First micro or computing experiences

[BillO]

My first experience with microprocessors was with an Intel 8080, but after almost a year and spending nearly enough to buy a good used car, I realized I had accomplished little except blinking a few LEDs. The first real work I did was after I bought a KIM-1 followed quickly by a my OSI Superboard II. I built several of my own 6502 based projects after that and then tackled my own version of the Elf using a RCA 1802.

I kind a left electronics behind for a long while perusing my education and a career in IT. During that time I just bought pre-built systems (Apple, Tandy, Atari-ST, IBM, blah, blah...).

Now that I'm old and burnt out, I just play around with old stuff and wonder why it's not a easy as it once was....

[6502inside]

Mine was with the Tomy Tutor, an unusual partial clone of the TI 99/4A. Frustratingly, almost none of the power of the TMS 9995 was accessible to the user. Moving to the Commodore 64 was a revelation.

http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/tomy/

[cbscpe]

The first and only computer I used on the bit level for several years were PDP-11's. Then I quit the job and was no longer involved in writing software and building hardware, but still wanted to tinker a bit with these subjects, so I got an Apple-II and ever since 6502 is my favorite processor to do my home projects.

[barrym95838]

clockpulse wrote:

My first Computer was a TRS-80 so I played around with Basic and z80 assembly programming. But within a few years I ended up with an Apple ][ + and moved on to programming in 6502 assembly. For me it just seemed easier and quicker to think like a 6502.

Wow! We must be brothers from a different mother!

Mike B.

[ttlworks]

My first computer was the Elektor Junior Computer, 1980. //picture from 2015.
(Just ignore that odd contraption plugged to it...)

[Tor]

I now noticed that the title said '.. or computing' experience.. not just micro. So although I started with AIM-65 and Nascom-1, as I mentioned in my early post, the computer I first used on a regular basis was the school's mini. But I have problems remembering the brand/model. What I thought I remembered doesn't match what I look up on the net. I think it was a British contraption though. Core memory, teletype, punched paper for loading and storing programs (either via the teletype, or, for larger things like e.g. the BASIC compiler, the mini's fast paper reader/puncher). The core memory was non-volatile, of course. The school gave me the key to the computer room, so I would go there in evenings and weekends. After unlocking the door I just had to turn on the power (also a key) inside of the door, and the mini came to life, with everthing still in memory. So, no need to re-load BASIC or whatever from that big roll of punched paper tape, just continue with the program I left from the night before. I wish I could figure out what that machine's name really was.

After all of that, when I got my first job I started working with Norsk Data minicomputers. That's where I really bonded. Fabulous machines, for my kind of person. Aaaand.. I've finally got one now! In my basement. (I worked with VAX too back then but that's not the same.)

[BigEd]

May need a photo of your basement, Tor...

[rwiker]

Hmmmm... apart from card punches, the first computer equipment I ever used were the ND10S and ND100 at my local technical college. I was 12 at the time, and decided on my career then... 40 years ago.

Like BigEd, I'd like to see a photo of your basement - or at the very least, I'd like to know a little about the ND that you got.

[Tor]

Ah, the ND is an ND110/CX Satellite, which is a much smaller version (physically) of (one of) the machines I worked with, back in the day. But other than that it's the same. As it's not a rack machine there's less room for disks, but that's all really, strangely enough. Well, there are only 7 slots, which is much less than the rack variants. But that's enough. My machine has two terminal boards, for example, giving no less than 16 terminal ports.. in addition to the console, which is on the CPU board. Here's my machine: http://www.ndwiki.org/wiki/ND-110_Satellite_9883.21238
General specs for the satellite series: http://www.ndwiki.org/wiki/ND-110_Satellite_Series
No picture there of my actual machine, but it's like in this picture (except that mine is on wheels, easy to move around).

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Tor wrote:

I now noticed that the title said '.. or computing' experience..

Actually, my first computing experience was playing around with a ballistics computer at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago during the 1960s. The beast was tube-powered...

[barrym95838]

I can remember having a conversation with "Eliza" on the Lawrence Hall of Science's mainframe during a school field trip in the mid 70s, but I don't know what kind it was. I also recall playing a text-based "Moon Landing" simulation on the mainframe at Cosumnes River College around the same time, but again I don't know what the hardware was. My first real programming experience was on a TRS-80 Model 1 Level 1 with 4 KB of RAM in 1979, but my first true bond formed with my own Apple ][+ a couple of years later. Man, Applesoft BASIC executed a lot faster than Level 1 and Level 2 BASIC on the TRS-80, and the Apple's built-in machine language monitor was the coolest thing I had ever seen!

Mike B.

P.S. Oh and the Apple's hi-res graphics gave you something that looked like a dot instead of a small rectangle. The only thing I liked better about the TRS-80 was the 64-column screen ... the Apple ][+ completely smoked it in every other category.

[rwiker]

Tor wrote:

Ah, the ND is an ND110/CX Satellite, which is a much smaller version (physically) of (one of) the machines I worked with, back in the day.

Was "CX" "Commercial Extension" (aka BCD arithmetic)?

My first experience with the ND computers was actually playing computer games. I remember a Norwegian translation of "Colossal Cave", a game that I think the Brits know as "Nim" (complete with sarcastic comments whenever the computer had the upper hand), and some sort of artillery exercise displaying on a Tek 4014 (I think).

The first computers I actually did any programming on were Apple ][s at high school; these had 16KB of RAM and used audio cassette for storage. One of my first projects was a version of "Nim" – with as much sarcasm as I could muster at that age.

Ever since I've had a soft spot for Norsk Data (where I worked for three summers in the late 80s), Apple (which still gets most of my money for computers), and the 6502.

[Tor]

rwiker wrote:

Was "CX" "Commercial Extension" (aka BCD arithmetic)?

The ND-100/CE was an ND-100 with BCD arithmetic and stack handling instructions (all-in-one instructions for something compilers would use multiple instructions for, at function start and exit). So /CE was Commercial Extended. It was an upgrade of the microcode. Later there was ND-100/CX which improved on the /CE microcode implementation and also introduced new OS support instructions. ND-100/CX became the "standard", as the operating system soon started using those new instructions (the /VSX version of SINTRAN-III).

The ND-110 was a newer version of the ND-100/CX, with integrated Memory Management System on the same board, no separate MMS board needed, and much more, including many more instructions. The ND-110/CX is just a faster version of the ND-110, with larger instruction cache and adding a data cache. 1.5 to 3.5 times faster than the 110.

TL;DR,: For the older ND-100, /CE was Commercial Extended, /CX was /CE plus OS support instructions, /CX was also a bit more modern technologically.
For the ND-110, /CX just means "faster" (the 110, without /CX, already included all the 100/CX instructions and had the same performance). Essentially, ND-110/CX was just the faster improved version 2 of the ND-110.

[sark02]

1983 ZX Spectrum. At first I programmed exclusively in BASIC. This was my first computer, so it was very exciting. The back of the ZX Spectrum manual had a character code table listing all values 0-255 along with the character that the code represented (e.g. ASCII). The table also had rows labeled "Z80 Assembler", along with "After ED" and "After BC"... I didn't understand what any of it meant.

I read in some computer magazines about "machine code". This was the raw language of the computer, and ran 10-100x faster than BASIC. I was intrigued. Another magazine had a series on Z80 assembler, and byte by byte, in BASIC, I POKEd short program fragments such as "LD BC,1234; RET" into memory and ran them via the USR() function. Sometimes the Spectrum would hang... sometimes it would crash. Loops ran so fast I could hardly believe it.

Eventually I bought a copy of the HiSoft assembler called DevPac, and I spent some time doing larger experiments, learning about interrupts, etc. I was around 14 at the time. I still have a Spectrum in a box in a closet. I'm in the US now, so it doesn't work... but I like to think it might one day.

My next computer was an Atari 800XL. Being an assembler language convert, my first software purchase was the Atari Assembler/Editor cartridge. This is possibly the slowest assembler ever written. But it did get me into 6502 assembly. Coming from the Z80 I was initially dumbfounded by the criminal lack of registers, but BY GOD was it FAST! I spent hundreds of hours and wrote 1000s of lines of 6502 code over the following couple of years, diving deeper into the 800XL hardware and capabilities, and really came to enjoy the 6502.

My last non-PC computer was an Atari ST. Again, my first purchase was the HiSoft DevPacST assembler. I loved the 68000. So much power and so easy to write for. I think I spent four or five years with the ST, taking me through my university years, before I put it in a box for good. Along with my Spectrum and 800XL.

A decade later, around 2002, I bought a Nintendo Gameboy Advance and, with the help of a programmable flash cartridge and the gbadev.org website, I learned to program in ARM assembler. I developed using GNU tools, doing low-level critical code in ARM assembler and higher level code in 'C'. As it was a little gaming machine, with very nice graphics and sprite hardware, it was great seeing efforts come to life... it took me back to the 80s again, in terms of the pleasure it gave me to write new things.

[DerTrueForce]

My first time mucking about with a computer was a Windows 98SE box, probably playing Day of the Tentacle and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, sometime in the early 2000s. I managed to get hold of QBASIC and then QuickBASIC 4.5, and DirectQB was a great enabler there, but I never wrote anything memorable or impressive.
Much later, I found a couple of old Commodore 64s and a tape drive for them(no floppy drive, unfortunately) at the recycling center, and I had a play around with them for a bit. I was intrigued with them at the time, not having seen anything like them before. I only ever played around with the BASIC on them, and never got into assembly with them, and eventually loaned them to a friend. I really should get them back from him, as I actually have the inclination to do some work with 'em now(even if the power supply needs work).