Greetings from a new Retro Hobbyist

[Michael Earls]

Hello,

I have been lurking around the retro computer scene for a few months and finally decided to jump in and build a kit. I just ordered the SC126 from Stephen Cousins. I had a Coleco ADAM Home Computer with a Z80 when I was a kid and fiddled around with CP/M 2.2 and Assembler, but didn't really do anything of significance. My first computer was a TI-99/4A computer, but I did most of my programming and BBS adventuring on the ADAM and then later a Commodore 64. I am a software developer by trade now and like to spend my spare time building electronics kits and playing around with FPGAs, microcontrollers, and 3D printing.

The SC126 will be my first retro computer build and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm amazed at the level of documentation it has and have been reading the tutorials and guides over the past few days. I have been exploring assembly language over the past few months and got a little overwhelmed by the Intel instruction set. So I tried the 6502 and felt a little too constrained with the small number of registers, so I decided to build a Z80 since it's a good intermediate place.

I'd like to thank all of those that came before me in this hobby for easing the difficulty of entry.

One of the goals I have for my Z80 homebrew kit is to build Dr. Scott M. Baker's Speech Synthesizer module. I built the SP0256-AL2 circuit on a breadboard and interfaced it to my C-64 when I was a kid. I have fond memories of the chip and recently got it up and running on an Arduino. I think it deserves its rightful place interfacing with a CPU from the 80's.

I look forward to learning more about the Z80 and other retro computer projects.

Michael Earls

https://cerkit.com

[Earth Person]

Greetings Michael,

On Monday, November 11, 2019 at 11:39:51 AM UTC-6, Michael Earls wrote:

Hello,

I have been lurking around the retro computer scene for a few months and finally decided to jump in and build a kit. I just ordered the SC126 from Stephen Cousins.

I just finished this over the weekend and had the onboard LED's performing a Cylon eyes type sequence.

 

One of the goals I have for my Z80 homebrew kit is to build Dr. Scott M. Baker's Speech Synthesizer module. I built the SP0256-AL2 circuit on a breadboard and interfaced it to my C-64 when I was a kid. I have fond memories of the chip and recently got it up and running on an Arduino. I think it deserves its rightful place interfacing with a CPU from the 80's.

Scott Baker's modules are in my inventory. I've built most of them. The SPO256A-AL2 I have along with the CTS256 and some roms. I was lucky enough to find some new old stock.

My issue with all of this is that I end up having more projects starting than I am finishing. Haha. And to add to all of that, I'm starting a Retrobrew Xi 8088 XT build! 

8088MPH!

Have a blast from the past.

[Karl Albert Brokstad]

Hi Michael

The SC126 is a good choice.

Karl

[Richard Lewis]

Welcome Michael. Never had any of Steve's boards fail. They just work. The SC126 is indeed the best kit to start out with, probably wouldn't be wrong to say that we all have one. If you do however run into any problems (which like I said is rare) you'll get lots of help on this forum

-regards

Richard

[TonyD]

Hi Michael

welcome aboard.

The SP0256-AL2 speech chip is a fun chip to mess around with. I think many of us have built a SP0256-AL2 project sometime in our past (or even in the present :-) ). I built a board for my ZX Spectrum back in the day (1984-ish) from a kit.

From you website, which looks great, I see you've built mechanical keyboard recently. I built one last year and I enjoyed it so much I'm hoping to design and build another custom one for my retro computers.

Tony