SWTPC craze

Richard wrote: Dude. 10 years ago I don't know if this "hobby" was on anyone's radar. Did ebay even exist 10 years ago? At any rate, 10 years seems like such a long time for this hobby that I don't know how you could compare 10 years ago to now. Billy writes: Oh come on! SWTPC kits were all the rage 30 years ago. Ever see one of their calculators? Ever use a KIM or SYM? 10 years is for the newbies to the hobby. Long before eBay, we had Ham Fests, fleas markets, government auctions, bankruptcy sales, etc. Some very serious scrounging and repairing took place. Maybe there were no terminals in mile high piles. But we sought out Teletypes, Flexowriters, Dura Machines, etc. I guess it hinges on what you mean by "hobby". Before the 1975 Mark 8 article, there were clubs around the US and England for homebrew computers. Most used TTL. Many had home made ROMS made from diode arrays. Quite a few copied instruction sets from DEC, DG so they could use the software. But these were true computers and true computer hobbyists. If you were extremely lucky, you found an entire computer. My first PDP-8 was dropped off a truck and sold by the pound by the insurance company. This was well before microprocessors were available. My first home built used DTL logic and serial shift registers for memory, circa 1965. And I had several friends who also were active computer hobbyists and built their own designs. Okay, so we're old farts and now that the dinosaurs went extent, we don't count as part of the hobby any more. But dammit, 10 years is nothing. I know a few other survivors who have been playing with home computers for 50 years! Billy