Getting out of the hobby

[Peter Cetinski]

Spurred by the conversation about the state of the hobby, micro vs mini and the relevance of this list to both classes, I thought I’d articulate what motivates me to those not into the micro scene.

I am a micro guy.  I was a kid in the late 70s early 80s so that is where my passion lies.  Being able to afford all of those incredible machines that I could only read about in magazines and dream about at night back then is a huge motivator for me.  Specifically, I mostly collect and restore TRS-80s with an emphasis on the Model II line of big 8” business class machines, including the Models II, 12, 16, 16B and 6000.  I try my best given the limited free time I have to encourage the growth of the community.  I write software for these computers that leverages my modern day programming skills such as a Wikipedia browser called TRSWiki and a Dropbox client called TRS-Box.  I host a monthly podcast affectionatley called TRS80 Trash Talk with a couple of other notable folks in the TRS-80 community.  I promote the rescue and preservation of the Model II line of software and documentation in the model2archive. 

I really enjoy the conversations on this list even though most of it is about hardware that I am unfamiliar with since it is before my time.  I learn a lot from the "old timers” (typed with utmost respect!) on this list and their websites, especially the 8” floppy experts.  While most of the TRS-80 specific traffic is either in the TRS-80 Yahoo Group or on the VCForum Tandy group, I’d definitely encourage more micro computer discussion on this list…otherwise I fear it may stagnate.  As new people join the hobby they are more likely to be micro focused given that collectors usually collect that which they are familiar with from some time in their lives.

Pete