which made it a much better buy than anything else available.

I bought one of the first Osbornes in the Chicago area and was pretty happy with it but quickly ran into a couple issues - storage and online capabilities. Disk capacity was something like 80K(?) and my modem ran at 300 baud. It was also difficult to move data back and forth between home and the lab since everything there was on 8" disks (the Z-2 had a Morrow Disk Jockey DMA controller). When a used IMSAI became available, I was quick to grab it. A souped up PMMI modem gave me 450 baud to the local BBS and a pair of Qume 8 floppies on a Tarbell DD controller gave me 1.2 MB per disk, faster load times and better reliability!

The front panel wasn't too useful most of the time but it was handy when regenning the system since you could built the new BIOS in RAM and then JMP (C3 is burned into my mind...) to the new starting address, come up running and then write it back to the boot tracks. And of course, having a solid S100 platform (the chassis had a Godbout motherboard with terminator) allowed me to modify my system as desired.

Jack
 
Class of 2014 here and I support the preservation of what can be called "veteran", vintage and classic. I don't have a collection as miraculous as a lot of the members I have seen here but I've taken my free time to "collect" numerous outdated machines from the 90s that most people would see in the trash and watching vintage videos or demonstrations (Some by Vwestlife, to much surprise, browses this forum) on YouTube I like to take time in restoring and learning about the years I was either too young to live or too young to understand.

Visiting this site makes it all the more joyful to relive the past I couldn't experience since there is always a strange nostalgia for me despite my young age. I can remember using Windows 95 at my earliest but a poverty that plagued much of my family kept us from modernizing our technology with Windows XP, so I was stuck in the Windows 9x days until around 2006. My want to preserve these machines didn't really come about until 2009/2010.
 
Despite our age differences (I'm 42, you're 18 ) we have similar motivations in working with vintage computers. I, too, grew up slightly impoverished and couldn't afford most of the cool computers or peripherals I wanted in my teens. Now that I'm older, I have the financial means to get the hardware I always wanted. My wife has scoffed at the typical ebay cost of $200 of an IBM Music Feature Card, until I tell her it was $695 in 1987 so that puts things more in perspective :)

I used to think I was among the youngest in our hobby (something cultivated from hanging out on the www.classiccmp.org mailling list for too long) but I'm happy that the age range of vintage computing (and gaming!) runs the gamut, from teens to 70s. That's fantastic.

Our hobby has been compared to those who collect, restore, and exhibit vintage cars. I agree :)
 
Trixter said:
Our hobby has been compared to those who collect, restore, and exhibit vintage cars. I agree :)
Click to expand...

The major difference here is most people think classic cars are cool...if you have a bunch of old computers you are a weirdo. :sigh:
 
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