History
Murray launched his YouTube channel in 2006 under the username adric22. [3] He worked on repairing and refurbishing iBook G3 and G4 laptops and later on MacBooks, buying and selling them on eBay, and later from his own website. He called himself TheiBookGuy. He made videos to show how he repairs some of the equipment, but had made his living with the actual repairs, as well as resales. In 2011, he shut down his repair business. [4]
Five months after creating his channel, David and his brother [5] made a channel called MyPCHelp, [6] which would mostly upload computer tutorials for any person to understand. [4]
Murray noticed his general videos about computing were attracting more subscribers. [4] In 2015, he renamed his primary channel to "The 8-Bit Guy" and focused on retrocomputing. [7] He says an average episode takes about 15 hours to produce. [4]
Murray ran several different YouTube channels with topics such as keyboard instruments from the 1980s, coin collecting, and airguns, although the latter two did not have as much popularity as his retrocomputing videos so he stopped uploading videos to them. [4] [8]
Murray was dissatisfied with his long-used in-home filming studio, so in 2020, he began construction on a small building in his backyard which would hold his new studio. In 2021, the new studio was finished and became Murray's primary filming location. [9] [10]
On January 2, 2024, Murray announced that after two years of falling views and revenue, he will be forced to shift some focus away from YouTube to the X16 project and a local arcade venue he partly owns in Bedford, TX. [11]
Content
The channel is known for its videos on restorations of old computers [12] [13] and retrocomputer development content, as well as more generally demonstrations of old technology. [14] [15]
Retroprogramming
Murray has developed video games designed to run on old computers, including:
- Planet X1 for the VIC-20, [16]
- Planet X2 for Commodore 64, [17] [18]
- Planet X3 for MS-DOS, [19] [20] [21]
- Planet X16 for the Commander X16, [22] and
- Attack of the PETSCII Robots for the Commodore PET. – The PETSCII Robots game has since been ported to many other platforms, [23] including the VIC-20, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Amiga, Apple II, ZX Spectrum, and Atari 8-bit computers, as well as MS-DOS, NES, Super NES, Oric, Atari 7800, Commodore Plus/4, Enterprise 128, MSX, PlayStation Portable, PicoMiteVGA, Commander X16, Genesis and the TI-84 Plus CE.
Murray has demonstrated the development of these games on his YouTube channel. [24] [25]
Moreover, he has developed PETDraw for various Commodore computers, a pseudo-raster drawing software using PETSCII. [16]
Commander X16 retrocomputer
Murray is working on the Commander X16, an anachronistic new 8-bit computer inspired by the Commodore 64 and designed to be largely period-accurate to it, but made using modern off-the-shelf parts [a] mostly analogous to period parts but with better-assured continued availability. [b] [27] [28] [29] [30]
Other interests
Murray is also passionate about electric cars, and has published videos about them on his channel. [31] [12]
Murray co-hosts the GeekBits podcast alongside his brother Mike Murray and friend Craig Bowes. [32]
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