At heart I am an experimenter.

If you would like to follow me on this Android robot adventure, you are welcome. But you must not forget I am, in the end, an experimenter. As such I make mistakes and often choose the wrong direction. When I do I will freely admit it, seek advise if needed (perhaps yours) and fix the problems the best I can. Perhaps you can learn from my mistakes and I can learn from yours. I love experimenting. And collaborating.

Fast Foward

30 years after I built my COSMAC ELF, I bought my first Android phone. The T-Mobile G1. I had gone to Fry's Electronics, with my birthday gift card, with the intention of buying a Windows phone. I wanted it to replace my Microsoft Zune, Motorola Razor, and Palm Zire-72 PDA. The guys in the store talked me into buying the G1 with Android 1.2 installed. It was not able to meet my goal of replacing all the devices in my pocket and backpack but, in the end, I have not been sorry I bought it. I recently replaced my G1 with a T-Mobile My-Touch 4G slide. The G1 is now the center of my next project, an Android driven Robot.

The COSMAC ELF and Me

In the late 1970's I was working for a small cable television station, cable Channel 11 in Pharr, Texas, when I realized I could build my own computer. I had been following articles in Kilobaud Microcomputing,  Byte, and Popular Electronics magazines with great interest. For sometime I studied a series of construction articles for a home brew computer designed around an early microprocessor, the RCA 1802. The articles, written by Joseph Weisbecker and published in Popular Electronics beginning in August, 1976, were titled "Build the COSMAC ELF", parts 1 through 4. But starting such a project seemed formidable until one day my boss, John Toland, owner, operator, and chief engineer of Canal ONCE, purchased the RCA Studio II, an early video game console, from Radio Shack. John and I were fascinated with it's design and immediately disassembled it. There we found, in the center of it all, an RCA 1802. At around $69.00 it was a steep purchase for me, but I did not hesitate to buy my own.