[Sticky] Introduce Yourself!

Hi there! I'm Donna – the heartbeat of operations at DIY Chris and when I'm not doing that, I'm happily by Chris's side as his wife. I've loved video games and electronics since I was a kid, if my dad ever needed a screw driver chances were it was in my room and I was taking something apart. Thankfully Chris is also very curious and we both share a love for learning and discovery. We've had many projects together over the years, DIY Chris happened by chance and I am so glad that it did. I've learned so much through this business over the last few years and if you place an order on our website, chances are I was the one who built it.

My first soldering project was a radio Chris got me, after that I was hooked. I started by cleaning boards he would assemble, then moved onto building DRAM Testers and cartridges. As of now, my skills have exceeded anything I could have ever hoped for and I absolutely love every minute of it. I love our customer base and the support this community has for one another. The innovation that still continues to this day is a special and beautiful thing, so please help us continue fueling this niche! 

LOVE the products you all offer!

DIYChris just rocks. Take my money!! 🙂

I really enjoyed the 1581 PCB with the option of ordering all the needed parts with it. Saved a lot of hassle! My 16 year old daughter did it on her own to continue building her DIYChris skills. 

Thanks for keeping the retro alive!

~-Nuke-~

Well hello there...

Been around for 45+ years on this lovely planet. I love to tinker around with 80/90's arcade boards, old computers, ie Atari, Apple, Commodore 64, etc. I also collect game consoles. If it can be hacked, or modified its mine. I'm a computer/video game hoarder. It's a problem but I can think of much worse.

Thank You...

My name is Jason and I love everything DIYChris C64.   Love taking a break from my day job designing modern DRAM memory chips to dabble in the simpler times of the C64 (and brings back memories of my childhood).  Thanks Chris!

Hello! I'm Joe Gott. I got into retro computing during COVID. I ordered a Apple IIe with a floppy drive and a Apple monitor. Then I moved into acquiring a Commodore, and then a VIC 20 (my first computer). It just got worse as I acquired a Sinclair 1000, TI 99/4A, and restored my Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-2 pocket computer with the help of Jeff Birt. It continued with buying Commodore floppy drives and a Commodore 128 (which I had repaired by Ray Carlsen). Then I started buying units for repair. My first was a Commodore clone datasette. Then Commodore 64's and so on. I've repaired many things now with the help of others in carious forums. As a newbie to repairs (including soldering and reading schematics), forums as a very valuable source of information. I but thing from a variety of sources including DIY Chris. I'm presently working on repairing a Commodore Plus4. and a old CompUadd laptop that is having floppy drive issues. As a retired IT Department Executive who spent his last few career years leading others and not touching technology (other than as a user), I love my new hobby.

Hi! I’m Rafael/Bobafett

Right now I’m building a C64 Melius and almost in test phase, just need to find some components but really hope to get all working at the end of the year.

Right now I own a Breadbin C64 with no mods, an Atari 800xl and 2 TI-99/4A.

Really hope Chris get inspired and can create an Amiga project!!!!!!

I'm James.  I've had education (high school & college) in the electronics field followed by work in the industry.  These days I'm back into  the 8 bit computer world.  Right now I've got a C64 & Atari 800XL setup.  I might get something else if I can find something affordable.

Geovillage here !

I have been having fun with computers since I programmed my first one back in 1975.  It was all on punch cards, so I guess this is why a C64 looks modern to me!

Speaking of the 64, I am a late arrival to this world.  My first computer was the ZX-81, followed by some various Atari computers and an S-100 Bus computer.   My first "tinkering" came when I managed to interface the Atari to the S-100's 8-inch disk drives.  It was only a few years ago when I bought a used "untested" C64 on Ebay and quickly learned what "untested" means.   Soon thanks to the community and some fantastic YouTubers, I was buying and fixing as many "untested" C64s I could afford with my retirement checks. Currently more than 20... LOL.

I love original but when original just can't be had, or at least can be had without destroying another machine, I will go with replica or functional equivalency.   My first order from DIY Chris was the replica 250407 that is a thing of beauty !  Over the next several weeks it will keep me busy as I endeavor to build a Zif Socketed C64 for my test bench.

Looking forward to exchanging ideas, getting and giving help on these forums.

geovillage.

Been into computers almost all my life. I have a degree in Computer Science and been in the field of computers since high school, doing years in the trenches as phone support for Gateway computers, Microsoft point of sale software (back when they did that), and for Microsoft ERP solutions, and currently work as a network operations administrator at my current place of employment.

I have also been into tinkering with computers, and have loved Raspberry Pi's for this purpose.

I have built several computers for gaming and maintain a network for my home, including a 16TB server.

I got my first 8-bit computer (a Commodore 64) at a pawn shop when I took my wife to when she was looking for an inexpensive bow for hunting.

Since then I have been in love with the Commodore line of computers, and due to the breadth of old computers (and the price of retro tech now a days) focused on the Commodore line. I have repaired several C64's and 1541's listed as "untested, for parts" on auction sites, and built a C64 (Sixty Clone) and VIC-20 (Vicky-Twenty) and a 1581 kit (from DIY Chris).

Greetings.  My name is Bill, a near 50 year old as of this post, living in Indiana.  I grew up in a TV repair shop, so I had an early introduction to magic-smoke fueled devices.

My first machine was a TI99/4a in the third grade.  Took a while to get a cassette player cable to be able to save my programs.  I actually took my TI to my classroom for a week.  It was the only machine in the school at the time.

After a few years, I upgraded to a Commodore 64 bread bin with 1571 (as it was all they had in stock).  Luckily that 1571 queued me up for the inevitable upgrade to the C128.  It was here that my retro roots are planted.  I stuck with my C128 until I was eventually pushed into the MS DOS world.

I was a FidoNet SysOp for a number of years, running on a Tandy 1000 to start and later a clone I built while working in a computer store.

From that point on, computers became a tool and other hobbies and jobs took over.  I became a ham radio operator, call sign NF9K.  I was licensing while I was a deputy with the MCSD.  It was a number of years before I felt the urge.

During The Plague, I took to buying broken C64's and repairing them and then returning them to the fold.  I sold ~15 at our local vintage computer show.  They went for $75 each, which was a net loss for me, but I didn't buy them to make money.  I bought them to fix...  That experience is my ROI.

Current Collection:

~5 or so C64's in various states of repair, C128, C128D (x2), Amiga 500 (waiting for bench), TRS-80 Model 4, Tandy 1000A, 1000TX, 1000TL/2, 1000HX, Apple II GS and still growing as I find items that interest me.

One of the greatest things about this hobby is I can now afford all of those sparkly things from the magazines.  There were too few yards to mow in my home town to afford anything like that.  I remember saving all summer to upgrade my 1000HX from 256k to 640k.

Anyway, here I am.

Hi, I got my first taste of the commodore 64 when one of my uncles, who was just 5 years older than I was, got one as a present.  I lived in Mexico at the time and I didn't know any english, but I pored over the manual, nagged my mom to help me translate, peeked and poked and made the screen do crazy things until I understood, more or less, what I was doing.  I started making my own games and then traded them by disk with my local friends. 

Later, after I moved to the US, the BBS craze was in full swing and I wanted to run my own, so I worked weekends in construction with my dad until I could afford a modem, a phone line, and hard-disk, and a semi-decent computer to run it on and thus started Lithium City BBS.  I ran that for many years, made a bunch of friends, learned Turbo Pascal, then later C and C++. And on and on until I went to study computer science and later got started in the startup industry in the Bay Area.  I never bothered looking back and as soon as a new, awesome technology came up I quickly moved on without even thinking.

A few years ago I was just sitting around, thinking about those days, and I realized how much I really enjoyed the technology of that time, and after researching some online communities in the retro-computing world I also came to realize that, re-learning technology from back then brought new understanding, new appreciation for how those things were setup, their limitations, and their aesthetic properties. So, I went on Ebay and bought a c64 that lights up but didn't show anything on the screen, and I'm in the process of trying to get it to show me that lovely blue screen and READY. prompt, with help from Chris here who has been super-helpful.

It's great to read everyone's introductions too.  Cheers!

/r