The NABU PC was an early 1980s Canadian home computer designed to connect users to a cable-based information network. This page highlights NABU PC history, revival, and related videos from Geek With Social Skills.
"Natural Access to Bi-directional Utilities" - NABU
Start with the featured NABU PC videos from the Geek With Social Skills archive, including New Old Stock hardware, CP/M software experiments, MSX-related testing, and Ishkur network updates.
Natural Access to Bi-directional Utilities, or NABU for short, was a personal home computer system released to consumers in 1982. The concept was ambitious for its time: connect homes, schools, and businesses to a networked computer service through cable television infrastructure.
Founded in Ottawa, Canada, in 1982 by entrepreneur John Kelly, the NABU project used cable TV modems to connect NABU PCs to a country-wide network. Alongside standard personal computer capabilities, the NABU computer could download software and information content through the cable feed.
Applications included video games, local news, and programming languages such as LOGO and BASIC. The system pointed toward a connected computing future years before most households had access to the internet.
Unfortunately, because of financial difficulties, the NABU Network went off the air on August 31, 1986.
The NABU PC experienced a surprising modern revival in late 2022 when a few thousand New Old Stock NABU units appeared on eBay through PellMill LLC. For vintage computing enthusiasts in the United States and around the world, it was a rare chance to buy an unused 1980s network computer decades after the original service had ended.
On November 26, 2022, Adrian Black posted a video on Adrian's Digital Basement titled "The 1980s computer you've never heard of - The NABU PC". Within hours of the video going live, interest in the NABU PC exploded and helped kick off a new wave of modern development, preservation, documentation, and experimentation.
Today, the NABU community continues to explore original software, CP/M options, network emulation, modern adapters, archival material, and new ways to use the hardware outside its original cable network environment.
The NABU PC matters because it represents an early attempt at consumer networked computing. Long before the web became part of everyday life, NABU imagined a home computer connected to a larger information and software service.
Its story connects vintage computing, Canadian technology history, cable TV infrastructure, online services, software distribution, educational computing, and the modern rediscovery of forgotten computer hardware.
For collectors and retro computing fans, the NABU PC is also a fascinating example of how a machine can disappear from mainstream awareness, then return decades later through preservation, community curiosity, and New Old Stock hardware finds.
Popular NABU PC topics include the original NABU Network, cable TV modem access, New Old Stock systems, CP/M support, LOGO, BASIC, MSX-related experiments, network adapters, software preservation, and modern tools that help recreate or replace parts of the original online service.
Because the NABU was built around network access, many modern projects focus on restoring the original experience, documenting how the service worked, finding software archives, and adapting the computer for use without the original cable-based NABU Network.