At the present time RENEJM Enterprises is a "One Man" shop, and I do everything.
- Jim Reneau (President, AP, AR, Janitor)
Bio of Jim Reneau:
Since an early age I have always been fascinated with technology, any technology I could get my hands on. My real love for computers and computing started in the early '70s, when I was just a kid. The family was in Cincinnati visiting my uncle, a programmer for Cincinnati Bell Telephone. I can remember being taken on a tour of the "Machine Room" and feeling like I was in the middle of a science fiction movie. I have been chasing that feeling most of my life.
In high school I got my first experience programming at a local community college. At the ripe old age of 13 I took a summer "community education" class introducing how to program the TRS-80 Model 1 computer in BASIC. I was so totally hooked and saved EVERY PENNY of my newspaper route profits to buy a computer. In '80 I acquired my first computer, a TRS-80 4K Color Computer 1 with a tape recorder and a second hand color TV. If I wanted to do anything I had to program it in BASIC.
With only 4K of memory (RAM) I quickly pushed the limits of program sizes. After saving more of my "newspaper" money I was able to purchase the machine that got me through college, an ATARI 800 with 48K of RAM. It originally had a tape drive but over the years it gained 3 44K floppy drives, a 300 baud modem, and the I/O expander. The ATARI had an Assembler Editor cartridge that I learned 6502 assembly, a BASIC cartridge where I programmed in their flavor of BASIC, and 4 joystick and paddle i/o ports where I hooked all sorts of breadboarded stuff to it.
With a beginning like the one described above, becoming a computer "nerd" was inevitable.
See my resume at http://www.renejm.net/biography
See what I am playing with and working on at my personal site http://www.renejm.net