by Lisa Lapin San Jose Mercury  News May 12, 1987 Steven Roberts describes himself as a typical high-tech junkie. He loves to tinker with his five computers, talk on his ham radio and play with his speech synthesizer in between freelance writing assignments. But he admits that his office is a bit unusual — a two-wheeled…

Read More

This interview happened when I was visiting Dialog, a huge online database vendor that used to be a key part of my freelance business (before the bicycle expedition, I was an occasional “information broker,” doing research for clients). I spent a few months in Silicon Valley, with occasional flurries of media coverage. by Perry Lang…

Read More

Before taking off on the bike in 1983, I was a heavy user of the DIALOG system… running a little freelance information-broker business as well as writing about it for various magazines including Byte, Online Today, EDN, and others. In those ancient pre-Google years, it was absolutely magical to have access to massive information resources,…

Read More

Life with the bike was often a frenzied schedule of public appearances, and long before I figured out that I could charge real money for speaking gigs, I counted on casual events like this to meet interesting people and maybe sell a few books. I think this was my first visit to the Apple Computer…

Read More

Photo by Maggie Victor: Sailing with Norm Goldblatt on San Francisco Bay.  Texting while Driving in 1987 This posting to my Computing Across America column on GEnie came near the end of the Silicon Valley layover between the Winnebiko II trek down the Pacific Coast and the jump to Ohio to resume through the Northeast and…

Read More

An ancient green binder has followed me around from lab to lab through the decades, and it contains all the hand-drawn schematics, software, design sketches, and operating procedures for the Winnebiko II system. This machine rolled out of the lab in 1986, and kept me amused until 1988 when rapidly advancing technology seduced me into…

Read More

Photo: The Computing Across America crew at the GEnie booth, 1987 West Coast Computer Faire. From upper left: Tom Hoobyar, Steven K. Roberts, Ray Rolls, Maggie Victor, GEnie booth personality, Kelly Monroe.  by Steven K. Roberts Palo Alto, California April 5, 1987 11,870 miles Ah, Stanford in the Spring. LCD characters wafting through a beery haze,…

Read More

During the early years of laptops, before they were universal commodities, a number of publications arose to focus on this new technology. Pico was not hugely well-known in this space, but I loved the name… they made a real effort to get the “picocomputer” term into common use, though like my own “Dataspace,” it didn’t…

Read More

SAFT was one of my first equipment sponsors, providing the NiCAD battery for the original Winnebiko, charged by a Solarex 5-watt panel as well as “shore power” when available (1983 schematic). During the Winnebiko 2 epoch, the company ran this article about my use of their products. SAFT Accumulator Second Quarter, 1987 CAPTION: Roberts on…

Read More

Mountain View, CAApril 3, 1987 One of my favorite activities was appearing at ham radio or computer club meetings, where I could comfortably hold forth on the more technical topics… demonstrating bike systems to fellow geeks. This Silicon Valley event was a delight, though alas I have no video or photos. Later this year, my…

Read More