(Natural Access to Bi-directional Utilities)

A personal home computer was released to consumers in 1982, enabling families and businesses to connect to a worldwide network.

Founded in Ottawa, Canada, in 1982, NABU used cable TV modems to connect families and schools to a countrywide network. In addition to standard PC capabilities, the NABU computer could download software and information content through the cable feed. Applications included games, programming languages, and news.

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The Internet Before The Internet

The NABU PC was said to be ahead of its time, described as the internet before the internet. Although the initial release was not bi-directional, for the users who experienced it, it was a glimpse into the future. Limited only by the television-cable infrastructure, whose amplifiers did not allow bidirectional transmission, the NABU was confined to downloading files from a looping broadcast of applications.

NABU servers broadcast a “Cycle” of applications, including the DOS (downloadable operating system). At the time, other consoles on the market were limited by read-only ROM chips that hosted the subroutines programmers used to make the hardware more accessible. Those subroutines were built into the chip's hardware and could never be improved or altered.

The NABU, however, downloaded the IOS — the operating system containing the programmer subroutines — from the server over the television cable connection. Downloading the content allowed NABU computer owners to experience real-time bug fixes, updates, and new software.

NABU Preservation Project

DJ Sures and Leo Binkowski founded the NABU Preservation Project to restore the original NABU Network through software emulation and to continue software development in the direction planned by the original company’s initiatives — an entertainment-networked family computer system.

Because the original NABU PC was designed to be connected to a network, the preservation project is continuing development with that objective in mind. By adding features such as Cloud CP/M, Chat, and Telnet, NABU computers can now connect to other computers over the internet.

This was the ultimate dream of the NABU Corporation in 1981 when they ventured into the home-computing market with the NABU Personal Computer.

Experience NABU

This website is home to the first and official NABU Internet Adapter software. This software emulates the NABU Network Adapter, the hardware used to connect NABU Personal Computers to the NABU Network.

The NABU Internet Adapter provides entertainment channels, including the original NABU Network from 1984, as well as new homebrew software, demos, and utilities.