Hi all!
Nuts & Volts magazine recently ran a series on the Elf 2000 SBC,
switches and all!
My first 'computer' programming was a TRS-80 Level 1, followed a
year later by an Apple ][+ with AppleSoft ROMs - God, those were the
days (even if I did have to 'skip out' of study hall to use it :) !)
That was in Junior High.
Since then, I've owned an Apple ][+, two ][e's (one of which still
works sans/floppy controller), a //GS, a Performa 475 (still have the
working motherboard, too!) a Quadra 800, a B&W G3, some or another
all-in-one PowerPC thingy, and an iMac G4 (20" FP/round base) which
I'm writing this on. May soon get an Intel-based mac; not sure which
one...
I also remember a battery-powered switch-only 'digital' computer
with a bank of 3v bulbs, and a row of about 20 or so slide switches
with the little metal things with holes that you slip the wires in
to; was almost certainly a Radio Shack item... Forgot the name of it
- so long ago... about mid to late 70s (before the advent of cheap
microprocessors/microcontrollers).
Of all of them, I have to say I loved that old Apple ][+ the most
- I pretty much taught myself 6502 assembler on it. The fundamentals
stay with me to this day; which is probably why it's so easy for me
to pick up new programming languages.
Lesson to all? Get the basics down, pat! Even if you have to
trudge through the material time and time again, do it. You'll be
well rewarded later! I know I have :)
On Sep 14, 2006, at 8:35 PM, Daniel Stenning wrote:
Well You beat me in the antiquity stakes - my first stab at
computers was
much later - programming a "good 'ole" traffic light sim in
machine code
using a university dev kit based on intel 8008 microprocessor
( might have
beem 4004 - cant remember - it was 1980 after all...) using
switches for
each bit of the byte...
Tedious in todays terms but the best way to learn if u ask me..
I always remember feelng sorry for the computer science students:
while us
Electronic engineering lads got to program in basic,C and unix using
terminals and a PDP11, the comp sci boys were learning fortran by
punching
out paper cards and traipsing up 5 flights of stairs to feed them
into the
computer and then traipsing down to the ground florr for the
printout - only
to be followed by numerous more iterations of course. From what I
gathered
they hated their comp sci practicals while we generally enjoyed
ours...
Well I did - anyway
On 15/9/06 02:20, "Joseph Nastasi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Sep 14, 2006, at 9:01 PM, Joseph Nastasi wrote:
On Sep 14, 2006, at 8:22 PM, Daniel Stenning wrote:
They even a working mechanical "analogue" computer -
We have it all so easy these days.
When I was a young lad of 11, I got a small plastic mechanical
computer called the DigiComp I:
http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/Digicomp-Kit-1963.htm
You could program it to count up and down and demonstrate simple
boolean logic - based games. Not a bad deal for $10 bucks a the
time (mid - 60's)
Memories...
:-)
And a couple of years later (God, I HATE when I get on these tech
nostalgia trips), I received a Geniac computer kit (about $20) This
was introduced in 1955 and was basically allowed you to have switched
based logic that lit lamps for output. You actually created these
rotating switches with masonite discs on a masonite base and wired
them to produce various logic combinations. It was a pain (then
again so was the Digicomp) but I thought it was very cool. The first
program I wired was a "Spacecraft Airlock Controller." Little did I
know how long that theme would last...
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1re4o/geniac.html
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