      http://www.ncsc.dni.us/fun/user/tcc/cmuseum/gaslin.html

      Classic Gadgets 

      -Passion for Computers Drives Today's Techies

      BY GLENN GASLIN - DAILY PRESS Copyright (c) 1995, 

      The Daily Press, Inc. Sunday, November 5, 1995

      Reprinted with Permission

      Twenty years ago, the scene at Harry Winter's house would have 
      been impossible. The Virginia Beach man was then in his 40s and 
      still in the Navy, and he had never heard of a computer called the 
      TRS-80.  And as a result, you could actually move around his house 
      without tripping on a printer cable or bumping into what e now 
      describes as an "infinite number of computers. But that was before 
      the birth of PCs in 1975 and the creative boom of the late '70s 
      and early '80s. That was before the country ot hooked on hacking, 
      and a new generation of techies defined themselves by their first 
      computer.

      The bundles of radical technology from that era have now become 
      novelties and antiques. Those who discovered computers a decade 
      before Netscape and Windows 95 have invented a new form of 
      nostalgia, and the hardware of their memories has become 
      collectible.  Many still swear by their aging monochrome monitors 
      and tape drives. Others have moved on, but fondly remember their 
      roots. And a man in Williamsburg is building a museum of sorts.    

      But few people can match Harry Winter's passion for things 
      considered modern 15 years ago.  "I'm not well," admits a grinning 
      Winter, now 69 and setting up a   computer on top of his dryer for 
      lack of a better surface. His counter tops, tables, halls and 
      rooms are packed with the innards of ancient machines. Any space 
      not occupied by a decade-old Radio Shack or IBM unit is covered in 
      gray cable, unplugged phones, naked green motherboards, remote 
      controls, paper bags full of keyboards and piles and piles of 
      disks.  Standing in one spot you can see at least 18 monitors, 
      some glowing,  some dark and shoved beneath a table. You can also 
      find a few dozen printers and a couple of acoustic modems, the 
      kind with two rubber circles on which to place the phone receiver. 
      The two giant Digital magnetic tape drives don't even stand out.  
      The three-foot high storage devices - they look like machines from 
      the p-secret government buildings as depicted in a '60s science 
      fiction movie - almost disappear into their surroundings.          

      So Winter, with a cordless phone in one pocket and four pens in 
      the other, demonstrates a vintage 2-pound "portable" computer on 
      top of the dryer. 

      "I probably have about 12 of them," he says, pulling a keyboard 
      from the sewing machine-sized beige box. A black and-green screen 
      displays "The floppy disk drive is not available" in English, 
      German and French.  

      "They're pretty tough machines," Winter continues.

      "This thing's stillrunning after 11 years." 

      To anyone unfamiliar with the classic gadgets known as TRS80s, 
      Winter and his dense gallery may not make sense. But to the growing 
      crowd of computer curators, the stuff is priceless.                                  
      

      Users groups still meet in Hampton Roads to celebrate the beauty 
      of circuitry wired a decade ago. The monthly TRS-80 group, of which 
      Winter is "Dictator for Life," even attract an occasional new 
      member. And another camp in Gloucester concentrates on one of the 
      most popular computers of all time, 1982's Commodore 64.            
 
      "It's kind of a neat nostalgia," says Tom Carlson of Williamsburg, 
      who Tom Carlson maintains an Internet site called "The Museum of 
      Obsolete Computers." His collection applauds the simple
      beauty of the 8-bit era of the early-'80s, when the big names 
      were Tandy and Commodore and Atari,when games like Defender and 
      Zork were all the rage. (Of course, you can't even cruise Carlson's 
      museum with the machines pictured there. Most don't have the speed 
      or memory to handle the Internet.) 

      "I can have a museum of things that came out when I was alive," he 
      continues, "and I don't have to be an old man or a rich man." 
      Carlson, 30, who could still pass as a college student and wears 
      an "Iron Man" comic book tie to work, has very little to be 
      nostalgic about except computers. He works with state of-the-art 
      equipment as a technology analyst for National Center for State 
      Courts in Williamsburg, but reminisces about "the old days."    
      

      That's when people who caught on early - who worshiped tape drives 
      and joysticks and daisy wheel printers - first developed a 
      relationship with the circuitry. The machines demanded a deeper 
      knowledge from its 6user than do their 1990s descendants, which 
      require only two skills: pointing and clicking.

      "They are easier to hack," Carlson says of the virtual antiques he 
      acquired over the years: the Vic-20 (a $300 marvel for which 
      William Shatner did the TV ads), the Plus/4 (a disappointing 
      sequel to the  Commodore 64) and the portable TRS-80 model 100 (a 
      laptop smaller thanmost made today).  "I get a real kick out of 
      businessmen with multi thousand dollar laptops, and all they're 
      doing is writing reports," he says.  "I bought this one for $200."

         
      Carlson explains the almost biological relationship he had with 
      machines like these. If he didn't like the word processor, he 
      could open up the program and rewrite it. Improve it.  Hack it. 
      Today, he says, the programming languages have gotten more 
      complicated and the general public more ignorant of them. The 
      average Commodore 64 and TRS-80 user probably knew a little of
      the simple language Basic, but only an elite few in the modern 
      crowd can script in C++.   


      "Sometimes I miss those days," Carlson says, comparing classic 
      computers to early automobiles. "If you're going to own a Model T, 
      you had to know how to fix it."                                      
      
      Or you have to know Rudy McDaniel. His Denbigh computer repair 
      business specializes only in the extinct, outdated and still 
      abundant Commodores and Amigas.  What was 12 years ago the most 
      popular computer on the planet still haunts McDaniel, who keeps a 
      his garage and attic stocked with hulls, microchips, monitors and 
      spare parts. He's got everything from a Commodore PET, sold in 
      1977 as one of the first home computers, to six Amigas, 
      Commodore's radical and sophisticated last effort.  "Why do I need 
      to upgrade?" he asks. "This does everything I need."

      McDaniel gets a call or two a week from someone who bought a 
      Commodore 64 at a garage sale. Or from somebody who needs a 
      keyboard, a disk  drive, memory expansion, whatever.               
      This is basically the inside of a Commodore 64," says McDaniel, 
      pointing at a slim green rectangle pocked with a sparse grid of    
      microchips. "As you can see, there's not much to it."Compared to a 
      typical new PC today, the Commodore had about 1/100ththe memory 
      (64K) and ran at 1/70th the speed (1 megahertz). But many folks 
      like McDaniel and Carlson still consider it one of the best game, 
      graphic and sound machines ever made. And it only cost $600 new. 
      (That was cheap, even in 1982.) 

      "This is part of my life," McDaniel says about his orderly shelves 
      ofelectric body parts, his Rubbermaid bin full of motherboards. 
      "It's   not an obsession." He'll defend his beloved machines 
      against the trendy technology rageof CD multimedia, Internet 
      access and Microsoft worship. He can makehis Amiga run like an IBM 
      compatible, a Macintosh or even, if he wants, a Commodore 64. And 
      a German company plans to start making "The 964" again, he says, 
      and sell them in China. Even Harry Winter's dusty Tandys can be 
      trained to work in a modern world. He rails on computer neophytes 
      with "more money than brains" who boot up systems choked with 
      America Online and Windows 95 and then complain, "I double-clicked 
      and nothing happened!" 

      Winter has one of those new PC setups, but can't keep the older    
      machines switched off. The days of simpler machines, the ancient 
      era of less than 20 years ago lives on in his home.                 
      
      "Einstein would have loved to have a TRS-80," Winter says, 
      defending his passion. "He would have been in hog heaven with a 
      simple 64K machine." 
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