Wanted to clue everyone in on several things that have been going on and some upcoming changes with the blog!

For the past couple of weeks, more people have steadily joined our team to help archive information about Conduit and it's grown into such a big effort that I feel like it's only right (and about time) that I make a dedicated page for it! And I know as much as we love me clogging up my blog with the same topic over and over again, I think a more "professional" page is what the archival effort deserves.

This doesn't mean I'm going to stop talking about Conduit on this page though! There's still some things I'll probably talk about on here but it will probably be far more sparse than how it is now.

Along with that, I will be overhauling my website as a whole! I feel like it's grown a little clunky-looking and deserves a nice new coat of paint as well. I might also be adding some fun new pages along with the new archival page as a fun bonus....we will see ( ˘ᴗ˘ )....

Feel like I'm about to explode with excitement from even just writing about this…but yes! I had the huge, HUGE privilege of being able to interview several people who had worked at Conduit!!

God, it's still unbelievable to say that...I'm so shocked I even managed to get ahold of anyone from Conduit, let alone be able to talk to them one-on-one!

I had originally managed to get ahold of maybe 8 people at the start, mostly through their linkedIn or work emails and I would explain to them that I was interested in interviewing them about their time at Conduit. Most of them got back to me telling me they, understandably, weren't interested. But after some weeks of back and forth, I had three people agree to an interview!


To give our interviewees a bit of an introduction...

Jennifer Wolf was an analog design engineer at Conduit and was a part of the original team that worked on the Conduit I! She shares some interesting tidbits about the creation of the company's first computer. You can read my interview with her here =>
An interview with Jennifer Wolf

Andrew Hobbs was the head of advertising at Conduit who oversaw and helped develop all the ad campaigns the company produced during its entire operation! He shares the thought process that goes into creating ad campaigns for products, along with a rare look into the development of the never-released Conduit II! You can read my interview with him here =>
An interview with Andrew Hobbs

Noah Bhambri worked at Conduit during its later years as a software developer and was a part of the team that worked on the Conduit II! He shares some information about the company's turbulent later years and more insight into the Conduit II's production! You can read my interview with him here =>
An interview with Noah Bhamri

Again, it was such an unbelievable honor to interview these three and I am so, so incredibly grateful to have this opportunity to.

My three-month vacation away from Conduit comes to an end.....I'll be honest, it was very hard to ignore the itch to keep digging for more information when I had their machine staring at me from my shelf for the past couple of months.

I know I've talked about doing some research into the company already, but it all was so surface-level. It was near impossible to find anything about them that wasn't just "they exist", or "they made PCs", or even the rare crunchy photo of the Conduit I from old ebay listings. In full honesty, it could be due to how I initially went at it with trying to research things about their computers rather than the company themselves. Not to say I didn't look into them at all! But what I gathered during my first dig around was information I would consider the tip of the iceberg. Nothing about their in-depth history and the faces part of it.

The presentation disk was what really pushed me to look further into everything. I renewed my search by taking another look into newspaper archives and getting much more specific with what I looked up. Because of the presentation disk, I had a nice long list of keywords to search for and finally started to get some interesting results. I found a lot of articles detailing new releases of theirs at the start, computer parts and accessories, software applications, and articles talking about the conduit I release.

But, I was really drawn to these three articles I was able to find...

Article from pre-founding of Conduit, dated 1978.

Both images were from the same article, dated 1984.

Article detailing their bankruptcy, dated 1989.

I thought these clippings helped lay out the short little life this company lived. A promising rise to, what seemed to be, a predictable crash. Probably a life lived by many startups from the era.

I also thought the bankruptcy article was extra interesting as it's one of the only articles I've found that references the Conduit II. Learning that it was a canceled project explains why I haven't run across any information about it that wasn't just vague rumors. (Raises a lot of questions about the model I own but....moving on.)
I also looked into what tech magazine archives I could find for more articles and advertisements and managed to find just one.

An advertisment for the Conduit I.

Unfortunately, after that, my search stalled for a while... I ran back into the wall of finding poorly archived scans and if anything was properly archived, it was usually about their products rather than the company. And as interesting as that is! You can only read so much about a handful of releases for so long…I knew there had to be more to the story, so, I decided to turn to the little old tech forum I visit once in a blue moon for help.

The whole concept of digging for information about something mostly forgotten is always exciting to people, so luckily I had a good handful of people interested in the search. And with renewed search efforts, progress started happening crazy fast.

Using the magazine I had found the conduit pc advertisement in, someone had managed to track down another advertisement published by the same company, along with a whole magazine spread about the PC's launch!!! Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ Aaahh!!!

Another ad for the Conduit I.

Magazine article interview the Conduit founders.

The magazine article was such an interesting find, especially with the closer look it gives about the thought process behind their first pc. If only they weren't super rare to come across....

Anyway, along with that find, someone else in the group had managed to discover a televised interview with two of the founders from an old blog on Geocities.

A screencap of Omar Nasseri (right) and Guadalupe J. Guzmán (left).

We think it might be from a local news broadcast, but unfortunately, the link to the video the website had was dead...(◞‸◟；). So we're holding off for now on assuming anything until we manage to find the video posted somewhere else online. With the progress we're currently making, my hopes are high!

Alongside all of this, I've revisited the credits of the presentation disk and have started looking into getting in touch with some of the former employees of Conduit. It's a bit of a ballsy move, I'll admit, so my hopes of getting in contact with anyone is pretty low, but not nonexistent!!

Will update again probably soon! I'm so, so excited to see where this archival effort is going...

Sooo….I was an exhibitor for this year's Vintage Tech Festival! Usually, I go to admire the beautiful machines and oddities everyone brings out to display. This year though, I really wanted to show off some of my beauties too.

I was a little apprehensive at first. It stressed me out thinking about having to transport 40-year-old computers in my cramped car and making sure nothing decided to croak during the ride to and from. But I knew that if I decided not to try it out, I was going to be kicking myself over it until the next convention rolled around.

Very glad I decided to give it a shot!! While waiting for my confirmation email to come in, I had already started thinking of what theme I should go with for my little exhibit and what should I bring. I ended up on early 80s Apple since I find their little "Wild West" era very interesting to look back on, especially now with their current image.

Then...it came to decide what to bring to the convention. I wanted to bring something that would catch people's attention and also not be a headache to pack and set up. Immediately, I knew I was going to bring my Mac SE/30 since it's such a staple of old PCs and it would give me an excuse to use the MacPhone I had picked up on a whim ages ago. I also landed on bringing my Apple III and IIc since they were a little overshadowed on release by the two explosions that were the IBM PC and the Mac. Along with all that, I packed some games to have running for people to sit down and play at the table.

I had spent the next few months just making sure everything stayed working in perfect order, along with making the decorations for the table and once the event finally arrived, I made the drive to the convention hall and got everything set up!

The Mac SE/30, Apple III, the Apple IIC, and me!

The con itself was a blast! I had only signed to table for the first two days so I could have the last day all to myself to explore the convention grounds. I did have small windows where I could get up and go look around at everyone else's exhibit, but for the most part, I was stressing that one of my machines would decide it had enough and give up on me. I did have some small technical difficulties, but other than that, it went relatively smoothly.

Everyone there was so nice…and it was such a fun experience to be surrounded by people who are just as obsessed with the same niche as you are. Hopefully, I'll have the opportunity next year to table again!

Super short update!! Always feel bad when these get long so I'm going to try to do my best with keeping this one brief (´͈ ᵕ `͈ )!

So, first things first....to the shock of no one, I had no luck trying to get the files from the presentation onto my main machine to share with you all. I tried booting the floppy up with my USB converter and lo and behold…




I tried using another floppy reader, and then another one when that one didn't work. I even tried booting it back up on the Conduit II but same thing happened every single time. With the combo of this floppy being 30+ years old and it being left in some box for most of it, I guess I shouldn't be that surprised.

But in better news, that ebay seller got back to me! They told me they didn't have anything else by the company they would be willing to sell but that they did own a conduit I model in their collection they could show me and...




Ahh!! o(^∀^*)o It's so cool to see good photos of one of these! All I could find when researching was just very low-quality images or poorly scanned newspaper clippings.

I talked more with the seller about our collections and something really interesting came up. When I showed them the Conduit II after they asked me where I heard about Conduit, they seemed confused. I told them it was the model the presentation disk was advertising and they told me that they only heard of Conduit! releasing the Conduit I and its upgraded models.

I guess that explains why it’s so hard to find any information on it's second addition, since even collectors of these things didn’t even know it existed!

This will hopefully be the last update on the Conduit thing for a while! Even if I want to do sooo much more research on this thing, my brain needs a little break from this weird little rabbit hole for a couple of weeks...

Feels like it's been forever since I've updated this site even if it's only been 8 days. Well, I hope the wait was worth it as I have a huuuuuge thing to cover in this entry.

So, I'm scrolling on ebay, right? Window shopping for some new clothes and computer parts I don't need, and then..this comes up.




I was just going to pass it by originally but then I saw the listing had the words "Conduit!" In it and I swear, I blacked out and only came back to when I got the confirmation email. Such a crazy find! Only for 15 bucks too!

I asked the seller for some more info on the disk since all the listing said was "Conduit demo disk [WORKING]", but unfortunately, they told me they didn't have the time to look at the actual contents of the disk and had only put in in their drive to test if it would read.

I personally wouldn’t consider that “testing” a disk but oh well…(◔_◔) I'm not one to judge!

Out of curiosity, I also asked if they had anything else by conduit they were willing to sell, but I haven't gotten a response back yet. (Will definitely update everyone if they do!)

But anyway, enough of the preamble; I was able to capture some parts of it but as you'll see, I started running into some..."familiar" issues later in.

It's tooooooo long to have all the images all in this blog entry so I've made a new PAGE for you all to view the presentation, along with all the little notes I made while going through it! Enjoy ♡

Wooah two updates in one day haha..Don't worry this one won't be as long as the previous, just wanted to quickly update everyone on the whole conduit OS situation really quick.

If you didn't read the last entry, I ended it saying I was going to try file dumping what files I could from the system before wiping it since a lot of the applications and files were either corrupted or refusing to open no matter how I tried, but that the system settings were ALSO refusing to open..making it impossible for me to even try wiping anything from it.

After it still refused to open when I tried again a few minutes ago, I finally tried just opening it through the command line but big whoop! The moment I opened it, it gave me that same garbled text every other program gave me.



Ugh...It's issue after issue with this damn machine. I wish it was just hardware problems so I knew how to fix them but when it's something like this? I have no clue. Would help if there was...ANY documentation on this thing online but for right now, I'm currently in the dark.

Hello again! I have aaallloot to talk about in this entry so I'll try to keep my rambling to a minimum and get right to the juicy stuff..

First! As the title implies, I finally got the courage to power on the computer I got from the flea, and good news.....didn't explode!! No smoke or anything! Woohoo!!

(this company loves putting those stripes everywhere don't they..)

I originally was going to just record my screen through my phone but when it booted to its own OS system, I immediately knew I needed to go through the effort to get my capture device out to properly show it to everyone.






While initally impressed, I started running into several issues while trying to check out certain stuff. From certain programs just refusing to open, to most of the programs that DO open just having a bunch of corrupted text in them, it made what I could do on the OS feel very restricted.



It's a bummer too since it seems like there's a lot of old personal files on here too? It's definitely a bit weird to go through someone else's stuff (even if it's decades old), but it's not like I was able to since it's all a garbled mess!

I also tried accessing the emails too (just out of morbid curiosity) and well..

(names censored for privacy)

The names were still intact initially until I tried opening some of the emails up. The text would get all garbled up like all the other documents so I stopped messing with it so I didn't screw up the poor thing even more. Maybe it's someone from above telling me not to me be so nosey.

ε-(ｰдｰ) Sigh...really was such a shame. I'm still really grateful to own a machine like this but for its software to be this damaged is a bit disappointing. Not really sure where to go from here. I originally planned to upgrade it with a better sound and graphics card but it would be a waste with how little I'm able to do with it.

I've thought of trying to do a file dump of the intact files (obviously not including the personal ones) and sharing them here with everyone before wiping the computer, but I'm not exactly sure how I'd go ahead doing that when I STILL am having trouble accessing system settings as of writing this. I haven't tried doing it through the command line as of yet, so I'll probably update sometime later today if that even ends up working.