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Are you really sure you want to know who I am? If not, you can still escape back to the main page......

Are you still here? Don't say I didn't warn you!

My name is San Bergmans. I was born on 12 December 1959, in Tilburg, The Netherlands. Since my marriage in 1988 I live in Oisterwijk, which is a few kilometres North-East of Tilburg. A bit further down on this page you'll find a picture of me.

At a very young age it was already fairly obvious that I had a more than an average interest in technical things. I loved to play with my Lego and my model railway. Automating this model railway was always a dream of mine, a dream that never came true though. Computers were far too expensive at that time, and automation was done with simple, yet equally expensive relays. I made many plans, that were never realized :-(

My first real programming steps were on a TI-57 calculator. It had only a very limited program memory, and running a program was simply a matter of repeating the keystrokes. After a few years I bought myself a TI-58 calculator. This calculator had more memory which was volatile at that time, which means that the memory was lost every time you switch off the calculator. A program had to be keyed in every time you needed it, for there were no ways to save it.
In 1980 my TI-58 died, it had problems with a cold start. After switching it on it took sometimes 10 minutes before it was running. I was still at school, so I still needed a calculator very badly. It was then when I decided to change religion, and converted myself from the TI camp to the HP camp with my brand new HP-41. This HP-41 was way ahead of its time, and was more like a tiny computer. To my knowledge it was the first calculator with alpha-numeric capabilities. And it still lives today. It was very useful during my last years at school for it had constant memory, something the teachers were not aware of at that time :-)

In 1982 it was time to buy a real computer, an Apple ][+. It was powered by a 6502 processor and had 48k of RAM memory. Disk drives were too expensive for me, so the first year I had to get along with only a cassette recorder. Basic was nice, but I realized that programming in machine language was much more powerful. I did not have an assembler, so I hand assembled a few programs. This was very educational and time consuming. Documentation was made with a mechanical typewriter, so I had to adjust my typing force every time I switched between computer and typewriter.
About a year later I had enough money for a pair of disk drives. The storage capacity of the Apple disk drives was very limited, only 140k could fit on one disk. TEAC came with 80 track drives which had a storage capacity of 640k (320k per side). Those drives were not supported by Apple, so I had to use one of the few available patched disk operating systems. None of them were to my satisfaction though. So I patched the original Apple Dos myself and named it S-DOS80, which worked very well. It is amazing what you learn when you patch existing programs like this. All extra features had to fit in the limited space that was available. Some features of the DOS were removed (like the INIT command which formatted new diskettes). Some routines were optimized to free every single byte that was available.

I started some small experimental projects with stand alone micro processors. For this I first built and programmed an EPROM programmer as an expansion board for the Apple. It programmed chips up to 32k (27256).
After a long search for the proper tools I found that the SC-Assembler, written by Bob-Sander Cederlof, was the most suitable. But after a while I found that the SC-Assembler needed some improvements. The 6502 version of the assembler was OK to me. But other processor crosses were rare and the ones that were available had so many limitations that it was hard to work with them. After wasting a whole week trying to find a lookup error in a hand assembled 8048 program I decided to program my own cross assembler, the SB-Assembler. I disassembled the SC-Assembler and used the knowledge I gained from that process to write my own version with many extra features.

After a few years the inevitable happened: I had to switch to the PC. The schematic drawing programs for the Apple were too primitive to be practical, and the word processing capabilities were also quite limited. So my desktop was filled with an Apple ][ and a PC. The Apple became more and more obsolete because the PC took over more of its tasks. The only tasks the Apple had left were to program in assembly and to burn EPROM's. To free my desk from the Apple I desperately needed a cross assembler on the PC and a stand alone EPROM programmer. In 3 month time I wrote my first 8086 assembly program: the SBASM for the PC was born. It took a few extra month to finish the extra crosses, but the migration form Apple to PC was almost complete. With pain in my heart I waved my Apple ][ goodbye.

In the meantime I was developing a serial bus system that could connect up to 125 different devices to one serial port, the SB-Bus. This system would free my EPROM programmer from a fixed system. But the EPROM programmer was not the first device I built for the SB-Bus, that honour was for the EPROM simulator. From now on assembling a program for a stand alone processor was only a matter of starting the assembler and the ROM code was automatically sent to the EPROM simulator. The brand new program is started as soon as the assembler is done!
In the meantime there are many more devices connected to the SB-Bus, as you can see on the projects pages.
You can read more on the subject SB-Bus in the dedicated chapter on this web site.

You may already have guessed that my favourite programming language is assembly. But that doesn't mean it is the only language I'm familiar with. Apart from the human languages Dutch, English and German, I also speak the computer languages:

• Assembly (practical experience with, 6502, 6800, 6805, 6809, 68HC11, Z8, Z80, 8085, 8086, 8048, 8051, AVR and PIC)
• Basic, including Apple Basic, GW-Basic, Quick Basic, VBA and Visual Basic
• Pascal, including USCD Pascal, Quick Pascal, and Delphi
• Dbase, including Dbase II and Dbase III and Clipper
• LabView, a very nice graphical programming language to control measuring instruments (National Instruments)
• HTML and JavaScript
• PHP and MySQL
• Python
• A little C

I'm a reasonable early PC user, so I'm familiar with the natural Microsoft evolution of operating systems. I also started using the Unix (FreeBSD) operating system running a home server.

• MS-DOS (practical experience as of version Version 3.2)
• Windows (3.0, 3.10, 3.10, Win-95, Win-98, ME, Win-2000 and Windows XP)
• FreeBSD
• Linux
• QNX
• PocketPC and PalmOS

As promised, here is a picture of myself. Ain't I cute? If you look a little bit closer you will find a more recent picture of me.

In 1979 I worked for 3 months at the Volt (daughter of Philips) as part of my study. My assignment was to build a system to test Switched Mode Power Supply transformers. My employer did not allow me to finish this project, because otherwise they had to find a new job for my successors. I can't sit still however, and therefore I spent a lot of my time in the company's library. (There was no internet connection available at that time :-)

In 1979 and 1980 I worked at Fluke for about 8 months (6 month as part of my study, and 2 extra months during my school holiday). For the first 6 month my main job was to build test systems for new PCB's. During the last 2 months I repaired the Fluke 8020 and 8024 series digital multi meters at the production test line.

From 1982 until 1988 I was employed at Abra Beheer, importer of Sansui and Fisher consumer electronics, among other brands. My job was to repair audio and video equipment. Later also Sanyo business machines was added to the main activities, and my task became repairing copiers, electronic typewriters, stand alone text editors and fax machines. I also took the first Sanyo fax machines in Holland through the PTT approval.

From 1988 until late 2003 I worked at Revah Service. Here we used to repair ITT consumer electronics. Later that brand name was changed to Nokia. At first my job was to repair TV sets. But gradually I started repairing analog and digital satellite receivers, which ended up being my main business. I also did some component level mobile phone repairs and digital JVC camera repairs.

Unfortunately Nokia centralized its mobile phone service in Europe, which lead to the closing down of Revah Service. Fortunately the satellite branch survived and the remains of the previous company were taken over by Copaco, a big IT distributor in the south of the Netherlands.