On Sun, May 19, 2024 at 4:56 PM Tarek Hoteit via cctalk <cctalk@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
