I don't normally do these introductions but maybe I should.
After all, I do have a few hundred posts.
My name is Cecil Meeks (friends/family call me CB). I'm in my mid-40's and I have a passion for all things "vintage electronics". I am happily married with three kids and two granddaughters. One of those granddaughters lives with us full-time. I live in SE Tennessee, USA (Hixson...near Chattanooga). I work as a full time Java/JS developer (transitioned from C#) in Chattanooga for a logistics company.
My apologies in advance for the long-winded and boring story below...
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While the 6502 is my number one favorite processor, it was not my first.
My first computer was the Texas Instruments TI99-4/a. I was 9 years old at the time and my grandmother found one cheap at a Western Auto store (remember those?). I desperately wanted to write video games since I was 5 but in 1978 (when I was 5), parents didn't buy their kids computers. I started programming the TI in BASIC and as far as I was concerned, the TI was the only computer in the world. Until I saw my friend's Commodore 64. So I asked for a C64 and my mom told me when I started college, she would buy me one. LOL. Well, in 1985 I started taking community college courses for a gifted program at my school on the weekends. My mom had no choice but to buy my Commodore 64.
So, I quickly started programming in 6502 ASM. Almost as soon as I got it.
Fast forward a few years when I was 16 and I worked a summer job to buy my first Amiga 500. This was the first computer *I* ever bought myself and I still own it today.
Fast forward a few more years and I upgraded my Amiga to an Amiga 1200, then I got into Wintel/DOS boxes. Well, someone I worked with learned that I still had some Amiga's and she asked if I would be interested in buying a B/W Mac from her for $40. So I said sure! I then caught the bug. Not only did I love programming these computers, I liked collecting them too. And as luck would have it, I then discovered eBay. It was almost brand new at the time!
This was a magical time. Scalpers hadn't heard about eBay nor the "vintage computer" collecting phase. I bought all kinds of computers for very little money.
Over the years, I've amassed a small army of vintage computers and gaming consoles. I've only recently started creating an inventory of them. But I estimate I have somewhere around 80 computers. All made before 1995 with MOST of them made in the 80's.
Now, back to the Amiga 500. I remember reading in a computer magazine one day about this new computer called the Amiga. How it had 4096 colors. I was blown away. While I loved my C64, I couldn't imagine having a computer with 4096 colors! How could that even exist? It was then I started saving my money and working extra hours to buy my own Amiga. Little did I realize that fascination with the Amiga's hardware planted a small seed in my mind about hardware. I'd always been a software guy.
Well, despite the Amiga being almost perfect, I always wanted it to have a little more. Same for the C64. Why couldn't the SID have 6 voices? Why couldn't the Amiga have 16 sprites? Etc. All of these little wish-list items were slowly brewing inside my head for years.
Then one day I was at a star party (I used to be heavy into astronomy) and I overheard two older men talking about an electronics project. One of the men had some type of circuit board he built himself and it had red numbers on it! (7 segment). I was about 19 at the time and I was amazed. I simply had no idea that a single person could build electronic components! I had always assumed it took a large company to do that. I mean, why wouldn't I? None of my friends were into electronics and we didn't have the internet. Everything I owned came from a large company.
Again, that hardware seed was growing.
As time goes by, I dream of my "ideal" computer. A C64-like computer with lots of colors and sprites. So fast forward yet some more and I have my first baby and I'm browsing online and I discover something amazing. Micro-controllers. This was before Arduino. I was very familiar with Andre' Lamothe at the time. I had many of his game programming books. Then I learned he had designed a console based off the SX52 micro-controller. It was the XGameStation.
This was a revelation like I had never seen before. Not only do people design their own hardware, but with super-fast micro-controllers, many of the hard things can be easy! (or so I thought)
Andre' Lamoth's teachings were incredible. He explained how to generate NTSC signals with a micro-controller. Again, I thought only voodoo magicians could do that.
At the time, I couldn't afford his XGameStation (I eventually got one, however). But since he was teaching people how to build electronics, I could build my own circuits using his techniques. So I manged to get a small development board for the SX52 micro-controller. This was an amazing little chip at the time. It had tons of I/O and ran at 80MHz.
One thing led to another and I started work on my dream computer. I would design and program everything about it. The video, audio, OS, etc. Everything. I managed to get my own NTSC video signal working. I upgraded to PIC mico-controllers because the SX series were discontinued.
I managed to generate audio tones, blink lights, etc.
I was having a blast but soon discovered designing a C64-like computer was hard. Really hard. Life got in the way and I lost all interest in hardware.
Fortunately, the hardware tree that sprung from that seed didn't completely die. Several years ago it bloomed again (OK, sorry about corny metaphors...lol).
And here I am today. Much wiser. Much smarter. I never did finish my C64-like computer but that's OK. It's the path to it that keeps me motivated. My interests change all the time so it's hard to sit down and finish a single project. But I don't mind. That's why they're called hobbies.
I still aspire to create that state-of-the-art computer (for 1982) and will one day. But for now, I'm just having too much fun.