20 May
2024
20 May
'24
8:56 a.m.
On Sun, May 19, 2024 at 4:56 PM Tarek Hoteit via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Thank you, Josh. How did your passion start with classical computers? Maybe this helps in
understanding the generation?
I know how I got started, but not really why. Although I can explain
how it progressed.
It was May 1986, I was at a sale of old electronics hoping to get a
keyboard for my homebrew computer (this was before cheap PC keyboards
in the UK). I saw a Philips P850 minicomputer being sold essentially
for the scrap metal price. It had the user and service manuals with
it, and it had a lights-and-switches front panel which I'd read about
and never used. I bought it and somehow got it back to my student
room.
That evening I realised that there was a period of about 25 years of
computing which was going to be lost and forgotten if nobody did
something about it. So I did something and started collecting and
restoring all the old computers I could find. It was a lot easier to
find minicomputers and the like back then than it is now.
But why did I buy that initial P850? I am not sure. I've always been
interested in the history of electronics and computers, so perhaps
that was it.
-tony