[ale] a moment of silence please

[Jim Lynch]

Dave Weiner wrote:
> On Apr 29, 2010, at 10:04 AM, Scott Castaline wrote:
>
>   
>> On 04/29/2010 08:34 AM, Thompson Freeman wrote:
>>     
>>> My mother wanted to join in the computer revolution, and in
>>> consultation with a dealer, her sons, and some other
>>> information settled on a KayPro lugable with dual floppies
>>> and DP/M using WordStar. When it was time to retire the
>>> KayPro about 1987, we shifted her to a Mac, and spent close
>>> to two years trying to get her to use the mouse instead of
>>> the WordStar diamond for cursor control.
>>>
>>>       
>> I seem to remember Timex had a small home computer, I think it was
>> called Sinclair. My father had gotten one of those things in a give  
>> away
>> thing when they 1st came out. I believe it was built on the Z80, not
>> sure of the OS though.
>>     
>
> If I remember correctly, Sinclair came out with one first, called the  
> ZX-80.  Shortly after that, they joined forces with Timex or were  
> bought, and the Timex Sinclair ZX-81 came out.  I have a ZX-81 in  
> storage up in PA that worked the last time I powered it up :)
>   
I also have one buried somewhere.  I've used the power supply on another 
project.  I also have two KIM-1 computers and the KIMSI S-100 bus 
interface.  It let me use S-100 (Altair for the purists) bus cards with 
the KIM.  My first computer was a 6502 interfaced with the 6522-TIM 
(teletype input module) chip and some static memory chips. 256 bytes of 
memory.  I built a crt terminal using Don Lancaster's book, "TV 
Typewriter Cookbook".  Then the KIM-1 came out.  I contracted with an 
outfit to write a 200UT terminal emulator and bought another KIM-1 to 
use as a peripheral interface to a CP/M system.   I had a couple of 
VIC-20s that I used for another project as a data control/collection 
device to help a farmer manage his multiple orchards.  In 1990 or 91, I 
bought a system with a 386sx-16 and 8 Mb of memory.  That I ran Linux 
0.92 on.  I still have the root/boot floppies around that I used.  HJ 
Lui generated them.  I don't think there were any distros around at that 
time.

Jim.