GrumpyOZRetro Ep#005 - Martin Crockett (SA Country Club BBS)

This is Grumpy Osiretro Episode 5, recorded on the 30th of October 2023. Some of the information in this podcast may be out of date by the time you hear this. In this episode, we've included a fun game for you to play along with at home. Count the number of F-bombs at Craig and I use and leave the answer in the comments if you're watching this on YouTube. That's my way of saying, don't listen to this from the kids who are around. Listen to discretion is advised. Gidey and welcome to Grumpy Osiretro. This is Tony. Martin Crocket, sysop of SA Country Club BBS and enthusiastic vintage computer collector, stops by later for a bit of a chat. I walked in with an apple 200 on my arm and a couple of floppy disks under the other arm and they sort of sneaked because they thought, yeah right, we're talking a $2,000 piece of hardware versus, I don't know what their facts would have been, where several hundred thousand dollars I would imagine at the time. Plugged it all in, got it all up and I killed their machine. You'll hear more about that later on. But first, in the time on a tradition, spanning all the way back to June 2023, Craig and I get together and chew the fat. Gidey Craig, how's it going mate? Glad you great mate yourself. Yeah, getting there. I've had a few things getting in the way of the whole retro thing over the last month or so, but I've still managed to dip a couple of oars into the water. Yeah, I like it mate. What have you been doing? What's a floating debate then since you're talking about oars? Well, the big thing I did in the last month was appear on this week in retro, episode 143, Dave and Chris were on it. Neil's been off doing a few bits and pieces and he mentions that in the most recent this week in retro where Mark Fixer's stuff was a guest. So they've been getting a few guests coming through the rotation. It's not my first rodeo with this week in retro. I was on episode 69 a couple of years ago. So yeah, great bunch of guys, scary how much work goes into that podcast. You listen to it or you watch it for an hour a week and it just seems to be so smooth and there's a lot of work that goes on the background. So Neil, Chris, Dave and Duncan, they do make it for some work. So I feel really privileged to be invited back on there after a little while and yeah, it's always a pleasure hanging out with those guys. Yep, no, mate. I did watch that episode. That was a good laugh. Actually, you look like you have in a pretty good time. Yeah, I sort of dip my toes back into this week in retro. I went off for a little bit, but I'm back onto it now. I'm quite enjoying it actually. You know, it's like you tend to rotate those podcasts where you can't listen to them all and yeah, it's just come back into the mix. So yeah, I've done a huge amount, been busy lately. So I've made painting my retro room, got contacted by the National Film Archive about some Omega demos and I thought I'd bloody lost the disc to be honest and I finally was actually I pulled out a box full of stuff to do the podcast and there was a disser in there. So there's that Hinch demo, Steve Weissart, and then Nightmare and Ramsey Street, which we're done by the Decay crew from somewhere out and I think they're up in Queensland or something. So they're very cool demos and I flipped that off. So they're opening their display in November, I believe. So a video game and video game collections and machines. I'd be pretty cool to get into Canberra and have a look at that. Yeah, so that's pretty cool. My other little bit of a score was my local recycling dude. I cruise through the other day and he goes, oh, I've got one of these Osborne things. I'm like, oh, Osborne. That sounds cool. When you go, you know, first thing he says is, I was probably worth five to seven hundred bucks. I went, oh, great. This is not going to go anywhere fast. I said, well, maybe if it's recapped and you know, mint condition and actually works and everything, you know, you can probably maybe get three, five hundred, two nays. I said, oh, look, I can help you out with it and maybe get someone to fix it. If need be. Yeah, I said, look, just plug it in and wait for the magic smoke to appear and see what happens. Yeah, we could say later roll in there and he sort of rustles up and he goes, oh, oh, that Osborne, there you go, mate, you can just take this or not. Shit. Yeah, right. Yeah, so he goes, oh, the boy stood, it was a sound machine for a starter, but yeah, he said, he took it out and plugged it in. Shot through for a couple of minutes and come back and he said, oh, there was this horrid smell and the fever of the smoke. So obviously, she dropped a cap. Yeah, so we negotiated a carton of beer and yeah, proud owner of an Osborne. I passed it straight onto a made-of-money, really one of the things. Yeah, he's giving it a clean up and I think it'll end up coming along to Adelaide Retro Me. Oh, that's great. And you made a great point there as well, Craig. If someone does do something nice for you or offers you something cool, if they don't take money for it, you're going to give them something like beer, the old beer economy. That spot keeps Australia moving. Cooper'sale, mate. Yeah, hit the spot. Yes, it's time to open the feedback again. And this time, I'm giving Craig first dibs. Yeah, thanks, Tony. You look, he has a couple of guys that barked at always sort of wander up and say, you know, hit you out of the blue that they've mentioned or they talked to you about something that happened on the pod. So that's always good to get a bit of feedback. Pretty much there. Everyone was pretty happy with what Randall had to say and they all said G's he can talk. So that's a bloody good thing. That's the role of the interviewer, your interviewer, to let them crap on for as long as they can. So that was really good. And yeah, Chris came across very well as so that was also a bit of a win. And I noticed on the YouTube there, got a couple of hundred hits, which I thought was pretty good. I don't know about the stats for that, but I noticed CRG and the Retro channel gave us some thumbs up. So it's good to get those guys. I like CRG. He's a pretty cool dude, actually. He's always quite a lot of joys and meager and meager stuff. Had anything come through the feedback, mate? Yeah, I've had some stuff come past and some really interesting things at that. Like you pointed out, we've had 200 hits on episode four, which is absolutely fantastic. And we've had around about 80 odd people listening to us on Spotify as well and the other podcasting apps. And what I'll do is just very quickly, if you're not listening to us on the pods, but whatever your favorite podcasting app is, do yourself a favor and start listening to us that way. Now I don't know if YouTube puts ads on the Os Retro channel because I'm not monetized and I have no intention of ever becoming monetized. And now with Google and YouTube with ad blockers and stuff, I would suggest to if you do get ads, I neither Craig nor I see a red cent of that and be start listening to us instead. Yeah, Craig, what are you reckon? Yeah, totally agree. Yeah, I drive in the cast. I listen to lots of pods. That's my main avenue. I occasionally watch some of the podcasts like this year this week in Retro. I like watching that now. I actually prefer to watch that and listen to it because you know, they're a bit of content and you can see the guys having a bit of a laugh. That's all pretty. Yeah, that's my main avenue. I guess the other one was mate. It was the CRT versus LCD. I like what you've said. Yeah, mate. The good, the bad and the bulky. I think I just said to you, I carried a 29-inch Sony CRT into the shed the other day. And yeah, it's a fair old memo space. I tell you what they do look cool. Me, I'm a purist. I like to rock off of a CRT, but I understand if you haven't got much room and you go under the likes of Retro and I have to stuff cat and CRTs around is hard work. So for me, yeah, I like a CRT, but I don't like paying to get them fixed either. Yeah, your opinion they're turning you a bit of a bit of both. Yeah, my opinion on that, I tend to share with Limford Pickle who made the comment on episode four. And he isn't a similar sort of thing. What triggered his comment about the CRTs was your request as it were to get tips from people on how to stop their Retro area from looking like a shit tip. And he reckons that having an LCD instead of a CRT is a good way to go about it because it frees up some space. And Limford apparently doesn't like the look of some CRTs. He's not keen on the aesthetics. No, I mean, I think CRTs look awesome, but I'm the same token. I also am aware that they're very, they're very bulky and of spaces that are premium, then an LCD absolutely makes sense. And sometimes emulation also makes sense to if you don't have enough room to have all your gear in the one spot. So I totally get what Limford saying. I don't think it's controversial at all. And I also don't think there's a right or wrong way to do this. This is something that I've been banging on about for years. In fact, I've got a fairly early video of mine which was just like a free wheeling kind of almost a rant questioning what a Retro person actually is. And basically no matter how you enjoy your Retro, whether it's through emulation, whether it's through original hardware, whether you're creating stuff, whether you're just buying cool stuff or whatever, there's no right or wrong answer as long as you enjoy it. And as long as you're not telling people how they should enjoy the hobby, that's cool. Well, I think I guess back to that trope, they're going to need a bigger shed if you're going to click CRTs. So simple as that. That sort of leads into the grump, but we'll get to that a bit later. Yeah, we will park the grump, but in the meantime, if you've got some feedback for us, ignore what I said before about YouTube. That's probably the best place to leave a feedback is via the YouTube comments feed. That said, hit us up at grumpyosretro.com to find out all the ways you can get in touch with us. Just interrupting the news sting to let you know that when I say 25, what I actually mean is 24 confused, it'll make a lot more sense in our about 30 seconds. This episode's news isn't so much news as it is details of upcoming events and there are a couple of really great retro events happening both in the virtual space and in meat space over the next six weeks or thereabouts. The first one I want to bring up is Rose Tinted Spectrum's charity stream. He's doing a charity stream in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital in the UK, which is a big children's hospital over there. He's done another charity stream for them before last year, but this year he's doing a 25 hour stream on the weekend of the 11th and 12th of November and he has got an all-star cast helping in crates. Did you want me to go through the guest list? Go for it. Okay, strike yourself in. The guests confirm so far as of recording. Uh, stew the brummy, rare's Graham Norgate as in rare softwares Graham Norgate. Yes, yes. Yes, Dazine, Watho Snorkers, your mate CRG, Neil from RMC, the Oliver Twins. Yes, the Oliver Twins. Yep, is 25 hours of dizzy. You've got to you've got to bear this in mind. There's going to be 25 hours worth of dizzy. So it's the Oliver Twins. They're a pretty big get, you know, and uh, I'm, oh wow, Rick, that's probably worth the price of admission alone, to be honest. Brad, if they got the needs to read. Timberwolf K, more fun making it retro bits. Mark from a very old Mark from the Retro channel. So we're getting a little bit of Australian representation there. Yeah, very much so. Yawning angel, multiplayer, Ian, super Jim. I think that's super Jim Tendo charmers or something, I think, but yes, super Jim is the tag showing on the description here, control all Reese, goldfish on games, LTGD, and the two guests that are probably just as big as the Oliver Twins, Violet Berlin, who if you're listening to this in Britain, you would know her from Bad Influence, which is a legendary British gaming TV show from the 90s. We never got it here in Australia, but I really enjoy watching Rose Tinted Spectrum's Breaking Bad Influence series where he has that retrospective and it makes me kind of wish that I grew up in the UK instead of Australia to be honest, sometimes because between that and all the cool raves and shit they had over there back in the 90s, I kind of feel like I've missed out, but that's another story from another day. And some bloke with a brown couch is also going to be wrapping that up for them. He also likes eating some slightly dodgy food from time to time, not naming names, but Ashens knows who he is. So you can see there, that is a pretty massive cast of characters there. Yeah mate, that's bloody awesome. I'm probably going to get slayed for this, but I don't think I've ever really played a dizzy game. I was more of a Monty on the run sort of guy, but yeah, I've never played a dizzy game. Well, I've played a little bit of dizzy, like I reckon I've played a bit of spin dizzy and fantastic dizzy on, you know, back in the day, got a carbon rembo, which system I played them on to be honest. I think one of them might have even been on the Mega Drive, but yeah, look, dizzy is one of a series. I really want to revisit. I know that particularly over in the UK, it is a cultural institution. So yeah, I reckon there's going to be a lot of people particularly over on the other side of the world who are going to be pretty pumped for this, but even someone like people like us over here in Australia who kind of just may have not experienced dizzy or only dipped our toes in it as casual players or casual observers. I think seeing a bunch of people who are really into the whole dizzy thing, a bunch of familiar names as well as some smaller YouTubers, I think it's going to be a really fun stream and I'm looking forward to dipping in and out of it. And yeah, like I said, it's very great cause in any of these sorts of streams, like the one Lee had a couple of months back with the more fun making a stream, that was huge. I think that raised about £13,000 in the end. So it'll be interesting to see where this lands. So yeah, it looks like there's going to be some sort of prize element to this as well. There's a big list of prizes on the description for the promo video that Rose Tinted Spectrums put up on his YouTube channel and there will be a link to that in the show notes as well as a link to a donations page. I can't even go through all these in the time we have a lot of to us. So just get on it, have a look and support this great cause. Yeah, I think you live in the UK, Tony, the Oliver Twins are going to pop around your house and make your nice hot cup of tea. That would be a great prize. That would be pretty cool. Moving right along. Another huge event that's a little bit closer to home is the Perth Omega user group. Now we know them very well. We know Chris from Perth Omega user group very well. He's been a guest on our podcast in fact. So big fan of what those guys do over there in Perth. The next meet, which is the 10th meet that they've set up. That's a big deal. There's a big ex on the on the demo that Chris put together for it and all that sort of stuff. And there'll be a link to the demo when everything else in the show notes. But getting back to the topic at hand here, it's coming up on the 9th of December from 5pm until 9pm at the Manning Community Centre in Manning in South Perth. Quizzes, prizes. There's going to be a raffle. There's going to be an auction. There'll be trading tables. There'll be a retro shop. Apparently, there's a live guest speaker. They haven't confirmed who it's going to be. Lots of exhibits. It's going to be a really full on event. There will be an admission fee. It's $30. But for that much entertainment, it sounds like it'll be well worth it. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to the Perth Omega user group YouTube channel. Check them out on Facebook, all the links are in the description. So get on it and look, if you're in Perth, I would head there with bells on and probably pants as well. So you don't want to be turned away at the door. While we're on the topic of club stuff, we will launch into the ARC event report in just a tick. But before we do that, just going to give Craig a shout out for all the awesome work he's been doing in the background. At the moment, he's trying to line up as many different user groups as he can from around Australia to start talking to us to tell us about their events, give event reports and all that sort of stuff. Because we see what we have here at Grumpy Os Retro being a great platform for the user groups around us to just tell us what's going on, what events have got happened, just tell us what cool stuff they've been up to. He's already got a couple of leads and he's working at some other leads pretty hard. Yeah, and look, Tony, while we're talking around the country, Mark Falconer from the Omega Retro Brisbane Group, they have a meet on the 29th of November. It runs from 630 to midnight. It's at the Garden City Library. So if you're in Brazil, you probably know where that is. Pretty much bringing one of your likes, especially in Omega. Check out either the Discord channel, their Facebook page, and they actually have a pretty active forum group. So keep an eye for that. It's good that we call it a cruising around the country. Awesome. Cool. If you're a member of a vintage computing or retro gaming user group anywhere in Australia or even New Zealand for that matter, hit us up GrumpyOs Retro.com, get our concept details and just let us know all about your club and we'll plug it. Throw it in your chili bin and float us a computer of course. Sounds choice, bro. Yes, we're going to hate this for this. Well, we're at it. Sorry, no, I better not hum the too much of that because we probably will get a content match and don't get me wrong. I love Dave Dobbin, but you know, I mean, I'm sure Dave will be pretty chill. I don't think he's going to throw a candle at us if we hum the first part of Slice of Heaven. I freaking love that song. Why is that not New Zealand's national anthem seriously? He's still bloody rolling around like Australia and New Zealand on that note. He's still playing, you know, what a legend. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure, but you're about to talk about arc, whereas I'm going off in a completely different arc. Anyway, let's pull it back to topic and go from there. Yeah, Tony, cool. It's cool that we're trying to roll these other people from around the country into a bit of a single platform and speaking of events, we had our arc meet for October, which was first console, first computer, first demo, first game, whatever sort of flow did you boat. So yeah, we had a pretty random selection of machines that turned up. There was some intelligence, Amtrad 6128, which I quite a bit of a fan of. Cutler C64s. There's one of those repo 64s where you get the board and you repopulate it with all the chips. So do to put all that together himself, someone else had a weird looking orange C64 when they 3D printed all the keys on it. So not too sure what was going on there. I saw that in the Facebook group and I thought that looked really cool to be completely honest and I think there should be more of that with C64s. Yeah, I know, but he wouldn't want to get the shits up over that. Dreamcast, there was a turbo graphics and somebody had their old hand and max system there, a couple of max, but you know, only the posh bastards would have got max as their first computers. But there's some some efficient artists in there that, you know, people want to have their first computer. They used it school, first computer, they had it home and I've got a couple of ads that got their first machines and their first school machines and their first work machines. One of the coolest things was a sharp twin Famicon and now that thing look actually looks like it was made by Fisher Price to be honest. That was like a lyrish red sort of color. The photos are up on Australia and vintage Facebook group. If you want to hack back through it from October. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Carl, the new member, he had, I saw him at 1200 actually. He'd come out at the town, he had brand new black case, black keys, he had a pie storm 1200 in it. So yeah, he was pretty happy with that. That was a bloody cool looking piece of kit. Yeah, it was really cool. The highlight of the night was, so Rowan had bought a long, I've called him one of the Rowland brothers because I've always got the old Rowland gear pumping out. He had a Daringer grade meaning, which is called a 2600 grade meaning. So it's basically looked like a foot square synthesizer with a million bloody knobs and diodes and all sorts of crap. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That one. Yeah. Oh, yeah, mate. Oh, wow. Yeah. I saw that in the group. I thought it was a minimo and I'm thinking a bit of an unconventional choice for first computer or console, but okay. I think it was just a really cool bit of kit. He really wanted to get it out to be honest and he made a really sexy bloody wooden case for the thing to stand up on. He had to like a little keyboard there that he's like twinkle in the arteries with. I was sitting right behind him. I had my mega 600 there and I kept thinking there was something wrong with my monitor, but then I realized it was actually synthesizer making these burr noises. So yeah, that was really cool. Actually, so if you jump on to the Facebook group, you can find it there. That was a really cool looking machine and yeah, that got a few heads turning. So that was pretty cool. Next month for November, which right of the 10th is console night. So yeah, once a year, we have a console night. Everyone cracks out their consoles. I reckon I might bring along. I might get older new. I bring a Tarry 2600 original and I reckon I got a Tarry VCS there. The new one hasn't come out the box yet. So we'll pop that out and bury crack the seal on that and load some stuff on it for the night. So yeah, so take a look at the Facebook page and you get on down to our retro. With my underdogs this month, I've been a bit distracted. So no official underdogs this month. In lieu of that, just go to roast into Spectrum's stream. Any YouTube you've never heard of before that's got fewer than 5,000 subs. They're my underdogs for the month. Nice. Actually, starting to sound a bit like you're the underdog of the minute mate, but that's all right. My creams are a bit of underdog as well. So a pair of vintage. I don't know how this popped into the feed. Yeah, I just I think I was looking at a Tarry STE's again and I've got an Atari ST here a couple of months ago and I was going through watched all the videos and I was like, oh yeah, most of them are okay. Pretty much all the same. And then this dude popped up. So a pair of vintage isn't he. I think he's a yank and my lad is a yank. Yeah, bad luck. And that's an Eric. Yeah, that's American for the rest of you. People, not too sure if you're in the other part of the world. And yeah, he had an Atari Falcon video and I went, oh, wow, you know, I started drooling. Then I started looking at the price of Atari Falcons. I went, uh, I stopped drooling. I put it in there with the Omega 4000s. But yeah, he grabbed that Falcon and he pulled that thing the bits. And I was actually quite impressed because yeah, the number of cards he actually had in the thing was amazing. And he really went through the process of what was in it. How it ran a little bit of the history and the usability of it. And he actually uses that to put together all of his scripts. So looking at the time when I did this a couple of weeks ago, and he had 600 subs, he's actually up to 1200 subs now. So quite impressed with it. Yeah, with the content. He's done a, did a TT video the other day and he ripped that thing the bits and I was surprised the number of cards I commented on his video the other day and he sent me a link with a list of all the accelerators. I didn't really realize you could get the number of accelerators that were available for those Atari's. So I was quite impressed with that. And yeah, we sort of leads into the older, I hear the, I know there's a bit of news. The old Atari Pie Storm is in the mix. So very good way to get some RAM hard drive and a bit better resolution out of an Atari. I think they got up to 128 mix of RAM and XA. Most Atari's only take 14, I thought. So very interesting to see which direction that goes. And considering they've got no, well, don't have a huge amount of custom chips. And that's just given that raw horsepower. I think you probably get that farth that Atari might actually finally be, you know, catch up to the mega. Not really. Yeah. The only only thing about the Pie Storm. And I'm sure it's only a matter of time until it catches up. For us plebs that only have an ST or STFM. We miss out. I mean, you guys with the STEs or whatever, you can be all high and mighty with your Pie Storms. But, you know, some Porsche Muck like me, I've only got an STFM. I've just got to suck it up. But, you know, it's maybe one day us, lowly STFM users will also have a chance. You can record this in mono if you wanted to feel, you know, back in your ST, not STE, mode there, Tony. That's what mega users always had to stare at as you know. Yeah. Anyway, drop that bit. Earlier on, we opened the feedback and Craig hinted at having a bit of a grump. Now we haven't had a good grump from Craig in a little while. So Craig, let's have it. Yeah, mate. I probably throw it out there. It's probably a good topic too for people to sort of jump on the bear wagon and give their opinion. Modifying cases. Look, I'm a bit of a bit of a purist. You know, I'm not going to start drilling holes in a tower 2600s or, you know, I'm not David Murray. I'm not going to, you know, just hack the death of bloody IBM prototype, probably because I never get one. But yeah, like, well, it's sort of funny because I've got an old case there that I got there 64C and it had those boom marks that you get in it from the phone sitting in the box too long. So it looked like something that was soldering on. Yeah, and I watched the RetroShack, I think, Pommie Guy, quite like him. He got in there with this cement and he putted up all the holes, sanded them back and he spray painted it a different color. So one of the guys in the club is tied to a paint shop and he offered to paint it for me. And look, I think he did a pretty good job. And I threw it up on one of the pages. And yeah, I got to sort of how down a little bit. I was a little bit like, oh, I've got a new case if you need it. What'd you destroy that for? And I'm like, oh, fuck off. I just like, the case was after destroyed anyway. And I sort of would affect the life. Yeah. Was it like a C64? You were saying? What kind of thing was it? Well, C64C. I got plenty of C64s and like, you know, I haven't fundamentally destroyed it, but I thought it'd come out too bad. It's going to get a 60 badge made up for it from the Badgeman. I'm going to call it Deep Purple. And yeah, Retro brought the keys and yeah. So yeah, it was a bit a bit of a fucking shitty about the whole thing. Grump over. Yeah, it's, well, look, it's one of those things, Craig, where again, back to the feedback, trying to police or gatekeep the hobby, that's fucking bullshit. And if you're one of these gatekeepers that feels like they got a sort of things has to be done in a certain way. Obviously, notwithstanding anything that's really agree, just like sticking a bloody paper clip in one of only four IBM prototypes ever made. But if it's something like this, then just shut the fuck up and let someone else just have a bit of fun with it. That's just my humble opinion. Now, 64C, it's not exactly like it's a rare bird. People have done all these sorts of customizations all the time with the more common guard variety machines. You see heaps of the old bread bins where people have done them to varying degrees of success. Yarm beta had one a while back, which was an absolutely shocking condition. He was a noob and he made quite a few mistakes. But the thing is he was honest about it. He actually showed the mistakes being made and he got how down. But the thing is, it's just a Commodore 64 that was already completely shagged looking. Adrian had a Commodore 128, a little while ago, but he got a friend of his to paint. And it was a really cool paint job. It's been completely honest, not entirely my cup of tea. But I appreciate it for what it is. And Adrian loves it. It means a lot to him, but he got how down in the comments for that one as well. But again, I think it's great. I think it's an awesome machine. It's a one of a kind and taking something that's relatively common and turning it into something that's unique. What's wrong with that? Yep, totally agree. Like some of those 64 cases are like 150, 180, 200 bucks light, you know. And when you got a mate says, yeah, I'll slap it through the paint shop. Well, yeah, you just get run with it. So anyway, I'm happy with it. You're happy? That's all that matters. Holy fuck, we both got fired up, didn't we? That's probably the most fired up of the being on this pod. Yeah, I was fucked up because I put it up in the Australian Commodore 64 thing, because I didn't put it in the world. Oh, Jesus, you know. Well, would you fucking do that for? I was like, oh, if you're listening, sorry, but fucking tough shit. Guy, do you think that you'd had like one of Bill Hurts's LCD prototypes just taking a great big shit on the fucking keyboard or something, mate? You know, Jesus. I'm going to cover this fucking Apple lease in glitter and fucking. Look, I mean, that's, I mean, you know, even I would think yeah, that's a bit rude, you know, I would not encourage that. But that said, I'm, I wasn't joking when I said, but I'd have some lampshades as garden ornaments. I was not joking. Well, get me to bloody those other G4s so I can build myself a benchmark. Sometimes with a guest, you get a lot more than you originally anticipate. Best known by many of Adelaide's great beards as a sissop of SA Country Club BBS, Martin Crocket is so much more than that. A lifelong electronics enthusiast, Martin has turned this into a very successful career. And he's also managed to collect a lot of vintage stuff along the way. Good day, Martin. How you going? Good mate, yourself. Oh, look, absolutely excellent. Excellent. Now, with Grumpy Orts retro, the first question we always ask is, what got you started? What was the origin story that put your head into the IT space? The left school at 18, finished, you know, was me tricking them days, year 12, looking for a job and ended up with a radio trade apprenticeship at what then was Kilkenny College of Tafe. But whilst it was a radio trade apprenticeship, they wanted me to be a technician working on over mini computers. So I was working on over 830s, over 1200s, and then later on they upgraded those machines and we had a deck PDP 1134 and a couple of sounds funny these days, but 32 bit mini computers, which were running at 15 megahertz or something rather like that. So that's how I got my first dabble in IT and that's what I was working on. We were doing board level repairs in them days, even as an apprentice. So I certainly did my apprenticeship, then I did electronic technicians difficult and associate diploma in electronic engineering, diploma in electronic engineering, and a whole bunch of other sort of IT related type subjects, programming, software, you name it sort of pretty well, everything. So I've got an even TV microwave servicing, TV serving. So because I work for Tafe, I've got free access to all of their training and all their courses. I used to basically finish work at 530, have tea, and then from 6 o'clock through 9 o'clock, attend Tafe courses for Phoenix, basically. So I got a huge amount of education from that perspective. Yeah, I think that's where the bug sort of got me basically, just a level of electronics. I love repairing stuff and I've laid trying to save the world, but I'm not giving everything going into landfill, basically. I collect vintage calculators, I collect vintage radios, valve radios, and yeah, basically IT and gaming consoles. So yeah. Do you have all your original gear, then, that you've always sort of grew up with, or, yeah? I actually, at one stage, when I got married and sort of started having kids, I actually gave a lot of it away. And I thought, wow, that's just bad thing to do, like a Mac SE 30 and early Commodores and a whole bunch of stuff. Some of it I did hang on to, and maybe 15 years ago, I started getting back into things. I started to think, well, I wish I hadn't had given all that gear away. Part of that was the bulletin board, when I was running the bulletin board, so I gave all the way to most of the hardware for that, because I'd really like to bring the bulletin board back online as an IP based thing for, but I don't know whether I've got enough backups of that sort of packed away in the shed. So that's certainly a project that I'm interested in actually doing is sort of resurrecting it from that perspective. Yeah, people don't remember, I guess you yourself being one of them. That's a minor project. I've got that many projects on the go that a 40-hour day wouldn't be enough for me to get through with the stuff that I've got. I would have at least a hundred different projects. It's like Randall, I love retro gear building. I've got an inside machine that I'm in the process of building, I'm getting cast as a guy in America's building the case that's coming across. I've got remakes of boards, a whole bunch of sort of stuff like that. So they just keep building up in boxes. I've got cardboard paper boxes that paper came in, A3 paper. I've got dozens and dozens of them with projects ready to do. If and when I ever retire, that's what I'll be doing a full time, I think. Yeah, mate, that's bloody awesome. I'm impressed. I think everyone in the same boat in this hobby, if you didn't work, you wouldn't have any money. So it's how to continue on the hobby. It sort of goes a bit of hand-in-hand so that I think that semi-retirement is probably the sweet spot, potentially. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just touching on the BBS. I know I used to, when I used to knock around with these Amiga guys and we used to dial in with our Amiga 1200s. We'd have a bit of a party and we'd always get into the old SA Country Club. That was one of our go-to sort of dial-ups. It was funny because I made a mind. I know he worked with you and I've been mates with him since, like, $9.85 and I know he worked with you at another place and I said, "Oh, yeah, we're in the SA Country Club." He goes, "Oh, buddy, dude, it's work." He runs there and I was like, "Oh, sure." That's bloody awesome. So yeah, because we used to dial in and we'd be sitting around drinking and then dialing and grabbing bloody pictures and all sorts of crap. We used to, I don't know whether you knew, but we used to flesh the hook at 59 minutes, like flesh the motor and really rock. And it had dropped the line and caught off them because we'd only get one hour a day. That again, an extra hour again. So I don't know. Did you know that it was a bit of a quick of the system? No, I tried that one down, hanging a set. No, I didn't get it. When you re-build it, mate, you left it put in some, you know, some fail saves or something. So for me, I spent a favorite time on there. I thought it was pretty cool. And all I get from me, I always had this bit of a, I always thought sysops were like, you know, I was looking at a scene at a space obviously 2001, you know, where the sysops were in this room full of blinky, blinking computers. And there's like, you know, mainframes and takes wear it away. But, you know, what was it? So a couple of questions here. What's the reality of all that hardware and what got you into it, I guess? So I used to know a guy called, yeah, a guy called David Winfield and he used to run a store called the Braxxers computers. It solves me. And I'm not quite sure how I met with David and he was running a ball on board and he said, oh, we can set you up a ball on board. And so basically he came in and he set up Opus and big term. And we sort of got that all set up. And that was my initial thing. And that was based in Gaul at the time with a single line. And then got married, moved to Anglevale and then sort of put in two lines, three lines, four lines and ended up with ten phone lines into the house, one for voice, one for the internet connection and then eight separate lines. Initially it was running on a 286 running desk view and that was pretty unstable. And I wanted sort of more lines. So I looked at different ways. So I ended up with a 386 SX and just didn't have the grunt to do it and it just fairly unstable. So I ended up with a a Nobel server running Nobel 3.11. I think it was a 3.15. And that's where all the files were stored because you could just throw hard drives at it as many as you like for storage. And then I ended up doing effectively PXE boot from 386 SX machines. So for each node there was a separate machine. So there was eight PCs, a server, another machine for me to be able to access the network as well. So there was a shitload of hardware at one stage running that. That's when electricity was a reasonable price, not bloody 45 cents, a kilowatt hour in South Australia. That's how I got into it and it just kept expanding, expanding and then then I put in a Linux Slackware Linux server and that's how we were doing the gateway to the internet to effectively do very crude and fundamental internet access, email and things like that. And that worked really really quite well. And that's how I got some of my background in Linux as far as a skill. So that's how I got my initial connection. It was very slow. I think they had like a 64K ISDN link with several hundred people hanging off the bloody thing, but it gave access and it was just the beginning of what was happening. Eventually, ISPs, adam, internet and places like that started getting bigger and bigger and there's just no way the ability to compete with those guys. Yeah, eventually I just seemed like a logical thing to shut it down and yeah, that's eventually what happened. Where did you sort of source your data from, like, not the connection, but, like, were you dialing overseas and grabbing stuff on a daily basis? Yeah, so, so bleeding. Yeah, it's a part of fighting it. There was a new files coming from America and a made-of-mind Darryl Merit. He used to run phone box BBS because he used to work for Telstra. We had US robotics modems, which were doing 19 care transfers, which were quite impressive in that day and age. Through other people into state as well, they were basically doing a link into the states, picking up all this gear through fighting it and then distributing it around South Australia. And then you could subscribe to different Amiga or Apple or whatever it happened to be and your files would come in there and then being treated would then be responsible for distributing them into, you know, into the bulletin board system. So it was mostly self-contained and mostly after itself. By today's standard of small amounts of data, but I would imagine there would be a couple of megs a day of files coming in there that would just be automatically added into the bulletin board. With Darryl, we were riding custom software to do, you know, fast indexing and searches and things like that. We run games like bulletin board type games and we'd ridden the software so you could run a game designed for another bulletin board system. So we'd, you know, export the data or the user information out of, in this case, it was Opus out of that and then you'd massage the data and then you'd create a effectively a file that the game itself would actually acknowledge a net with, you know, your time limits and you user and things like that. We had like a postcard type scenario where, you know, it was free. We didn't charge anybody anything for it. And yeah, to send us a postcard to acknowledge the usage of it. And some people did some people didn't. I got a few interesting postcards from around the world. That's when I had spare time. I didn't have any spare time anymore. That's funny. That's awesome. You know, use these things and you just go, oh, well, wonder how that came about. And it's, you know, to hear that backstory to, yeah, sort of blowing my mind. Especially when you're in your early 20s and didn't really have access to much, that was very cool. It was, yeah. And been working in IT and having access to cheap hardware and managed to score a copy of Novel Network and was able to install that and run that side of things. I mean, that's probably by today's standards, probably several thousand dollars worth of software alone, just for that. So yeah, to about have access to that and build a, what would have been very sophisticated in its day and age was great. And that's working in industry gave me the opportunity to do those sort of things. And you always saw systems that sort of gods, because, you know, you didn't see pictures or anything like you do these days on Facebook and everything. Yeah. That's right. Cracking guys that used to crack games and stuff. It's like, oh, they were just on a different itch alone. That was also the past time of mine. It was cracking games. So yeah, my first computer, well, I was, remember being at the Kilkenny College of Typhoon, we used to have a teletype ASR-KSR-33s, you know, they all took a big, big, big, big type machines. And somebody came in with a TRS-80 model one. And I never thought, what the, how do you get all that in this such a little box? And there sort of was really quite impressed with this 4K of memory 4K basic type TRS-80. I've got to have a play with it. Basically, it was, you know, tandered, come out to the school and basically said, this is our new hardware that's coming out. And we had a play with it and thought, right, that's amazing. And eventually I was doing a, I think it was a basic programming course. And there was a guy there used to work for, it wasn't computer and it was a place called Random Access. He had an Apple 2 and I, that's effectively how I ended up with Apple 2s. And because I was working for TAFE, where we're getting into micro computers and all sorts of things like that. So the TAFE started buying Apple 2s as a reasonable, good education machine for people to actually learn about programming and that side of things. Just as a little interesting aside, when we were looking at buying 32-bit mini computers, so your data-generals and decks and things like that, we needed some way of testing these machines. So only real hardware available to me at the time was an Apple 2. So I wrote a small multitasking operating system, which is not bad in 64 or less than 64k of memory. And I had split screens. I had, you know, there's a 40 by 80 column screens. I wasn't a whole lot of information on the screen, but I managed to get the screen split into four at a real time clock ticking away, doing multi-tasking and switching between tasks. Then we had four Apple serial cards and then that spread out to four others after that. So basically, I could walk in with my Apple 2, plug in a whole bunch of connections, we had to juggle the wiring slightly, but basically I could plug into 16 ports as these mini computers. And then I could run scripts and the scripts were basically, here's a 10-9 program, encable, compiler, and all that sort of thing. So we could simulate a real workload and consistently simulate a workload. Data-generals won the contract because they were the by far the best. We give primar hard time with that little bit of hardware. And I remember going into the instituted technology at levels and then a deck, Vax 11780, I walked in with an Apple 200 on my arm and a couple of floppy disks under the other arm and they sort of sneaked because they thought, yeah, right, we're talking a $2,000 piece of hardware versus I don't know what their Vax would have been, where several hundred thousand dollars I would imagine at the time, plugged it all in, got it all up, and I killed their machine. If the Apple 2 just gave us so much work, the poor thing just died in the ass. And in fact, towards the end, they said, that's really amazing that you managed to do that. It was actually written up in the institute of electronic engineers or something rather like that because it was just something rather radical. And I was only an apprentice in them days. I'd probably spent a month or so riding code in pure assembler. That's the only way you could do it for the 6502. And we had to slow the speed down because the Apple 6502 only has the 2506 byte stack. And so every time it was doing an interrupt, it was filling the stack up and the 16 of them come and end it, filled that very quickly. So we ended up slowing the board rate down to 300 board. It wasn't a big deal because it was able to square out the typing speed effectively. It still did the commands. And of course, the processing power was done by the 32-bit mini computer. So really, the typing speed wasn't an issue at all. I'm hoping I've got the source code for it in my shed because I've really quite interested to look at the code. I wrote 30, 40 years ago whenever it was, "Hey, what am I? I don't know, but yeah, I'm really interested to look at the source code." Yeah, not resurrected, but just curious to see how good a code I would have actually written in them days. SA Country Club, the BBS. That was my first exposure to FidoNet. I think I was like 13 or 14 years old at the time to that developing brain. The fact that you could tilt people from all over the world about all sorts of stuff that blew my tiny little mind. I mean, there might be somebody listening to this who doesn't know what FidoNet is and maybe would like to know a little bit more about how it works. So would you be able to give a brief explanation as to what FidoNet was all about? It came from America. I mean, obviously a bunch of enthusiasts with bulletin board side of things would set up FidoNet. So basically, countries were out allocated and noted. It has some parallels to even IP based sort of communications, but yeah, so everybody has assigned a note. I can't remember what my note number was. I know what it is in hex, but I don't know what it is in decimal. Even today, I use that as sometimes as part of my password sequence because it's a bunch of hex numbers. So basically, you'd have nodes, so there'd be some sort of central hub or multiple central hubs in America. There were files, both files, and I guess effectively forums. There were message chat areas, and you could subscribe to as many that were available. And that's where all these messages came from. And obviously, there was a 24-hour to 48-hour delay, and if you put in a question, you're not going to get an instant response like you would these days. You'd put your question in, it would get sent off to America if somebody was there, and then at the time they would answer it, and then it would come back the next day, but quite often it was two or three days turnaround on those sort of things. Key nodes in Australia would contact the states and they'd pull the data across, and that way, you generally sponsored. It was all done by a modem. It was expensive in them days. There was no real IP type stuff going around at that point. Towards the very end, we did manage to utilize one of the universities and get links done that way. There were different nodes, so you would get high-level nodes, and then low-level nodes. I mean, I effectively, I wasn't in user node. Nobody fed off of me. I used to feed off another guy, and he would feed off somebody in Sydney, and then somebody in Sydney would feed off somebody in America, so that's how it all got transported. There was a fair delay. Considering it was a totally amateur design network, it actually worked really quite well, and it's really quite impressive for the software, and then there were lots of bits of software that people have written to add you to, you know, to subscribe and unsubscribe for different things, and they were done with text-based control files that would be shipped off to America, to your node upstream, and then they turn on the access to either that chat group or the that file system. Sometimes there'd be lots of files come through. Other times there'd be less files come through. I have, in them days, occasionally, you would after an app that wasn't available, so you would, there's a modern-term app. Nobody knew what an app was in the mid-80s. Yeah, so occasionally, I mean, I had US query robotics modems, and you dial, you know, double-I-double-1 to dial out into America, and yeah, there were international subscribers dialing in them days, so, you know, you've got five minutes, it was going to cost you 23 bucks, that's up another phone call, so yeah, you weren't really keen to do it, so it worked quite well that, you know, you had these different nodes, so I had a local call to pick up majority of my gear, but occasionally there was something I wanted for the ball and board that just wasn't available, so that means that you'd have to dial into them directly and pick it up that way, so yeah, you did it very infrequently because there's a potential huge cost associated with it, but even because I was a goaler, even, you know, people in Adelaide, that wasn't a local call anymore. Basically, you'd have to dial any area code, if you put any area code in front of your number, then you were up for additional cost as far as it wasn't a local phone call. We got around that, the somebody at Elizabeth had two modems, and they connected them back to back, and you dial into one modem, give some commands, and then that modem would dial out on the other link, and you could actually get up a link, so yeah, two effective local call into Elizabeth, and then local call from Elizabeth out to goaler, and effectively, you got away with it doing that way, so there were all sorts of little tricks that we used to do to try and to choose these sort of things. Yeah, it was SDD, my mum used to yell at me because I lived in the country as well, so yeah. It was a city that sort of was, yes, horrendous phone bills, so she'd freak, you know, that yes. I didn't know about that, that tricks, that's awesome. Not sexually transmitted, does it is in this case? Subscribe to something or other, subscribe to trunk dialing, I think that's what it's for. Pins, are you chatting to, I guess? Yeah, maybe. Funny you should mention that, Martin, I actually grew up in Elizabeth, so you were a local call for me, which is why I used SA Country Club a fair bit, but my first experience with bulletin boards was with a Commodore 64, and of course, this was like the late 80s when most people using bulletin boards had moved onto PCs or amigas or whatever, and the only bulletin board in Adelaide that still ran on a Commodore 64 was down at Morphit Vale, which to describe that to the listener, that's like about 60 kilometres away, so effectively, the problem with someone living in Elizabeth trying to ring Morphit Vale, even though they were both Adelaide Metro area, is the same problem that somebody ringing from Adelaide would have phoning callers, so it was that right. It could become quite an expensive endeavor, and again, you know, my mum was concerned when I was ringing this place in Morphit Vale a bit too often, because that was causing an impact to the phone bill, so that's why I started using local BBSs like SA Country Club. Yep, cool. There you go. Interesting in your history, I'm going to be capturing this information, because it's bringing back memories for me, mostly good. So, look, if you were to resurrect it, would you like move it to a modern platform today and try and bring it all across, or you think you might actually try and resurrect the original company. I'd probably do it in that way. Yeah, I'd probably do it as a VMR reckon, and then obviously you would be some means to take RS232 type connections to made M's, and they look like serial ports to the bulletin board software, but they're actually IP, but it's type things. It's something I would like to do, but it's not very high priority at this point in time, and I said, I don't even know if I've got the backup still in the shed, and if I have whether they're actually in a usable state, I used to do lots and lots of backup, floppy disk backups, hundreds of floppy disks, so hopefully there's some of that still out there. I don't know. That's another story. I'm building a shed, basically, for half that's worked up the other half is storage. It looks like an office inside, it's got double insulator walls, air condition, there's all drip rock walls, wooden flooring, suspended ceiling, it's a really quite high tech thing. It's probably sitting at 90% of the start at three years ago, and it's only been doing all of the trade work on the thing, so it's a big project, but yeah, basically the storeroom will be floor to ceiling, but all that's at all my hardware, sorted by category or something, rather, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to sort of, there's a shitload of gear that go in there, and then the other being, everybody is, oh, that's your man cave, well, yeah, no, maybe, there's no TD pictures on the wall or anything else like that, yeah, sure, I'd love a 65 inch TV on the wall, but it'll mainly have my work bench and, you know, soldering stations and those sort of things, so I can actually work, and I'll probably put a couple of cabinets in there with some of my pride and joys, maybe the Apple 3 and a few other bits and pieces like that, so if anybody unfortunate enough to come and visit me, I'll bore them shitless, looking at all of my vintage hardware, well, it'd be us, we'd be loved to come for a tour. Well, I'll probably end up doing a virtual tour or something and put it on any, any cheap thing, just because I just, I think I'll be blown away by amateur hardware I've got, and most of it, it was actually stored and is now back at my house, but it's still packed in boxes at hundreds of boxes, so there's an awful lot of gear that I've got to go through and categorise and work out what I'm going to keep, what I'm not going to keep. I've got from being specifically Apple type stuff, but yeah, Apple 2, Apple 2, Apple 2C, Apple 2C Plus, Apple 2GS, I'll actually, you've got two replica Apple ones I'm building, which is a really quite interesting project, an original 6502 CPU ceramic with its gold pins, and we're looking at $12 to $1,500 just for the CPU, because I've built them with period-correct parts, even the IC sockets, ticks and instruments, IC sockets, so yeah, to scale the world to get all of these sockets and that, and the chips are all in the right day code. Some of the chips I haven't got yet, so I'll just put modern, you know, 90 type equivalent chips in there, but these all need to be vintage, 1972, the sort of when that came out. So yeah, I'm building those, they're once again long-term projects, but the intention is not to rip anybody off or whatever, but yeah, the chips are just so hard to come by, yeah, because people have built their replicas. There are replicas that are using modern components, but these are, this is a client of the, there's two different boards they used, one with NTI, which is the name of the company that actually did the, so they're not subscribing, they're a PCB manufacturer, and then there's one pre-NTI, they look almost exactly the same, there's a few different components different, but just collecting the chips from that vintage is, is, is full-time work. And I said, I'll, I'll get them up and running using some, mostly the vintage correct parts, but some of them will be modern, more, more modern parts until I can source the other ones. I reckon they're probably worth five grand a piece when they're finished, because they did, yeah, they're just so few. There's a, on eBay that moment, there's a genuine original Apple one of which they're only, I don't know how many, less, well, less than 100 in captivity. This is going for $2.1 million, that's eBay price on this Apple one. So, yeah, to actually own one, it's never going to happen, but own a very close replica, really looking forward to that, yeah, again, yet another project that I'm working on. Yeah, they could be waiting a little while to sell that particular Apple one, because I saw an article very recently where a genuine Apple one signed by Steve Wozniak sold at an auction in the US for $232,000. So, it's probably, yeah, so that's probably more about the price you'll be looking at, like only two or three hundred grand, or maybe, yeah, obviously I'm surprised it sold for that little given that was signed it, but yeah, I think two millions, probably a little bit optimistic, but from what you're saying Martin, even spending five grand on building a period correct replica, that's actually a bit of a bargain if you think about it. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it is. The people have sat down and laid out the boards have gone for that. Absolutely, everything is as close as possible to the original. Yeah, just to weigh in them, yeah, really quite exciting prospect. Apart from the Apple stuff, have you got a bit of a, is it a bit of a mix bag between Apple's and PCs and Commodore's, or is it a bit of everything? So, pretty well. So, I made a bit of a list, I've got Atari's, 400, 800s, STs, all those sort of things. Apple's, we went through Apple 2, 2e, 2DS, Apple 1, Apple 3, and then all the more modern sort of, you know, machines, yeah, the LCs and the STs and ST30s and, and I'll see you later, yeah, absolutely, yes, most definitely as a pastime of mine. I guess one of my favourite is S100 bass systems, sort of typically the Audi, already Z80 bass type systems. I've got a couple of replica type machines that I've built up. Yeah, so I'm building an LTR-8800 and I'm also building an MSI-880, which are replicas, you know, they're, you're looking at three, four grand, they'll get one ship over from here and they're probably 110 volts and not particularly suitable for here, and there's a lot of work in involved in them. So, using modern parts, you know, switch made power supplies to make it much lighter. So, yeah, I've got all the Apple Mac stuff for HPs, Hp-85, Hp-86, so most of the Sinclair ZX range, yeah, ZX-881, Spectrum, all of that sort of stuff. NECs, like any clicking NECs, I've got some very really vintage sort of gaming type machines, the 6600, I think it is the Hp-800, a whole bunch of that sort of stuff. Compact, early compact machines, portables, IBM's, K-PRO's, Osborne's, Commodore Pact 64's, plus 16 128, only a mega 500's, there's too many different amigas to acquire and purchase in that side of things. MSX machines, I know Randall talked about a guy called Surji who did the Amiga machine, I've got one of those and I'm in the process, I've already got plus, I've got a couple of other standalone Panasonic and a few other MSX type machines. One thing I would look, and yeah, to discuss that on one of your channels, somebody was flogging a deck, PDP 11 or something rather, locally here in Adelaide, which I've never come across. It's my dream to actually own a PDP 11 of some sort, but there's a thing called a PiDP 11 and a PiDP 8 using their replica front panels, but scow down, and they're using a Raspberry Pi running SIMH to do it, but it's pretty good, and you can run all the, you know, boot the operating system and all that. I've got a couple of those that I've built up. There's a guy called the High Nibble, he's done an MSI-80800 replica, not using a Raspberry Pi, it's using one of the smaller and maybe MTL micro controllers or something like that. He's done a really good job and the quality of, I've bought professional gear before and then you pay good money for it. He's doing it as a hobby, as an amateur effectively, and the quality of the product and even the packing, like the switches, he's got replica switches, the cabled pad-outs, just machined exactly the right space to hold these things in there, like a really quite professional kit. I've built one of those up and that works like a dream, and then there's another one. But in addition to that, I've got, if you name a brand, there's a good chance that I'll have it, and I guess part of this comes from the fact that when I was working for TAFE, and they were getting in different hardware to look at, and that sort of thing, so I, you know, the Apple II was a machine that's tannedy. Lots of different machines sort of come across my path, and I just, I don't know, I'd see one, I think. Oh, remember that? Yeah, I've got to have one of those. So yeah, I added to the collection, and then once I've got one, you think, well, there was another model that was better than that one, or, you know, the model I came out after, so I have to do that. So I like collecting sets at sets of machines. Yeah, obviously with Apple, and Apple Lisa would be nice, that's on my to-do list. The 20th anniversary Mac, there's another one. I would like one of those, but that's also on my list. But I've got majority of Macs. I love retro stuff. I love lots of different devices that people are coming up with. So, you know, a Commodore 64, you can get a, you know, 1541 drive emulator and things like that. Whilst I've got genuine drives, they're all SD-based things. So majority of the machines I've got, and I found one interesting enough for some of the early NEC stuff today this morning when I was looking. So I, I'd love those. I'll try and buy them as kits and build them up. It saves money and B. It's just another project that I could add to my list that I haven't ever got right in the finishing, but I just, yeah, floppy drives are coming out, many go-tacks and stuff like that are really quite handy because they're compatible with an awful lot of different machines. So they become quite convenient. I've got probably half a dozen different go-tack machines, and I'll probably buy another 10 or so to add to, you know, to PCs and to the K-PROs and a whole bunch of things like that. I just like, I love building, you know, because my background is electronic engineering and soldering and that sort of thing. So I love building, I've built an Apple 2 from scratch, like a bought their PCB from, from Taiwan, sourced all the components and, you know, obviously using E-Proms rather than Broms, but yeah, there's an awful lot of soldering on one of those boards. One interesting little thing I have got is a relay-based computer. It doesn't actually have gates. It uses mechanical relays. I waited years and years for that to become available, which it did eventually become available. And, uh, oddly enough, that's a mode project list. The one I got recently was a Challenger 1P, a higher scientific, been chasing that for the absolutely years and years and eventually managed to source one. So I've got a family member who works with the cheat metal work, so I'm going to see if he can build me, you know, make me have an aluminium case and try and replicate that as close as possible to the original thing. The other thing is, it's pretty well exactly the same. It uses E-Proms and uses Cherry switches rather than the originals that were available and it's all in one PCB. Yeah, it's a whopping, you know, 40 characters wide by 20 lines, D4, 16 lines, D, but once again, that's a machine I cut my teeth on back in the, the either the late 70s are very early 80s, and this just, yeah, kind of got to have got to have one in my collection. I'll never, yeah, they, they typically go for $2,000 for a piece of crap, effectively, but, uh, so to build a replica for 500 bucks or whatever is, you know, I like the original way possible, but a replica is a good way of getting into it as well. A super ADI, I've got a replica super ADI, I've started building yet another project. A dream, a dream 6800 is another one. It was into, once I started on the ZX80, I sort of went back in time, so you get the ZX80, the ZX80 one going forward in time, but going back in time, they had a couple of single board computers and there was a guy did a replica board for that, and once again, I've sourced all the components for that. It, uh, is actually using a, uh, a national semiconductor scam microprocessor chip, which is one of the first machines I ever used to program, interesting bit of hardware, very, very fundamental basic bit of hardware, didn't have a stack, so if you wanted to do a subroutine jump, you step to save the address, and then pull the address back rather than doing a subroutine jump, and it will put it on there and pull it back for you. So, very, very crude fundamental type stuff, but that uses a, like, uh, tinium any little ticks instruments type 7 segment display for its display, and it's got a sort of keypad, and the guy is replicated just about everything, some of the chips that were almost impossible to come by, put it together, it didn't work, and I just never had time to, the debugger, I've got a filling out board of time, and his scam microprocessor that probably is, uh, you know, a UR or something, or other like that, they've managed to fly off, so yeah, um, yeah, another project, lots of lots of projects, but I do really love building retro stuff, and I also love building modern stuff that emulates old hardware, you know, like floppy drive type things, I've got a counting what is called now, but it's a little device and it emulates, uh, design, and so it has already out, but you, you fill it with effectively cassette images, and then it injects that back into the original machine, and obviously it doesn't have the stuff of the issues that cassette drives with the SVI Kez. SVI Kez? SVI Kez? Well, a little bit green. Yeah, I've got a couple of those. Yeah, okay, I thought it might have been the TZX Dueno, which is another one which you can fill with, but that's mainly aimed at ZX Spectrums, and I think it's, uh, uses the, uh, Arduino, as the name would suggest. It does, I reckon, but I reckon he's expanded it to be a bit more compatible with a few other different machines, and it's a matter of just lading the, the images effectively onto there, and then that, yeah, converts it to an audio stream, and you can inject it back into the, into the PC or whatever happens to be. I think it's really awesome that you're a pureist, but actually takes the modern technology on board, because, you know, you just kind of forward to five LED million floppy drives and disks, and five, five alternatives, I think the, you know, the retro has really come back in a way that you've got, you can access these things now, you can just work a cartridge in the back of you 64 and start playing games, I think it's really good for community. How do you see the communities sort of change in the last five, ten years, potentially obviously been in it for a while? Yeah, there's a lot, a lot of older people don't take them as an offense, like I was, they're sort of doing this sort of stuff and into it in a big way, but I think there's a, a new community of younger people that sort of get into it, and, uh, you know, you can run your Raspberry Pi or whatever, and you can sort of do emulation of that sort of stuff, but I think they're actually getting into the, to the hardware side of things, which is good, because it's part of history that if it wasn't for people like us would be lost forever, and it is landfill, and whilst I've got four kids, not one of them is vaguely interested in anything that I do with electronics or IT, my, maybe my older son may be sort of interested in it in time, he better be, because he's going to inherit an awful lot of gear at some stage. But, uh, yeah, I think it's changing, and it's, I think we're on a, a wave of new people, I mean, obviously, when I was at the Adelaide Retro group, it was half a dozen people, it was very early in its days, I don't know how big it is these days. I've done a few speeches there, you know, for presentations, one was on, you know, root solvering, and that side of things, so the other one was my apple, one machine that I bought in, and I just got that busy, I just couldn't afford the time to actually do it, so there's some really interesting people there, and it's good that they, they do meet, and they, we share common interests, and, you know, people like us have got old war stories that we can tell to the younger people have just got into that side of things, but it's interesting that they've done. One thing that has changed, of course, and man of hardware that's available is diminishing rapidly, so it's good for us, if you've got a collection, because it means it goes up in value. Farrah's machines go, I've probably got 200 plus different machines in various boxes, I need, I need to sit down and do a full injury of what I actually got, because I have no idea. I've got a vague idea that I don't know, I think I'll look over in a box and get, I remember that, I haven't seen that for years. And a lot of stuff based on, yeah, it will be a brilliant, exciting time, it's going to take weeks to unpack it all, but, yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah, Martin, look, we always like to ask, interviewees, what's the, what's the grump? We are Grumpy Os-Retro, there must be something out there that gives you the shit, all over there to one thing, so what have you got for us? Dip shits who send stuff and don't pack it, they say, I've packed it really well for you, and it's got a bit of newspaper wrapped around it, and it rattled around in the box, and when you get it, it's, and the shit smashed out of it, and you think, well, I've been searching for this for years and years, and I've got a handful of broken things, I get two monitors delivered last year, not packed properly, smashed, I've had floppy drives for old Atari 400s and 800s, got here, smashed, and the plastic is really brittle, it doesn't take much to box it, I've sent stuff into state, and monitors, basically, your double box, lots of packing, no room fridge of sight around, I would like to think, even if you drop one of my monitors, that I'd packed it would survive that fall, that's my biggest thing, especially when you've been searching for so long and so hard for it, and it gets here, and you pick up the box and you've rattled, rattled, rattled, you think, that's not going to be good, so that's my biggest gripe, and I guess another of mine one is, is people who sell shit, you look at it and you think, oh yeah, look, sorry, from the photos, and they don't show you the back that's missing, it's been smashed, and they don't show you that side of things, so you get anything, yeah, that's not good, but they're my two biggest gripes, final question, 6502 or Z80, 6502, that's where I started, whether I have equal fondness for both of them, in fact, I was looking at a number plate that said 6502, that's Z80, and my car, I haven't done it, but I was thinking of that, so the two are, I've spent more time programming the 6502, so I have a slight preference for 6502 in this case. Thanks again to Martin for giving us his time, I could listen to him all day Craig. Yeah, look, I'd love to have Martin back again, I reckon he's probably got another bloody 50 stories within him somewhere, and especially when he starts building his cave, starts pulling out machines that he's probably forgotten about, I think there'll be some treasure in there for sure. I definitely tell us what you think, hit us up at grumpyosretro.com, leave your feedback, leave comments under the YouTube video on the Osretro.com YouTube channel, thanks again for listening, and until next time, see you later. Need that to get? Day Retro. [BLANK_AUDIO]