On Tuesday 08 September 2015 11:11:29 EBo wrote: > On Sep 8 2015 8:24 AM, Gene Heskett wrote: > > On Tuesday 08 September 2015 08:49:57 andy pugh wrote: > >> On 8 September 2015 at 13:43, Kenneth Lerman <[email protected]> > >> > >> wrote: > >> > (Written by a man who owned a computer with 16K of memory -- > >> > although he expanded it to 48K.) > >> > >> My first computer had 1k of memory. > > > > Gotcha beat Andy, my first one, a Cosmac Elf, had 256 bytes. RCA > > 1802 MPU. A "different" architecture, but one that could be quite > > miserly with its memory usage. I learned how to program it using > > its monitor and a hex keypad, then added a 4k static ram board > > plugged into an s-100 > > buss backplane ($400+ dollars back then) and, laying ground for my > > machine control efforts now, made it into a machine controller for > > U-Matic vcr's... > > Wow, that is a trip down amnesia lane... My first paid gig was > programming an RCA 1802 that was developed for a geothermal test well > data logger.
That cpu is still in use in the drilling survey business, it can run well within an inch of two of a hot radioactive source used to excite the surrounding soil as it goes down the hole, using the signature of the return coming back to identify the rock or whatever is down there. But the tech that knew how all that worked, got a 5x better paying job at a naval yard in FL, and they would not spend the bucks to hire another radiation certified tech, so they dropped the nuclear survey service and are now just doing well maintenance. About a year later he wrote me and wanted to hire me, but lost interest when he got a quote of what it would take to make me move to FL. I've years ago, found the pond where I could be the alpha frog here in WV. Thats worth quite a bit of money to me even if I don't have tons of it now. "A country boy will survive". ;-) > I remember being able to do multi-thread programming in > hardware (via 4 banks of registers, and the context switch was an > atomic operation). The guy that hired me was the engineer, and the > prime contractor was to cheep to spend the bucks for an assembler > (many thousands of $$$), so we had to code it in hex... I kid you > not. Excellent experience. My 2 really major projects were done in hex, but the next guy saw it as some sort of black magic & ripped it out. The other, 3rd project I wrote for a color computer 2, in basic09, which turned out to be 4x faster and had std text filenames whereas the GVG offering to do that same function was both $20,000 delivered in boxes and used 2 digit hex numbers for filenames. That job? For a GVG 300-3A/B production video switcher, a 3 bus, 24 channels of input monster that was about 50/50 hardware to software. Programmable for lots of video effects, my coco2 allowed each tech director in charge of airing the live news or making a commercial, to program his own 'bag of tricks' that became available with a single button push, and be able to recall that personality he was used to working with for each job. > 5 or six years later (when I got more programming under my belt) > I bet a friend that I could write a fully relocatable macro assembler > for it in 24 hours. Well, it took me 36 hours, but years later in > 1999 when he had to do some Y2K maintenance he dusted my old assembler > code off, compiled it (with only a few non-ANSI warnings), made the > changes, and was done by the end of the day. He bought me a second > case of coke (the original bet was a case of coke). Chuckle, you have got to love it when it pays off, even if it pays in coke. That pat on the back is worth a very big grin. Being diabetic, I haven't drank one in about 30 years now. My coffee isn't quite black either, two shakes of a cinnamon shaker and two shakes of cumin go in the grounds basket too, which is anti-intestinal cancer stuff in addition to being a seasoning that seems to largely cancel the heat of the cinnamon. Cinnamon is a helper to get rid of a little sugar by digesting it better. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
