1 post tagged “nostalgia”

I had pulled up Google a few days ago to find some info on a question I had and as often happens when “surfing the net” you’re led off on tangents totally unrelated to the original purpose (but those tangents can be so interesting can’t they?). Something in my search had triggered a memory of the National Radio Institute (NRI Schools) and off I went to see what had become of the NRI.

My first stateside duty station after returning from Vietnam was Washington, D.C. During my tour there (9/71–10/74) I decided to take some college courses at the Prince George’s County Community College. One course I took introduced me to computing, computers, and computer programming. We learned a bit about FORTRAN, and wrote simple programs which we translated onto punched cards, delivered to the schools computer room for processing, and picked up the results before the next class. (This class piqued in me a curiosity and interest in computers that has remained to this day.)

In early 1975 (I had married in Nov ‘74 and we arrived for a tour of duty at the Spanish Naval base in Rota, Spain in Nov ‘75) I happened to spot an issue of Popular Electronics magazine with a cover story featuring the MITS Altair 8800 micro-computer! I couldn’t believe it. The computers I worked with required large rooms to accommodate them and cost millions of dollars — here was a computer comparable in size and weight to a typewriter (IBM selectrics were the rage ). There’s no sense in lying about it . . . I wanted one of those babies so badly I could taste it.

In a later issue of Popular Electronics I happened to notice an advert for McGraw-Hill Publishing Co.’s NRI Schools (National Radio Institue). I decided to use some of my GI school benefit to enroll in a correspondence course in microcomputer electronics. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. There were many months worth of basic electronics classes before we actually got to the computers though and as I had to travel quite a bit in my Navy work I was lugging books, soldering iron, circuit boards etc. etc. But I loved it.

Eventually we got to the heavy duty stuff and I finished the course in 1976 having built a Heathkit occilloscope and a monster 22 lb. digital computer called the NRI 832.

I got rid of all the books and equipment in preparation for a reassignment (and of course now wish I’d hung onto them!) and in 1979 we moved back stateside to Virginia. My hunger for all things computer was only increasing. The technology we used in our work in the Navy involved a lot of computing in different forms but all of it only served to heighten my interests. We lived a small community called Great Bridge (which I imagine is larger and has become part of the Norfolk-Va Beach-Chesapeake-Hampton metropolitan conglomeration of traffic and people) and just half a block from our apartment was a Radio Shack store wherein resided several of their TRS-80 Model computers. The gentleman who ran the store was a great guy and allowed me spend some time using one of the units. I had a ball and got to talk to a lot of folks who wandered in and were interested. Unfortunately their computer cost far too much money and we were beginning to think about a first home buy so no computer for this boy!

Later, after we’d purchased a house, I sold some camera equipment and used the money to purchase a Sinclair ZX-81 for an astounding $150.00. I had a ball with this computer but eventually sold it to help fund my purchase of a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer

I kept this computer for several years and not until we moved to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii did the Color Computer get retired in favor of a more modern computer. I’ve migrated through a variety of machines since then and am today working from a Toshiba Satellite A135 series laptop (after having owned a Dell Inspiron and a Sony Vaio laptop). While I no longer own any of the equipment I’ve written about I did rescue a working model of a Zenith Supersport laptop pictured here powered on and booted into MS-DOS 3.3