Change in computers as a hobbiest... 2835

Hi Alex,

Alex

Actually, if I had started in 1988, I likely wouldn't have started at all. To me the "glory days" were the mid to late 1970's. Once the original Apple II and TRS-80 came out, it rapidly went downhill IMHO. The IBM PC a few years later just put the nails in the coffin. I define computer history as anything pre IBM PC. Anything since is just an application :-)

How about the Rochester Area Microcomputer Society's first BBS. It ran from EPROM and its total storage was one Northstar floppy disk. It was put together from donated parts in a "BYTE-8" chbuttis using the original Hayes S100 card modem. Again the late 1970's and I connected to it using acoustic coupler 103A modems. This all operated at a blinding 30 CPS unless you were using a real teletype which limited you to 10 CPS. I still have a couple of these acoustic couplers around here as well as my home brew video terminal with its 64 character by 16 line display. Interestingly I just recently found out that a local old computer collector has that BYTE-8 chbuttis and its contents. I verified for him that yes indeed it was the original RAMS BBS.

Now that's real hobby computing :-)

Chris AN GETTO$;DUMP;RUN,ALGOL,TAPE $$