Why I do this

I have been in the IT industry for almost 38 years. I went to tech school from 1983-1985. I got my first IT job shortly after graduating and within a few weeks I bought my first computer, a Tandy 1000 at my local Radio Shack. It started me down a road of always having computers around to fill my time as a hobby. I had a few older computers from 1999 to 2011.  I had two Tandy 1000s and two older 68K Macintoshes. Over the years I just lost interest in those computers. I moved back to my hometown in 2011 and wanted to downsize all the stuff I collected. Those 4 computers ended up being recycled. A decision I now regret doing. I got an iMac G5 in 2014 to run older Macintosh software and that satisfied my Retro Macintosh computing needs. I used emulators like DOSBox to run any Retro PC software I needed. I never felt a need to have actual Retro PC hardware to run on. DOSBox did a good enough job. The reason I moved back to my hometown was to be closer to my family, especially my parents. They were now in their twilight years and every moment spent with them was precious and important. My father passed away September 13th, 2019. It left a big hole in my life and I needed to fill that void. I turned to Retro computing as a result. Those computers I recycled now seemed like a bigger loss. I then started down a path to obtain and recreate computers I had owned over the years, with the focus being PCs.

Since the passing of my father, I have acquired or built around 20 retro computer systems ranging from PC/XT class up through Intel Core2 based systems. In the coming weeks and months, I will present some of these and the story behind. I also plan on presenting a bit of computing history along the way. My next blog post is going to the cover the beginning of the PC era, how PC/XT class systems dominated the 1980s and how they evolved. This blog is also part of that need to fill the void left by the death of my father. I look after my mom very closely; she is now 85. Every moment spent with her is evermore precious than before. I reserve my Saturdays to spend the day with her and then stay overnight. Two of my systems, a pair of Tandy 1000s are at her place for me to use when I stay there. We all deal with loss differently, but Retro computing has proved to be far more rewarding than I would have thought. I hope this blog will be a journey I can share with others who do this too😊


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