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25 Years of NOCCC Memories
by by Jim Sanders , JimWSand@aol.com - March 26, 2001 at 20:26:15:
As one of the founding members of the North Orange County Computer Club, I was asked to write an article for the Orange Bytes 25th Anniversary issue reflecting on my highlights of those 25 years. The first of those memories would be the initial meetings in a fourth floor classroom on the Campus of California State University Fullerton. A notice had been posted on the bulletin board at Computer Automation where I worked at the time. It announced the formation of a computer club for interested hobbyists. Since I had just finished resurrecting enough parts from the company’s scrap pile to get my own Computer Automation “Naked Mini” 16 bit mini-computer working, I thought I might hook up with others that had interests like mine.Surprise, surprise, of the 45 or so people that showed up for those first meetings, there were people with an assortment of “MICRO-computers.” Everything from assorted S-100 Intel 8080 kit-built units to 100% “home-brew,” Rockwell 6502 machines, Motorola 6800 machines, an Apple “I;” (that “I”; means the number one for those of you that don’t go back that far), and an assortment of weird and wonderful accessories that were bought, built, or adapted for these computers. It was FUN! There was, however, only one odd ball with a commercial 16-bit mini-computer. The contrast between the $5000, 9 track, reel to reel half-inch tape drive system that transferred 30,000 bytes per second I used at work and the $50 audio cassette recorder with home-brew digital-to-audio and audio-to-digital circuits that did 30 bytes per second attached to the “Micro” with dangling wires, was extreme. None the less, this was my introduction to the world of micro computers and it was fascinating. While today we are jaded with high speed desk-top PCs and bemoan the slowness of an old hard disk that only does UDMA 33,000,000 bytes per second, the 30,000 bytes per second from that tape drive sounds archaic, and 30 bytes per second from that audio cassette unit sounds down right stone age; it was wonderful at the time.
Maybe you had to have been there, but 30 bytes per second was bliss compared to entering program data with the front panel switches at maybe 10 bytes per MINUTE. Even though I might have felt some disdain for these mere Micros compared to my Mini, the fastest input/output speed I could afford at the time was 10 bytes per second. Oh! What a marvelous machine. Oh! What a mechanical nightmare. Oh! What a love/hate relationship you could have with an ASR 33 Teletype machine; the complete, does everything, I/O machine for your computer. Selling new for $1500 to $2000, it was your printer, keyboard, display (on paper), and mass storage device using paper tape. It had a 9-bit punch (8-bit byte plus parity) and a tape reader. All of these functions were tied together and chugged along at 10 bytes per second on a bad day and on a good day, still 10 bytes per second. If I had to reload the Dartmouth BASIC interpreter, it took almost ten minutes for a measly 5800 bytes. But I only paid $75 to get it out of the scrap pile after it had been knocked over by a forklift. Several weeks of un-jumbling springs, gears, levers, and rods (along with a little body work and Bondo), a small monetary offering, plus two six-packs to a moonlighting TeleType repairman for the final adjustments, and I was in business. Uppercase only, you understand, but it worked!
It took a couple of years before I had to admit that though the sophistication of the hardware in my Mini was far greater than the Micros, there was damn little useful software. So I built a Cromemco Z1 kit. A big, black anodized, rack mountable, aluminum box. A power supply that claimed to be good for 30 amps of +5 volts. A 22 slot S-100 motherboard, a 4 Mhz Z80 CPU board and a bag of parts to build it, and a floppy disk controller and I/O board and a bag of parts to build that. A friend of mine that worked for Alpha Micro told me about a DEAL he could get on some used 8K byte memory cards for a mere $125 apiece. I could only afford six of them at the time for a grand total of 48K of RAM. $350 for a used Lier-Siegler ADM1 terminal, a borrowed floppy disk, and I was up and running in the wonderful world of CPM. I got a copy of “The Great Adventure” on floppy disk and got hooked. You know that today, it seems like you always need more memory than you have, well back then, to my dismay, I fo und that I could not save my current game and all my progress exploring the rooms of the great cave unless I had 56K of RAM. So at one point the machine stayed on for three weeks while I played a game.
To help my memory of some of the early happenings in the club and the industry, I dug up an April 1980 issue of Kilobaud Microcomputing magazine. It reminded me that although a large number of the founding members had S-100 CPM systems, and considered those to be the only “real” computers, the Apple II owners became the largest SIG for a while. Then the Radio Shack TRS-80 became the largest SIG. I remember one meeting where the whole TRS-80 group was all abuzz because one member had managed to get a bootleg copy of the schematic diagram of the TRS-80 mainboard and was selling blueline copies for $15 apiece. As a club, NOCCC was dedicated to serving all platforms, and when the TRS-80 SIG couldn’t get as much center stage as they felt they needed, they split off and formed their club that focused on the TRS-80 exclusively. There were two editorial comments in the April “80 Kilobaud” that in hindsight I thought were particularly interesting.
Wayne Green said: “IS IT STILL A HOBBY?” Despite persistent rumors that IBM will soon announce a micro-computer system, I am not surprised by delays. If I were the sales manager of a major firm about to enter the microcomputer market, I would have qualms about jumping in right now. First, I would evaluate the competition by getting a TRS-80 and the available software for it.... same for the Apple and perhaps a couple others. I would check out the available systems from the viewpoint of a businessman. My report would conclude that there is little of value available for business so far.”
Apparently Wayne didn’t think much of the Visicalc spreadsheet on the Apple II
And the second: “STATE OF THE ART Most programmers are keeping one eye on equipment sales, so it is not surprising that more software is being written for the TRS-80 Model I. Radio Shack is probably selling no less than all other systems combined. If Radio Shack becomes complacent, other systems may be able to counter the might of Radio Shack merchandising with better hardware, better software support and better marketing.”
History, of course, documents how IBM ate every body’s lunch, and single interest clubs withered on the vine.
Reflecting on club memories brings up far too many to list, but some stand out above others; the day Chapman College agreed to let us use their facilities, the first Hayes internal S-100 modem card, the first S-100 floppy disk controller with 32 bytes of Boot ROM, the day Apple demod the Lisa computer (mother of the Mac), the day I bought my first 1200 baud external modem at a club meeting for $350, the first demo of a double sided, double density 8" floppy disk, the first IBM PC (which was actually pretty lame at first), and the first IBM AT, the first day I had to figure out how the MS-DOS directory tree structure worked, the first Kaypro and Compaq luggables, the day the club sold subscriptions to formally start the NOCCC BBS, the twice yearly swap meets the club sponsored at ACP, the MicroSoft/NOCCC roll out of MS-DOS 6, the meeting where several IBM VPs put on a demo of IBM’s new toys, the long, long list of other vendors who have spent their Sunday doing a demo for us, the large number of nice people I have met over the years and the fun times we have had together.
The predominant thought I found myself returning to, in one way or another, was a club motto that you have probably heard over the years; “Friends helping Friends.” Of all the things the club is or has been over the last 25 years, some common threads remain; our interest in computing and the desire to learn new things and share what we have acquired. The emphasis shifts from year to year, the list of what or who’s hot and who’s not, changes. For some time now the world wide wait has been not only the hot topic, but at times seemingly the only topic. So you hear; “Do you know how.?” “How can I.?” “What happens when I...?” “Do you know why...?” “Why does...?” and the list goes on, and the subject is mostly WWW, and more often than not, some one in the club has an answer. So tell a friend and bring them in. It is your club as much as mine, and if we keep the spirit alive, it may go on for! another twenty five years.
Jim Sanders #0019
Ad from April 1980 Kilobaud Magazine
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