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Forgive my tardy response. I’ve been working 20hrs/day and this fell to a lower priority.

Hal Chamberlin and I were friends from 1963 to 1970, and in business together from 1971 to 1986 when he took a very lucrative offer from Ray Kurzweil in Boston. Hal now works for Young Chang in Korea (half in the USA, half time in Korea).

I helped Hal build the HAL-4096 so I know all about it. There are many things in our history together that were “firsts” in the industry. I have so much of it that I don’t need more, but I thank you for the offer.

If you have any questions about the 4096 I can try to answer them. For example, the core memory planes were ordered from a Junk Yard in California. Hal designed the core-driver circuit and I purchased the components, laid out the PC boards and wire wrapped the backplane that Hal designed. The processor, as I recall, was designed from discrete circuits. We were Freshmen at NCSU (Electrical Engineering program) when we started the 4096. I don’t know how we had to time to do this because we both had jobs to earn extra income for our “hobbies”. It was a long term plan that came to fruition during 1968 (as I recall). It was the most important exhibit at the NCSU Engineer’s Fair (I was chairman of the Fair that year), and required a whole classroom. There were crowds that visited it. However, the demo was somewhat basic; not designed for flash and whistles for the general populace. However, the Professors and other engineering students were very impressed. It was a massive piece of work done by two people… but don’t forget… I was the support person, Hal was the brains and vision on that project.

I haven’t heard from Hal in about a year, so I don’t know if my contact info is still valid.

Let me know if I can help you in any other way. This was a very early computer, and may have been the earliest one of its magnitude done by students at a University. If there is any way I can be of service in the future let me know.