Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:42:40 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:37:45 -0400, HK wrote:

Old Wayne sounds like those losing control IT managers of the mid 1980s
who were terrified by PCs because they meant that users could kind of do
things their way instead of his way.
Oh no, just because I managed large corporate systems, I never had
that mentality although there are certainly some who do. I've been
dabbling in home computers for a long time, well before the IBM PC,
MS/DOS, etc. My first was actually a DIY project using a board level
engineering prototype called the SC/MP. It was made by National
Advanced Systems back in the 70s and was programmed in hexadecimal
machine language via a keypad device. Those were the days. Of
course it didn't do much compared to what we now have. My first
"boxed" home computer was the Commodore VIC-20 which used an audio
cassette for input/output. It had a decent Basic compiler and could
do some useful things. Well before all of that I had a TI-59
programmable hand held with all the bells and whistles. It was an
amazing device in its day.

Oh man does that bring back memories.

When I was in high school, the Math Club used to work at the Sylvania
plant over in Danvers "programming" one of their computers - with
phone jacks of all things.

My wife claims to be a mathlete when she was in high school. Alternate
for the It's Academic team too.

My first exposure to the mini-computer was a Digital Research CP/M
machine working with the IBM P/LM compiler. From there it was a few
home built computers that essentially did nothing more than play Lunar
Lander, Kingdom and Collassal Cave. Used to bootstrap the earlier
computers eventually moving the paper tape which I found at a ham flea
market.

I really liked programing in P/L M, P/L 1, P/L M86. Great languages.

Proably the most fun computer was the VIC-20 and when I upgraded to
the Commodore 64 I was in hog heaven - man, could I do some stuff with
that. It still runs.

You should donate it to a computer museum.

On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:08:15 -0400, BAR wrote:

Proably the most fun computer was the VIC-20 and when I upgraded to
the Commodore 64 I was in hog heaven - man, could I do some stuff with
that. It still runs.

You should donate it to a computer museum.

I would, but I have a problem with old pieces like this - I tend to
keep them.

Besides, you can't get video games like the ones that ran on the C-64
- in particular "Omega Race" which I still enjoy playing once in a
while. :)

There is a ham here in Woodstock who still has his packet node running
on a C-64.

I've got my packet node, weather station and KAM running on a old 486
machine which, for my money, was one of the best processors ever
designed. It's gone through one power supply, but still runs like a
champ. I don't think it's been turned off in ten years or so (power
interruptions excepted).