Hello from Tampa!
Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2024 12:33 pm
Hi I'm Pete.
I've been following this project, as well as skirting the borders of retro computing for some time now, and have recently started to dive in. Please pardon my rambling as I give my riveting backstory lol.
I've been a professional c/c++/c#/java/go/whatever programmer for the better part of 30 years now, briefly (thank goodness) starting on 16-bit Windows, before moving into 32-bit land with the release of Win95/NT3.51, etc. etc. I also was really into the sadistic rituals of downloading all 30 floppy images for the latest Slackware Linux release over a 28.8k dialup, just to render my P90 useless since I had a 1.2GB drive... but I digress.
My first intro to computers was in the late 70's, very early 80's when my best friend's older brother got a PET, a 2001 to be exact, and he let us play Miner 49'er (I think). A few years later I got an Apple ][e, and learned enough Basic to write the most convoluted text adventures ever created. We were never a Commodore family, but I had a good friend in high school that was a beast with his C64...
Anyway, fast forward to today, and I'm still writing code and doing Solution/Cloud Architecture type stuff, and have been finding myself longing for the "good old days" when things were simpler, more direct. No dependency managers, no layers and layers of abstractions - just you, your code, and the machine. I've been toying with the idea of picking up a vintage system like a C64 or an Apple ][c, but the cost-to-how-much-needs-fixed ratio feels high. So I went a different route. I found the PAL-1 (Kim-1 reproduction) on Tindie, and pulled the trigger on the system and all the add-ons. So far I've received and built the main computer and the cassette interface, successfully talked to it via USB-to-Serial with minicom. Now I'm waiting on the rest of the add-ons to show up, and binge-learning 6502 assembly.
Something about using my daily-driver with 4k video, 32" monitor, etc. to talk to my PAL-1 via serial seemed...wrong, so I started looking for a terminal, either an actual terminal, which I don't have room for, or something like a VGA32 or similar that would feel like a dedicated terminal. I came very close to grabbing an IBM 3151 ASCII station on Ebay, but after some further research, I wasn't sure that the inbuilt emulation modes would be useful for much beyond the PAL/Kim, so I waited. I like the idea of a retro/vintage machine running a terminal program to talk to the PAL, so I started looking in that direction. I found some decent-sounding C64's on EBay, but still being pretty new to them, wasn't totally sure what I should be looking for.
Then it happened, someone had an Otter x16 unbuilt kit WITH a CX16 keyboard on EBay and lightning struck!
For whatever reason, the kit with keyboard is less than the kit alone on Tindie, so I grabbed it. Now the fun begins!
TL;DR; Wanted to get into retro/8bit. Bought a PAL-1 kit, felt silly talking to it over serial from a modern system, bought another 8-bit kit to be my "retro" system and also talk to my PAL-1 (and my Ben Eater breadboard 6502, but that's another story)
I'm looking forward to digging in to all things X16 and hopefully contributing some code to the community. Thanks for putting up with my long-winded into!
Thanks!
TampaPete
I've been following this project, as well as skirting the borders of retro computing for some time now, and have recently started to dive in. Please pardon my rambling as I give my riveting backstory lol.
I've been a professional c/c++/c#/java/go/whatever programmer for the better part of 30 years now, briefly (thank goodness) starting on 16-bit Windows, before moving into 32-bit land with the release of Win95/NT3.51, etc. etc. I also was really into the sadistic rituals of downloading all 30 floppy images for the latest Slackware Linux release over a 28.8k dialup, just to render my P90 useless since I had a 1.2GB drive... but I digress.
My first intro to computers was in the late 70's, very early 80's when my best friend's older brother got a PET, a 2001 to be exact, and he let us play Miner 49'er (I think). A few years later I got an Apple ][e, and learned enough Basic to write the most convoluted text adventures ever created. We were never a Commodore family, but I had a good friend in high school that was a beast with his C64...
Anyway, fast forward to today, and I'm still writing code and doing Solution/Cloud Architecture type stuff, and have been finding myself longing for the "good old days" when things were simpler, more direct. No dependency managers, no layers and layers of abstractions - just you, your code, and the machine. I've been toying with the idea of picking up a vintage system like a C64 or an Apple ][c, but the cost-to-how-much-needs-fixed ratio feels high. So I went a different route. I found the PAL-1 (Kim-1 reproduction) on Tindie, and pulled the trigger on the system and all the add-ons. So far I've received and built the main computer and the cassette interface, successfully talked to it via USB-to-Serial with minicom. Now I'm waiting on the rest of the add-ons to show up, and binge-learning 6502 assembly.
Something about using my daily-driver with 4k video, 32" monitor, etc. to talk to my PAL-1 via serial seemed...wrong, so I started looking for a terminal, either an actual terminal, which I don't have room for, or something like a VGA32 or similar that would feel like a dedicated terminal. I came very close to grabbing an IBM 3151 ASCII station on Ebay, but after some further research, I wasn't sure that the inbuilt emulation modes would be useful for much beyond the PAL/Kim, so I waited. I like the idea of a retro/vintage machine running a terminal program to talk to the PAL, so I started looking in that direction. I found some decent-sounding C64's on EBay, but still being pretty new to them, wasn't totally sure what I should be looking for.
Then it happened, someone had an Otter x16 unbuilt kit WITH a CX16 keyboard on EBay and lightning struck!
For whatever reason, the kit with keyboard is less than the kit alone on Tindie, so I grabbed it. Now the fun begins!
TL;DR; Wanted to get into retro/8bit. Bought a PAL-1 kit, felt silly talking to it over serial from a modern system, bought another 8-bit kit to be my "retro" system and also talk to my PAL-1 (and my Ben Eater breadboard 6502, but that's another story)
I'm looking forward to digging in to all things X16 and hopefully contributing some code to the community. Thanks for putting up with my long-winded into!
Thanks!
TampaPete
