"== Early Chicago computer club ==
Hi, thanks for all your efforts!!!

Not sure if you wanted me to answer via your talk page. 

AFAICR (made that up - As Far As I Can Remember) the Chicago computer club I was involved with was C.A.C.H.E., the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists Exchange. 

I believe there was a meeting approx Apr '75, begun by Robert Swartz, who was lucky enough to be able to affort a ""Digital Systems"" original 8080 ""box"" - and the CP/M operating system.  

(Digital Systems was right up the road from Gary Kildall (the CP/M guy)so they got together.  - One making a rugged box and the other the OS for it). 

The ""hobby"" as I see it really took off with the MITS Altair on the cover of the January, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. 

[Back to Chicago Club] SO one day reading Pop'tronics, I noticed a piece saying there had been a computer club in the Chicago area, naming the people who attended, and saying when the next one was.    As I recall it was Lloyd Smith (now my best friend) formerly of Dyer IN, and Bill Burther, Valparaiso IN (R.I.P.).  

SO we rode together to that possibly 2nd, or perhaps 3rd meeting (? Sept 1975) and I was hooked. 

MY involvement with the club was to be an ""active participant"" in that for ex. I was sec'y for many years, wrote programs to maintain the mailing list, help with the newsletter, often whipping up a small newsletter myself when no one else helped (this was one of the events that led to the invention of the BBS).  I brought my system in to show, back when maybe one in 10 actually HAD a system. 

My home system consisted of an Altair 8080, to which I had added a Selectric Typewriter and Dynastor FLYING HEAD disk drive (a whopping 256K, yes, KAY).   I had to (1) teach myself digital electronics; and (2) design and create the board to interface to these uniquely-mine peripherals (Ex: Type a char on the selectric (terminal) and watch what came in - on an oscilloscope) THEN program the altair to ""produce outputs that matched that timing"", learning that  gasp IBM put the parity bit at the opposite end of the word than most of the rest of the world!)

My machine also  once ""video"" became available (I skipped the ""TV Typewriter"" phase), a 16 x 64 display called a Processor Technology Video Display Module.  (and no coincidence, the BBS Randy Suess and I invented and I programmed, had a 16 x 64 size message limit at first). 

THEN my world opened to assembler programming (not hand assembling or some other hack) when Processor Technology came out with a paper tape-distributed editor and 8080 assembler.  (I seem to recall it having 4 things, but don't recall now.)

I modified the PT Asm to run on cassette tapes (The ""Tarbell"" having become a standard) and called the combination of things the ""CACHE Cassette Operating System"" (CCOS) and several people in the club started writing assembler programs.  

SO anyway, the club had a huge variety of machines represented - from the ""boards"" - Kim-1, ?? Trying to remember if the Apple-1 was a ""board"" - I think so and the little Sinclair ""pocket calculator"" sized ones from TI or with a TI chip.  

When the Radio Shack computers came along, many of us pioneers thought ""this is the end of the hobby"".  What we meant was, for example (maybe an extreme example) - I could design and make my own boards, AND write the BIOS routines to run them, etc, and THAT was more the fun - so someone buying a ""built"" machine seemed kind of sad.  However, this is the march of time, and I'm sure the ""Hams"" (amateur radio enthusiasts) felt a bit the same way as more and more products came along making it easier and easier to ""talk over the air""..   I eventually - and somewhat delinquently - adopted the PC, but by then had pretty much ""burned out"" programming as a hobby, and did not make a LOT of contributions in that area. 

____ END _____ of my thoughts on the club, is this what you were looking for?  

Just to ""come to a better close""  the fact I'd done my own HW meant incompatability, so I invented MODEM.ASM (named  and it stuck  Xmodem by Keith Peterson) to be able to ""beep"" things back and forth with friends; 

Then the BBS came about as ME thinking a dial-in system to gather articles for a newsletter, but Randy Suess suggested a club project would be ""by committee"" so just the two of us - him HW and me SW - did it, independently of the club.  — Preceding unsignedcomment added by  (talk • contribs)  
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