开云体育

Pretty cool, Scott. A few years before you did this, I built (from RE) the COSMAC Elf computer. I didn't have friends who'd give me parts and tools, so I bought mine. I was a bit older, and already employed by the USAF as a photographer. I also had way to many other hobbies. This was late in 1976 or early 1977, or maybe as late as early 1978. Radio Shack had the best price I could find at the time, I believe it was $15 for the wire wrap tool, and $25 for a roll of blue wire. That was quite a chunk of my pay as an A1C in the USAF at the time, so only the one color. The Elf only had 256 bytes of ram, and no rom. I got it wired up, while waiting for enough money to buy the ram, which at that time was $300 for the 8 chips needed. That was most of my monthly salary. Then there was a substantial price drop, down to $100 for the necessary chips. Got them, installed them, and discovered a wiring error that let the magic smoke out of the new ram chips. My friend Jim, who was also interested in computers and had a camera repair shop in Ft. Walton Beach, traded some of his spare camera repair tools for the fried board, and soon thereafter my wife bought me a TRS80 Model 1, Level 1, 4K machine. I made some upgrades on it, over the years, but never again built a computer from scratch. I did do some programming, for a few more years, but eventually became more of an appliance user. I've "built" several PC's in the past couple of decades, but buying parts that plug in, and maybe have a screw or two to hold them in place is not the same thing.

I've been out of work for several weeks for medical issues, should be going back next week, I hope. Once I have some more income, I am seriously considering building one of Lee's Membership Card CPM machines. That is the last OS I did any serious programming in. The Z89 I was using CP/M (and HDOS) on was a kit built by my FIL, not me. I've not built anything except the odd PC now and again in at least 30 years. Reading your blog reminded me again of some of the fun I've been missing.

Bill in OKC

William R. Meyers, MSgt, USAF(Ret.)


A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new
problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
LAZARUS LONG (Robert A. Heinlein)