New here — spent my life on the software side, glad to find you all

J

jpiell

New member
Jul 6, 2026
3
0
1
Hi everyone — glad I found this place.

I go back a ways with all of this. A lot of the machines you folks restore were just the machines on our desks when I was coming up, and I spent my working life on the software side of the industry. Never really shook the bug. These days I keep a home lab humming, tinker with whatever's in reach, and enjoy watching people here bring old iron back to life — there's something satisfying about it that the throwaway stuff today just doesn't have.

Mostly I'm here to look around, learn the neighborhood, and swap the occasional story. Looking forward to it.

— Jeffry
 
Hey Jeffry!

It's great to have you here! I'm sure you have some amazing stories to tell us! I'm looking forward to speaking with you more. If you ever feel like contributing to the Wiki please feel more than free to! I have already pre-authorised your wiki account for automoderated edits. If you ever find yourself looking to start a collection of memories we also have rtccollector.com (soon to have it's name changed to retrotechcollector.com), All forum members get enthusiast free for three years. We're currently working on a huge update that's going to be a big step up from what it currently is along with the name change.

For a little bit of background on me, (I'm Josh!), I started all of this about three years ago now, at the beginning it was just the wiki, and I thought adding a forum would be a logical next step! I've been collecting retro tech for about 10 years, and I have everything from the Atari 2600, Sinclair Executive Pocket Calculator, Macintosh (a lot of them), the list goes on and on.... I'm a Computer Scientist by degree and a Cyber Security Managing Consultant by trade.

I always found that the longer I had things in my collection, the more I would end up having to do repairs and there was no single source of repair/troubleshooting knowledge, so, I decided (with a lot of community support) to start RetroTechCollection. As my collection grew, I got really sick of tracking everything on a spreadsheet so I decided to create RetroTechCollector to track what I had, where and it's cost, and the app has slowly grown into it's own little ecosystem of a marketplace, collection tracker and price tracker.

I look forward to seeing you around here!

All the best,
Josh
 
Josh said:
Hey Jeffry!

It's great to have you here! I'm sure you have some amazing stories to tell us! I'm looking forward to speaking with you more. If you ever feel like contributing to the Wiki please feel more than free to! I have already pre-authorised your wiki account for automoderated edits. If you ever find yourself looking to start a collection of memories we also have rtccollector.com (soon to have it's name changed to retrotechcollector.com), All forum members get enthusiast free for three years. We're currently working on a huge update that's going to be a big step up from what it currently is along with the name change.

For a little bit of background on me, (I'm Josh!), I started all of this about three years ago now, at the beginning it was just the wiki, and I thought adding a forum would be a logical next step! I've been collecting retro tech for about 10 years, and I have everything from the Atari 2600, Sinclair Executive Pocket Calculator, Macintosh (a lot of them), the list goes on and on.... I'm a Computer Scientist by degree and a Cyber Security Managing Consultant by trade.

I always found that the longer I had things in my collection, the more I would end up having to do repairs and there was no single source of repair/troubleshooting knowledge, so, I decided (with a lot of community support) to start RetroTechCollection. As my collection grew, I got really sick of tracking everything on a spreadsheet so I decided to create RetroTechCollector to track what I had, where and it's cost, and the app has slowly grown into it's own little ecosystem of a marketplace, collection tracker and price tracker.

I look forward to seeing you around here!

All the best,
Josh
Click to expand...
Hi Josh,

Nice to meet you as well. I took a look at what all is here. What a trip. Sinclair lol. Oh my.

I am also insteredrted in locating a new project if you know of anyone looking. My background is C, C++, C#, Java, Xcode. I have written Rest API's as well as UX.

You might find my book (it's very inexpensive) a trip as well. Download the sample for free. That covers 1979 into 1981 when all the clones started showing up but the first 2 years tell how IBM gave up the market by giving away the schematics to build the PC and at the sametime as Bill Gates is unknown has a BASIC interpreter and Steve Jobs is building Apple IIe. If you like nostalgia you might like it.

Last comment on the forum. Do you remember public BBS? This experience takes me back.
 
jpiell said:
Hi Josh,

Nice to meet you as well. I took a look at what all is here. What a trip. Sinclair lol. Oh my.

I am also insteredrted in locating a new project if you know of anyone looking. My background is C, C++, C#, Java, Xcode. I have written Rest API's as well as UX.

You might find my book (it's very inexpensive) a trip as well. Download the sample for free. That covers 1979 into 1981 when all the clones started showing up but the first 2 years tell how IBM gave up the market by giving away the schematics to build the PC and at the sametime as Bill Gates is unknown has a BASIC interpreter and Steve Jobs is building Apple IIe. If you like nostalgia you might like it.

Last comment on the forum. Do you remember public BBS? This experience takes me back.
Click to expand...
That's Fantastic! We would definitely welcome a new dev on RetroTechCollector! I will send you a DM with more details if you are interested. It's a LOT of JS/TS and relies heavily on REST APIs for both frontend and backend microservice communications.

I'd love to take a look at your book! Feel free to pop the links here (Amazon, the free sample, etc...)!

I definitely do remember public BBS's, it's actually one of the (now) not-so-secret projects I'm working on for this forum, as well as the wiki and app. It's Java based, and heavily relies heavily on Teletext mode for native retro machines, it's also compatible with Minitel (for anyone who has an old minitel terminal as well) and obviously supports text mode as well. Let me know if you're interested in that project as well!

All the best,
Josh :)
 
US Robotics 2400 LOL. Fido LOL. That takes me back. If you do read my book, we can chat about what the heck happened as you go. The entire 3 way story plus Xerox Parc is wild. Imagine Steve Jobs seeing Windows 1 while Mac was late and calling Gates to a conference room full of Apple folks to call his a thief and Gates responding how can I steal from you what wasn't yours to begin with. HA HA. I actually had a PCJr in 1984. I wanted an IBM XT because of the 10m hard drive but IBK priced them at like $10k. within 1 year you could get a machine that looked exactly like the IBM XT without the IBM logo for < $1k. IBM Lost the market as soon as that happened.

I am also including the link to my other pages. I have an Education Software business for iOS - Genoch Education
Genoch Education

And my integration platform - Active Integration
Genoch - Active Integration

Ok here are the links to my book and my resume. Please feel free to scarf and talk to me about work you guys might have or pass on. Please share the book link. It's not priced to cover marketing. Word of mouth. It was a fun project but I never planned on making any real money with it. Im looking forward to what happens next.This is how I saw it go down
 

Attachments

You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom