Klostmi
New member
Hello,
I am very grateful to the community for this valuable resource to retro fans. A little about myself:
I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s in Ohio with a father who owned a TV and appliance business where he sold and also repaired all different kinds of electronics and appliances. He eventually began selling video game systems as well. In 1977 I was a lucky kid on the block when my dad gave me an Atari VCS with several games for Christmas. Later through the years he gifted me the Intellivision game system and a Magnavox Odyssey console, both of which he got from customers who didn’t want to pay for the repairs.
In 1983 I got my first computer- a Commodore 64 for my birthday, which at the time was a huge surprise because my family’s financial situation was very bad at the time. I just got the computer only and hooked it up to my little color tv in my bedroom. I saved up money and got a subscription to “Compute’s Gazette” magazine and enjoyed typing in the lines of code from the programs included in the magazine.
One day, in the middle of entering a huge program, my mom came into my bedroom and turned off the light switch, which was the same circuit my computer was on unfortunately and my hard work went bye bye!! After that I saved money like crazy to buy a 1541 floppy drive.
I eventually got a Star micronics parallel printer interface and I believe it was an SG-10c dot matrix printer which I used for school reports. Later I upgraded my computer to a used commodore 128 whom my sister’s boyfriend gave me for very cheap for some reason (maybe he was trying to influence me??) he gave me two boxes full of games on floppies along with the computer! I was in heaven!
After high school I went to college and studied Electrical Engineering with a minor in computer engineering. In school in a microprocessors class I built an 8086 based computer on a breadboard and wrote a simple operating system which I burned into an eeprom using a Z80 computer with EEPROM writer. I remember plugging in what seemed like hundreds of wires while watching the 1992 Winter Olympic Games on tv. The next year I got my first pc, an IBM PC compatible computer with modem. I loved dialing into our schools computer lab and connecting to the big Vax mainframe there so I didn’t have to wait my turn for a VT-100 terminal in the lab to be available.
Through the years I would get motherboards and parts to constantly build and upgrade newer and newer PC’s. I unfortunately sold my Commodore 128 and its accessories to my roommate when I needed money for school.
After entering the military and having a career for 21 years which didn’t involve electronics I didn’t do much in the way of electronics or building computers. It was only recently that I starting building things with micro controllers and got interested in retro computers. I built a brand new Commodore 64 last year and am now building my very first Amiga, an Amiga 500++. I had always dreamt of owning an Amiga, now this incredible Retro computing community is allowing that to happen. Thanks again all!!
Mike
I am very grateful to the community for this valuable resource to retro fans. A little about myself:
I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s in Ohio with a father who owned a TV and appliance business where he sold and also repaired all different kinds of electronics and appliances. He eventually began selling video game systems as well. In 1977 I was a lucky kid on the block when my dad gave me an Atari VCS with several games for Christmas. Later through the years he gifted me the Intellivision game system and a Magnavox Odyssey console, both of which he got from customers who didn’t want to pay for the repairs.
In 1983 I got my first computer- a Commodore 64 for my birthday, which at the time was a huge surprise because my family’s financial situation was very bad at the time. I just got the computer only and hooked it up to my little color tv in my bedroom. I saved up money and got a subscription to “Compute’s Gazette” magazine and enjoyed typing in the lines of code from the programs included in the magazine.
One day, in the middle of entering a huge program, my mom came into my bedroom and turned off the light switch, which was the same circuit my computer was on unfortunately and my hard work went bye bye!! After that I saved money like crazy to buy a 1541 floppy drive.
I eventually got a Star micronics parallel printer interface and I believe it was an SG-10c dot matrix printer which I used for school reports. Later I upgraded my computer to a used commodore 128 whom my sister’s boyfriend gave me for very cheap for some reason (maybe he was trying to influence me??) he gave me two boxes full of games on floppies along with the computer! I was in heaven!
After high school I went to college and studied Electrical Engineering with a minor in computer engineering. In school in a microprocessors class I built an 8086 based computer on a breadboard and wrote a simple operating system which I burned into an eeprom using a Z80 computer with EEPROM writer. I remember plugging in what seemed like hundreds of wires while watching the 1992 Winter Olympic Games on tv. The next year I got my first pc, an IBM PC compatible computer with modem. I loved dialing into our schools computer lab and connecting to the big Vax mainframe there so I didn’t have to wait my turn for a VT-100 terminal in the lab to be available.
Through the years I would get motherboards and parts to constantly build and upgrade newer and newer PC’s. I unfortunately sold my Commodore 128 and its accessories to my roommate when I needed money for school.
After entering the military and having a career for 21 years which didn’t involve electronics I didn’t do much in the way of electronics or building computers. It was only recently that I starting building things with micro controllers and got interested in retro computers. I built a brand new Commodore 64 last year and am now building my very first Amiga, an Amiga 500++. I had always dreamt of owning an Amiga, now this incredible Retro computing community is allowing that to happen. Thanks again all!!
Mike
