I don’t remember my very first hamfest, but I do remember what going to hamfests in the ’90s was like. Some of these memories have probably blended together over the years, but the feeling of going to them has stayed with me. I didn’t get my amateur radio license until 2002, but my dad and…
Sometime after we got the CD-ROM drive for our 386, we picked up a demo disc that included several LucasArts game demos. The only one I really remember from that disc was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. My dad and I played that demo over and over again. It probably took us a…
A couple of years after we got the Tandy 1000 RLX, my dad decided it was time for an upgrade. Somewhere along the way he had picked up a couple of books on building your own PC, one of which was Build Your Own 486/486SX and Save a Bundle by Aubrey Pilgrim. After reading through…
From my earliest memories until I was about six and a half years old, the computer I remember us having at home was our Commodore 64. Then one random day during first grade, my parents picked me up from school early. (My mom must have taken the day off from work because she was there…
This post probably won’t be very long, as I don’t think there’s a whole lot to it. It’s more just a fun little anecdote from my early days of using computers. Back in 1997, we probably had a couple of different family email addresses. At the time, we usually used whatever free email account came…
I thought I’d share a memory that came back to me recently. To tell this story, I need to go back to the summer of 1999. I had just finished 8th grade and was starting summer vacation before high school. My 8th grade principal, who also happened to be my dad’s boss and a friend…
Went to another hamfest this weekend and somehow came home with another $20 Timex Sinclair 1000 with the 16K RAM pack. Did I need another one? Not even a little. I had just picked one up last weekend, and I already have 4 or 5 of them at home. But my thinking is that it…
Yesterday I picked up a Timex Sinclair 1000 and a 16K RAM expansion at a local hamfest for just $20. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be working, but that’s okay. Half the fun of this hobby is figuring out why. I’m looking forward to digging into it, learning more about the hardware, and hopefully bringing…