non-cents productions, LLC

h. w. neff

an e-book?
what's an e-book???

it was the late 80's...pre-web (as we now know it) and before the wireless revolution (though there were cellular phones/bricks).

a time when baseball cards only came with gum
and nobody would take their collection to a game.

except for the pictures, we did!

sportsbook

from the first "wouldn't that be cool?" conversation it took 3 of us only 30 days to have 3 working prototypes built, programmed, and out at a field for spring training.

it took a little bit longer to get to the production model, which is shown above. it held all the stats of all the then current players (plus some gotta-have players like "the babe", etc.) plus a it came with a lanyard (design criterion: beer in one hand, dog in one hand, and no letting the unit drop), a manual, and all the associated packaging (care to see the box?).

we landed our sportsbook in places like "the sharper image" catalogue.

unfortunately for us, it was also before "flash" memory chips. the unit was based initially on eproms, with production to be based on masked roms. the bottom line was that we were effectively shipping $5 with each initial unit, a problem to be solved when volume got high enough....alas, money got tight first: a contract for an electronic bible we developed for a customer was breached and we hit the wall at full speed.

in the immortal words of maxwell smart: "missed it by that much."

190401