Well after 30 years in the computer business and almost 10 years of online marketing, I figured it’s time; time to share a blog. I’m not sure yet what topics I’ll start with, but I have many to chew on. I have been a hypnotist for over 40 years, a photographer for about the same, and a pilot for over 30 years. I made a living as a photographer from about 16 years old to mid 20s shooting mostly weddings. I was the school photographer from junior high through college. I performed hypnosis demonstration shows through that same time. I built my own BD-4 homebulit airplane, helped develop the Turbo Honda powered BD-5, and helped build one wing of Burt Rutan’s prototype Vari Eze homebuilt design. I sold airplanes for Rockwell and Cessna during general aviation’s heyday, ferried many of them from the midwest to SkyMart in Long Beach, CA, and was the number one salesman in the world for Rockwell Commander. I even had the privilege of flying numerous aircraft in and out of the Anaheim Stadium parking lot which was designated as an airport for 4 days of 2 successive years, from where we taxied them in the middle of the night to the Anaheim Convention Center across the street from Disneyland, for the Indoor Aircraft show. I flew 6 or 7 different types of planes in and or out of the stadium, including Varga and Partenavia as well as Cessna and Rockwell 112, 112TC, 112B, & 114models. The SkyMart years were incredibly fun. One of my customers was John Travolta whom I watched earn his pilot’s license in his new Commander 114.  I was able to attend the taping of the last couple of episodes of ‘Welcome Back Kotter’ and experience the excitement of being on a movie set, thanks to John.

I started a computer store 2 years before the IBM PC, and became the western U.S., Central America, and Pacific Islands distributor for Ohio Scientific microcomputers, including the first self contained “Basic in ROM” personal computer, the Challenger 1P, or C1P, and the first large storage multi-user business computer, the Challenger 3B, also known as C3B. It handled up to 16 user terminals sharing a single 8 bit CPU!, and had a whopping 74 MB of hard disk storage! Yeah, megabytes! As home video became real, we added cameras and recorders to the retail stores, and were among the first to rent movies on VHS & Beta video tape. It was very profitable before the big chains came along, as people were happy to pay $20 to rent 3 movies for a couple of days!

When OSI was bought by M/A Com, they gravitated toward a different CPU so I designed my own computer system, (Guilford MP32), to support the users and software that had been developed for OSI’s OS65u operating system. I used the Western Design 65C816 CPU which was code compatible with the 6502 used in the OSI line, but could address more memory. I designed the circuit boards on a borrowed Macintosh which had a PCB design program available. (Archaic and excruciatingly slow to redraw by current standards.) I used almost all programmable logic chips, EE PROM, up to 256KB Static RAM, and wrote the operating system to support up to 256 users and many gigabytes of SCSI data storage. The practical physical limitations of the initial board design allowed 32 simultaneous users, each on it’s own complete CPU card, with 24 being the most we ever implemented in a single chassis. They were all plugged in to a passive backplane which used the PC AT planform for economy, and modified a number of the buss signals to allow for arbitration of the many CPUs requesting the shared peripheral buss. The design worked beautifully.

For years I watched computers morph into commodities, with very little differentiation in the small business arena, outside Apple’s artistic endeavors. This last few years, online stores and websites have kept me busy in between airplane refurbishing projects and real estate foreclosure projects. I am still an active pilot and attend AOPA and Oshkosh conventions as often as I can. I attend seminars each year to stay abreast of the impressive inroads being made in hypnosis. I’m even growing wine grapes and will be crushing my first vintage soon.

Well, that’s the synopsis, and I’ll expound on the various topics as time permits. Please say Hi if you happen by…..

SG