This looks like a great group of people - nice diverse interests, and good vintage hardware.
I'm not much of a collector - no room and not enough time. So I choose to delve deep into my favorite machine, the IBM PCjr. Owning and loving a PCjr is close to being a member in a cult. Anything that was easy to do on a standard PC or clone is a pain on the Jr, which makes it so interesting.
http://mail.magnaspeed.net/~mbbrutman/PCjr/pcjr.html
Besides the PCjr, my other machines are:
Original IBM PC 5150 with first revision BIOS. This machine can't use a VGA, EGA or any other card with BIOS because it doesn't know to scan for BIOS extensions. The BIOS also has a bug that limits the reported memory to 544KB.
Original IBM PC AT 5170. This machine has a 386 motherboard in it and some other nasty upgrades, however I have all of the original parts. That includes the famous Seagate ST-225 hard drive.
Timex Sinclair 1000. My first computer ever. I have the 16K RAM expansion and the thermal printer. This is a machine I'd like to do more with.
The older machines are great hobbyist machines because it's usually TTL logic, well known processors, and slow enough speeds such that modifications and debugging are not impossible. I'm a programmer, and programming on these things is easy.
Favorite languages: Turbo C++ for DOS. This can generate code for my older machines. Turbo Pascal 3.0, which runs directly on my older machines. Zbasic, also for the older machines. And I'm learning assembler so I can be really dangerous.
Regards,
Mike
I'm not much of a collector - no room and not enough time. So I choose to delve deep into my favorite machine, the IBM PCjr. Owning and loving a PCjr is close to being a member in a cult. Anything that was easy to do on a standard PC or clone is a pain on the Jr, which makes it so interesting.
http://mail.magnaspeed.net/~mbbrutman/PCjr/pcjr.html
Besides the PCjr, my other machines are:
Original IBM PC 5150 with first revision BIOS. This machine can't use a VGA, EGA or any other card with BIOS because it doesn't know to scan for BIOS extensions. The BIOS also has a bug that limits the reported memory to 544KB.
Original IBM PC AT 5170. This machine has a 386 motherboard in it and some other nasty upgrades, however I have all of the original parts. That includes the famous Seagate ST-225 hard drive.
Timex Sinclair 1000. My first computer ever. I have the 16K RAM expansion and the thermal printer. This is a machine I'd like to do more with.
The older machines are great hobbyist machines because it's usually TTL logic, well known processors, and slow enough speeds such that modifications and debugging are not impossible. I'm a programmer, and programming on these things is easy.
Favorite languages: Turbo C++ for DOS. This can generate code for my older machines. Turbo Pascal 3.0, which runs directly on my older machines. Zbasic, also for the older machines. And I'm learning assembler so I can be really dangerous.
Regards,
Mike