The "New" Lounge

PET

VIC

TED

LAB

STORE

My Collection

ABOUT ME

coming soon

Disclaimer:
All the information presented here, was taken from the following sources:
Brain Bagnal's Book
On the Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore.

Available at Amazon.ca
The new edition had been delayed at Amazon until Feb.2010

Also, a lot of information has come from Video interviews with Bil Herd and Dave Haynie. Dave has a lot of videos on You-Tube. Search them out.. I wish I could post them here, but I don't have permission.

Lastly, more sites on the net have information. There are even a few dedicated sites to the C16. Do a Goggle search, because Bing is just a flash in the pan.:)

Lord, How I hate these about pages.

Ver. 1.02.2 (last update 4/28/11)

Glen VanDenBiggelaar, was born September 11,1970 in a Small town in Central Alberta. (yea, I am old so stay off my lawn...)
Glen grew up mostly in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada into a middle class family. His Father was an Electrician, his Mother stayed at home with the kids until they were almost in their teens, then became a teacher's Aid.

Glen is the middle child of Three, and older sister and a younger brother. (yea, am am the redheaded middle child).

In about 1977, Glen's family moved to Red Deer. His Father was starting up Red Deer's Branch of Johnson Controls. On Saturday's, Glen would get up early, walk or bike (depending on what time of year it was) to the local library, and spend the better part of a day just reading. During the summer, Glen and his friends would get on their bicycles and go to every business in Red Deer and collect Stickers and Business cards. Glen learn at an early age how to collect and keep everything organized. Glen's childhood "geek" toys consisted of Lego, and he loved the Radio Shack Science Fair kits, making radios from wires and springs mounted on a cardboard box was the Ultimate toy for Glen.

In about 1979, when his family moved back from Red Deer, Glen walked into the library in grade 6 one day and discovered his school had gotten 3 Commodore PETS.Glen stayed every spare moment with these machines, After School, Lunch, recess and self taught BASIC, just to make these machines do SOMETHING. At the time, there were no instructors who even knew how to turn the darn things on.
In grade 7, Glen switch schools and There, he was exposed to the Apple 2. These were Black Apples, the ones from Bell&Howell built for schools.
A few years went by and Glen's family got an Intellivision, and finally his Dad bought a TRS-80 CoCo with a Tape drive. Radio Shack had the floppy drives for $500 plus dollars at the time, so Glen learnt all he could on that 16K machine. When the fighting over the TV between the Intellivision and the Computer with his younger brother, Glen Decided to get any TV he could from Yard sales and such to set up the computer in his bedroom. This is common now, but Glen was the first person in his peers to have a Computer in his bedroom. Needless to say, Glen had a few small fires in his bedroom, when these old tube TV's decided to blow up. Luckily, he never caused any damage, but he sure did have some Crazy looking B&W TV's in his room.

Glen's Teenage years were the 80's. In his younger days, he collected Comics,and listened to heavy metal music, and was always taking things apart, trying to figure out how they worked. Anime' and good artwork was his passion. He was into the Anime' long before anyone even heard of it.
Glen is and was always fighting Obesity, even as a young kid, from the age of 5 and up. In 1988 he got his stomach stapled, and dropped 180 LBS in a year. During this time, Glen drifted away from Computers, but was always obsessed with CGI.
Glen could always see the future of computers. in 1991, he left home to go to School in Calgary at SAIT. The only courses he could take with Computers was Printing Management Technology. There, he was introduced to the Either-net and e-mail and such. He would tell his friends that they needed to get on the world Wide Web then, because it would be too late soon. He had a good friend that was an Auctioneer, and Glen pitch the Idea in 1991 of an on-line world wide Auction site. He also had told these people of a day when we would be having instant messages, movies, Music and TV shows streaming right to the Computer, on demand. Glen's friend, the Auctioneer, got a group of investors in one day, to listen to Glen's pitch. Glen told them that the biggest problem was bandwidth at the time and the modems could not handle it then, but within 5 years it would be almost too late. They then asked how video would be handled, and Glen told them at first a separate Video card maybe required. Everyone had laughed at that time and could not understand it.

By 1996, Glen could finally (with his parents help) afford a halfway decent PC of his own, and got on the World Wide Web as soon as he could. He learned HTML , making simple websites in frontpage, on GeoCities, Zoom and other free sites. When Glen found out about ADSL coming, he got on the phone every month with Telus, to be one of the first with High speed internet.
In 1997, Glen started back into the modern Hardware, and took his A+ course at home, he could not afford the tests, but all the online practice tests he took. in 1998, Glen took his MCSE for NT4. At that time was the big hiring boom for Y2K, and he got job offers from Headhunters all over the World. He refused to take any job until after his courses were over.He even got an offer to go to San Francisco to work for Apple on the (Clam shell) new Ibooks as customer support. Unfortunately, they only wanted to pay $13/hour to start, and wanted Glen to move down there on his own dime.

We all know what happened January 1,2000 everyone was laid off. Glen was working at Convergys, doing tech support for Comcast@home service, lasted 19 months, before having a small nervous breakdown, and leaving the call center behind. During those 19 Months, @home folded, Glen was switch to HP support, then back to ComCast, then to AT&T broadband. When he left, Glen Vowed Never to work at a call center again.

Glen then became a consultant, building and maintaining Computers for anyone. Unfortunately, he gets allot of Charity work, because people try to cheap out on the bill or pull the, I will pay you next week...
Glen has then received Contract work, for Dell and IBM doing rollouts of new systems.

About 2005 , Glen Created the "CoCo lounge" website. Glen had started Collecting the CoCo a few years back, and he found when people found out he collected it, they dumped tons of old systems on him. At one time, his one bedroom apartment was filled to the ceiling with boxes of stuff and he could not even walk around in it.Glen left the CoCo scene in 2007.

In 2006, Glen went back to work for Dell, Dell had promised only call center work for a few months then we will promote you. The old carrot and stick, lying approach to sucker you into phone support. The sad thing, is they knew Glen was a hardware junkie and they put Glen in software. In Glen's interview, Glen had to explain to the HR guy about the new (At that time) AMD 939 chips, for he didn't even know what an "AMD" was.
In the Spring of 2007, Glen was working for Dell as a contract for Telus, Doing Rollouts of new machines. Glen was team leader and was putting in average 14 hour days, and making some good money. Glen decided to buy a Voodoo laptop. Everyone asked him what it was like, so Glen put up the ultimate "Fanboy" site Called "Iboughtavoodoolaptop.com".(Glen still owns the Domain Name). Glen Did a daily Blog and Even put out a Video (which you can still find on Daily Motion). It took Glen over a Year to Pay off and finally get his $7000 laptop. And during that time Glen (who called every moment of it), could see the "Death" of the once great company by HP. While the Voodoo staff loved and followed the site, HP was not amused by the Antics of it. More than once, HP employee's (not any of the ORIGINAL Voodoo staff) "Suggested that it would be a wise Idea for Glen to stop and STFU or ELSE!!!". Glen never really took any of the many threats from HP seriously, and One funny story is HP had an Open house/job fair which Glen was invited down for (by the Rahul, the Ex-owner of Voodoo no less). The person interviewing Glen had absolutely NO IDEA who Mark Hurd was at the time. Glen had to educate this guy on who all the Higher ups at HP were (Glen Tries to keep on top of who all the Corporate "Big Wigs are". Needless to say, Glen never got hired at Voodoo (Glen thinks he scared the bejeebees out of the people that interviewed him, because of his passion with Computers and hardware.). Glen stopped doing the Voodoo website about January 2008, when the threats were high and it was no longer fun to promote a company that was obviously in its death throws. By January 2009, HP closed the Voodoo HQ in Calgary (which Glen predicted almost to the day- a year before, and even said it on his blog), and today, only an (very small) few of the original Voodoo staff still actually work for HP.

Glen was introduced to the Amiga in 2008, by his best friend's father. He was an retired Xerox employee, and had been down to the Pal Alto Center. The stories he told Glen about what they were working on back in the 70's at Xerox, some of that stuff (like E-paper) is just coming to market now. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2008 and willed the Amiga stuff to Glen.

Glen was instantly hooked on the Amiga and currently is trying to get a nice collection. In the summer of 2009 Glen joined the Edmonton Amiga User group and is trying to Kickstart that old passion back into the group.

Glen Considers himself more of a Computer historian, then an actual Geek. He is continually fascinated on the early stories behind the computers, and loves to meet those involved.
Glen is the Idea guy, the dreamer. He continually invents new ways of doing things. He has come up with Ideas on extending battery life for laptops, and even a whole new way of cooling laptops. It has been said his inventions a a few years off because the technology for some of his devices has yet to be invented. He sees solutions, where others see only problems.

This is the guy who walks though a Dollar store and imagines uses for things, that were never intended for that use. A lot of clients are shocked when he presents a "so simple solution, to a problem that other would have charged hundreds of dollars for". For Glen, he "just doesn't think outside the box", for him, there is no box to begin with.

BTW, you won't find Glen on any of the "social networks" like facebook or any of those fad, privacy sucking sites. Call me old school, but active scripting was only used by scammers and Pornographers back in the day. Now everyone uses active scripting and all those crappy languages (PHP, etc). Look at Facebook, you can't even log on to it without it taking full control of your computer and demanding you have "Active scripting" installed. Too much Eye candy that really screws with your system. no thanks.

Glen would ultimately like to open and Curate a Computer museum, for Glen can talk (and has) for hours on the fascinating background of most early computers. Glen spends 2-4 hours a day on the 'net reading the latest Tech news and tries to keep up with the triends. You would never know it to meet him though, he still has his Treo 650 as his cell phone and doesn't even have 'net access on that (way too expensive, even with a "Plan"). He works at a Video store (another dying quickly industry) just to keep a roof over his head, when the Computer work is down. Glen Currently has a ton of "projects" on the go (like any Geek should).

You Can Follow Glen on Twitter (@GlenVDB1), yes Glen broke down and got a Twitter account even though he hates it and you can follow him there, trying to promote the Amiga. So far he has annoyed everyone at TWIT, New Tek, Jeri Ellsworth and even Paul Thurrot. He did have an E-mail read on the TWIT show TNT (Tech News Today), in which, he mentioned the TNT needed more Amiga News, but that was his only 3 seconds of fame.