Solar Soyuz Zaibatsu: History
Venimus, Vidimus, Dolavimus
History of Solar Soyuz Zaibatsu
Before 1984
My name is James F. Choate Jr, I usually go by "Jim". I was born in 1959 in Killeen, TX. From early 1960 to 1965 we lived in Vinton, LA. My mother's sister and her husband owned the Palomino Club. It is well known in the Blues and Country music industry. I got to meet Fats Domino when I was about 4, and Mickey Gilley played piano there for a while. In 1966 we moved to Houston, TX and lived in that area until graduating high school in 1978. I then moved to Austin, TX and have lived here ever since. I've always been interested in science and technology, especially space related topics. In the summer of 1969 I blew up my parents garage with my chemistry set. My mother advised I should find a new hobby. So, I spent a couple of years learning electronics and amateur radio. I figured out amateur radio was not my cup of tea. About that time I ran into a kid at school who had a PDP 8e he had gotten from his mother. She apparently worked for a company building pacemakers and they had updated their computer based test system. We used a Silent 700 terminal to program in Basic/8. I then moved on to a Mountain S-100 and a PDP 11/03 (using RT-11) that were my own. I also built a small 6800 based SBC. Sometime in 1983 I bought a Commodore 64, a C2N cassette deck, and a 300 baud modem. I then became involved in designing a bulletin board system (BBS) that was inspired by "Macroscope", a book by Piers Anthony. In the book they had a computer which used plain English for access. I spent about a year and decided that the C64 was probably not the best system for that sort of application.
1984 - Present
I bought my first MS-Dos based machine in 1984, and hooked it up to a 1200 baud modem and used Teleguard BBS software. I also became involved in a hands-on science museum, Discovery Hall, as an exhibit builder and read "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. I decided that I wanted to get a real 'cyberpunk' name for my BBS and after much work settled on Solar Soyuz Zaibatsu. It means 'Solar Union Combine', my way of saying 'We're all in it together'. In 1988 I became involed with another BBS development effort called TurBoard. It was based on the NAPLS graphics standard that extended ANSI ASCII to include graphics and animation. It worked quite well, but the NAPLPS standard itself never really took off. This system was a multi-tasking environment built on MS-DOS with Desqview/X and a 4-port serial card. Desqview/X was a 3rd party multi-tasking extension to MS-DOS as well as supporting a standard X-windows client and TCP/IP. In 1992 I was introduced to Linux. I had been working with SunOS and was somewhat familiar with AIX. By late 1993 I had registered ssz.com, signed up for one of the first ISDN lines in Austin, and moved my BBS to Linux. By the end of 1994 several friends and I started the Central Texas Linux User Group (CT-LUG). The first Linux user group in Texas. We also worked with groups and individuals to start groups in several other states. I worked with CT-LUG for about 3 years and then moved on. CT-LUG is still a working group, one of at least three Linux groups in Austin. In 2000 Lucent changed the license for Plan 9 and I began to use that operating system as well. It was intended to be the next OS after the Unix model. And it did it very well, however the development and user community are not really interested in promoting the OS and as a result its growth has been stagnant. I started Hangar 18 in 2000 to foster Open Source technology and distributed computing. By 2003 I quit my day job and started Open Forge, LLC to pursue the Open Source technology dream full time. We worked with The Texas Game Festival and the IGDA Austin chapter, and I had a Plan 9 article published in SysAdmin magazine in 2004. Due to an inability to keep all the business partners pursuing the same goals it became clear that the business was not going to succed. We closed Open Forge, LLC in 2006. I am currently pursuing a new business plan that is still focused on Open Source technology development, along with holding down a day job.
The Wired Society
Several friends and I began to work as a group in about 1990 through about 1994, our shared goal was to advance technology but also warn people that it could be used for great evil. It was only after we started the group that we found out that James Martin had written a book with a similar title and theme, The Wired Society: a challenge for tomorrow (ISBN 0-13-961441-9). Once we found this out we stopped using the name. We got a lot of flack for this logo.
Hope this didn't put you completely to sleep :)
Current systems we keep running
We're always on the lookout for additional hardware, software, manuals, books, etc. for these machines... We're looking for 4 sets of the Sony Linux for the Playstation 2 as we would like to build a 4-way cluster similar to what the NCSA did, but not that big :) Tadpole products like the IBM N40 or Sparcbook are always one of our primary targets. These machines are not well known despite being so cutting edge for their time. SGI peripherals (ie monitor, keyboard, mice, camera, etc).
Bottom line...if you have anything related to the above and are interested in finding it a loving home...get in touch, please.
Copyright 1983 - 2008 All rights reserved. Permission to use components of this website for non-commercial use is granted.
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