The
First Home Computers
When the Personal Computer first appeared on the scene, Bob was already programming
in machine language and wrote many programs for the Commodore Vic-20, C64, and
C128 home computers. He starting writing articles for many of the computer magazines
of the day and became a guru of machine language programming. He soon became an
associate editor of RUN magazine, Commodore magazine, and Compute!
Gazette for Commodore. David
versus Goliath In 1984, Bob started writing Pro
Stock, the first drag racing game
for a personal computer entirely in machine language! Pro
Stock was submitted to many software
publishers, including Activision. Pro
Stock underwent many changes and eventually
became Drag Race Eliminator and was again sent to Activision. Month
after month passed and Activision continued to make numerous promises, but in
reality had secretly rushed to produce their own drag racing game. At this time,
Bob was offered the position of editor for Compute! magazine, but declined
because it would necessitate a move to North Carolina. Instead, when he found
out what Activision was doing, he founded Family Software and started selling
Drag Race Eliminator, for the Commodore 64, on his own. It quickly became
one of the most popular racing games available. Besides Activision's Top Fuel
Eliminator, there was another copycat drag race program that followed shortly
after, but they were all short-lived. Bob ported the game over to the IBM PC and
compatible machines and the rest is history. Drag Race Eliminator
to this day, is the only two-player, drag racing program with an accuracy to one
thousandth's of a second. Drag Race Eliminator also remains
the longest selling racing game in the history of personal computers. The
First Practice Tree for Drag Racing
In 1987, Bob took his innovative timing routines from Drag Race Eliminator and
used them to produce the first Practice Tree, PC Tree . First, for
the Commodore 64 and then for the IBM personal computer. He followed it up in
1988 with another first, Drag Math Calculator for both platforms.
At this point, Bob started building a front engine dragster, as a father
and son project, and went bracket racing seriously. Using the PC Tree
practice tree software, Bob quickly became one of the best 'bottom bulb' racers
in the area and was winning races where his worst reaction time of the day was
better than .512, with an average of .509, on a .500 tree. Delay boxes were not
legal or used at this time in Division 1. In wanting to be more consistent on
his dial in, he started running methanol and building his own methanol calibrated
carburetors. He then wrote the first ET Prediction software for a personal computer,
The ET Predictor. At this time, laptops were not prevalent, so he
started selling Sharp EL-5500 III handheld computers with the ET Predictor programming
installed. Later, when these were discontinued by Sharp, he switched to the Sharp
PC-1270 and the ET Predictor II became one of the most popular ET
Prediction computers around. A
Return to NHRA Drag Racing Competition When Bob started NHRA Super
Comp racing in 1992, he quickly realized how difficult it was to get a throttle
stop equipped race car to repeat. Needing a way to accurately monitor the engine
RPM, he searched for an existing data recorder as a diagnostic tool. However,
no one manufactured a data recorder that could do the job. Having sampling rates
of 60 times a second, at best, nothing was capable of measuring minute RPM variation.
So, he put together the first drag racing only, all-digital data recorder, the
DataMaster Sportsman Computer. The DataMaster has
a sampling rate of over 3,300 times a second and was the first, and is
still the only, data recorder to monitor engine and drive line RPM as a frequency,
and not as a simple counter. Being able to see as little as 3 RPM of variation,
Bob quickly learned how to make a throttle stop work correctly and became deadly
at running the 8.90 index. In 1995, traveling all over the east coast, at every
race he attended, he never ran worse than 8.915 right out of the trailer. Bob
Kodadek (SC 1596) was number 1 in NHRA Super Comp for much of the 1995 season,
and ended up finishing # 7 in the world and # 2 in NHRA Division 1. |