I’ve always had a love affair with old computers, having been absorbed in the world of computers from the early age of 12. My first computer was a TRS-80 Model I level II in 1980 that was purchased by my brother, David. Despite David paying for the computer, it was me that spent the most time using it. I still owe him a lot for buying it and allowing me to use it so much, without which I would not be where I am today.
With my TRS-80 I only had one game called Tandy Invaders and after playing it for 3 months straight with no money to buy any more games, I started to learn how to program, first in BASIC and then in Z80 assembly language. My first project was to recreate the player-controlled base from Tandy Invaders and I will always remember it took me months of trying just to get the controls working. One day something just clicked like a switch, and I knew how to code anything. Since that day, I have learned 6502, 68000, 8051 and X86 assembly language before moving to C, C++, C#, Objective C, Visual Basic, T-SQL, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Pascal, Ruby and Swift.
I’ve always worked with computers in IT positions starting with technical support, before moving onto infrastructure implementations, consultancy and finally to my current role as a Cloud Architect working for a very large IT company. I still perform programming and scripting in my role, but that is becoming rarer these days.
In my personal time I like to design and develop mobile software and games. This started about 15 years ago with the Pocket PC (who remembers those) and most recently iOS and Android apps. None of my games are particularly good, but my kids enjoy them. You can check them out yourself at http://www.gigabytesol.com. I also invented the Talking animal craze 10 years ago (sorry), including one featured on the Ellen show and another in the movie ‘This is 40’.
My background has given me a deep affection for the retro computers scene, and that has led me to my latest venture. I love the Raspberry Pi and with the advent of RetroPie you are now able to emulate an ever-growing list of old computers and consoles. But emulation is only part of the puzzle, it doesn’t give you the full experience. To truly get that you would have to buy the original computers, but then you would have to put up with slow loading times and buying old (and now expensive) games.
Recently, I have put a lot of effort into creating Raspberry Pi cases in the style of these old computers to make the experience all the more authentic. So far, I have created Amiga, C64, C16, VIC-20, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum +3 and BBC Micro cases suitable for the Raspberry Pi B+, 2 and 3 models. I’ve been sharing these on Facebook and Twitter for a while and they have gained a lot of love.
I just love crafting these cases and will be doing many more in the future. If you have any you want to see made, then please comment below so I can get your feedback.
The Pi cases play into another hobby of mine, 3D printing. I’ve got quite a collection of printers now (6 at the last count) and use them every day to produce the cases I make which are available on https://retropicases.com
Finally, I love everything Cryptocurrency related. I’m an avid follower of the crypto community and spend a portion of every day learning about new projects and the blockchain tech that makes it all possible. I’ve got quite a diverse crypto portfolio and I also mine crypto both locally with my own rigs and remotely via a small amount of cloud mining. I’d love to hear from you on your crypto experiences and recommendations.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.