Rick Smith started working with computers in 1972, while in high school. It was an IBM 1620 with 16K of memory and 10 megabytes of disk storage. He then worked with an IBM 370/158, while he attended the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle in the seventies. His first "home-built" computer was based on the SC/MP microprocessor from National Semiconductor. He designed a 2K memory board for it and hand wire wrapped it. He wrote a few games for it, but these were limited, since there was only 26 variables in this version of BASIC.

In the eighties, he became involved in computer repair and repaired mainframe peripherals, Memorex 660 drives, Pertec tape drives and Dataproducts printers. Those 660 drives were the size of washing machines and stored only 20 megabytes on multi-platter removable media.

Also, during this period, he began to write software for the new Apple ][ computer using both Integer and Floating Point BASIC. He used the Apple Disk ][ drive and then began to solve computer problems for his friends. (At that time the Apple Disk ][ cost $535 with interface card and stored only 90K on each diskette!)

As a result, he began working for ComputerLand stores in the Chicago area and also started working with business systems other than the Apple. He ran CP/M on the Apple ][ (with a Z-80 card) and the Altos computer. He also worked with the IMSAI series of computers and still owns an IMSAI 8080. (This is the same type of computer that was used in the movie War Games.)

He worked with the Osborne I and was in the booth with Osborne representatives during the launch of this new computer at a Chicago computer trade show. (At the same time, across the aisle was a new product, from Hayes Microcomputer, the Smartmodem, which had a new command syntax starting with AT!)

When IBM came out with the new "PC" he was in the third technical training class in Boca Raton, Florida. His first nationally published article appeared in C.A.L.L. Apple and was about the Apple /// "debug" mode - an undocumented feature.

He was also in the Compaq plant in Texas when the first Compaq portable rolled off the assembly line during the week he was attending training class.

His first mobile computer was the IBM portable 5155 (20+ Pounds) and has since successfully upgraded this system to a 386 system with a hard disk drive.

Through his career, Rick wrote in the languages of Pascal, Delphi, BASIC, Visual Basic, Perl, Objectview, Powerbuilder, PL/1 and FORTRAN.

He has also installed, configured and used the following operating systems: