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Hosted by randy kindig
63 episodes with randy kindig
3 episodes with randy kindig
2 episodes with randy kindig
2 episodes with randy kindig
2 episodes with randy kindig
ANTIC Episode 117 In this episode of ANTIC The Atari 8-Bit Computer Podcast… lots of scanning talk, more new games for the Atari than you can shake a stick at, and how to win a kiss on the forehead… READY! Recurring Links Floppy Days Podcast AtariArchives.org AtariMagazines.com Kay's Book “Terrible Nerd” New Atari books scans at archive.org ANTIC feedback at AtariAge Atari interview discussion thread on AtariAge Interview index: here ANTIC Facebook Page AHCS Eaten By a Grue Next Without For What we've been up to New scans for documents sent by Aaron Spurlock: https://archive.org/details/Mad_Scientist_Software_Hospital_ACLS_Teaching_Series_manual https://archive.org/details/Mad_Scientist_Software_Cardiac_Arrest_ACLS_Teaching_Series_manual/ New scan - https://archive.org/details/donnie-iris-do-you-compute New scan - https://archive.org/details/analog-computing-poster Wade Ripkowski's site - https://unfinishedbitness.info/ In-progress quick reference book by Randy, with Atari 800 complete (for comment) - https://floppydaysqr.my.canva.site/ Atari 8-bit development episode of Next Without For with Earl Evans and Randy Kindig - https://www.nextwithoutfor.org/2025/05/show-015-atari-8-bit-programming.html Artistic disk envelopes and cassette covers - https://ataricovers.com/ News Source Code for Atari's Editor/Assembler and Program/Text Editor RELEASED! - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/381770-source-code-for-editorassembler-and-programtext-editor-released/ ugBASIC 1.17.2 RELEASED - https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/ Jerry White's TV Theme Songs - https://www.atarimania.com/demo-atari-400-800-xl-xe-tv-theme-songs_44160.html Indus GT Mini (Piotr Bugaj) - https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=9725048287561907&set=gm.1671261500183510&idorvanity=484741565502182 The FourZeroZero keyboard series - http://www.norths.de/category/a400-design-tastatur/ new Album called "Power of Myth" by Poison6502 - https://poison6502.bandcamp.com/album/power-of-myth New Game Mazy 2 - https://www.atariteca.net.pe/2025/05/mazy-2-mas-laberintos-y-estrategia-para.html Mikie for Atari XL/XE - physical edition - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/381444-mikie-for-atari-xlxe-physical-edition/ The Best of Grawitacja 2025 for Atari 8-bit: https://www.atariteca.net.pe/2025/05/lo-mejor-del-grawitacja-2025-para-atari.html Kara T-Rex - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myIQFTLGw28 Dinodrab - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiIDqf2Kl5g Jurassic Spark - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0dGyjIkDMY ABBUC Software Contest - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/381593-abbuc-software-contest-2025/ ABBUC Hardware Contest - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/381594-abbuc-hardware-contest-2025/ Upcoming Shows Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo - June 14 - New Westminster, BC, Canada - https://www.vancouvergamingexpo.com/index.html VCF Southwest - June 20-22, 2025 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - June 20-22, 2025 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - July 31-Aug. 3 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2025-se VCF West - August 1-2 - Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/2025/03/05/vcf-west-2025-save-the-date/ Fujiama - August 11-17 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2025/ VCF Midwest - September 13-14, 2025 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 17-19 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Event page created by Chicago Classic Computing - http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Event page created by Floppy Days on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ Event page on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub YouTube Videos FlashJazzCat AVG Cart/Sub Cart review video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQo1kXX0OBA Atari's death...by the books - Power of Vintage - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXUqBL4JHHQ Luckyman (new Atari XL/XE game!): Atari Online PL - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fBNeMkT--o ZeroPage Homebrew - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA2QtP8ssWs The author shares his journey of creating games using Advan Basic (Polish) - Spowiedź autora #14: LukLab i gry w Advan ... New at Archive.org Computer Shopper full issue scans - https://archive.org/details/@tenten10 https://archive.org/details/the-action-toolkit-reference-manual https://archive.org/details/polycalc-apx Other The Soft Warehouse math software manuals - https://archive.org/details/TheSoftWarehouseMathSoftwareManuals/AlgicalcManual/ https://archive.org/details/reference-card-for-the-atari-400-800-microcomputers-nanos-systems-corp https://archive.org/details/ace-pocket-reference-card-atari/ACE_Pocket_Reference_Card_Atari/ Allan Bushman's scans of Magatar: https://archive.org/details/magatar-vol-1-num-7 https://archive.org/details/magatar-vol-1-num-10 https://archive.org/details/magatar-vol-1-num-8 Atari newsletters at Internet Archive: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RkznDDlOL2O_K-RrbkajIuo6DvYof6Ajrn7j9NTcoDM/edit?usp=sharing Feedback Critical Connection source code https://github.com/savetz/critical-connection
Interview with James Nagle, Reboot of Compute's Gazette Magazine Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper FutureVision Research Hello, and welcome to episode 151 of the Floppy Days Podcast for May, 2025. My name is Randy Kindig and I'm the host for this ode to computers that only survive in our memories and our collections. This month, I'm continuing to step aside from the ongoing series of episodes about the HP 97/67 programmable calculators to bring you a timely interview that basically constitutes current news. I don't often do this, but this news was so exciting to me that I wanted to bring this to all my listeners as soon as possible. The interviewee is James Nagle and the topic is the sudden and welcome news that James is planning to revive the iconic Compute! magazine under the equally-iconic name Compute's Gazette. I hope you'll stick around to hear about James' plans and are as excited as I am to find out where this goes. For upcoming shows, we do have one more episode in the series on the HP97 with HP calculator historian Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz (“Vwahdek Meer-Yeng SHAY of itch”). I will air that episode very soon. New Acquisitions and What I've Been Up To C64OS - https://c64os.com/ PiStorm: https://www.hackster.io/news/hands-on-with-the-pistorm-the-ultimate-raspberry-pi-powered-accelerator-for-your-commodore-amiga-449ef0634f3e https://www.amigastore.com/pistorm-edition-amiga-p-91328.html Quick Reference Book - https://floppydaysqr.my.canva.site/ Upcoming Vintage Computer Shows Retrofest 2025 - May 31-June1 - Steam Museum of the Great Western Railway, Swindon, UK - https://retrofest.uk/ Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo - June 14 - New Westminster, BC, Canada - https://www.vancouvergamingexpo.com/index.html VCF Southwest - June 20-22, 2025 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - June 20-22, 2025 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 21-22 - Old Rainier Brewery Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start KansasFest - July 18-20 - Virtual only - https://www.kansasfest.org/ INIT HELLO Apple II Conference - July 26-27 - System Source Computer Museum in Hunt Valley, MD - https://init-hello.org/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - July 31-Aug. 3 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2025-se VCF West - August 1-2 - Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/2025/03/05/vcf-west-2025-save-the-date/ Fujiama - August 11-17 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2025/ VCF Midwest - September 13-14, 2025 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly - September 26-28 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 17-19 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 25 - Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - https://www.chicagotiug.org/home Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub Feedback HP-97S: https://www.hpmuseum.org/hp97s.htm https://www.johnwolff.id.au/calculators/laboratory/laboratory.htm Interview Links New Compute's Gazette Website - https://www.computesgazette.com/ Compute's Gazette collection at archive.org - https://archive.org/details/computes.gazette
Interview with David Greelish, Apple Lisa Documentary Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper FutureVision Research Hello, and welcome to episode 150 of the Floppy Days Podcast for April, 2025. My name is Randy Kindig and I'm the host for this journey through the annals of home computer history. This month, I'm going to step aside from the ongoing series of episodes about the HP 97/67 programmable calculators to bring you a timely interview with a good friend about an interesting topic. That friend is David Greelish, a computer historian, and the topic is his recent publication of a film documentary about the Apple Lisa, called "Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa". David tells us all about the film, why he produced it, why the Apple Lisa was an important part of home computer history, who he interviewed for the film (he had some amazing guests) and much more. It's a great film and should interest a lot of the listeners, so please consider going out and purchasing the film in order to support David's efforts. For upcoming shows, we do have one more episode in the series on the HP97 with HP calculator historian Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz. I will air that episode very soon. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To Indy Classic Expo - https://www.indyclassic.org Vintage Computer Center - https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com OmniView 80 card for Atari 800 - https://archive.org/details/Atari_OMNIVIEW_manual Commodore 16 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_16 6502 Plus 4 upgrade for C16 from Lotharek - (https://lotharek.pl/productdetail.php?id=257 News Reboot of Compute's Gazette Magazine - https://www.computesgazette.com/iconic-computes-gazette-magazine-returns-after-35-years-expanding-focus-to-entire-retro-computing-community/ Upcoming Shows The 32nd Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! - May 2-3, 2025 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago-Carol Stream (Wheaton), Carol Stream, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ VCF Europe - May 3-4 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ Retrofest 2025 - May 31-June1 - Steam Museum of the Great Western Railway, Swindon, UK - https://retrofest.uk/ Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo - June 14 - New Westminster, BC, Canada - https://www.vancouvergamingexpo.com/index.html VCF Southwest - June 20-22, 2025 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - June 20-22, 2025 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 21-22 - Old Rainier Brewery Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start KansasFest - July 18-20 - Virtual only - https://www.kansasfest.org/ VCF West - August 1-2 - Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/2025/03/05/vcf-west-2025-save-the-date/ VCF Midwest - September 13-14, 2025 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly - September 26-28 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 17-19 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 25 - Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - https://www.chicagotiug.org/home Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub Documentary and Classic Computing Links Classic Computing Website - https://www.classiccomputing.com/Classic_Computing/Blog/Blog.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psAeTDYezdo - "Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa" Full Documentary Film Exidy Sorcerer at VCFSE 2 - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-episode-17-the-exidy-sorcerer-live-from-vcfse-20 Stan Veit podcast - https://www.classiccomputing.com/CCPodcasts/Stan_Veit/Stan_Veit.html Classic Computing - the book! - https://www.classiccomputing.com/Classic_Computing/My_Book.html Documentary link at IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31122934/
ANTIC Interview 453 - Giann Velasquez, Atariteca Hello, and welcome to this interview-only episode of ANTIC, The Atari 8-bit computer podcast. I'm Randy Kindig, your host for this episode. Giann Velasquez is the owner and curator of the popular, Spanish-language, Atari 8-bit news site, Atariteca. Giann is a consummate Atari 8-bit fan and lives in Lima, Peru. This interview took place on June 30, 2024. Links Atariteca - https://www.atariteca.net.pe/ Blog about Atari 8-bit computers. News, guides and analysis on emulators, games and programs for Atari XL/XE series computers.
Floppy Days 147 - Lorenzo Hagerty, Dynasty Computers Hello, and welcome to episode 147 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for January, 2025. I am Randy Kindig, your host for this podcast. This month is another interview from my backlog, as I continue to get the opportunity for interviews with some amazing icons from the early personal computer days. This month, that person is Lorenzo Hagerty, who founded Dynasty Computer Corporation in 1979. Dynasty was the first network marketing company to exclusively carry the then new home computers with a repackaged Exidy Sorcerer. If you recall, this was a couple of years before IBM brought out their first PC. I've had a few recent interviews with people involved with the Exidy Sorcerer, including Howell Ivy, Paul Terrell, and Vic Tolomei. However, this is the first one with someone from outside Exidy, who purchased the Sorcerer in bulk and repackaged it for the general public. Please note that I do plan to get back into producing episodes covering specific vintage computers. Coming up in 2025 will be coverage of machines like the HP97, the Lobo Max-80, the Dragon, and the C64. Research for those is underway, so expect those soon.
ANTIC Interview 452 - Dean Garraghty Hello, and welcome to this interview-only episode of ANTIC, The Atari 8-bit computer podcast. I'm Randy Kindig, your host for this episode. Dean Garraghty is the proprietor of DGS Software, which sold, and continues to sell, software for the Atari 8-bit computers since the 80's. This is a very low cost, 191-disk set that includes an entire utility pack, games, issues of a disk-based newsletter, a sound and music package, an interesting programming language called Quick, and more. Dean has been an Atari enthusiast since the 80's and has an interesting story to tell concerning his journey with the Atari 8-bit. This interview took place on April 6, 2024. Links DGS Website - http://www.dgs.clara.net/ DGS post on AtariAge - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/268373-dgs-pd-library-the-whole-lot-to-download/ YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLn2nyiuk_OaW1Is4cZtvtQ
Interview with Dan Bricklin, VisiCalc Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper FutureVision Research Hello, and welcome to episode 146 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for December, 2024. I am Randy Kindig, your host for this podcast. This month I'm staying with the recent interview theme, as I continue to get the opportunity for interviews with some amazing icons from the early personal computer days. This month, that person is Dan Bricklin, co-developer of the iconic VisiCalc software that helped kickstart the sales of early personal computers like the Apple II and began the important spreadsheet software category that persists until today. I published an interview with Dan's partner in VisiCalc (and in Software Arts), Bob Frankston, back in 2023, and now Dan adds to the story in his own words. Please note that I do plan to get back into producing episodes covering specific vintage computers. I've just had an amazing run of interview opportunities in recent months, which has reduced the time I had to do the research on computers for the podcast. Coming up in 2025 will be coverage of machines like the HP97, the Lobo Max-80, the Dragon, and the C64.
Episode 145 - Interview with Paul Terrell, The Byte Shop - Part 4 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper FutureVision Research Hello, and welcome to episode 145 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for November, 2024. I am Randy Kindig, your host for this audio tribute to the amazing variety of home computers that existed in the late 70's thru the 80's, before the influence of Big Blue changed the landscape forever. This month I'm continuing the series of interviews I've been doing recently with Paul Terrell. As we have discussed, Paul Terrell is a name well-known in the annals of computer history; probably most famously for his kickstart of Apple Computer through the purchase of one of Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's first batches of Apple I computers for his Byte Shop. The Byte Shop was a very early computer store that was one of the few that existed in the world, at the time. In this interview, we continue to focus primarily on The Byte Shop, how it got started, what it was like, and much more. This is part 4 of a 4-part series on just that topic with Paul. If you want to know what it was like to run a computer store in those early days, this is the interview for you! Along the way, you'll learn even more about just what the home and hobby computer scene was like in those days. In future episodes, Paul and I will discuss other topics around his long and distinguished career, such as the aforementioned dealings with the fledgling Apple Computer, and other ventures in which Paul was involved after the Byte Shop, including a business that rented software. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To Episodes 8 (https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-episode-8-the-trs-80-model-i-part-i) and 9 (https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-episode-9-the-trs-80-model-i-part-2), containing interviews with David and Theresa Welsh, authors of the book “Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution”. Lobo MAX-80 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max-80 HP-97 Calculator and repair: https://www.hpmuseum.org/hp6797.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-67/97 https://www.ebay.com/usr/waterhosko Upcoming Shows Show list I maintain for the remainder of the current year - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule) Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we Atari Party 2024 - Dec. 7 (noon - 4p.m.) - Quakertown Train Station, Quakertown, PA - http://atariparty.org/ Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - February 15-17, 2025 - Hotel Fera Events Center, Orange, CA - vcfsocal.com Midwest Gaming Classic - April 4-6 - Baird Center, Milwaukee, WI - https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/ VCF East - April 4-6, 2024 - Wall, NJ - http://www.vcfed.org Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 12-13 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/ Interview with Paul Terrell (3) Apple-1 Prototype Polaroid Photographs Given to Paul Terrell of the Byte Shop in 1976 - https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/348985606984001-steve-jobs-3-apple-1-prototype-polaroid-photographs-given-to-paul-terrell-of-the-byte-shop-in-1976/?cat=3 Ray Borrill's Data Domain blog - https://www.landsnail.com/thedatadomain/remember.htm
Episode 144 - Interview with Don French and Steve Leininger, Co-Designers of the TRS-80 Model I Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper FutureVision Research Hello, and welcome to episode 144 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for October, 2024. I am Randy Kindig, your host for this audio ode to the home computers of the past. This month I have a special treat for you. At the recent Tandy Assembly, which I will talk about in more detail later in the podcast, not only were there a lot of great people, exhibits, vendors, and camaraderie, but we were also blessed with having Steve Leininger as one of the guest speakers along with his partner in the development of the TRS-80 Model I, Don French! I recently had an interview with Steve Leininger (episode 142: https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-142-interview-with-steve-leininger-designer-of-the-trs-80-model-i ), thanks to his willingness to be interviewed at the recent VCF Southeast in Atlanta. That was a milestone for my podcast, as I had always wanted to talk with Steve. I also had interviewed Don French several years ago, prior to his attending Tandy Assembly in 2017, in episode 53 (https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-53-interview-with-don-french-co-designer-of-the-trs-80-model-i ). This time, however, I was able to get an interview with Don and Steve together in the same interview! That in itself was amazing and I think you'll really enjoy the back-and-forth between the two gentlemen who are obviously and correctly proud of the work they did to bring the TRS-80 to the world and Tandy into the computer business. Next month, I will talk about another computer rescue that came my way recently, and which is also tied into Tandy Assembly and Radio Shack computers. I'll not go into any further detail here as I don't want to spoil the story for you next month. But believe me, it will be fun both to tell and to listen to. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To Soldering kits from FutureVision Research The Soldering Basics Kit The BEAM Bot Soldering Kit The Demonstrator Soldering Kit Tandy Assembly 2024 - https://www.tandyassembly.com/ Drive cable for the TRS-80 Model I from Ian Mavric - https://www.ebay.com/str/trs80universe RAM card for Tandy PC2/Sharp PC1500 from Jeff Birt - https://www.soigeneris.com/sharp-pc-1500-memory-modules Upcoming Shows Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/ Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we Show list I maintain for the remainder of the current year - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule)
Episode 143 - Interview with Paul Terrell, The Byte Shop - Part 3 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper FutureVision Research Hello, and welcome to episode 143 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for September, 2024. I am Randy Kindig, your host for this retro ride to the past of home computing. This month I'm continuing the series of interviews I've been doing recently with Paul Terrell. As we have discussed, Paul Terrell is a name well-known in the annals of computer history; probably most famously for his kickstart of Apple Computer through the purchase of one of Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's first batches of Apple I computers for his Byte Shop. The Byte Shop was a very early computer store that was one of the few that existed in the world, at the time. In this interview, we continue to focus primarily on The Byte Shop, how it got started, what it was like, and much more. This is part 3 of a 4-part series on just that topic with Paul. If you want to know what it was like to run a computer store in those early days, this is the interview for you! Along the way, you'll learn even more about just what the home and hobby computer scene was like in those days. In future episodes, Paul and I will discuss other topics around his long and distinguished career, such as the aforementioned dealings with the fledgling Apple Computer, and other ventures in which Paul was involved after the Byte Shop, including a business that rented software.
ANTIC Interview 438 - John Carlsen - Atari Summer Employee Hello, and welcome to this interview-only episode of ANTIC, The Atari 8-bit computer podcast. I'm Randy Kindig, your host for this episode. John Carlsen worked at Atari only briefly, as a summer job for 6 weeks in 1987, between his final years of high school. Later, in 1988-1989, he worked for its founding president, Nolan Bushnell when he signed on to Nolan's latest startup, called Bots, Inc. They made pizza delivery robots (and a related customer-facing order entry system) for Little Caesars Pizza. John then worked for Axlon, which was created by former Atari employees to manufacture add-on products for the Atari computer, followed by Aapps Corp., which spun out of Nolan's offices. In 1990-1991, John also worked for Mediagenic (Activision, Infocom, etc.) until a week after its hostile takeover. This interview took place on March 6, 2024. Links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Bushnell
Interview with Steve Leininger, Designer of the TRS-80- Model I Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper 0 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 13 sec Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 42 sec Intro 9 min 03 sec bumper - Peter Bartlett 9 min 11 sec New Acquisitions 17 min 11 sec bumper - Ian Mavric 17 min 19 sec Upcoming Computer Shows 21 min 53 sec bumper - Myles Wakeham 21 min 58 sec Meet the Listeners 28 min 37 sec Interview with Steve Leininger 1 hr 20 min 29 sec Closing This particular episode has a special meaning for me, personally. You see, as I've mentioned on earlier episodes, the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy/Radio Shack was my first home computer (even though my first programmable device was a TI58C calculator). I recall the joy and wonder of playing with the machine (it wasn't called the Model I at that time; just the TRS-80; as it was the first of the line) in the local Radio Shack store in 1977 and 1978 and the incredible rush of owning one in 1979; after my wife purchased a Level I BASIC machine for me as a gift for college graduation. That machine only had 4K of RAM and 4K of ROM (Tiny BASIC), as it was the entry-level machine, but it was a thing of beauty. I felt like I could do anything with that machine, even though my justification to the wife was that we could track our checkbook and recipes on it. I think she knew better, but went along with it anyway. The computer came with everything you needed, including a tape drive and black-and-white monitor, which was good for a poor recent college graduate. I quickly, as finances allowed with my new engineering job, upgraded the computer to 16K of RAM and Level II BASIC (a powerful Microsoft 12K ROM BASIC) and enjoyed the machine immensely, even using it in my job supporting the build-out of a new nuclear power plant back in those days. I eventually sold off the Model I, in favor of a computer that had color graphics and sound (the Atari 800), but have always continued to have a huge soft spot for that first computer. When I started the Floppy Days Podcast, one of the people that has always been on my bucket list to interview has been Steve Leininger, who, along with Don French while at Radio Shack designed the TRS-80 Model I, among other things. A few years back, I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Steve for the Trash Talk Podcast, when I was co-hosting that show, but an ill-timed trip to the hospital for my son meant that I was not able to participate. While my son's health is of paramount importance, of course, I always wanted to get another chance to talk with Steve. Not only was Steve the designer of one of my favorite home computers of all time, but he also was a fellow Purdue University Boilermaker, who graduated just a year before I started there. The thought that I could have met Steve on campus if I'd been there just a year earlier was very intriguing to me, and fueled my desire to talk with Steve even more. In the last episode (#141 with Paul Terrell) I talked about VCF Southeast in Atlanta in July of 2024. After I had made plans to attend that show, I was flabbergasted to find out that Earl Baugh, one of the show organizers, had somehow managed to contact Steve and get him to come to the show! I have to thank Earl for the work he did to make that happen. Here was my opportunity to certainly meet Steve, and perhaps even talk with him! I prepped some questions, just in case I was able to get an interview. While at the show, I met Steve and asked him if he would be willing to do a short interview for Floppy Days while at the show. Amazingly, he was very kind and agreed to do that. We found a quiet room and I was able to talk with Steve for almost an hour. This show contains that interview. Another note on this: as you'll hear in the interview, the connection to Steve is even stronger than I realized! He not only went to my alma mater, but also grew up in some of the same towns that myself and my wife did. We personally peripherally know some of his relatives. Things like this really do make you think the world is small! One other, final, note: This interview even ties into the recent and continuing interviews I've been publishing with Paul Terrell. As you'll hear in upcoming episodes with Paul, and in this interview with Steve, Steve actually worked at the Byte Shop before getting the first job with Tandy, and in fact his work at the Byte Shop directly led to him getting hired by Tandy to design the Model I. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed getting it. I am overjoyed I finally got the chance to talk to one of my vintage computer heroes, Steve Leininger! New Acquisitions C64 Sketch and Design by Tony Lavioe - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4dZGtt2 Compute's Mapping the IBM PC and PC Junior by Russ Davies - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3yQmrlP The Best of SoftSide - Atari Edition - https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-best-of-softside-atari-edition ZX81+38 - https://github.com/mahjongg2/ZX81plus38 magnifying glasses - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4cBQYla Japanese power adapter - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3XjeUW5 Upcoming Shows VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ World of Retrocomputing 2024 Expo - September 14-15 - Kitchener, ON, Canada - https://www.facebook.com/events/s/world-of-retro-computing-2024-/1493036588265072/ Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/ Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub Interview Steve's Workbench at radioshack.com (archived) - https://web.archive.org/web/19980528232503/http://www.radioshack.com/sw/swb/ Transcript of Interview-Only Randy Kindig: All right. I really appreciate your time today, Steve. Steve Leininger: Thank you for having me, Randy. Randy Kindig: So let's start out maybe just by talking about where You live today, and what you do? Steve Leininger: I live in Woodland Park, Colorado, which is 8, 500 feet, right out in front of we got Pike's Peak out our front window. Randy Kindig: Oh. Oh, that's nice. Steve Leininger: Yeah we get snow up through about June, and then it starts again about September. But it's not as much snow as you would imagine. Randy Kindig: I've got property in Montana, and I lived out there for a couple of years, Steve Leininger: so there you go. Randy Kindig: We probably got more snow up there. Steve Leininger: Hey, you asked what I did. I'm involved with Boy Scouts, a maker space with a church based ministry firewood ministry, actually. Some people call it a fire bank. So we provide firewood to people who can't afford that. Randy Kindig: Oh. Steve Leininger: So it's like a food bank, but with fire, firewood. Randy Kindig: I've never heard of that. Steve Leininger: We source the firewood. We cut it down and we split it. Lots of volunteers involved; pretty big project. Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay, cool. I also wanted to mention, I'm a fellow Boilermaker. Steve Leininger: There you go. Randy Kindig: I know you went to Purdue, right? Steve Leininger: I did go to Purdue. Randy Kindig: Did you ever get back there? Steve Leininger: Yeah, and in fact they've got a couple learning spaces named after us. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. Steve Leininger: We've been donating to our respective alma maters. My wife went to IU. Randy Kindig: Oh, is that right? Oh my. Steve Leininger: Yeah, oh my and me. Yeah, the fact that the family who's all IU, their family tolerated me was, quite a remarkable thing. Randy Kindig: Okay. I find it interesting because I think you graduated in 76, is that right? Steve Leininger: 74. Randy Kindig: Oh, 74. Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. I was there from … Randy Kindig: Oh yeah, you actually were gone before I started. Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I was there from 70 to 73. 70 to 70 four. When I graduated in four years, I got both my bachelor's and master's degree by going through the summer. I managed to pass out of the first year classes because of some of the high school stuff yeah. Randy Kindig: Okay. I started in 75, so I guess we just missed each other. Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. You're the new kids coming in. Randy Kindig: Yeah. . So I, I found that interesting and I wanted to say that. Do you keep up with their sports program or anything like that? Steve Leininger: Yeah, they play a pretty good game of basketball in fact, I ribbed my wife about it because she was from the earlier days, the Bobby Knight days at IU that were phenomenal. Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. For those of you listening, I'm talking with Steve Leininger, who was the primary developer, if not the developer, of the TRS 80 Model I.. Steve Leininger: I did all the hardware and software for it. I'll give Don French credit for sticking to it and getting a project started. And for refining, refining our product definition a little bit to where it was better than it would have been if I would have stopped early. Randy Kindig: Okay. And I have talked with Don before. I've interviewed him on the podcast, and I met him at Tandy Assembly. But I'm just curious, when you were hired into Tandy and you were told what you were going to do; exactly what were you told? Steve Leininger: They had a 16 bit microprocessor board that another consultant had developed. And they were trying to make a personal computer out of this. It was the Pace microprocessor, which was not a spectacular success for National, but it was one of the first 16 bit processors. But they had basically an initial prototype, might have been even the second level of the thing. No real documentation, no software, ran on three different voltages and didn't have input or output. Other than that, it was fine. I was brought in because I was one of the product one of the engineers for the development boards, the development board series for the SCAMP, the S C M P, the National Semiconductor had a very low cost microprocessor that at one point in time, I benchmarked against the 8080 with positive benchmarks and ours was faster on the benchmarks I put together, but as I was later told there's lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. But so they said take a look at using that, their low cost microprocessor that you were working with. And it really wasn't the right answer for the job. Let's see, the Altair was already out. Okay. That was the first real personal computer. The Apple, the Apple 1 was out. Okay. But it was not a consumer computer. Okay. They, it was just, it was like a cookie sheet of parts, which was very similar to what was used in the Atari games at the commercial games. Okay. pong and that kind of stuff at that time. And I had been working, after Purdue, I went to National Semiconductor. There's a long story behind all that. But in the process, some of us engineers would go up to the Homebrew Computer Club that met monthly up at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We're talking Wilbur and Orville Wright kinds of things going on. Yeah. Everyone who was in the pioneering version of computing had at one time been to that meeting. Randy Kindig: It's very famous. Yeah. Steve Leininger: Yeah. And Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were basically a couple guys working out of their garage at the time. I was still working at National Semiconductor, but I also had a Moonlight job at Byte Shop number 2. The second computer store in all of California. Randy Kindig: And So you worked with Paul Terrell. Steve Leininger: I actually worked with one of, yeah, Paul, I actually worked for Paul's I don't know if it was a partner, Todd, I don't even remember the guy's name. But I just, it was. Randy Kindig: I was curious because I'm talking to Paul right now and getting interviews. Steve Leininger: Yeah. I, I'm sure we met, but it wasn't anything horribly formal. Since it was the number two shop, it still wasn't the number one shop, which Paul worked out of. And so we had an Apple 1 there. I actually got the job because I when I When I went in there, they were trying to troubleshoot something with what looked like an oscilloscope that they pulled out of a tank, and so it had, audio level kind of bandwidth, but could not do a digital circuit. And I said what you really need is a, I told him, a good tectonic scope or something like that. He said do you want a job here? I ended up moonlighting there, which was, as fortune would have it, was a good deal when the folks from Radio Shack came down to visit. Because when they came down to visit the sales guy wasn't there. We'll let the engineer talk to them, they almost never let the engineers talk to them. Randy Kindig: So you had to talk with them. Steve Leininger: Yeah. It was John Roach, Don French, and it was probably Jack Sellers, okay and Don was probably the; he was the most on top of stuff electronically because he was a hobbyist of sorts. The other two guys: Mr. Sellers ran the engineering group. John Roach was the VP of manufacturing. And they were basically on a parts visit. They do it once a year, once, twice a year. And they also did it with Motorola and a couple other places. But I told him about this microprocessor and that I was writing a tiny BASIC for it. Okay. Tiny BASIC was a interpreted basic that a guy named Li-Chen Wang actually had the first thing in Dr. Dobbs, Dr. Dobbs magazine. We're talking about, we're talking about things that you don't realize are the shoulders of giants that turned out to be the shoulders of giants. And in fact, we reached out to Mr. Wang as we were working on it. We thought we had the software already taken care of because I'm jumping ahead in the story, but we were going to have Bob Uterich, and you'd have to chase that back. We had him signed up to write a BASIC interpreter for us, but because he'd already done one for the 6800, and it was included in Interface Age magazine. on a plastic record. You remember the old plastic records you could put in a magazine? Randy Kindig: Yeah, I did see that. Steve Leininger: Yeah, so this was called a floppy ROM when they did it. Yeah. So if you had the right software and everything you could download the software off of the floppy ROM and run it on 6800. I think he used the Southwest Technical Products thing. And so we'd signed him up to do the BASIC. This was independent of the hardware design I was doing. And he went into radio silence on us; couldn't find him. And so we get to, in parallel, I was using the Li-Chen Wang plan to do at least a demo version of BASIC that would run on the original computer. And when the demo went successfully on Groundhog Day in 1977. This is the time frame we're talking about. I I started work on July 5th, the year before it. With Tandy? Yeah. Okay. We rolled into town on the 3rd, and of course they're closed for the 4th. And on the 5th I started, and there was the wandering around in the desert at the beginning of that, and Don's probably talked about how I was moved from there to their audio factory and then to the old saddle factory. Tandy used to be primarily a leather company before they bought Radio Shack in 1966 or something like that. And anyway, when the software didn't come out, I ended up writing the software, too. So I designed all the hardware and all the software. I didn't do the power supply. Chris Klein did the power supply. And, a little bit of the analog video circuitry, but it was very little part of that. Because we were just making a video signal. I did all the digital stuff on that. Yeah. Randy Kindig: So the software ended up being what was the level one ROM, right? Steve Leininger: Yeah, the level one ROM started out as the Li-Chen Wang BASIC. But he had no I. O. in his software, so I was doing the keyboard scanning. I had to do the cassette record and playback. Had to implement data read and data write Peek and poke, which is pretty simple. Put in the graphic statements. Yeah, oh, and floating point. Now, floating point, luckily, Zilog had a library for that, but I had to basically, this was before APIs were a big deal, so I basically had to use their interface, To what I had written and had to allocate storage, correct? We're talking about 4K bytes of ROM. I know, yeah. Very tiny, and to put all the I. O. in there, and to make it so that you could be updating the screen, when you're doing the cassette I put two asterisks up there and blinked the second one on and off, you remember that? Randy Kindig: Oh yeah. Steve Leininger: Sort of as a level set. Randy Kindig: Yeah. Steve Leininger: And someone said, oh, you should have patented that thing. And actually I have seven or eight patents, U. S. patents, on different parts of the computer architecture. Randy Kindig: Oh, do you? Steve Leininger: But not the blinking asterisk, which is probably a patentable feature. Randy Kindig: Yeah, I wish I'd had that on other machines, that I ended up having. So that would have been nice, yeah. I liken what you've done with what Steve Wozniak did, for the Apple II. You're somebody I've always wanted to talk to because I felt like you were one of the important pioneers in their early years. What do you have to say about that? Do you feel like what you did was ... Steve Leininger: in retrospect, yes. And I have a greater appreciation for people like the Wright Brothers. If you think about the Wright Brothers they took all their stuff from their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop down to Kill Devil Hills. We now know it as Kitty Hawk. But they would take the stuff down there by train, and then they would have to put it in horse driven wagons. Think about that. And people would ask them, what are you going to use the airplane for? It's what are you going to use a home computer for? Yeah, to maintain recipes and to play games. Randy Kindig: Do your checkbook. Steve Leininger: Do your check, home security. There's a whole lot of stuff that we talked about. And other giants entered the field: Multiplan, which became Lotus 1 2 3, which became Excel. Not the same company, but the idea, could you live without a spreadsheet today? Very difficult for some things, right? Randy Kindig: Yeah. Yeah, it's ubiquitous. People use it for everything. Yeah. Yeah. So you've been, I talked with David and Teresa Walsh. Or Welsh, I'm sorry, Welsh. Where they did the book Priming the Pump. Steve Leininger: That's very that's pretty close to the real thing. Randy Kindig: Is it? Okay. They named their book after what you did and said; that you primed the pump for home computers. Can you expand on that and tell us exactly what you meant by that? Steve Leininger: It again goes back to that shoulders of giants thing, and I forget who said that; it's actually a very old quote, I can see further because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think the thing that we brought to the table and Independently, Commodore and Apple did the same thing in 1977. There were three computers that came out inexpensive enough that you could use them in the home. They all came with ROM loaded BASIC. You didn't have to load anything else in. They all came with a video output. Some had displays. Some Commodore's was built in. One of ours was a Clip on and you had to go find one for the apple. For the Apple, yeah. Apple had a superior case. Apple and Radio Shack both had great keyboards. Randy Kindig: apple was expandable, with its... Steve Leininger: yeah, Apple Apple was internally expandable, yeah. And, but it cost $1,000. Without the cassette. Without the monitor. It wasn't the same type of device. Randy Kindig: I was a college student. And, I looked at all three options. It was like the TRS-80; there are Radio Shacks everywhere. You could go in and play with one; which was nice. And they were inexpensive enough that I could actually afford one. Steve Leininger: And, Radio Shack can't duck the, if you did something wrong, you had to fix it. Randy Kindig: That's right. Let's see here. So initially the idea was to have a kit computer by Tandy? Steve Leininger: Yeah. I'm not sure whose idea that was. It made some kind of sense. Because that's the way the Altair was, and Radio Shack did sell a number of kits, but in the process of still kicking that around, saying it could be a possibility. I was one of the ones that said it could be a possibility. Within the same group that I did the design work from, they also would take kits in that people had built and troubleshoot the things if they didn't work. We had a couple engineers that would see if you connected something wrong or something. If you didn't, sometimes it was a matter that the instructions weren't clear. If you tell someone to put an LED in, yeah. You specifically have to tell them which way to put it in. And might be an opportunity to tweak your timing. Yeah. Anyway, we get this clock in, and it was a digital clock. Seven segment LEDs probably cost 50 bucks or more. Which is crazy. But It says, put all the components in the board, turn the board over, and solder everything to the board. And, pretty simple instructions. This had a sheet of solder over the entire bottom of the board. Someone figured out how to put two pounds of solder on the back of this thing. And, as we all got a great chuckle out of that, You realize, oh, you don't want to have to deal with a computer like this. You really don't. And Lou Kornfeld, who was the president at the time, didn't really want the computer. But he said, it's not going to be a kit. All right. That, that, that took care of that. great idea. Great idea. Randy Kindig: Were there any other times when you thought the computer might, or were there any times, when you thought the computer might not come to fruition? Any snags that you had that made you think that maybe this isn't going to work? Steve Leininger: Not really. I was young and pretty well undaunted. Randy Kindig: Pretty sure you could, Steve Leininger: yeah I, it wasn't any, it wasn't any different than building one at home. I'd been building kits since, night kits, heath kits, that kind of stuff, since I was a kid. And home brewed a couple things, including a hot dog cooker made from two nails and a couple wires that plugged into the wall. Don't try that at home. Randy Kindig: No kidding. Steve Leininger: But, it's funny if you If you look it up on, if you look that kind of project up on the internet, you can still find a project like that. It's like what's it called? Anvil tossing, where you put gunpowder under an anvil, shoot it up in the air. What could possibly go wrong? Don't, Randy Kindig: It's very well documented in books like Priming the Pump, Stan Veit's book, which I assume you're familiar with, and Fire in the Valley, what your involvement was with the Model 1. But there was some mention of your involvement with the Expansion Interface and other TRS 80 projects. What else did you work on while you were there? Steve Leininger: The Color Computer, the Expansion Interface. The model three to a little. Randy Kindig: Okay. Steve Leininger: Little bit. The model two was the big one. And point I just got tired of the management there. Randy Kindig: Did you? Okay. Steve Leininger: Yeah. I my mind was going faster than theirs, and they made the conscious decision to do whatever IBM has done, but do it cheaper. That, to me, that's not a. Didn't say less expensively either, so the whole thing just troubled me that, we're not going to be able to do anything new unless IBM has done it. And at about the same time the Macintosh came out and a superb piece of work. Yeah. Randy Kindig: Okay. So what education training and previous work experience did you have at the time you got hired by Tandy that made you uniquely qualified for that project that they were looking for? Steve Leininger: I'd been playing around with electronics since I was in the third grade. Actually, electricity. Randy Kindig: The third grade, wow. Steve Leininger: Yeah. My, my mom got me a kit that had light bulbs and bells and buzzers and wire from, I think it might have been the Metropolitan Museum. They had a kit. They, they've got a, they still today have an online presence. It, of course the materials have changed, but the kit had all these parts and it had no instructions. And I don't know if that was by design or it didn't have instructions, so I had to learn how to hook up wires and light bulbs and bells and switches to make it do things. And, in the process, I found out that if you put a wire right across the battery terminals, it gets hot. And, interesting stuff to know. Pretty soon, I was taking this stuff in to show and tell in the third grade. Look, and I was very early in electronics. It's electricity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then my mom would take me to the library. She was quite a voracious reader, and I'd go to the library. technical section specifically the Dewey Decimal 621, which was electronics and things like that. Randy Kindig: you still remember that. Steve Leininger: Yeah. And in the 590 series, there's some good stuff too. And I would usually take out a stack of books, even though I was a horrible reader because I'm dyslexic and ADD. So I have an attention span and reading problem. But the technical stuff I was reading about pipeline architecture processors while I was still in junior high. And not that was important to where I ended up, but it was important because I understood the words and data flow, and stuff like that. And between that and building the kits and things like that, I When we moved to Indianapolis, my dad moved jobs down to Indianapolis. Randy Kindig: Oh, you lived in Indianapolis? Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I moved from South Bend down to Indianapolis. So I probably passed your house as . Actually we came down through Kokomo, but but yeah. Randy Kindig: I actually grew up in that part of the state. Just south of South Bend. Steve Leininger: Okay. So yeah La Paz, Plymouth, Randy Kindig: yeah, Warsaw, Rochester. Steve Leininger: Yeah, I was born in Rochester. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. So that's where I grew up in that area. Steve Leininger: Okay, there you go. My dad's from Akron. Randy Kindig: Are you serious? Steve Leininger: I am serious. Randy Kindig: Akron's where my wife grew up. And I was just 10 miles from there. Steve Leininger: The general store there, Dan Leininger and Sons, that's my great grandfather. Randy Kindig: Really? Steve Leininger: Yeah. Randy Kindig: I'll be darned. Okay. Okay. Steve Leininger: So now it all makes sense. Randy Kindig: That's amazing. Steve Leininger: Anyway, we started a garage band. This is before Apple's garage band. And I made my own amplifier. It basically had the sun sun amplifiers back end on the thing and a Fender Showman front end on it. Completely home brewed really loud amplifier. And I had a friend who had a guitar amplifier that was broken, and he had taken it down to the music store there. And after six weeks of not getting it back, they said we've had trouble with our technician and all that. I asked if I could go down and look at it, and in 15 minutes I had his amplifier fixed. And they said, do you want tom so you want a job? All right. Yeah, because I'd been doing, I'd had a paper route before and I don't think I was doing anything since we'd moved and ao I started working in a music store and they ended up with two music stores and then an organ store next door and I started repairing that kind of stuff. And this was the end of my first year in college. Went to the extension in Indianapolis. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. And Was that I U P U I? Steve Leininger: IUPUI, yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I U P U I. Randy Kindig: Huh. I went there as well. Steve Leininger: Yeah and learned Fortran there, got all my first year classes out, and then moved on up to the campus. And because we'd always go to the library, and because my mom would often take me to the library, the newsstand not too far from the library, and she'd get a couple magazines, but she let me get an electronic magazine. And, I didn't understand these things, pretty soon you start understanding the pic, you start understanding it. This is a resistor, I built a little shocker box based on a design in probably elementary electronics. And It's like a handheld electric fence. Randy Kindig: Oh, wow. Steve Leininger: Yeah. Think hot dog cooker. Anyway, so I learned some electronics that way. A lot of that was self taught. I learned quite a bit more by working in the music store, again, this was before I was taught any formal electronics. And actually when I moved up to campus on Purdue, I thought I was going to be a world class guitar amplifier designer. That's where I thought. And it turns out my analog gut feelings aren't, weren't as good as other people's. Paul Schreiber does a much better job with electronics, with analog electronics than I do. But digital electronics, I understood this stuff. I would hang out in the library and I'd read the trade magazines. So I was up to date on, I was way more up to date than a typical professor would be on current electronics. And in 1973, which was the end of my junior year, Electronics Magazine had an article on the Intel 8008. And I said, Oh, I understand this. See, I'd already been taking assembly language. Now they didn't teach assembly language programming in the electronics school. They had Fortran, but there was no way to get from Fortran to ..they weren't teaching programming languages. I had to go to the business school where I learned assembly language on the school's CDC 6600 mainframe. Randy Kindig: Really? Steve Leininger: Yeah. Randy Kindig: Through the business school? Steve Leininger: Yeah. And for those of you who have never tried assembly language programming, it looks like a foreign language until you just internalize it in your brain: there's ADD, A D and A D C for ADD with carry, and there's a whole bunch of different things. There's different ways to move data around, but you're only doing a few really basic things, and if you do it fast enough, it looks like it's instantaneous. That's the way even your phone works today. It's because you're doing it fast enough. It fools you. Randy Kindig: Yep. Wow. Do you ever look back at these days, at those days, with amazement? As far as how far the industry has come? Steve Leininger: Oh yeah. And, it's funny because you wouldn't, you couldn't probably, but you wouldn't start over again. I had to learn, I had to learn digital video. Actually the giant that I, whose shoulders I stood on there was the late Don Lancaster. He had a book called TV Typewriter Cookbook. And actually that came out a little bit later, but he had a TV typewriter series in Radio Electronics Magazine. And basically alphanumeric display. If you think about it, just the glass teletype, the keyboard display and a serial interface at the time that the RadioShack computer came out was selling for 999. Another 400 on top of what we were selling the whole computer for. Because we had a microprocessor in there. We didn't have a whole lot of options. We didn't have a whole lot of fluff. In fact Motorola said, send this to your schematics and your parts list and let's see if we can minimize your circuit. And after two weeks they sent it back. He said, you did a pretty good job here. . . Randy Kindig: Okay. Huh. You still stay in touch with people at Tandy? Steve Leininger: A few of them. It's actually been more lately. Because it's almost more interesting now. It's like the, I don't know whatever happened to Atwater and Kent, of the Atwater Kent radio. But, that's an old school radio that now you've got people that rebuild them and got them all polished up and all this kind of stuff. But for a while they ended up in the dump. I'm sure, there are some trash 80s that ended up in the trash. Randy Kindig: I'm sure. Steve Leininger: Yeah but I've gotten rid of lots of PCs that don't meet my needs anymore, right? Randy Kindig: Sure. Yeah, we all have, somewhere along the way. It seemed like you were really quiet there for a long time and that you were difficult to get in contact with. Steve Leininger: I wasn't really that difficult. I didn't maintain a social media presence on the thing, but things that I had my own consulting company for quite a while. I actually came back to Radio Shack two more times after I left. One was to come back as a technologist there. The politics still didn't work out well. Then I came back as a contractor to help them with some of their online things. I actually had a website called Steve's Workbench. Steve Leininger: And you can find it on the Internet Archive. The Wayback Machine. And it had some basic stamp projects. And we were going to do all sorts of other things. But I managed to upset the people at RadioShack. com. They didn't have a big sense of humor about someone being critical about the products that they'd selected. And I, I did a... I was going to start doing product reviews on the kits, how easy it was to solder, whether it was a good value for the money and all that kind of stuff. And I gave a pretty honest review on it. And Radio Shack didn't appreciate the power of an honest review. It's what makes Amazon what it is, right? You go in there and if there's something that's got just two stars on the reviews, Yeah, you really got to know what you're doing if you're going to buy the thing, right? And if you see something that's got a bunch of one star and a bunch of five star reviews Yeah, someone's probably aalting the reference at the top end. And so I mean they had such a fit that when they changed platforms For RadioShack. com, they didn't take Steve's Workbench with it And I basically lost that position. Radio Shack should own the makerspace business right now. They at one time, one time I suggested, you ought to take a look at buying Digikey or maybe Mouser. Mouser was right down the street from us. They already had their hands into Allied, but these other two were doing stuff, more consumer oriented, but they didn't. They were making, they were flush with money from selling cell phone contracts. And they thought that was the way of the future until the cell phone companies started reeling that back in. At a certain point, you don't want to be paying your 5 percent or 10 percent royalty to Radio Shack for just signing someone up. Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize you had ever gone back and worked for them again. Steve Leininger: Yeah, twice, Randy Kindig: and so I'm curious, did you meet any other famous figures in the microcomputer revolution while you were working at Tandy? Steve Leininger: At Tandy, let's see. Randy Kindig: I'm just curious. Steve Leininger: Yeah, Bill Gates, of course. I went out when we were working on level two BASIC. And Bill Gates I think was probably a hundred- thousand- aire at that time. And, working in a, thhey had a floor in a bank building in Seattle. He took me to the basement of his dad's law firm, and we had drinks there, and I went out to his house on the lake. This was not the big house. I've never been there. It was a big house on the lake, but it wasn't the one That he built later on. So I knew him early on run across Forest Mims a couple times. And of course, he's the shoulders upon which a lot of electronic talent was built and some of the stuff is lost. Jameco is actually bringing him back as a… Jameco is a kinda like a Radio Shack store online. It's yeah it is, it's not as robust as DigiKey or Bower, but they've held their roots. Someone I've not met Lady Ada from Adafruit would be fun. Randy Kindig: Yeah. Would, yeah. Steve Leininger: I, that, that's another thing that, if we had something along those lines, that would have been cool, but the buyers weren't up, up to the task and they when you don't want criticism at a certain point you've got to quit doing things if you don't want to be criticized. Randy Kindig: Sure. When you finally got the Model 1 rolled out and you saw the tremendous interest, were you surprised in the interest that it garnered? Steve Leininger: I wasn't. I wasn't. In fact, there's a quote of me. Me and John Roach had a discussion on how many of these do you think we could sell? And, this is actually quoted in his obituary on the, in the Wall Street Journal. I, Mr. Tandy said you could build 3, 500 of these because we've got 3, 500 stores and we can use them in the inventory. And to take inventory. And John Roach thought maybe we could sell, up to 5, 000 of these things in the first year. And I said, oh no, I think we could sell 50, 000. To which he said, horseshit. Just like that. And that, now I quoted that to the Wall Street Journal, and they put that in his obituary. Yeah I don't know how many times that word shows up in the Wall Street Journal, but if you search their files you'll find that it was me quoting John Roach. So … Randy Kindig: I'll have to, I'll have to look for that, yeah, that's funny. So you were not surprised by the interest, Steve Leininger: no, it, part of it was I knew the leverage of the stores I'd been working, when we introduced the thing I'd been working for the company for just over a year. Think about that. And it wasn't until just before probably, it was probably September or October when Don and I agreed on the specs. I'd keep writing it up, and he'd look at it. Don actually suggested that, demanded, he doesn't, in a, but in a good natured way, he made a good case for it, that I have, in addition to the cassette interface on there, that I have a way to read and write data. Because if you're going to do an accounting program, you got to be able to read and write data. I actually figured out a way to do that. There were a couple other things. John Roach really wanted blinking lights on the thing. And my mechanical, the mechanical designer, there said that's going to cost more money to put the LEDs in there. What are you going to do with them? And, Mr. Roach was, you know, familiar with the IBM probably the 360 by then? Anyway. The mainframes. Yeah, mainframes always had blinking lights on them. Randy Kindig: Exactly. Steve Leininger: And since it's a computer, it should have blinking lights. And Larry said, Larry the mechanical guy said what are you going to do with them? I said, I can't, I said I could put stuff up there, It's… Randy Kindig: What are they going to indicate? Steve Leininger: Yeah. And then, he said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to make the case without holes for the lights and just don't worry about it. That was the end of the discussion. Mr. Roach was probably a little disappointed, but yeah, no one else had them, Randy Kindig: it's funny to think that you'd have blinking lights on a microcomputer like that. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any aspect of the Model one development you would do differently if you were doing it today? Steve Leininger: Yeah, I would, I would've put the eighth memory chip in with the, with the video display so you get upper and lower case. Randy Kindig: Yeah, there you go. Okay. Steve Leininger: Might've put buffers to the outside world. We had the, the microprocessor was buffered, but it was, it was very short distance off the connector there. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot I would have changed. Software could have been written a little better, but when one person's writing all the software the development system that I had was a Zilog development system. And 30 character percent a second. Decorator, line printer. The fact that I got it done is actually miracle stuff. Randy Kindig: Yeah, and you got it done in a year, right? Steve Leininger: And it was all written in assembly language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it all done in a year. Randy Kindig: That's a good year's work. Steve Leininger: It is. Randy Kindig: Building a computer from scratch, basically, and then getting it... Steve Leininger: and back then we had to program EEPROMs. We didn't have flash memory. Okay. Didn't hardly have operating systems back then. Not that I was using one. There was something in the Zilog thing, but yeah we were so far ahead of things, we were developing a product rather than a computer. And maybe that's the whole difference is that we had a product that you pull it up, plug it in, and it says these are TRS 80 and it wasn't the Model 1 until the Model 2 came out. Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. It was just the TRS 80. Yeah. So I have to know, do you have any of the old hardware? Steve Leininger: I've got a Model 1. I don't use it except for demonstrations now. I actually have two. I've got one that works and one that's probably got a broken keyboard connector from taking it out of the case and holding it up too many times. Randy Kindig: Were these prototypes or anything? Steve Leininger: They are non serial production units. I've got the, I've got a prototype ROM board that's got the original integer basic that I wrote. I don't have the video boards and all that kind of stuff that went with it when we did the original demonstration. Let's see we had four wire wrapped, completely wire wrapped industrial wire wrapped versions that we used for prototyping the software. One went to David Lein, who wrote the book that came with the thing, the basic book. One I had at my desk and there were two others. Yeah. And they got rid of all of those. So a cautionary tale is if you do something in the future where you've got that prototype that was put together in Tupperware containers or held together with duct tape, you need to at least take pictures of it. And you might want to keep one aside. If it turns out to be something like the Apple III, you can probably get rid of all that stuff. If it turns out to be something like the Apple II, The RadioShack computer, the Commodore PET, you really ought to, enshrine that. The original iPhone. Apple did stuff that was, what was it, can't remember what it was. They had a they had a thing not unlike the... 3Com ended up getting them. Anyway the hand of the PDAs, no one knows what a Personal Oh, digital assistant. Yeah. Yeah. We call that a, we call that a phone ... Randy Kindig: Palm Pilot. Yeah. Steve Leininger: Yeah. Palm Pilot. That's the one. Yeah. I've got a couple of those. I've got three model 100's. I've got one of the early… Randy Kindig: Did you work on the 100s? Steve Leininger: I used it, but I didn't work on it. The design. No. Okay. That was an NEC product with Radio Shack skins on it. Randy Kindig: Oh, that's right. That's right. Steve Leininger: Kay Nishi was the big mover on that. Yeah. Let's see I've got an Altair and an ASR 33 Teletype. Yeah, we're talking about maybe the computer's grandfather, right? I've had a whole bunch of other stuff. I've probably had 40 other computers that I don't have anymore. I am gravitating towards mechanical music devices, big music boxes, that kind of stuff. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. Cool. Interesting. Steve, that's all the questions I had prepared. Steve Leininger: Okay. Randy Kindig: Is there anything I should have asked about that? Steve Leininger: Oh my, Randy Kindig: anything you'd want to say? Steve Leininger: Yeah, I, I've given talks before on how do you innovate? How do you become, this is pioneering kinds of stuff. So you really have to have that vision, man. The vision, I can't exactly say where the vision comes from, but being dyslexic for me has been a gift. Okay and this is something I tell grade school and middle school students that, some people are out there saying I, I can't do that because, it's just too much stuff or my brain is cluttered. Cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk the sign of? Embrace the clutter. Learn a lot of different things. Do what you're passionate about. Be willing to. support your arguments, don't just get angry if someone doesn't think the way you do, explain why you're doing it that way. And sometimes it's a matter of they just don't like it or they don't have the vision. The ones that don't have the vision, they never, they may never have the vision. I've quit companies because of people like that. But When you've got the vision and can take it off in your direction, it could just end up as being art. And I shouldn't say just art, art can be an amazing thing. And that behind these walls here, we've got a pinball machine and gaming conference going on. And it is nutcase. But is there stuff out there you look at and say, Oh, wow. Yeah. And I do too. Keep it a while going. Randy Kindig: Very cool. All right. That's a great stopping point, I think. All right. I really appreciate it, Steve taking the time to talk with us today. Steve Leininger: Thanks, Randy.
Episode 141 - Interview with Paul Terrell, The Byte Shop - Part 2 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Hello, and welcome to episode 141 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for July, 2024. I am Randy Kindig, your host, as always, for this historical perspective on obsolete-but-still fun technology. This month I'm bringing you a follow-on interview episode from last month. As we discussed then, Paul Terrell is a name well-known in the annals of computer history; probably most famously for his kickstart of Apple Computer through the purchase of one of Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's first batches of Apple I computers for his Byte Shop. The Byte Shop was a very early computer store that was one of the few that existed in the world, at the time. In this interview, we continue to focus primarily on The Byte Shop, how it got started, what it was like, and much more. There will be even more content in future episodes, as Paul and I had a pretty lengthy discussion on just this topic. If you want to know what it was like to run a computer store in those early days, this is the interview for you! Along the way, you'll learn even more about just what the home and hobby computer scene was like in those days. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To VCF Southeast - https://gameatl.com/vintage-computing-festival-southeast/ Upcoming Shows Show list I maintain for the remainder of the current year - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule) Vintage Computer Festival West - August 2-3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-18 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ World of Retrocomputing 2024 Expo - September 14-15 - Kitchener, ON, Canada - https://www.facebook.com/events/s/world-of-retro-computing-2024-/1493036588265072/ Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/ Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we Interview with Paul Terrell (3) Apple-1 Prototype Polaroid Photographs Given to Paul Terrell of the Byte Shop in 1976 - https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/348985606984001-steve-jobs-3-apple-1-prototype-polaroid-photographs-given-to-paul-terrell-of-the-byte-shop-in-1976/?cat=3 Ray Borrill's Data Domain blog - https://www.landsnail.com/thedatadomain/remember.htm
Episode 140 - Interview with Paul Terrell, The Byte Shop - Part 1 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Hello, and welcome to episode 140 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for June, 2024. I am Randy Kindig, your guide to this journey through vintage computer goodness. This month I'm bringing you another interview episode. Paul Terrell is a name well-known in the annals of computer history; probably most famously for his kickstart of Apple Computer through the purchase of one of Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's first batches of Apple I computers for his Byte Shop. The Byte Shop was a very early computer store that was one of the few that existed in the world, at the time. I've had an earlier introductory interview with Paul where numerous topics were covered in a more general manner. I also talked with Paul about his time at Exidy working on the sorcerer computer. In this interview, we focus primarily on The Byte Shop, how it got started, what it was like, and much more. Through several conversations with Paul, the interview ran quite long, so this is part I of The Byte Shop discussion. If you want to know what it was like to run a computer store in those early days, this is the interview for you! Along the way, you'll learn even more about just what the home and hobby computer scene was like in those days. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To American Computer and Robotics Museum - https://acrmuseum.org/ Vtech Pre-Computer Unlimited - https://vtech.fandom.com/wiki/PreComputer_Unlimited USB-C Power Adapter for Atari 8-bit - https://mozzwald.com/product/atari-8-bit-usb-c-power-adapter/ USB-C Power Adapter for Apple IIc - https://mozzwald.com/product/apple-iic-usb-c-power-delivery-adapter/ Upcoming Shows Show list I maintain for the remainder of the current year - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule) KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 16-21 (in-person), July 27-28 (virtual) - University of Illinois in Springfield, IL - https://www.kansasfest.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21, 2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ Nottingham Video Game Expo - July 20-21 - The Belgrave Rooms, Nottingham, U.K. - https://www.nottsvge.com/ Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/ Vintage Computer Festival West - August 2-3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-18 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/ Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we Meet The Listeners Brian Cox's site FVResearch.com - https://www.fvresearch.com/
ANTIC Interview 437 - Dr. Kristina Hooper Woolsey, Atari Research Labs and Apple Multimedia Lab Hello, and welcome to this interview-only episode of ANTIC, The Atari 8-bit computer podcast. I'm Randy Kindig, your host for this episode. Dr. Kristina Hooper Woolsey is an American scholar and cognitive scientist known as the "mother of multimedia" for her pioneering work at the Apple Multimedia Lab and Atari Research Labs, which she directed. Woolsey was a founding member of the Apple Human Interface Group. She was named a Distinguished Scientist by Apple Computer in acknowledgment of her pioneering work in multimedia in education. She was the executive producer of a range of multimedia titles in learning --- Life Story, the Visual Almanac, Animal Pathfinders, Disappearing Ducks, Countdown, Planetary Taxi and others --- that were produced when she was Director of the Apple Computer Multimedia Lab. There is discussion during the interview about Cynthia Solomon and Brian Silverman, who were interviewed in a previous episode about their time at Atari Research Labs. This interview took place on Feb. 6, 2024. Links Dr. Woolsey's book about her time at Apple - https://www.amazon.com/learn-different-Designing-Multimedia-1987-1992-ebook/dp/B07QCH1VN4 Interview with Cynthia Solomon and Brian Silverman - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-435-cynthia-solomon-and-brian-silverman-logo
This Episode I had the pleasure of the host of Floppy Days, Randy Kindig. 11 years and 141 episodes so far and his quest to cover every home computer chronologically has only got him to 1984's Grundy Newbrain! what dedication. Randy Speaks to me about his motivation and collection of vintage computers and we share our observations on how computing has changed since the days of individual quirky machines. Please visit www.floppydays.com to listen to his show. Thanks also to Warren (Woz) Pilkington for the opening segment. Theme is by Mr Nissness, get him on youtube and bandcamp @mrnissness You can support the podcast with hosting costs by buying me a kofi www.ko-fi.com/bytehigh if you wish, but a like or a rating is just as welcome. Keep it blocky!
Post-VCF SoCal 2024 with Paul Nurminen Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper 0 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 13 sec Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 43 sec Intro 2 min 53 sec bumper - Paul Nurminen 3 min 00 sec Discussion with Paul Nurminen 1 hr 20 min 00 sec Closing Hello, and welcome to episode 137 of the Floppy Days Podcast. I'm Randy Kindig, the host of this show. This episode is an adjunct to and follow up to the last episode (#136) of Floppy Days. In that episode, which covered the Grundy New Brain, I alluded to the fact that in the “What I've Been Up To” section of the podcast, I was going to publish a separate episode just for that. I did that because I don't like to have episodes over about 90 minutes, and having this segment in that show would have pushed it well beyond that. So, for this episode I enlisted the aid of Paul Nurminen (aka Nurmix), who was also an attendee and exhibitor/vendor at the recent Vintage Computer Festival Southern California, to help me do a follow up discussion of that show. We discuss our exhibits, other exhibits of note, our general thoughts about the show, and a whole lot more. I hope you enjoy this. Links VCF SoCal - https://www.vcfsocal.com/ Intellivisionaries Podcast - http://intellivisionaries.com/ White Flag Computing - https://www.whiteflagcomputing.com Episode 83 of Floppy Days about the Intellivision Keyboard Component with Paul Nurminen - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-83-the-intellivision-keyboard-component 1090XL expansion unit and 320K RAM board - reifsnyderb Discussion - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/333084-swutils-simcheck-simtest-osdump/ Purchase - https://www.tindie.com/products/5cfab/1090xl-modernized-reproduction-main-board/ The VintNerd - https://thevintnerd.com/index.html Mega65 - https://mega65.org/ 10-Minute Amiga Retro Cast - https://www.youtube.com/c/10MinuteAmigaRetroCast Aquarius+ computer - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/352635-introducing-the-aquarius/
Grundy NewBrain Peripherals thru Web Sites with Chris Despoinidis Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper 0 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 13 sec Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 42 sec Intro 5 min 17 sec bumper - Chris Espoinidis 5 min 28 sec New Acquisitions 6 min 33 sec bumper - Gerald McMullon 7 min 16 sec Upcoming Computer Shows 12 min 01 sec bumper - Steve O'Hara-Smith 12 min 27 sec Peripherals 22 min 37 sec Using the Machine 33 min 14 sec User Groups/Newsletters 38 min 36 sec Books & Manuals 41 min 47 sec Software 44 min 11 sec Ads 46 min 45 sec Modern Upgrades 51 min 43 sec Emulation 59 min 07 sec Buying One Today 1 hr 02 min 52 sec Community 1 hr 04 min 50 sec Current Web Sites and Videos 1 hr 12 min 45 sec Closing Hello, and welcome to episode 136 of the Floppy Days Podcast. I'm Randy Kindig, the host of this show, and I'll be your guide to a journey back to the year 1982, when a very interesting, low-cost machine entered the market in Great Britain. This is the final episode on the Grundy New Brain, not a well-known machine, most particularly here in the United States where very few have even heard of it; let alone ever owned one. If you want to know more, I've recently published interviews with John Grant, Steve O'Hara-Smith, and Gerald McMullon concerning their involvement with the New Brain back in the day. I also, in the most recent episode, discussed tech specs around the machine with my co-host. Regarding that, in that last episode, to help me talk about the machine, I enlisted Chris Espoinidis to co-host this episode. Chris manages the New Brain Emulator site from his home in Greece. Even though Chris created one of the premier New Brain emulators in existence, and that was the primary focus of his Web site initially, his site has become one of the best places (along with Gerald McMullon's Website) to get any and all New Brain information (which quite honestly is quite sparse). The focus of this last episode detailing the machine, Chris and I will cover things like peripherals, Web sites, books & magazines, software, using the machine, emulators and all of the topics that have become the standard for machine coverage on Floppy Days. This episode will complete all the details we know on the New Brain, with the intent to impart every bit of information to you that I could find about this little-known machine. Before we do that, I will talk about upcoming shows. Upcoming Shows Interim Computer Festival SPRING - March 23rd and 24th, 2024 - Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://sdf.org/icf/ Midwest Gaming Classic - April 5-7 - Wisconsin Center, Milwaukee, WI - https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/ VCF East - April 12-14, 2024 - Wall, NJ - http://www.vcfed.org Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 13-14 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/ The Commodore Los Angeles Super Show - April 13-14 - Burbank VFW Hall, Burbank, CA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=class:start VCF Europa - April 27-28, 2024 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ The 32nd Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! - May 4-5, 2024 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago-Carol Stream (Wheaton), Carol Stream, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ VCF Southwest - June 14-16, 2024 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/ Boatfest Retro Computer Expo - June 14-16 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 22-23 - Old Rainier Brewery Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start Kickstart Amiga UK Expo - June 29-30 - Nottingham, UK - https://www.amigashow.com/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21, 2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - NEW VENUE TBD - http://vcfmw.org/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29, 2024 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Tandy Assembly - September 27-29, 2024 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26, 2024 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show schedule - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ Newsletters NewBrain Online (Dutch/Netherlands) - https://retro.hcc.nl/newbrain/newbrain-online.html Books and Manuals books/manuals at archive.org - https://archive.org/search?query=grundy+newbrain Modern Upgrades NewBrain SD-Box https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G5fARz7HnM https://newbrainemu.eu/new/download/nb-sd-card-box-v-2-circuit-diagram/ Emulation NewBrain Emulator by Chris https://newbrainemu.eu/new/download/newbrain-emulator-beta-4/ https://github.com/cdesp/NB-Emulator-V.3 Buying One Today https://www.ebay.com/itm/325473049117 - $999 BIN (from Greece) Grundy NewBrain Model AD.Complete with PSU, Manual, AZERTY !! Tested & Working!! - https://www.ebay.com/itm/334406491114 - 995 euro (from Netherlands) untested, no power supply - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256162599251 - 449 pounds BIN (from UK) Community Forums AtariAge - https://forums.atariage.com/search/?q=grundy&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=116 Stardot - https://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/search.php?keywords=grundy&fid%5B0%5D=45 Current Web Sites/Videos https://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Grundy/ https://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Grundy/gerald.php https://web.archive.org/web/20160303192051/http://newbrain.hcc.nl/ https://www.newbrainemu.eu/ Article on NewBrain in Popular Computing Weekly (PCW) - https://newbrainemu.eu/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,99/Itemid,52/ Grundy NewBrain Model A repair http://www.8bit-homecomputermuseum.at/repair/newbrain/newbrain.html http://www.8bit-homecomputermuseum.at/repair/newbrain/newbrain_ad_repair.html Series of videos on fixing the NewBrain from the Clueless Engineer - https://www.youtube.com/@Brfff/search?query=grundy Several videos by Chris on using the emulator and many other videos - https://www.youtube.com/@CDESP072 NewBrain Robot Car - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T6mNi2ula4 References history article by Gerald McMullen - https://newbrainemu.eu/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,96/Itemid,52/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/5291/Grundy-NewBrain-AD/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/8265/Grundy-Business-Systems/ https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=176 https://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Grundy/index.php https://www.theregister.com/2012/07/02/newbury_labs_grundy_business_systems_newbrain_is_30_years_old/
Grundy NewBrain Tech Specs with Chris Despoinidis Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper 0 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 14 sec Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 43 sec Intro 5 min 38 sec bumper - Chris Espoinidis 5 min 51 sec New Acquisitions 16 min 32 sec bumper - Gerald McMullon 17 min 15 sec Upcoming Computer Shows 21 min 26 sec bumper - Steve O'Hara-Smith 21 min 45 sec Interview with Chris Espoinidis 36 min 23 sec Tech Specs 1 hr 12 min 07 sec Closing Hello, and welcome to episode 135 of the Floppy Days Podcast. I'm Randy Kindig, the host of this show, and I'll be your guide to a journey back to the year 1982, when a very interesting, low-cost machine entered the market in Great Britain. This machine, if you've been following the show, was the Grundy New Brain. This is not a well-known machine, most particularly here in the United States where very few have even heard of it; let alone ever owned one. As you know, I've been hot on the trail of pioneers who were involved with development of this machine. I've recently published interviews with John Grant, Steve O'Hara-Smith, and Gerald McMullon concerning their involvement with the New Brain back in the day. In this episode I move more into discussing details of the machine and its impact on the home and small business market in the 1980's. To help me talk about the machine, I was able to track down Chris Espoinidis and convince him to co-host this episode. Chris manages the New Brain Emulator site from his home in Greece. Even though Chris created one of the premier New Brain emulators in existence, and that was the primary focus of his Web site initially, his site has become one of the best places (along with Gerald McMullon's Website) to get any and all New Brain information (which quite honestly is quite sparse). The focus of this episode, and the next, is to cover things like tech specs, Web sites, emulators and all of the topics that have become the standard for machine coverage on Floppy Days. This particular episode contains an interview with Chris, and then goes into great detail concerning the technical specifications of the New Brain. The next episode will cover all the other details, with the intent to impart every bit of information to you that I could find about this little-known machine. Before we do that, I will talk about new acquisitions and upcoming shows.
VCF SoCal 2024 Preview with Organizing Team Hello, and welcome to this bonus, interview-only episode of the Floppy Days Podcast. My name is Randy Kindig; your host. This episode is a discussion with most of the organizing team around the very first Vintage Computer Festival 2024 that is coming up February 17 & 18 in Orange, CA. You'll hear how the show came about, why the particular location and time were selected, and what you can expect to see at the show. I'm excited to have a new VCF available in an area and time that should be fantastic to visit and be a part of. Note that this interview occurred on Dec. 5, 2023, and you'll hear several references to the show being “2 and a half months” away. Links VCF SoCal Website - https://www.vcfsocal.com/ VCF SoCal Organizers - https://www.vcfsocal.com/faq#organizers The VintNerd Website (Steve and Micki) - https://thevintnerd.com/index.html The VintNerd YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/thevintnerd Matt's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@polymatt Pathways to Invention Film (Levi) - https://pathwaystoinvention.org/ Southern AMIS Projects (Rob) - https://www.southernamis.com/ Video version of this interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y2zfRP8kyE&t=9s
Grundy NewBrain History with Gerald McMullon Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper 0 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 14 sec Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 43 sec Intro 6 min 33 sec bumper - Gerald McMullon 7 min 15 sec New Acquisitions 13 min 55 sec bumper - Steve O'Hara-Smith 14 min 13 sec Upcoming Computer Shows 17 min 26 sec Interview with Gerald McMullon 57 min 51 sec Closing Hello, and welcome to episode 133 of the Floppy Days Podcast for December, 2023. I'm Randy Kindig, your host on this vintage computer retrospective. Hard to believe we're coming up on the end of 2023. It was Feb. 2013 when I took the first halting steps in producing a podcast, so we're coming up on 11 years of Floppy Days very soon. We are currently covering computers that were released in the year 1982. We are very early in that year, with lots of other computers to be covered. This episode is about a machine that was developed in the UK. It was pretty much unknown in the United States and even in the UK didn't get much traction. The machine I'm talking about is the Grundy NewBrain. There are a lot of unique things about this machine that you'll discover through the history episode, these interviews and the episodes that cover the details. I've been fortunate enough to be able to contact a few people who were involved in the development of the machine. I've published interviews so far with John Grant and Steve O'Hara-Smith. This episode is also an interview episode, but this time with another key member in its development: Gerald McMullon. Gerald has a lot of interesting information to share about the NewBrain, including information about its development and support of the machine after its release. I have been able to contact some other principals in the development of the NewBrain: Basil Smith and Mike Wakefield. Unfortunately, Basil has had a lot of recent requests for interviews, so I'm waiting in line for that. However, should I be able to talk with Basil and/or Mike, I will of course bring all of that to Floppy Days in future episodes. This current episode is the end of the interview episodes around the NewBrain at this point in time. Next month, and actually likely the next 2 months, we will be covering the details of the machine such as tech specs, emulators, software, newsletters, peripherals, web sites, etc. That will happen with a special co-host that I'm going to leave as a surprise for right now. New Acquisitions TI95 cassette interface - https://github.com/molleraj/ti95interface AquariCart + 32K RAM - https://www.ebay.com/itm/124471439128 MC-10 3-button joystick pad - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzsGst8HAiI Upcoming Computer Shows Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - February 17-18, 2024 - Hotel Fera Events Center, Orange, CA - vcfsocal.com Interim Computer Festival SPRING - March 23rd and 24th, 2024 - Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://sdf.org/icf/ Midwest Gaming Classic - April 5-7 - Wisconsin Center, Milwaukee, WI - https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/ VCF East - April 12-14, 2024 - Wall, NJ - http://www.vcfed.org Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 13-14 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/ VCF Europa - April 27-28, 2024 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ The 32nd Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! - May 4-5, 2024 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago-Carol Stream (Wheaton), Carol Stream, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ VCF Southwest - June 14-16, 2024 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/ Boatfest Retro Computer Expo - June 14-16 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 14-15 - Old Rainier Brewery Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start Kickstart Amiga UK Expo - June 29-30 - Nottingham, UK - https://www.amigashow.com/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21, 2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-28 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29, 2024 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show schedule - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ Interview Gerald's Website - http://www.mcmullen.com NewBrain Nutshell History by Gerald at Binary Dinosaurs - https://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Grundy/gerald.php NewBrain history article by Gerald in Micro Computer Mart newsletter - https://newbrainemu.eu/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,96/Itemid,52/
Grundy NewBrain History with Steve O'Hara-Smith Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper 0 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 14 sec Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 43 sec Intro 6 min 14 sec bumper - Steve O'Hara-Smith 6 min 32 sec New Acquisitions 22 min 53 sec bumper - Gerald McMullon 23 min 36 sec Upcoming Computer Shows 26 min 51 sec Feedback 30 min 19 sec Interview with Steve O'Hara-Smith 71 min 46 sec Closing Hello, and welcome to episode 132 of the Floppy Days Podcast; a podcast about home computers in the magical years of the late 70's through the 80's. I'm Randy Kindig, your host on this voyage. We are currently covering computers that were released in the year 1982; a banner year for personal computers. It's actually going to take quite some time to get through this year in history. This is the second episode about a computer that few in the United States know much about. It was released in the UK and even there didn't get much traction. It was a unique beast, with its own personality and quirks; before it went quietly into the annals of history. The machine I'm talking about is the Grundy NewBrain. As it was so relatively unknown, I'm going to be spending a lot of air time talking about its history: in the last episode (Episode 131) I summarized its history, including a short interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, whose company did some work on the machine This episode contains an very informative interview with Steve O'Hara Smith, who was involved with development of the machine The next episode will have an interview with Gerald McMullon, also having done some work on the early NewBrain, as well as support after its release Finally, there will be 1 or more episodes to cover the usual topics of tech specs, Web sites, emulators, etc. I will have a special guest co-host for that. So, as you can see, there's a ton of upcoming information about the NewBrain. Please join me in learning more about this unusual machine. Before we get into this interview, I'll let you know what I've been up to and have been able to acquire lately; which continues to grow seemingly beyond my control. That brings me to some administrative news. In order to provide maximum flexibility for my listeners, I'm going to start publishing a timeline in the show notes. It will have a time marker for each section of the podcast, so that, for instance, if you want to jump straight to an interview and re-listen to just that section, you can do so. This is an easy thing to provide, with the audio editing software I use, so from now on expect to see that information in the show notes. New Acquisitions TS2068/Spectrum group - https://groups.io/g/TS2068 Wafadrive - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotronics_Wafadrive mini-bus expansion board - https://www.andertone.com/product/ts1000-expansion-extender/ composite mod for TS1000/ZX81 - https://www.ebay.com/itm/175512970894 64K RAM pack (Memopak) - https://www.andertone.com/product/memopak-64k-ram-pack/ TS1500 keyboard membrane - https://www.ebay.com/itm/304824623956 Upcoming Computer Shows Atari Party 2023! - Saturday, December 2, 2023, 1pm to 4pm - Quakertown Train Station, Quakertown, PA - https://quakertowntrainstation.org - organized by Peter Fletcher World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - February 17-18, 2024 - Hotel Fera Events Center, Orange, CA - vcfsocal.com Interim Computer Festival SPRING - March 23-24, 2024 - Intraspace, Seattle, WA - https://sdf.org/icf/ Midwest Gaming Classic - April 5-7 - Wisconsin Center, Milwaukee, WI - https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/ VCF East - April 5-7, 2024 - Wall, NJ - http://www.vcfed.org Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 13-14 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/ The 32nd Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! - May 4-5, 2024 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago-Carol Stream (Wheaton), Carol Stream, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ VCF Southwest - June 14-16, 2024 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/ Boatfest Retro Computer Expo - June 14-16 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21, 2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-28 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29, 2024 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show schedule - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/
The Grundy NewBrain History with John Grant Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Hello, and welcome to episode 131 of the Floppy Days Podcast; where old computers get a new lease on life and have a purpose once again! I'm Randy Kindig, your host on this journey to the late 70's through the 80's. We are currently covering computers that were released in the year 1982; a banner year for personal computers. Next up is a computer that few in the United States know much about. It was released in the UK and even there didn't get much traction. It was a unique beast, with its own personality and quirks; before it went quietly into the annals of history. The machine I'm talking about is the Grundy NewBrain. Certainly a bold and pretentious name for a computer, but memorable nonetheless. As it was so relatively unknown, I'm going to be spending a lot of air time talking about its history. Here's how I'm planning to cover this unique machine: in this episode I'll be summarizing its history, including a short interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, whose company did some work on the machine a later episode will have an interview with Steve O'Hara Smith, who was involved with development of the machine yet another episode will have an interview with Gerald McMullon, also having done some work on the early NewBrain, as well as support after its release Finally, there will be 1 or more episodes to cover the usual topics of tech specs, Web sites, emulators, etc. I will have a special guest co-host for that. So, as you can see, there's a ton of upcoming information about the NewBrain. Please join me in learning more about this unusual machine. Before we get into the history of the machine, I'll let you know what I've been up to and have been able to acquire lately, computer and modern upgrade-wise. New Acquisitions the Commodore Room - https://www.youtube.com/@thecommodoreroom4554 Tandy Assembly - http://www.tandyassembly.com PiKey-10 upgrade - http://www.pikey.tech/ NewSoft - (https://jaynewirth.wixsite.com/newsoft CoCo3 512K RAM upgrade - http://www.cloud9tech.com CoCo Multi-pak PAL upgrade - http://www.cloud9tech.com ChromaTRS - https://www.ebay.com/str/trs80universe Vintage computer printed items - https://techdungeon.xyz/ 48KRAM (Josh Malone) Twitch channel - https://twitch.tv/48kRAM Vintage Computer Shows Atari Party 2023! - Saturday, December 2, 2023, 1pm to 4pm - Quakertown Train Station, Quakertown, PA - https://quakertowntrainstation.org - organized by Peter Fletcher World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ Vintage Computer Festival SoCal - February 17-18, 2024 - Hotel Fera Events Center, Orange, CA - vcfsocal.com Midwest Gaming Classic - April 5-7 - Wisconsin Center, Milwaukee, WI - https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/ VCF East - April 5-7, 2024 - Wall, NJ - http://www.vcfed.org Indy Classic Computer & Video Game Expo - April 13-14 - Indianapolis, IN - http://www.indyclassic.org The 32nd Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! - May 4-5, 2024 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago-Carol Stream (Wheaton), Carol Stream, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ VCF Southwest - June 14-16, 2024 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at UT Dallas - https://www.vcfsw.org/ http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show schedule - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ References history article by Gerald McMullen - https://newbrainemu.eu/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,96/Itemid,52/ Grundy NewBrain history at Centre for Computing History - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/5291/Grundy-NewBrain-AD/ Grundy articles at Centre for Computing History - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/8265/Grundy-Business-Systems/ Grundy NewBrain at old-computers.com - https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=176 Grundy NewBrain at Binary Dinosaurs - https://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Grundy/index.php 2012 Article on the Grundy NewBrain at The Register - https://www.theregister.com/2012/07/02/newbury_labs_grundy_business_systems_newbrain_is_30_years_old/ NewBrain at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grundy_NewBrain
ANTIC Interview 435 - Cynthia Solomon and Brian Silverman - Logo Hello, and welcome to this interview-only episode of ANTIC, The Atari 8-bit computer podcast. I'm Randy Kindig, your host for this episode. Cynthia Solomon is an American computer scientist known for her work in artificial intelligence and making popular computer science for students. She is a pioneer in the fields of artificial intelligence, computer science, and educational computing. Together with Seymour Papert and Wally Feurzeig, Cynthia designed the Logo computer programming language in 1967. Dr. Solomon has attained many accomplishments in her life such as being the vice president of R&D for Logo Computer Systems, Inc., when Apple Logo was developed and was the Director of the Atari Cambridge Research Laboratory. Brian Silverman is a Canadian computer scientist, the creator of many programming environments for children, and a researcher in cellular automata. As a student at MIT, Brian had worked with Seymour Papert, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, and when Papert founded Logo Computer Systems, Inc. in 1980 to commercialize the Logo programming language, Brian became its director of research. Brian was responsible for the development of Logo for the Atari 8-bit line of computers. This interview took place on May 27, 2022. Links Logoworks: Challenging Programs in Logo by Cynthia Solomon, Margaret Minsky, Brian Harvey - https://www.amazon.com/Logoworks-Challenging-Programs-Logo-books/dp/007042425X Atari Cambridge Research 1982-84 - https://logothings.github.io/logothings/AtariResearch.html Atari Logo at Atarimania - http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-atari-logo_15782.html Brian's work at Playful Invention Company - https://www.playfulinvention.com/ ANTIC episode 29 (Turtle-y Goodness) with Atari Logo content - https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-episode-29-turtle-y-goodness
Interview with Forrest Mims III, Electronics Author Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Books: Forrest's first memoir "Siliconnections: Coming of Age in the Electronic Era" - https://amzn.to/48wmIao Forrest's best-selling book "Getting Started in Electronics" - https://amzn.to/3LDExdY Forrest's upcoming book "Maverick Scientist: My Adventures as an Amateur Scientist" - https://amzn.to/3PAgP3k Hello, and welcome to episode 130 of the Floppy Days Podcast for September 2023. I'm your host, Randy Kindig, and I'll be bringing you this podcast as the beautiful fall weather and foliage descends on central Indiana. I love the podcast, and I love the computer shows that start popping up in the fall, which you'll hear more about on this show. I feel like I've been EXTREMELY lucky lately, in being able to get interviews with some outstanding contributors to the early home computer era of the late 70's and early 80's. As you know, I've had interviews recently published with Paul Terrell, who jump-started the early Apple Computer with his purchase of their first 50 Apple I's. Those interviews will continue as Paul and I continue to talk. Additionally, I also recently was able to talk with one of the most prolific, impactful authors of electronics books and kits on the planet, Mr. Forrest Mims III. I would be surprised if just about every listener of this podcast hasn't heard of Forrest and wasn't impacted in some positive manner by his terrific tutorials on electronics. In this episode, Forrest and I talk about his early involvement with the creation of MITS and the Altair, how he got into publishing numerous books for Radio Shack, and much, much more. Forrest is still extremely busy and involved with the scientific community today and was happy to share his story. Almost as happy as we are to have been able to talk with him. Before we talk with Forrest, I will give a short run-down of what I've been up to and new acquisitions (that's where the computer show discussion comes in). New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To TS2068 Twister/HDMI board - https://www.andertone.com/product/the-twist/ TS2068 OS64 board - https://www.andertone.com/product/zebra-os-64-cartridge-for-timex-sinclair-2068/ HDMI cable - https://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Original-Master-System-Console/dp/B07Z5W7QS7/ 2068 Personal Color Computer User Manual - https://www.andertone.com/product/timex-sinclair-2068-personal-color-computer-user-manual/ T/S 2068 Basics and Beyond by Sharon Zardetto Aker - https://www.andertone.com/product/t-s-2068-basics-and-beyond/ The Essential Guide to Timex/Sinclair Home Computers - https://www.andertone.com/product/the-essential-guide-to-timex-sinclair-home-computers/ TS2068 group on groups.io - https://groups.io/g/TS2068 “Back Into the Storm” by Bil Herd and Margaret Morabito (autographed) - https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/back-into-the-storm-a-design-engineers-story-of-commodore-computers-in-the-1980s/ modern power supply for TS2068 - https://www.andertone.com/product/ts-2068-power-supply/ M100/T102/T200 TPDD1 boot disk - https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/store/#!/TPDD1-disk-26-3808/p/141211027 TI99 CF7+ case - https://www.arcadeshopper.com/wp/store/#!/3D-printed-case-for-CF7/p/80201708 Upcoming Shows Tandy Assembly - Sep. 29-Oct. 1 - Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, Ohio - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Amiga38 Germany - Oct. 6-7 - Das Rote Krokodil - Kunstwerk Mönchengladbach - https://amigaevent.de/WB.html The Interim Computer Festival - Oct. 7-8 - Seattle, WA - https://sdf.org/icf/ AmiWest - October 14-15 - Sacramento, CA - https://retro.directory/browse/events/4/AmiWest.net Dragon MeetUp - October 7-8 - The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge - https://www.facebook.com/events/225011523831254/?ref=newsfeed Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 14, 2023 - Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ Mactoberfest Bay Area Meetup - October 14, 2023 - Belmont, CA - https://www.bigmessowires.com/2023/09/03/mactoberfest-bay-area-meetup-is-october-14/ World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show schedule - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ Interview Web site operated by Forrest - http://www.forrestmims.org/biography.html History of MITS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Instrumentation_and_Telemetry_Systems Forrest at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Mims “The Altair story; early days at MITS.”, CREATIVE COMPUTING VOL. 10, NO. 11 / NOVEMBER 1984 / PAGE 17, Forrest M. Mims III - https://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v10n11/17_The_Altair_story_early_d.php Easy-to-understand guide to home computers by Forrest Mims III - https://archive.org/details/easy-to-understand-guide-to-home-computers Digital computer book by Paul Malvino - https://www.amazon.com/Digital-computer-electronics-introduction-microcomputers/dp/0070399018/ Understanding Digital Computers by Forrest Mims III - https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Digital-Computers-Self-learning-Microcomputer/dp/B002E6HIAI/ Forrest's articles in Popular Electronics Magazine - https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Consumer/Archive-Poptronics-IDX/search.cgi?zoom_query=forrest+mims&zoom_page=2&zoom_per_page=10&zoom_and=1&zoom_sort=0&zoom_xml=0
Paul Terrell - Exidy Part 2 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Hello, and welcome to episode 129 for August, 2023 of the Floppy Days Podcast, with your host, Randy Kindig! If you're a regular listener, you'll know that we're in the middle of a series of episodes where we talk with Paul Terrell. Paul has been credited with essentially jump-starting the personal computer industry in many ways, not the least of which was by buying the original Apple I computer from the just-getting-started Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and selling it in his equally-famous computer store, The Byte Shop. This was one of the first personal computer retail store chains in existence. Paul was also a member of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club and attended the West Coast Computer Faire. He was involved in the development of both the Exidy Sorcerer and BYT-8 computers and he later went on to start ComputerMania Inc. which was a chain of computer stores created with the purpose of renting computers and software. The first episode with Paul (June 2023's episode) was a sort of overview before Paul's time being involved with Exidy and the Exidy Sorcerer computer. Last month was segment 1 of 2 focusing directly on Exidy and the Sorcerer. And, this month is segment 2 of 2; again focusing on Exidy and the Sorcerer. You'll hear more about how the Sorcerer came about, hear Paul's insight into why certain design decisions were made, and what mistakes were made. The Sorcerer was truly an early, important machine, and had impressive features for the timeframe that it came out. As a reminder, if you want to hear additional information about the Sorcerer and about Exidy, there are 2 other Floppy Days Podcasts you'll want to listen to: Episode 17, where the Sorcerer is covered in detail - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-episode-17-the-exidy-sorcerer-live-from-vcfse-20 Episode 114, which features an interview with Howell Ivy. Howell was the principal designer of the Sorcerer and recollects his time at Exidy. - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-114-howell-ivy-exidy-sorcerer-and-exidy Paul decided he would really like to be able to talk about his incredible career in its entirety, including an amazing number of industry-impacting contributions, more than just the time with Exidy, and I of course was ecstatic that he decided my humble podcast could be a good medium for that. What that means for the listener, is that you can expect an even broader series of continued podcasts with Paul in the near future, interspersed with other computer-based and interview episodes along the way. I really hope you enjoy the Paul Terrel series in general, and this episode should give you a nice wrap-up on his involvement with Exidy and the Sorcerer! New Acquisitions Console5 - http://www.console5.com Okimate 10 printer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okimate_10 ATR8000 - https://www.atarimagazines.com/v3n4/ATR8000.html Happy 1050 - https://www.8bitclassics.com/product/happy-1050-upgrade-for-atari-1050-disk-drive/?ref=Floppydays Atari Joystick USB Adapter (JAKAdapter) - http://kair.us/projects/jakadapter/index.html Upcoming Shows VCF Midwest - September 9-10 - Waterford Banquets and Conference Center, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ World of Retrocomputing - September 16-17 - Kitchener, Ontario, Canada - https://www.worldofretrocomputing.com/2023-worc-expo Tandy Assembly - Sep. 29-Oct. 1 - Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, Ohio - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Amiga38 Germany - Oct. 6-7 - Das Rote Krokodil - Kunstwerk Mönchengladbach - https://amigaevent.de/WB.html The Interim Computer Festival - Oct. 7-8 - Seattle, WA - https://sdf.org/icf/ AmiWest - October 14-15 - Sacramento, CA - https://retro.directory/browse/events/4/AmiWest.net Dragon MeetUp - October 7-8 - The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge - https://www.facebook.com/events/225011523831254/?ref=newsfeed Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 14, 2023 - Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show schedule - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ Paul Terrell Interview Paul on LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-terrell-2441a17/details/experience/ Paul on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/paul.terrell.92/ Paul at WikiPedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Terrell Interview with Paul at NextShark - https://nextshark.com/paul-terrell-apple “Today in Apple history: The Byte Shop, Apple's first retailer, opens” by Cult of Mac - https://www.cultofmac.com/457420/byte-shop-opens-tiah/ “The Man Who Jump-Started Apple by Harry McCracken”, August 23, 2007, PC World - https://web.archive.org/web/20110511184229/http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/005240.html
Floppy Days Episode 128 - Paul Terrell - Exidy Part 1 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Hello, and welcome to episode 128 for July, 2023 of the Floppy Days Podcast, with your host, Randy Kindig! If you're a regular listener, you'll know that we're in the middle of a series of episodes where we talk with Paul Terrell. Paul has been credited with essentially jump-starting the personal computer industry in many ways, not the least of which was by buying the original Apple I computer from the just-getting-started Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and selling it in his equally-famous computer store, The Byte Shop. This was one of the first personal computer retail stores in existence. Paul was also a member of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club and attended the West Coast Computer Faire. He was involved in the development of both the Exidy Sorcerer and BYT-8 computers and he later went on to start ComputerMania Inc. which was a chain of computer stores created with the purpose of renting computers and software. This guy has had an amazing career and I am truly honored to be able to bring you a series of interviews with Paul for the podcast. Paul and I will be covering his entire career, from his early beginnings, thru the Byte Shop years and his time with the nascent Apple Computer, and beyond. The first segment (last month's episode) was a sort of overview before Paul's time being involved with Exidy and the Exidy Sorcerer computer. This segment is part 1 of 2 focusing directly on Exidy and the Sorcerer. You'll hear how the Sorcerer came about, hear Paul's insight into why certain design decisions were made, and what mistakes were made. The Sorcerer was truly an early, important machine, and had impressive features for the timeframe that it came out. If you want to hear additional information about the Sorcerer and about Exidy, there are 2 other Floppy Days Podcasts you'll want to listen to: Episode 17, where the Sorcerer is covered in detail - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-episode-17-the-exidy-sorcerer-live-from-vcfse-20 Episode 114, which features an interview with Howell Ivy. Howell was the principal designer of the Sorcerer and recollects his time at Exidy. - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-114-howell-ivy-exidy-sorcerer-and-exidy Paul first contacted me after the interview I had with Howell Ivy and Howell's involvement and remembrances of the Exidy Sorcerer. He really liked Howell's interview and wanted to add a few details and give his perspective on the Sorcerer. As we talked further, Paul decided he would really like to be able to talk about his incredible career in its entirety, more than just the time with Exidy, and I of course was ecstatic that he decided my humble podcast could be a good medium for that. I really hope you enjoy the Paul Terrel series in general, and this episode should give you a nice perspective on his involvement with Exidy and the Sorcerer! Upcoming Shows Vintage Computer Festival West 2023 - August 4 & 5 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/ Atari Buy/Sell/Swap/Trade Event - August 5th 10am-2pm - 15 miles SE of Charlotte, NC - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/352517-atari-buysellswaptrade-event-august-5th-10am-2pm-15-miles-se-of-charlotte-nc/ ZZAP! Live 2023 - August 12 - The Holiday Inn, Kenilworth, CV8 1ED - https://fusionretroevents.co.uk/category/zzap-live/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 17-20 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2023-se Fujiama 2023 - Aug. 30 - Sep. 3 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2023/ VCF Midwest - September 9-10 - Waterford Banquets and Conference Center, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly - Sep. 29-Oct. 1 - Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, Ohio - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Amiga38 Germany - Oct. 6-7 - Das Rote Krokodil - Kunstwerk Mönchengladbach - https://amigaevent.de/WB.html The Interim Computer Festival - Oct. 7-8 - Seattle, WA - https://sdf.org/icf/ AmiWest - October 14-15 - Sacramento, CA - https://retro.directory/browse/events/4/AmiWest.net Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 14, 2023 - Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show schedule - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ Paul Terrell Interview Paul on LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-terrell-2441a17/details/experience/ Paul on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/paul.terrell.92/ Paul at WikiPedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Terrell Interview with Paul at NextShark - https://nextshark.com/paul-terrell-apple “Today in Apple history: The Byte Shop, Apple's first retailer, opens” by Cult of Mac - https://www.cultofmac.com/457420/byte-shop-opens-tiah/ “The Man Who Jump-Started Apple by Harry McCracken”, August 23, 2007, PC World - https://web.archive.org/web/20110511184229/http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/005240.html
Floppy Days 127 - James Shackel Estate Haul and Paul Terrell Intro Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Hello, and welcome to episode 127 for June, 2023 of the Floppy Days Podcast, with your host, yours truly, Randy Kindig! I'd bet there are few listeners who don't know the name Paul Terrell. Paul has been credited with essentially jump-starting the personal computer industry in many ways, not the least of which was by buying the original Apple I computer from the just-getting-started Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and selling it in his equally-famous computer store, The Byte Shop. This was the first personal computer retail store in existence. Paul was also a member of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club and attended the West Coast Computer Faire. He was involved in the development of both the Exidy Sorcerer and BYT-8 computers and he later went on to start ComputerMania Inc. which was a chain of computer stores created with the purpose of renting computers and software. This guy has had an amazing career and I am truly honored to be able to bring you a series of interviews with Paul for the podcast. Paul and I will be covering his entire career, from his early beginnings, thru the Byte Shop years and his time with the nascent Apple Computer, and beyond. This first segment is a sort of overview leading up to Paul's time involved with Exidy and the Exidy Sorcerer computer. You'll hear a small bit about Bill Gates, the early Micro-soft, the Byte Shop, the early Apple, the Homebrew Computer Club, the West Coast Computer Faire and a whole lot more. Later episodes will be focused primarily on a single topic, such as the Sorcerer, the Byte Shop, etc. Paul first contacted me after the interview I had with Howell Ivy and Howell's involvement and remembrances of the Exidy Sorcerer. He really liked Howell's interview and wanted to add a few details and give his perspective on the Sorcerer. As we talked further, Paul decided he would really really like to be able to talk about his incredible career in its entirety, more than just the time with Exidy, and I of course was ecstatic that he decided my humble podcast could be a good medium for that. I really hope you enjoy the series in general, and this short episode should give you a taste of the things to come!
Floppy Days 126 - Interview with Bob Frankston, Co-developer of Visicalc Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Hello, everyone! Welcome to episode 126 of the Floppy Days Podcast, with yours truly, Randy Kindig, as the host. Everyone, and I mean everyone, listening to this podcast has surely heard of the ground-breaking application (for its time) Visicalc. Visicalc was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II by VisiCorp on October 17, 1979. It is considered the killer application for the Apple II, turning the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool, and then prompting IBM to introduce the IBM PC two years later. More than 700,000 copies were sold in six years, and up to 1 million copies over its history. Initially developed for the Apple II computer, VisiCalc was ported to numerous platforms, both 8-bit and some of the early 16-bit systems, such as the Commodore PET, Atari 8-bit, TRS-80 (TRSDOS), CP/M, MS-DOS, and even the HP Series 80. VisiCalc was later replaced in the market by Lotus 1-2-3 and eventually by Microsoft's Excel, which is the dominant spreadsheet today. Spreadsheets, along with word processors, and presentation tools are still today considered one of the key applications for computing. Bob Frankston, along with Dan Bricklin, are the co-inventors of VisiCalc. This month, we have an interview with the aforementioned Bob Frankston. Bob was kind enough to take time to talk with me about what it was like to create such a ground-breaking tool. Before doing that, I have a few new acquisitions to discuss and I'll tell you about upcoming computer shows. New Acquisitions/What I've Been Up To Retro Innovations Lige and the YouTube show “The Commodore Room” - https://www.youtube.com/@thecommodoreroom4554 Console5 (cap kits) Upcoming Shows The 64 bits or less Retro Gaming Festival - June 3-4 - Benton County Fairgrounds in Corvallis, Oregon (sponsored by the Portland Retro Gaming Expo) - https://www.64bitsorless.com/ Boatfest Vintage Computer Exposition - June 23-25 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info VCF Southwest - June 23-25 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX - http://vcfsw.org Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 24-25 - “Interim” Computer Museum, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start Kickstart Amiga UK Expo - July 1-2 - Nottingham, UK - https://www.amigashow.com/ KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 18-23, 2023 (in-person) - July 29–30, 2023 (virtual) - Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri - https://www.kansasfest.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 28-30 2023 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ ZZAP! Live 2023 - August 12 - The Holiday Inn, Kenilworth, CV8 1ED - https://fusionretroevents.co.uk/category/zzap-live/ Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 17-20 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2023-se Fujiama 2023 - Aug. 30 - Sep. 3 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2023/ VCF Midwest - September 9-10 - Waterford Banquets and Conference Center, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly - Sep. 29-Oct. 1 - Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, Ohio - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ AmiWest - October 14-15 - Sacramento, CA - https://retro.directory/browse/events/4/AmiWest.net Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Chicago TI International World Faire - October 14, 2023 - Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ http://chiclassiccomp.org/events.html Facebook show listings - https://www.facebook.com/VintageComputerShows/ Interview Bob's Website - https://www.frankston.com/ New York Times article on Bricklin and Frankston joining Lotus (acquisition) - https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/10/business/business-people-former-friendly-rivals-joining-forces-at-lotus.html Bob interview on TwitTV - https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/4
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Welcome to Floppy Days #125 for April, 2023. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. We are currently in the year 1982 for home computers. This episode is the continuation of a multi-episode arc that covers the Sinclair ZX Spectrum through all the usual topics. This is the seventh of those, with the first having been the interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, the second and third being coverage of the history of the Spectrum with Alessandro Grussu, the fourth being the interview with the author of the terrific book “The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer”, Mr. Chris Smith, the fifth covering tech specs for the Speccy with Chris, and the sixth covering the topics peripherals, using the machine, and magazines with PJ Evans, Tour Guide and Sinclair curator at The National Museum of Computing on Bletchley Park in the U.K. The topics covered in this episode include books, software, ads, modern upgrades, emulation, buying one today, community, and Web sites. Once again, my co-host will be PJ Evans, who did a wonderful job last episode. This will be the final episode covering the ZX Spectrum, after setting the record in terms of number of episodes on Floppy Days about a single machine. As usual, I will also talk a bit about what I have been up to, including an update on any new acquisitions that have come my way. In addition, I'll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I'm aware. Before we get started I want to mention the show sponsors for Floppy Days. https://www.8bitclassics.com, run by my friend Corey Koltz, is a great place to get vintage computer items. This includes video cables, power supplies, PC boards, cartridges, upgrades and more for a wide variety of vintage computer platforms. In the New Acquisitions section I cover each month on this show, often one of the items I talk about has been ordered from 8-Bit Classics. Corey has been a friend of the show for some time and I really appreciate his support of the podcast. Check out the site… he has some great stuff. https://www.arcadeshopper.com, run by my friend Greg McGill, is another terrific site to get vintage computer items. Greg has a wide variety of hard-to-find items for a large number of platforms. This is another site that I do and have done a lot of shopping at and have mentioned numerous times on Floppy Days. If anything shows out of stock, just ping Greg through the contact form and he can check whether he has or can get more of the item for you. I also wanted to mention those listeners who appreciate the show enough to donate through patreon.com. This includes Chris Petzel, Tony Cappellini, laurens, Richard Goulstone, Josh Malone, Andy Collins, Simon McCullough, Jason Moore, Quentin Barnes. I really appreciate you guys and it helps offset the cost of running the podcast. Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions and What I've Been Up To Amiga 500 Parceiro - amiga.parceiro@outlook.com Atari XEP80-II Case - https://thebrewingacademy.com/collections/atari-800-xl-xe-xel-xld/products/xep80-ii-by-mytek FD sign and shirt - http://www.vistaprint.com book - Over the Spectrum - https://amzn.to/3AmFaSZ ZXPand+ Case - http://www.sellmyretro.com Upcoming Shows Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 29 & 30 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/ The 64 bits or less Retro Gaming Festival - June 3-4 - Benton County Fairgrounds in Corvallis, Oregon (sponsored by the PortlandRetro Gaming Expo) - https://www.64bitsorless.com/ Boatfest Vintage Computer Exposition - June 23-25 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info VCF Southwest - June 23-25 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX - http://vcfsw.org Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 24-25 - “Interim” Computer Museum, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start j KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 18-23, 2023 - Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri - https://www.kansasfest.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 28-30 2023 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ ZZAP! Live 2023 - August 12 - The Holiday Inn, Kenilworth, CV8 1ED - https://fusionretroevents.co.uk/category/zzap-live/ VCF Midwest - September 9-10 - Waterford Banquets and Conference Center, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly - Sep. 29-Oct. 1 - Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, Ohio - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ AmiWest - October 14-15 - Sacramento, CA - https://retro.directory/browse/events/4/AmiWest.net Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ Books books listed at World of Spectrum - https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/books Spectrum Machine Language For The Absolute Beginner by William Tang 2020 - https://amzn.to/3Ix6mn3 (Retro Reproductions) Over the Spectrum by Philip Williams 2020 - https://amzn.to/3YFsbGu (Retro Reproductions) Spectrum Games Bible 1982-1984 Paperback – June 11, 2008 by P Johns - https://amzn.to/3KfL0vy ZX Spectrum Games Code Club: Twenty fun games to code and learn Paperback – November 23, 2015 by Gary Plowman (Author) - https://amzn.to/3EgSFGk Spectrumpedia by Alessandro Grussu (2 volumes) - https://www.alessandrogrussu.it/sp.html Volume I (English) - https://amzn.to/3Ek9boX Volume II (English) - https://amzn.to/3IGVwet The Micro Kids: An 80s Adventure with ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and more Paperback – Illustrated, December 8, 2018 by Gary Plowman - https://amzn.to/3Klsan7 The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer Illustrated Edition by Christopher David Smith - https://amzn.to/3IwGgjU Sinclair ZX Spectrum : A Visual Compendium - https://www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/by-system/products/sinclair-zx-spectrum-a-visual-compendium Software archive at World of Spectrum - https://worldofspectrum.org/archive TOSEC at archive.org by Lady Eklipse - https://archive.org/details/zx-spectrum-tosec-set-v-2020-02-18-lady-eklipse Top 10 games - https://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/30-best-zx-spectrum-games-594151 1. Elite – Firebird Games 2. R-Type – Electric Dreams Software 3. Chuckie Egg - A'n'F Software 4. Manic Miner - Bug-Byte Software Ltd 5. Knight Lore - Ultimate Play The Game 6. Back to Skool - Microsphere 7. Football Manager - Addictive Games Ltd 8. Lunar Jetman - Ultimate Play The Game 9. Horace Goes Skiing – Beam Software 10. Boulder Dash – Front Runner Productivity and Education Software from Sinclair Catalog (all cassette) - https://archive.org/details/sinclair-research/ZX%20Spectrum%20Software%20Catalog/mode/2up Ads and Appearances Starring the Computer - http://www.starringthecomputer.com/ Ad - http://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/Sinclair/ZXSpectrum Modern Upgrades ZX-AY external stereo audio interface for all ZX Spectrum models - https://www.bytedelight.com/?product=zx-ay-external-stereo-audio-interface-for-all-zx-spectrum-models ZX-HD HDMI Interface - https://www.bytedelight.com/?product=zx-hd-hdmi-interface-with-ulaplus DIVMMC - https://www.thefuturewas8bit.com/shop/sinclair/divmmcfuture.html SpectraNet - https://www.bytedelight.com/?product=spectranet-internet-interface-with-closed-case Emulation Emulator list at World of Spectrum - https://worldofspectrum.net/emulators/ Spectaculator (paid) https://www.spectaculator.com/ Fuse: Windows - https://sourceforge.net/projects/fuse-emulator/files/fuse-utils/1.4.3/fuse-utils-1.4.3-win32.zip/download macOS - https://fuse-for-macosx.sourceforge.io/ Linux - http://fuse-emulator.sourceforge.net/ Speccy - https://fms.komkon.org/Speccy/ Eighty One - https://www.aptanet.org/eightyone/ Retro Virtual Machine (RVM) - https://www.retrovirtualmachine.org/ ZEsarUX - https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux/ ZX Spectrum 4 Android - https://www.zxspectrum4.net/android/ QAOP (browser-based) - http://torinak.com/qaop JSSpeccy (browser-based) - https://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/ Community Facebook Spectrum Forever - https://www.facebook.com/groups/491247224287188 Spectrum for Everyone - https://www.facebook.com/groups/400461880300289 World of Spectrum - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1571053279836005 ZX Spectrum - https://www.facebook.com/groups/164156683632183 Twitter ZX Spectrum Code Club - https://twitter.com/zxspectrum_club Mastodon Sinclair ZX Spectrum Bot - https://oldbytes.space/@zxspectrumbot@mastodon.cloud Spectrum User - https://oldbytes.space/@spectrumuser@toot.wales Forums AtariAge - https://www.atariage.com https://worldofspectrum.org/forums/ https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/index.php https://www.sinclairzxworld.com/viewforum.php Podcasts Our Sinclair: A ZX Spectrum Podcast by Amigos Retro Gaming - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/our-sinclair-a-zx-spectrum-podcast/id1454120857 Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/zxspectrum/ Web Sites Byte Delight shop - https://www.bytedelight.com The Future Was 8bit shop - https://www.thefuturewas8bit.com/ Power supplies for Spectrum machines at Retro Games Supply - https://en.retrogamesupply.com/collections/other Dr. Steve Vickers at YouTube - https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~sjv/ “The first ZX Spectrum prototype laid bare” article about John Grant - https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/05/the_first_zx_spectrum_prototype_laid_bare/ The official world archive for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum - https://worldofspectrum.org/ The Spectrum Show by Paul Jenkinson - https://m.youtube.com/user/BuckingTheTrend2008 The MagPi - https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/issues/67 Interview with Steve Vickers & Richard Altwasser - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLnuY3EKnWE References Retro 8-bit Computers - http://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/ Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum Old-Computers.com museum - https://www.old-computers.com/museum/default.asp https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics Arcade Shopper Welcome to Floppy Days #124 for March, 2023. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. We are currently covering the very productive year for home computers of 1982. This episode is the continuation of a multi-episode arc that covers the Spectrum through all the usual topics. This is the sixth of those, with the first having been the interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, the second and third being coverage of the history of the Spectrum with Alessandro Grussu, the fourth being the interview with the author of the terrific book “The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer”, Mr. Chris Smith, and the sixth covering tech specs for the Speccy with Chris. The topics covered in this episode include peripherals, using the machine, and magazines. Next episode we will complete the ZX Spectrum coverage, by talking about books, software, ads, modern upgrades, emulation, buying one today, community, and Web sites. As usual, I will also talk a bit about what I have been up to, including an update on any new acquisitions that have come my way. In addition, I'll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I'm aware and share any feedback I've gotten. Before we get started I want to mention that I now have some show sponsors for Floppy Days. https://www.8bitclassics.com, run by my friend Corey Koltz, is a great place to get vintage computer items. This includes video cables, power supplies, PC boards, cartridges, upgrades and more for a wide variety of vintage computer platforms. In the New Acquisitions section I cover each month on this show, often one of the items I talk about has been ordered from 8-Bit Classics. Corey has been a friend of the show for some time and I really appreciate his support of the podcast. Check out the site… he has some great stuff. https://www.arcadeshopper.com, run by my friend Greg McGill, is another terrific site to get vintage computer items. Greg has a wide variety of hard-to-find items for a large number of platforms. This is another site that I do and have done a lot of shopping at and have mentioned numerous times on Floppy Days. If anything shows out of stock, just ping Greg through the contact form and he can check whether he has or can get more of the item for you. I also wanted to mention those listeners who appreciate the show enough to donate through patreon.com. This includes Chris Petzel, Tony Cappellini, laurens, Richard Goulstone, Josh Malone, Andy Collins, Simon McCullough, Jason Moore, Quentin Barnes. I really appreciate you guys and it helps offset the cost of running the podcast. Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions and What I've Been Up To Amiga 1000 - amiga.parceiro@outlook.com Commodore SX-64 repair video by The Commodore Room - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flsn_FD2zpA Upcoming Shows Midwest Gaming Classic - March 31-April 2 - Wisconsin Center, Milwaukee, WI - https://www.midwestgamingclassic.com/ VCF East 2023 - Apr 14-16, 2023 - InfoAge Science and History Museums, Wall, NJ - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/ The Commodore Los Angeles Super Show - April 15-16, 2023 - Burbank VFW Hall, Burbank, CA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=class:start 31st Annual “Last” CocoFest - April 22-23, 2023 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago, Carol Stream, IL - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 29 & 30 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/ The 64 bits or less Retro Gaming Festival - June 3-4 - Benton County Fairgrounds in Corvallis, Oregon (sponsored by the PortlandRetro Gaming Expo) - https://www.64bitsorless.com/ Boatfest Vintage Computer Exposition - June 23-25 - Hurricane, WV - http://boatfest.info VCF Southwest - June 23-25 - Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX - http://vcfsw.org Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 24-25 - “Interim” Computer Museum, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start j KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 18-23, 2023 - Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri - https://www.kansasfest.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 28-30 2023 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ ZZAP! Live 2023 - August 12 - The Holiday Inn, Kenilworth, CV8 1ED - https://fusionretroevents.co.uk/category/zzap-live/ VCF Midwest - September 9-10 - Waterford Banquets and Conference Center, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly - Sep. 29-Oct. 1 - Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, Ohio - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ AmiWest - October 14-15 - Sacramento, CA - https://retro.directory/browse/events/4/AmiWest.net Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ World of Commodore - Dec. 2-3, 2023 - Admiral Inn Mississauga, Mississauga, ON - http://www.worldofcommodore.ca/ Feedback Claus, webmaster at www.mtxworld.dk Using the Machine http://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/Sinclair/ZXSpectrum Popular Magazines/Newsletters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:ZX_Spectrum_magazines https://www.old-computers.com/museum/default.asp Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(magazine) Modern Crash - https://fusionretrobooks.com/collections/crash-magazine articles for Crash written by Paul Evans - https://www.google.com/search?domains=www.crashonline.org.uk&sitesearch=www.crashonline.org.uk&q=paul%20evans Your Sinclair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Sinclair Current blog - https://www.ys3.org/ Sinclair User https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_User https://archive.org/details/sinclair-user-magazine?&sort=-week&page=2 Spectrofon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrofon Sinclair Programs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Programs https://archive.org/search?query=Sinclair+Programs&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22 ZX Magazin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Magaz%C3%ADn References Retro 8-bit Computers - http://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/ Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum Old-Computers.com museum - https://www.old-computers.com/museum/default.asp https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/
NEC TREK PC-6001, Part II Please donate at: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays. Welcome to Floppy Days #122 for January, 2023. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. We are currently covering the very productive year for home computers of 1982. As regular listeners will know, we've been covering the ZX Spectrum and the myriad of information about that machine. While we still have more information to cover, such as emulation, Web sites, and a lot more, we are currently taking a tiny step back to pick up coverage of a machine that I recently acquired and wanted to talk about, but which came out in very late 1981. That machine is the Nippon Electric Company (NEC) PC-6001 and its US variation, the PC-6001A, or NEC-TREK. It actually was released in November, 1981 in Japan. Thus, you can see that this is really a very tiny detour to go back and pick up this machine. It's one I didn't know about, honestly, and when I acquired a very clean, boxed version in the Great Barn Find of 2022, not only did I decide to keep the machine but also to cover it on Floppy Days. I hope you can forgive me this minor detour off the path of covering the machines in the approx. order they were released. I think you'll find this machine interesting, as I did, and enjoy hearing about it. This is the second episode of a 2-part arc on this machine, due to the amount of material we were able to pull together and length of time it took to go through it. Last episode we covered history and tech specs (as well as a brief interview with my co-host), and this month we will cover the remaining usual topics. With me this month again to provide the co-hosting duties will be Carlos Camacho. Carlos lived in Japan for a while and has a great perspective on this line of computers, as well as a lot of experience and knowledge around Japanese computers in general, which I think you'll find interesting. The research he did on the PC-6000 line a few years ago was a tremendous help in pulling together information for this show. At the end of the day, if you have an interest in acquiring anything for this platform, you'll need the information that Carlos provides on how to navigate the Japanese vintage computer market. I know I learned a ton from Carlos. Very soon we'll return to ZX Spectrum coverage. As usual, I will also talk a bit about a few new acquisitions (beyond the barn find) that have come my way. In addition, I'll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I'm aware and share any feedback I've gotten. I hope you enjoy the show! Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions IBM PC5140 Display Adapter - http://ohlandl.ipv7.net/5140/5140.html#CRT_Display Spectrum Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner by William Tang - https://amzn.to/3Y1p8rq C128D JiffyDOS - https://store.go4retro.com/jiffydos-kernal-rom-overlay-ic/ Atari Fast BASIC - https://github.com/dmsc/fastbasic Upcoming Computer Shows VCF East 2023 - Apr 14-16, 2023 - InfoAge Science and History Museums, Wall, NJ - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/ The Commodore Los Angeles Super Show - April 15-16, 2023 - Burbank VFW Hall, Burbank, CA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=class:start 31st Annual “Last” CocoFest - April 22-23, 2023 - Holiday Inn & Suites Chicago, Carol Stream, IL - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ Indy Classic Computer and Video Game Expo - April 29 & 30 - Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, Indianapolis, IN - https://indyclassic.org/ Pacific Commodore Expo NW v4 - June 24-25 - “Interim” Computer Museum, Seattle, WA - https://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=pacommex:start j KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 18-23, 2023 - Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri - https://www.kansasfest.org/ Southern Fried Gaming Expo - July 28-30 2023 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ Portland Retro Gaming Expo - October 13-15, 2023 - Oregon Convention Center - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ Feedback Khalid Yousif NEC PC-6001 MkII SR FM synth music capability - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvVq8MHoybA Khalid's website to document and archive findings on the Iraqi Warkaas - https://warkaa.org/ YouTube Playlist by Todd Geiger - Computers - In Their Own Words Byte High No Limit Podcast - https://sunspotstories.podbean.com/ Popular Magazines/Newsletters PC-6000, 6600 information magazine SAVE, produced by Hokuten (owner of pc-6001.net) - http://www.pc-6001.net/p6/save/index.html Oh, PC! - all NEC models - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Issue_of_Oh!PC.jpg I/O Magazine - https://archive.org/details/iomagazine PIO Magazine - https://archive.org/details/PioVol.1 Books PC-6000,6600 related book list - http://www.pc-6001.net/p6/syoseki/index.html Amazon Japan - to get books in Japanese Software TOSEC: NEC PC 6001 (archive.org) - https://archive.org/details/NEC_PC_6001_TOSEC_2012_04_23 Software Compilation Neo Kobe - NEC PC-6001 (archive.org) - https://archive.org/details/Neo_Kobe_NEC_PC-6001_2016-02-25 Ads and Appearances https://oldcomputers.net/nec-pc-6001.html video ad - (Japanese with English subtitles) https://archive.org/details/necpapikonpc6001acomputercommercial1981subsvtcdvplemfm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTCdVPlemFM Emulators https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/12241/how-do-i-use-nec-pc-6001-p6-or-cas-files PC6001V - http://papicom.net/p6v/ PC6001VW - http://p6ers.net/bernie/develop/pc6001vw3.html iP6 and iP6 Plus Windy's Room - http://www.eonet.ne.jp/~windy/index.html iP6 home page - http://www.retropc.net/isio/ip6/ VNECTREK - October 27, 2009 in the Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20091027114600/http://www.geocities.com/emucompboy/ MAME/MESS - https://www.mamedev.org/ Buying One Today freight forwarding companies buyee zenmarket Jauce Community Facebook - Japanese Vintage Computer Users - https://www.facebook.com/groups/japanesevintagecomputers Forums AtariAge - https://forums.atariage.com/forum/116-classic-computing-discussion/ VC Federation - https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?forums/other/ PC-6000,6600 information bulletin board at pc-6001.net - http://www.pc-6001.net/cgi/p6bbs/imgbbs.cgi Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/pc6001/ Current Web Sites Purchasing today at The Beep Shop - https://www.beep-shop.com/list/pc60_c.html Write-up of the PC-6001 at the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show in the May, 1982 Byte Magazine (archive.org) Write-up of the PC-6001 in the March, 1983 Byte Magazine (archive.org) https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-03-rescan/page/n503/mode/2up?view=theater&q=6000 NEC PC-6001 search at archive.org - https://archive.org/search.php?query=nec+pc-6001&sin= Obscure Systems Showcase: 10 Games For The NEC PC6001 by Sharopolis (YouTube) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREmdyXXLhE The PC-6001: NEC's home challenger by Re:Enthused (YouTube) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYfC3YwvGLA PC-6001 series portal site - http://p6ers.net/ some PC-6001 software (WAV for real machine and .P6 for emulator) - http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/ iP6 information and links at retropc.net - http://www.retropc.net/isio/2ndindex.html PC-6001 World - http://www.pc-6001.net/p6/index.html http://vector.co.jp - download site References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-6000_series NEC Retro - https://necretro.org/ https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=177&st=1 GiantBomb.com - https://www.giantbomb.com/nec-pc-6001/3045-115/ OldComputers.net - https://oldcomputers.net/nec-pc-6001.html https://www.wikiwand.com/en/PC-6000_series https://forums.atariage.com/topic/233915-i-now-own-and-am-baffled-by-a-japanese-nec-pc-6001/ Co-host The Color Computer Store - https://twitter.com/trs80cocostore, @TRS80CocoStore, https://www.ebay.com/usr/colorcomputerstore
donate at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Welcome to Floppy Days #121 for December, 2022. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. Happy holidays to all! We are currently covering the very productive year for home computers of 1982. As regular listeners will know, we've been covering the ZX Spectrum and the myriad of information about that machine. While we still have more information to cover, such as emulation, Web sites, and a lot more, we're going to take a tiny step back and pick up coverage of a machine that I recently acquired and wanted to talk about, but which came out in very late 1981. That machine is the Nippon Electric Company (NEC) PC-6001 and its US variation, the PC-6001A, or NEC-TREK. It actually was released in November, 1981 in Japan. So, you can see that this is really a very tiny detour to go back and pick up this machine. It's one I didn't know about, honestly, and when I acquired a very clean, boxed version in the Great Barn Find of 2022, not only did I decide to keep the machine but also to cover it on Floppy Days. I hope you can forgive me this minor detour off the path of covering the machines in the approx. order they were released. I think you'll find this machine interesting, as I did, and enjoy hearing about it. With me this month to provide the co-hosting duties will be Carlos Camacho. Carlos lived in Japan for a while and has a great perspective on this line of computers, as well as a lot of experience and knowledge around Japanese computers in general, which I think you'll find interesting. The research he did on the PC-6000 line a few years ago was a tremendous help in pulling together information for this show. This will be a 2-part episode, due to the amount of material we were able to pull together and length of time it took to go through it. Next month we'll return to ZX Spectrum coverage. As usual, I will also talk a bit about what I have been up to, including an update on the The Great Barn Find of 2022, as well as a few new acquisitions (beyond the barn find) that have come my way. In addition, I'll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I'm aware and share any feedback I've gotten. Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. On that topic, I do intend to beef up the various Floppy Days offerings, including some additional content depending on the donation level at Patreon. Look for that as soon as I've figured out what I want to offer and how to manage it. I do want to send out a heart-felt thank you for everyone who has already contributed and continues to contribute! I hope you enjoy the show!
Dontate at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Welcome to Floppy Days #120 for November, 2022. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. I hope everyone is well. We are currently covering the very productive year for home computers of 1982. This episode is the continuation of a multi-episode arc that covers the Spectrum through all the usual topics. I'm still unsure how many episodes we're going to end up with in this arc. There's so much to talk about and so many knowledgeable people on the subject, that the Spectrum is probably going to set the illustrious Floppy Days record for the number of episodes about a single machine. This is the fifth of those, with the first having been the interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, the second and third being coverage of the history of the Spectrum with Alessandro Grussu, and the fourth being the interview with the author of the terrific book “The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer”; Mr. Chris Smith. As I don't know of anyone who knows more about the internals of this machine than Chris, as evidenced by his book, other than maybe the original designers, Chris continues to help me with this episode and we cover the tech specs of the Spectrum. As usual, I will also talk a bit about what I have been up to, including an update on the The Great Barn Find of 2022, as well as a few new acquisitions (beyond the barn find) that have come my way. In addition, I'll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I'm aware and share any feedback I've gotten. Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. On that topic, I do intend to beef up the various Floppy Days offerings, including some additional content depending on the donation level at Patreon. Look for that as soon as I've figured out what I want to offer and how to manage it. I do want to send out a heart-felt thank you for everyone who has already contributed and continues to contribute! Before we get started, I want to apologize for the lateness of this episode. It's being published a couple days into December due to my son having been in the hospital the past week. However, I'm happy to report that he's home now and I'm delighted to be able to get this to you now. I hope you enjoy it.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Welcome to Floppy Days #119 for October, 2022. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. I hope everyone is safe and sound... We are currently covering the prolific year (for home computers) of 1982. This episode is the continuation of a multi-episode arc that covers the Spectrum through all the usual topics. I don't even know yet how many episodes we're going to end up in this arc. There's so much to talk about and so many knowledgeable people on the subject, that the Spectrum is probably going to set the illustrious Floppy Days records for the number of episodes about a single machine. This is the fourth of those, with the first having been the interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, and the second and third being coverage of the history of the Spectrum with Alessandro Grussu. In this episode, I talk with the author of the wonderful book “The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer”; Mr. Chris Smith. I don't know of anyone who knows more about the internals of this machine than Chris, as evidenced by his book, other than maybe the original designers. In this episode, I interview Chris about him, his book, his collection and other topics. As usual, I will talk a bit about what I have been up to, including an update on the The Great Barn Find of 2022, attendance at a computer show, as well as a few new acquisitions (beyond the barn find) that have come my way. In addition, I'll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I'm aware. Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute! Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions and What I've Been Up To Apple GS monitor connector for CoCo - Mike Rojas, Facebook - (https://www.facebook.com/commerce/listing/392874865780089/?ref=share_attachment) GFA BASIC - http://gfabasic.net/ “GFA BASIC Training Reboot Camp - A Beginning Tutorial for the GFA BASIC Interpreter” - https://docs.dev-docs.org/ “GFA BASIC Book - An intermediate programming tutorial for GFA BASIC” - https://docs.dev-docs.org/ GFA BASIC Atari Reference Manual Tandy Assembly - http://www.tandyassembly.com Vintage is the New Old with Paulo Garcia - https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/ Jeff Birt's Website at Tindie - https://www.tindie.com/stores/hey_birt/ Upcoming Shows Chicago TI International Worlds Faire = Oct. 29, Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ World of Commodore = Dec. 3-4. - Mississauga, Ontario, Canada - https://www.tpug.ca/world-of-commodore/world-of-commodore-2022 - Virtual and Physical! Interview with Chris Smith The ZX Spectrum Ula: How to Design a Microcomputer (ZX Design Retro Computer) Illustrated Edition Chris' Web site - http://www.zxdesign.info/indexPage.shtml Harlequin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones#Harlequin ZX Spectrum 30-year Anniversary event - http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/news/23039/Celebrating-30-Years-of-the MicroMen: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1459467/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIcAyFVK0gE
“The Great Barn Find of 2022!” Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Welcome to Floppy Days #118 for September, 2022. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. I hope everyone is doing well.. I decided to take a 1-month break from the ZX Spectrum series of episodes, of which I'm currently in the midst, in order to talk about some other vintage computer activities with which I've been involved lately. There has been a lot going on the vintage computer front for me, as well as some changes in my personal life that I wanted to share with all of you. I apologize that you're just going to hear my voice for the entire show, but I'll make sure not to drone and try to keep it lively. I will talk a bit about what I have been up to, an amazing barn find, attendance at the largest vintage computer show of the year, and an incredible computer museum adventure, as well as a few new acquisitions (beyond the barn find) that have come my way. In addition, I'll briefly tell you about upcoming shows of which I'm aware. Next month, we'll pick up where we left off with the Spectrum series. I have some additional guest hosts lined up to really dive into topics like tech specs, peripherals, books, magazines, modern upgrades, Web sites, etc. I think you'll enjoy the remaining Spectrum topics and guests I have planned. Links Mentioned in the Show: What I've Been Up To VCFMW - http://vcfmw.org/ Kevin Ottum and his Nu-Brick company - https://www.facebook.com/commerce/listing/181163469893545 Jim Brain and his RetroInnovations company - http://go4retro.com American Computer and Robotics Museum - https://acrmuseum.org/ Upcoming Shows Portland Retro Gaming Expo = Oct. 14-16, Portland, OR - https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/ Chicago TI International Worlds Faire = Oct. 29, Evanston Public Library, Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/ World of Commodore = first weekend of Dec. - https://www.tpug.ca/category/woc-posts/ NOT YET ANNOUNCED
https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Welcome to Floppy Days #117 for August, 2022. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. I hope everyone is doing well.. Thank you so much, Andy Collins, for providing your thoughts and memories about the ZX Spectrum to kick off this episode. Great work! We are currently covering the prolific year (for home computers) of 1982. This episode is the continuation of a multi-episode arc that covers the Spectrum through all the usual topics. I don't even know yet how many episodes we're going to end up in this arc. There's so much to talk about and so many knowledgeable people on the subject, that the Spectrum is probably going to set the illustrious Floppy Days records for the number of episodes about a single machine. This is the third of those, with the first having been the interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, and the second being coverage of the history of the Spectrum through about 1984. In this episode, I once again talk with the author of the wonderful book “Spectrumpedia”; Mr. Alessandro Grussu. In this episode, Alessandro and I continue to walk through the history of the machine, covering additional models that were produced, its competition at the time, its positives and negatives, and ultimately the impression it left in home computer history books. As usual, I will talk a bit about a few new acquisitions that have come my way in my attempt to use up every square inch of exhibition and storage room in my home, as well as bring you news about upcoming shows. Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute!
donate at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Welcome to Floppy Days #116 for July, 2022. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. I hope everyone is staying safe. Thank you so much, Mark Hacker, for providing your thoughts and memories about the ZX Spectrum to kick off this episode. As mentioned in the last show, 1982 was a landmark year for home computers, as there were some significant introductions in this year. One of the most impactful computers released at this time was the ZX Spectrum; in the UK by the iconic Sir Clive Sinclair. This episode is the continuation of a multi-episode arc that covers the Spectrum through all the usual topics. In fact, there's such a rich history leading up to the introduction of the Spectrum, and through its lifetime in the market, of which many in the US may not be aware, that we're going to be spending three (3) full episodes just on its history. This is the second of those, with the first having been the interview with John Grant of Nine Tiles, who played a part in the development of the Speccy. As I was looking for materials to help discuss the history of the Spectrum, I had difficulty in finding books and other references that went into the full timeline, other than Wikipedia. Luckily, I happened upon a wonderful reference that covers all aspects of the machine, called “Spectrumpedia” by the Italian Alessandro Grussu. I was able to contact Alessandro and he graciously agreed to co-host on one or more topics, starting with history. His book has a wonderfully complete and detailed section about the history of the Speccy. In this episode, Alessandro and I attempt to walk through the introduction of the machine, all of the different models that were produced, its competition at the time, its positives and negatives, and ultimately the impression it left in home computer history books. I will, as usual, talk about a few new acquisitions that have come my way in my never-ending adventures to discover new modern upgrades for my collection of old machines; as well as bring you news about upcoming shows. Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute!
https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Please consider donating to keep Floppy Days going! ZX Spectrum Part 1 History with John Grant Welcome to Floppy Days #115 for June, 2022. And I'm your host, Randy Kindig. I hope everyone is doing well. As you know, we are generally following the timeline of computers as they were released to the world. We have arrived in the year 1982. 1982 was a landmark year for home computers, as there were some significant introductions in this year. Machines that played a critical part in the rich home computer period of the 1980's. In particular, I'm talking about the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 as well as some other interesting machines. One of the most impactful computers released at this time was the ZX Spectrum; across the pond in the UK by Sir Clive Sinclair. This episode kicks off a multi-episode arc that covers the Spectrum through all the usual topics. The first topic we always start with is history. I was able to catch up with a person who played a significant role in the history of the Spectrum through his company Nine Tiles. Of course, I'm talking about Mr. John Grant. John was kind enough to talk about the work he did on the machine and some of the stories surrounding its development and introduction. I hope you find this interesting. I will, as usual, talk about a few new acquisitions that have come my way in my never ending quest to discover new modern upgrades for my collection of old machines; as well as bring you news about upcoming shows. Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions XEP-80 II by MyTek (Michael St. Pierre) MyTek Website - https://ataribits.weebly.com/xep80-ii.html Purchasing XEP-80 II at The Brewing Academy - https://thebrewingacademy.com/collections/atari-800-xl-xe-xel-xld/products/xep80-ii-by-mytek MidiMaze cart + SIO2Midi + cart shells SIO2Midi by MyTek - https://ataribits.weebly.com/midi.html SIO2Midi at The Brewing Academy - https://thebrewingacademy.com/collections/atari-800-xl-xe-xel-xld/products/midi-for-your-atari-8-bit-400-800-xl-xe-xel-xld 8-bit cartridge shells at Vintage Computer Center - https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com/product/atari-8-bit-cartridge-shells OSS 4-in-1 cart - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimized_Systems_Software#:~:text=Optimized%20Systems%20Software%20(OSS)%20was,bit%20family%20of%20home%20computers FujiCart + case MyTek Website - https://ataribits.weebly.com/576nuc.html FujiCart and case at The Brewing Academy - https://thebrewingacademy.com/collections/myteks-576nuc-atari-computer/products/myteks-576nuc-and-internal-fujinet?variant=39350116024422 Steve Boswell (Mr Robot) site - https://atari8bit.net/ Upcoming Shows VCF Southeast - July 15-17 Southern Fried Gaming Expo - https://gameatl.com/ KansasFest 2022 = July 19–24, 2022, Kansas City, MO - https://www.kansasfest.org/ VCF West 2022 = Aug 6, 7, The Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/ VCF Midwest = Sep 10-11, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly = Sep 30-Oct. 2, Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Interview Links Grant, who also worked on the guts of Sinclair's ZX80 and ZX81 (and can be heard talking about his experiences in Randy Kindig's Floppy Days podcast), donated the prototype hardware to the museum “The first ZX Spectrum prototype laid bare…” at The Register - https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/05/the_first_zx_spectrum_prototype_laid_bare/
https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Please consider donating to keep Floppy Days going! Interview with Howell Ivy, Co-founder of Exidy and Developer of Exidy Sorcerer Computer Welcome to Floppy Days episode 114 for May, 2022. I am Randy Kindig, your host. Again this month, I have a special interview show for you that actually has been a few years in the making. Some time ago, I had come across and had gotten initial contact with Howell Ivy, who it turns out was co-founder of Exidy and was instrumental in the development of the Exidy Sorcerer computer. The Exidy Sorcerer is a machine that I covered clear back in 2014 in episode 17 of Floppy Days. It was a very early machine, just after the release of the home computer triad of the Commodore PET/Apple II/TRS-80 Model I and before the Atari 400/800, with great graphics, a Z-80 processor, and one of the first home computers (after the VideoBrain) to have plug-in cartridges (these based on the 8-track tape cartridges). After the initial contact with Howell, he went silent and I was unable for the last few years to get an interview set up. Finally, recently, I was able to get a response and quickly got the interview in the books. I also recorded a video for an interview for the first time! The link to the video interview on YouTube is in the show notes here. Before getting into the interview, I do want to talk about some vintage hardware or modern upgrades I was able to acquire, as well as bring you information about upcoming vintage computer shows. Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute! Links: New Acquisitions Mattel Aquarius Aquaricart and 32K RAM "Combo Pack" - https://www.ebay.com/itm/124471439128?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 Apple II Yellowstone Disk Controller - Big Mess o' Wires Upcoming Shows Boatfest Retro Computing Festival 2022 - June 24-25 - Hurricane, WV - https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/boatfest-retro-computer-festival-2022-tickets-222333103297 The Commodore Los Angeles Super Show 2022 - June 25-26 - Burbank, CA - https://portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=class:start VCF Southeast - July 15-17 Southern Fried Gaming Expo - https://gameatl.com/ KansasFest 2022 - July 19–24, 2022, Kansas City, MO - https://www.kansasfest.org/ VCF West 2022 - Aug 6, 7, The Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/ VCF Midwest - Sep 10-11, Elmhurst, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ Tandy Assembly - Sep 30-Oct. 2, Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Interview Links The History of Exidy - http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-ultimate-so-far-history-of-exidy_24.html Howell Ivy interview at RetroGamer - https://www.retrogamer.net/profiles/developer/howell-ivy/
https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Please consider donating to keep Floppy Days going! Interview with Monte Davidoff, Developer of Altair BASIC Floating Point Welcome to Floppy Days episode 113 for April, 2022. I am Randy Kindig, your host. I'm going to take a break this month from covering machines in order to bring you a special interview show. Monte Davidoff worked with the very early Microsoft, while in college, when they were famously getting started by developing a BASIC for MITS and Ed Roberts for the Altair 8800. Monte developed the floating point routines for that BASIC that they so desperately needed at the time. If you're like me, I previously was unaware of Monte's contributions to essentially the first BASIC developed for arguably the first personal computer. It's interesting to hear Monte's perspective on how he managed to get involved with Microsoft, Bill Gates, Paul Allen and the project on which he worked with them. His recall of specifics about programming for the 8080 is pretty amazing. Before getting into the interview, I do want to talk about some vintage hardware or modern upgrades I was able to acquire, as well as bring you information about upcoming vintage computer shows. Finally, while I usually abstain from talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute!
https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays The IBM PC 5150, Part 5, with Jim Leonard Welcome to Floppy Days episode 112 for March, 2022. I am Randy Kindig, your host. As a reminder, we are currently finishing up talking about computers released in 1981. This is the 5th of 5 shows covering the release of the IBM PC 5150, the grand-daddy of most modern personal computers. I know 5 shows about one computer seems like a lot, but it IS one of the few computer lines that actually became a standard and many of the computers we use today are based on this original architecture. Besides, it just turned out there was a lot to cover about this machine. As on the earlier IBM PC episodes, I'm extremely happy to have Jim Leonard as co-host for this final episode on the 5150. Jim is a fount of knowledge on all topics IBM PC, so I'm honored he was able to help us take a walk through the various aspects of the machine and all of its associated information. In this episode we will cover emulation, buying one today, Community, and Web sites. Before we get into the main part of the show, I will be talking a bit about new acquisitions in the vintage computer hobby. Finally, while I usually decline talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. I've been very happy with the way listeners have jumped in and contributed whatever they felt they could afford. Believe me, it has been helpful. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute!
Welcome to Floppy Days episode 111 for February, 2022. I am Randy Kindig, your host. As a reminder, we are currently finishing up talking about computers released in 1981. This is the 4th of 5 shows covering the release of the IBM PC 5150, the grand-daddy of most modern personal computers. As on the earlier IBM PC episodes, I'm extremely happy to have Jim Leonard as co-host for these remaining episodes on the 5150. When Jim and I went to record what was to be the final episode on the IBM PC, it ran so long that I decided to break it into 2 episodes. That means there will be one more episode next month, for 5 total on this historic machine. In this episode we will cover ads appearances and modern upgrades. Next month, in the final episode, we will focus on emulation, buying one today, Community, and Web sites. Before we get into the main part of the show, I will be talking a bit about new acquisitions in the vintage computer hobby. One other thing I wanted to mention to the listeners is that this month coincides with the 9th anniversary of Floppy Days! That certainly makes Floppy Days one of the grand-daddys of vintage computer podcasts and makes me wonder where the last 9 years went. It's been a fun ride and it's a long way from over. The interest remains high from listeners, with over 300,000 downloads since it started. More importantly, my love of the topic and interest in keeping this going remains high! We have a lot more machines to talk about! 1982 & 1983 were extremely rich years for the introduction of new home computers and I want to bring all of them to you. Finally, while I usually decline talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute!
contribute to the show via Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays The IBM PC 5150 Part 3 With Jim Leonard Welcome to Floppy Days episode 110 for January, 2022. I am Randy Kindig, your host. As a reminder, we are currently finishing up talking about computers released in 1981. This is the third of four shows covering the release of the IBM PC 5150, the grand-daddy of most modern personal computers. As announced last show, I'm extremely happy to have a co-host for these remaining episodes on the 5150. And that co-host is Jim Leonard, one of the people responsible for putting together VCF Midwest each year and a huge early PC enthusiast. Jim has an amazing amount of detailed knowledge about these machines and really enhances the podcast! In this episode we will cover peripherals, using the machine, software, magazines, and books. Next month, in the final episode covering this venerable machine we will focus on ads, emulation, modern upgrades, Community, and Web sites. Before we get into the main part of the show, I will be talking a bit about new acquisitions in the vintage computer hobby and what I've been up to. Finally, while I usually decline talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute! Links Mentioned in the Show: New Acquisitions Apple IIc VGA - http://www.a2heaven.com/webshop/index.php?rt=product/product&product_id=135 Apple IIc monitor - https://madeapple.com/apple-monitor-iic/ Apple IIGS RGB-to-SCART cable - https://cocoman.onlineweb.shop/Apple_IIgs_SCART_Cable/p7004829_21371801.aspx VTech Precomputer 1000 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTech_PreComputer_1000 HP-85 EBTKS - Philip Freidin - http://www.fliptronics.com/EBTKS/index.html Upcoming Shows in 2022 VCF East - Apr 22-24, Infoage Science and History Museums, Wall, NJ - https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/ CocoFest - May 14-15, Elk Grove Village, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest-2022/ VCF Southeast - July 15-17 Southern Fried Gaming Expo - https://gameatl.com/ KansasFest 2022 - July 19–24, Kansas City, MO - https://www.kansasfest.org/ VCF West - Aug 6, 7, The Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/ Magazines/Newsletters Magazine LIst - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_magazines Byte - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_(magazine) Creative Computing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Computing_(magazine) Compute's PC Magazine - https://archive.org/details/compute-magazine Personal Computer World magazine - http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/sec/573/Personal-Computer-World/ Books Compute!'s Mapping the IBM PC and PCJR Paperback by Russ Davies - https://www.amazon.com/Compute-Mapping-IBM-PC-PCJR/dp/0942386922/ References IBM Archives - https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_fact.html Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer Old-Computers.com - https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=274&st=1 Vintage Computer Federation forums - https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php IBM 51xx PC Family Computers - http://www.minuszerodegrees.net
Today's special guest will be none other than Randy Kindig, vintage computing podcasting legend, and holder of the gold standard of vintage podcasting in general. Host of The Floppy Days Podcast as well as the Antic Podcast and so much more! 00:00:00 -Start/Intro 00:01:45 -Start of the show! 00:02:00 -Panel Introductions 00:03:20 -Viewer Introductions 00:03:45 -Special Guest, Randy Kindig 01:59:54 -Commmercial break 02:01:02 -Thank you Patrons! 02:02:18 -Commercial Break 02:05:00 -Who's New on Discord? Join Here: Discord.CoCoTalk.Live 02:57:07 -CoCo Thoughts by Samuel Gimes 02:08:12 -Game On! Results, With Nick Marotta! Featuring Ken of Canadian Retro Things 02:11:05 -Game On! discussion 02:24:40 -Game On! Game for next week, With(out) Nick Marotta! But... Featuring Ken of Canadian Retro Things 02:27:22 -Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 02:27:45 -CoCo News} Leany Brothers- Several interesting followup bits from last weeks interview 02:32:42 -Game On! News} Jim Gerrie- Pooper!, and Robert Sieg's Full Screen Project machine language driver 02:35:53 -Game On! News} Pere Serrat and Kees van Oss- released AGD games pack #47, Papyrus, Quest for Elements, Ray's Reprisal, Restless Andre, Stripping Penelope 02:39:25 -Game On! News} Tim Thayer- rough draft of the background graphics for an upcoming game called Card Sharks 02:41:11 -Game On! News} Robert Sieg- BASIC MC-10 games that has converted to use his Full Screen project character display generator for higher res graphics, also shows using the Gameboy graphics editor for the graphics 02:47:17 -Game On! News} Aaron & Boat/The CoCoShow- Next episode to be recorded on Twitch Jan 23rd at 1pm (actually right now, as these time stamps are being made!) 02:48:18 -Game On! News} Nick Marentes- update for 13th Zero Hour Blog post 03:12:16 -End of Line for... Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 03:12:30 -Commercial Break 03:17:20 -News, with L. Curtis Boyle **CoCo/General News** 03:17:50 -CoCo News} Pierre Serrazin- released version 0.1.74 of CMOC 03:18:44 -CoCo News} Simon Jonassen- release a video/audio demo, source code and BIN file for a 3 voice square wave music player for the Coco 3 03:21:00 -CoCo News} Bill Nobel- video update to his Teensy project, ROM is in place, MMU and video operational, and the quick video clip shows the Buggy Monitor 03:24:30 -CoCo News} retrorewind.ca- have HD6309E's in stock, and also offers the service of socketing the CPU and installing it 03:26:15 -CoCo News} Baptiste Hobbe- Atari style to Coco joystick converters that are for sale 03:27:31 -CoCo News} John Linville- video showing his Coco / Tandy 1000 joystick testing prototype in operation 03:30:40 -CoCo News} James Jones- video showing BASIC09 vs. DECB 03:33:13 -CoCo News} Pedro Pena- video showing him upgrading a 26-3134A Korean Coco 2 to 64K RAM and adding Extended BASIC 03:35:20 -CoCo News} Bill Pierce- has fixed some broken links, and developers can now access the last developers-only release of Drivewire 4.3.4e that was never officially released from his website **MC-10 News** 03:40:00 -MC-10 News} Robert Sieg- screenshots of characters for Flipull updated with custom font characters 03:41:21 -MC-10 News} Ciaran Anscomb- update to XRoar this past week, now allowing XRoar to load ASCII BASIC files directly via a "quick type" **Dragon News** 03:42:36 -Dragon News} Chris Hawkins/CRC (Chris's Retro Corner)- fixing a couple of the things - a key that didn't work, and the power button that only worked sometimes 03:43:30 -Dragon News} John Whitworth- another batch of the PSU Kits are available again from Dragonplus Electronics 03:44:50 -End of Line for... News, with L. Curtis Boyle 03:45:00 -Project Updates and Acquisitions 03:45:15 -PUA} CoComan 03:51:30 -PUA} L Curtis Boyle 03:53:18 -Outtro 03:56:10 -Caboose/Final thoughts... 03:57:10 -Good Bye Everybody! https://floppydays.libsyn.com/ https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/ http://www.nextwithoutfor.org/ http://www.midwestcomputermuseum.com/cms/ Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Visit us on the web at http://cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: http://discord.cocotalk.live Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams: https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelm... Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at: http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show: https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow
Today's special guest will be none other than Randy Kindig, vintage computing podcasting legend, and holder of the gold standard of vintage podcasting in general. Host of The Floppy Days Podcast as well as the Antic Podcast and so much more! 00:00:00 -Start/Intro 00:01:45 -Start of the show! 00:02:00 -Panel Introductions 00:03:20 -Viewer Introductions 00:03:45 -Special Guest, Randy Kindig 01:59:54 -Commmercial break 02:01:02 -Thank you Patrons! 02:02:18 -Commercial Break 02:05:00 -Who's New on Discord? Join Here: Discord.CoCoTalk.Live 02:57:07 -CoCo Thoughts by Samuel Gimes 02:08:12 -Game On! Results, With Nick Marotta! Featuring Ken of Canadian Retro Things 02:11:05 -Game On! discussion 02:24:40 -Game On! Game for next week, With(out) Nick Marotta! But... Featuring Ken of Canadian Retro Things 02:27:22 -Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 02:27:45 -CoCo News} Leany Brothers- Several interesting followup bits from last weeks interview 02:32:42 -Game On! News} Jim Gerrie- Pooper!, and Robert Sieg's Full Screen Project machine language driver 02:35:53 -Game On! News} Pere Serrat and Kees van Oss- released AGD games pack #47, Papyrus, Quest for Elements, Ray's Reprisal, Restless Andre, Stripping Penelope 02:39:25 -Game On! News} Tim Thayer- rough draft of the background graphics for an upcoming game called Card Sharks 02:41:11 -Game On! News} Robert Sieg- BASIC MC-10 games that has converted to use his Full Screen project character display generator for higher res graphics, also shows using the Gameboy graphics editor for the graphics 02:47:17 -Game On! News} Aaron & Boat/The CoCoShow- Next episode to be recorded on Twitch Jan 23rd at 1pm (actually right now, as these time stamps are being made!) 02:48:18 -Game On! News} Nick Marentes- update for 13th Zero Hour Blog post 03:12:16 -End of Line for... Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 03:12:30 -Commercial Break 03:17:20 -News, with L. Curtis Boyle **CoCo/General News** 03:17:50 -CoCo News} Pierre Serrazin- released version 0.1.74 of CMOC 03:18:44 -CoCo News} Simon Jonassen- release a video/audio demo, source code and BIN file for a 3 voice square wave music player for the Coco 3 03:21:00 -CoCo News} Bill Nobel- video update to his Teensy project, ROM is in place, MMU and video operational, and the quick video clip shows the Buggy Monitor 03:24:30 -CoCo News} retrorewind.ca- have HD6309E's in stock, and also offers the service of socketing the CPU and installing it 03:26:15 -CoCo News} Baptiste Hobbe- Atari style to Coco joystick converters that are for sale 03:27:31 -CoCo News} John Linville- video showing his Coco / Tandy 1000 joystick testing prototype in operation 03:30:40 -CoCo News} James Jones- video showing BASIC09 vs. DECB 03:33:13 -CoCo News} Pedro Pena- video showing him upgrading a 26-3134A Korean Coco 2 to 64K RAM and adding Extended BASIC 03:35:20 -CoCo News} Bill Pierce- has fixed some broken links, and developers can now access the last developers-only release of Drivewire 4.3.4e that was never officially released from his website **MC-10 News** 03:40:00 -MC-10 News} Robert Sieg- screenshots of characters for Flipull updated with custom font characters 03:41:21 -MC-10 News} Ciaran Anscomb- update to XRoar this past week, now allowing XRoar to load ASCII BASIC files directly via a "quick type" **Dragon News** 03:42:36 -Dragon News} Chris Hawkins/CRC (Chris's Retro Corner)- fixing a couple of the things - a key that didn't work, and the power button that only worked sometimes 03:43:30 -Dragon News} John Whitworth- another batch of the PSU Kits are available again from Dragonplus Electronics 03:44:50 -End of Line for... News, with L. Curtis Boyle 03:45:00 -Project Updates and Acquisitions 03:45:15 -PUA} CoComan 03:51:30 -PUA} L Curtis Boyle 03:53:18 -Outtro 03:56:10 -Caboose/Final thoughts... 03:57:10 -Good Bye Everybody! https://floppydays.libsyn.com/ https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/ http://www.nextwithoutfor.org/ http://www.midwestcomputermuseum.com/cms/ Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Visit us on the web at http://cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: http://discord.cocotalk.live Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams: https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelm... Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at: http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show: https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow
IBM PC 5150 Tech Specs Welcome to Floppy Days episode 109 for December, 2021. I am Randy Kindig, your host. As a reminder, we are currently finishing up talking about computers released in 1981. This is the second of a now anticipated four shows covering the release of the IBM PC 5150, the grand-daddy of most modern personal computers. Back in episode 106, I covered the long and interesting history of the 5150. How it came about and why we are living today with the choices made clear back in 1981. I'm very happy to announce that I will have a co-host for these next 3 episodes where we cover tech specs, books, magazines, Web sites, and all the usual topics. And that co-host is Jim Leonard, one of the people responsible for putting together VCF Midwest each year and a huge early PC enthusiast. Jim is a fount of knowledge about these machines and adds a ton to the podcast! It turns out that just covering the tech specs about the 5150 alone was more than enough material to fill an entire episode, so Jim and I will focus on that in this episode. Next month we will cover peripherals, software, magazines, books, and more and in the final episode covering this venerable machine we will focus on ads, emulation, modern upgrades, Community, and Web sites. Before we get into the 5150 tech specs, I will be talking a bit about new acquisitions in the vintage computer hobby and what I've been up to. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate to help keep this podcast going. New Acquisitions Commodore 128 RGB to SCART - https://c128adapter.pook.nl/ Atari 8-bit 576NUC+ - https://thebrewingacademy.com/collections/myteks-576nuc-atari-computer/products/myteks-576nuc-and-internal-fujinet Atari 8-bit ACE80XL Cart - https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com/product/ace-80 Upcoming Shows VCF East 2022 = Apr 22, 23, 24, Infoage Science and History Museums, Wall, NJ - https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/ CocoFest 2022 = May 14th & 15th 2022, Elk Grove Village, Illinois - https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest-2022/ KansasFest 2022 = July 19–24, 2022, Kansas City, MO - https://www.kansasfest.org/ VCF West 2022 = Aug 6, 7, The Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/ Interview - Jim Leonard Jim interview on Floppy Days #7 at VCFMW 8.0 (2013) - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-episode-7-vintage-computer-festival-midwest-8-0 Total DOS launcher - https://github.com/MobyGamer/total-dos-launcher The Oldskool PC YouTube Channel - https://youtube.com/TheOldskoolPC Reference - Tech Specs https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_fact.html https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php http://www.minuszerodegrees.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=274&st=1
Interview with Albert Cory, author of “Inventing the Future” about the Xerox Star Welcome to Floppy Days episode 108 for October, 2021. I am Randy Kindig, your host. This month is a special episode based on an interview I was able to get with Albert Cory, author of the recently published book, “Inventing the Future”. This book is a semi-fictional account of what it was like to work at Xerox in the late 70's and early 80's, while the company was working on the concept of the “Office of the Future” and the amazing computer known as the Xerox Star. For me, this interview and book finally pushed me into researching this incredible part of computer history; of which I had a cursory knowledge, but had never gone into any detailed research. The Xerox Star was ahead of its time and the technology that went into this computer set the stage for our modern computers in many ways. While Xerox didn't truly take advantage of all this amazing technology, as the Star was considered a commercial failure, many other companies took the mantle from Xerox and successfully utilized much of its technology. Albert sits down with me and talks about what it was like to work at Xerox in those days, what prompted him to write the book, and many other topics. I think you'll find it interesting. I know I did! Before getting into the interview, I do want to talk about some vintage computer shows I was recently able to attend and, of course, some vintage hardware or modern upgrades I was able to acquire. Finally, while I usually eschew talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you to help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about. Thank you so much everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute! Links: New Acquisitions VCF Midwest - http://www.vcfmw.org ZX80/81/TS1000 ZXpand Super Serial + wireless module - https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/zxpand%2B-super-serial-card-40640 ZX80/81/TS1000 ZX-Key: The ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard and Interface Card (Gateron Black Switches) - https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/45028 ZX80/81/TS1000 ZX-Key main Web site - ZX81 Keyboard Adventure Apple IIGS RGB-to-SCART cable - Cocoman - https://cocoman.onlineweb.shop/Apple_IIgs_SCART_Cable/p7004829_21371801.aspx Microsoft BASIC I for Atari - https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Microsoft%20Basic%20I Tandy Assembly - http://www.tandyassembly.com MCX32SD for Tandy MC-10 - https://thezippsterzone.com/mc-10-items-for-sale/ REX# for M100/T102 - Steve Adolph - https://bitchin100.com/wiki/index.php?title=Ordering_Information Backpack Drive for M100/T102 - Jeffrey Birt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3es0NLJmd2c Upcoming Shows CocoFest November 6-7 Elk Grove Village, IL https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ Commodore Los Angeles Super Show (CLASS) November 6-7, Burbank, CA, http://www.portcommodore.com/class VCF East April 22-24, 2022: Vintage Computer Festival East , Wall NJ VCF West August 6-7: Vintage Computer Festival West , The Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA Interview Links Albert Web site - https://www.albertcory.io/ Bitsavers documents - http://bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/sdd/ “Inventing the Future” by Albert Cory - https://amzn.to/3EtBOO1 “Dealers of Lightning” by Michael Hiltzik - https://amzn.to/3w7xVM0 Read the reviews from the participants - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57138737-inventing-the-future
The History of the IBM PC 5150 Welcome to Floppy Days episode 106 for August, 2021. I am Randy Kindig, your host. As regular listeners will remember, we are currently talking about computers released in 1981. It just so happens that the next computer up is the IBM PC 5150, the grand-daddy of most modern personal computers. It just so happens that this very month, August, is the 40th anniversary of the venerable IBM PC. This wasn't planned. It just fortuitously worked out this way. I'm planning to have a couple-episode arc on this topic, starting this month with the long and interesting history of the 5150. How it came about and why are we living today with the choices made clear back in 1981? Although I'll be running solo this month, as Bill Gates just couldn't free himself up to co-host with me, I will have a co-host for the follow-up episode where we cover tech specs, books, magazines, Web sites, and all the usual topics. Before we get into the 5150 history, I will be talking a bit about new acquisitions in the vintage computer hobby and what I've been up to. Finally, while I usually eschew talking about monetary support for this podcast, I do want to mention that I have a way for you help if you have the inclination. I have a page set up at https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays where you can donate. Any funds will be used to defray the cost of managing the podcast as well as acquiring new hardware to talk about.
History of Personal Computing and Floppy Days performed a live recording of podcast at Vintage Computer Festival SouthEast 3.0 outside of Atlanta, GA. Present were Randy Kindig of Floppy Days podcast, along with David Greelish and Jeff Salzman (from the remote HoPC offices in Pennsylvania). Without further ado, here is the podcast. Show notes will […]
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