Nerd cred time! That one time in 1990 that I asked my friends at the Singapore Microcomputer Society for a recommendation letter.

Throughout the 80s, I was a very active member of the Singapore Apple Users Group (or AUG(S) as they liked to call themselves), which later became part of the SMS. I created a tiny CMS and published their newsletter articles on 3.5″ disks with a custom bootloader/reader that booted in under one second from powerup on an Apple ][—complete with keyboard navigation and paginator. I was pretty proud of that.

I acted as a co-sysop for the SMS BBS. I also ran my own BBS, which I wrote from scratch using Apple BASIC and ran on my Apple //e, which detected when you used ProTERM, and would offer you MouseText-based iconography and keyboard navigation.

I made graphics demos on the //gs, wrote a 1-bit audio recorder for the Apple ][ based purely on cycle-counting (it sounded like crap, but it worked), and wrote a…uh…self-replicating utility…for the Apple //gs that would automatically eject your disk after some random delay…which spread…uh…never mind about that one.

Anyway, here’s the letter in its nerdy glory. Good times. Good times.

Full text of the letter:

Singapore Microcomputer Society letterhead

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

RE : DAVID RAHARDJA

This letter is to acknowledge David Rahardja as an active and valuable member of the Apple Users Group in the Singapore Microcomputer Society (SMS) during the period of Dec 1988 to July 1990.

David has a talent for creative work and it is seen in his work as a writer and editor for the Apple column in our magazines, Microlines and also the AUG Stack (a magazine on a disk). His excellent computer graphics and his considerable expertise is an asset to himself and the organisation.

David’s credentials includes an interactive, disk-based magazine. His programming, editing and creative work on the first issue was highly remarkable, and copies of that issue have since been distributed to various countries like in the States.

David’s other contributions includes:

• Publishing, editing and coauthoring the 1989 SMS Apple Users Group Survey Report.
• Procuring advertisements and producing promotional material for the Society.
• Working as co-System Operator of the SMS-2, our electronic bulletin board system.

He is also very active in management work and contributes to ideas during meetings and such.

We acknowledge David’s talents and appreciate his contributions to the Society and am certain he will be an asset to any organisation he may join.

Yours sincerely,

Apple User Group Singapore Microcomputer Society

(signed)

Colin Nah

Chairman

PS: It’s sad that basically everything I wrote prior to the 2000s were on floppies and old SCSI drives that have given up their ghost to the vagaries of time, mold, and rust. I wish I could see my old code again if just to laugh at how naive it was.

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