Hamvention

Those first couple of years saw the Commodore 64 setup expanded with a Commodore Amiga A500 and then the expected replacement of all of that by a PC.

Jim Collins was a ham radio guy (VE3OYE) and was also interested in the advent of packet radio and the Newmarket Ham radio "Fest" which by the time I started being interested in the PC was morphing into a Hamfest and Computer Fest. The latter becoming an annual or bi-annual event around the Toronto region.

In Spring 1990 Jim and his wife Sarah invited us on a coach trip down to Dayton, Ohio. An exciting trip in itself to be off down to the USA, even more so for myself as the prospect of a high speed modem was in the offing and boxes full of used stuff at the massive "Hamvention".

A high speed, affordable, modem in late 1989 was a 2400 baud external serial offering, that item became the prize of the trip for me (double the 1200 baud I was currently running) Of course, within a year I would be running a US Robotics HST modem at 14400 baud.

The trip to Dayton was great fun, after an early morning journey we arrived at the Motel Six and threw our stuff into the rooms, this was followed by the Hamvention and the rushed feeling of never being able to see everything in the acres of tables. happy times indeed.

The prize, apart from a couple of useless gizmos, a Zoom 2400 baud external modem, something that was examined many times during the journey home.

The Hamvention marked the start of a much more "serious" computer hobby for me, within 18 months I would be building computers from boxes of old stuff, experimenting with motherboards, video cards and what have you, it was also at the same time as a temporary furlough from my relationship with Jim Collins as I moved from one landing gear company to another, far in the distance, on the other side of Toronto.

They called it Brand-X.