6502.org

Disclaimer: I've never owned a 6502 machine before the recent past, when I bought a C64 to play with.

My older brother bought a 16KB ZX Spectrum in late '82 or early '83. We played games, and he got into BASIC programming with a few games published in some magazines. I remember he was chuffed because when the machine was fixed after suffering a fault, it came back with 48KB. That machine still works, as of a year or so ago, but got rehomed in a Plus case. We upgraded to a 128K +2 in '86. At that point I started to learn the BASIC and wrote some really horrible programs (I was 11 years old then....). I also got interested in machine code, and hand assembled some routines like a clearing the screen routine by rotating the screen memory. It was one of those magical moments when my little routine worked first time with RANDOMIZE USR x.

In '89 (Xmas) we got an Amiga 500. That was an amazing machine. With it I learned "proper" programming with a decent structured BASIC (AMOS Basic), and after I upgraded to a A1200 in '93 - my first machine with a harddisk, all 70MB of it - I learned C from some magazine articles. I also learned a lot about the OS and got a database program on Aminet. Eventually I learned Perl on that machine too, as part of my final year Uni project. These are the main tools I use to this day.

(I've always disliked PCs. Not quite the rabid loathing that was common with Amiga die-hards of the day, but a definite dislike. Mostly of the OSes but the hardware as well. I still remember the first time I saw DOS and couldn't believe that this "business machine" had nowhere near the capabilities of the Amiga 500 I was used to. And while Windows 3.1 looked nice, that was about all the nice things that could be said about it.)

Eventually (EDIT: this was '97) I succumbed and got a PC, but only for running Linux, after getting into UNIX through the HP-UX machines at Uni. That got me to about '05 when I finally got fed up with how poor Linux on the desktop was/is and I got into OS X (not through any love of Apple, just because it is nice hardware and the OS is a fairly decent UNIX). I still think Linux is the business when it comes to the server side, and have several servers running Debian in the house.

Now I've gone full circle and enjoy the older machines more then working on "current" stuff, hardware and software. It's certainly a far nicer usage of the little free time I manage to get.

My first PC coincided with my first Linux installation too!

An IBM XT compatible (8088) with 640k Ram 20Meg hard disk, monochrome display and DOS3.1. I think it was an 8 or 10MHz turbo machine though. I still have some of the original files stored from that machine. The first computer I worked on was a Commodore PET 2001.

My first computer was an Oric-1 in 1984 followed by an Atari 800XL in around 1986. Both were 6502 based, so got to grips with assembly on the Oric and could continue with the learning on the Atari (although the Atari had much more powerful graphics chips despite being a design originating from the late 1970s).

I remember seeing adverts for the Atari ST and Amiga around 1985, but they were way too expensive for me. However, in 1988 the Amiga A500 was just in the price range for my parents to purchase for me. So that was my first post-6502 machine and got me in to 68000 assembly as well as C programming. I went to university to read computer science, and my final year dissertation was done entirely on that Amiga (this was early 1992).

I have a real soft spot for the Oric, Atari and Amiga - they ignited and fuelled the passion I have for computing all the way from 13 years old when I got my first computer, through university to my first graduate job as a software engineer.

Sadly I don't get to do much programming / low level computing at work anymore (still work in IT but now a consultant type) - so this forum and my 6502 project keep feeding my interest!

Cheers, Dolo
https://hackaday.io/project/5789-6502-homebrew-computer

My path was Vic 20, Apple 2+, Apple 2e, Amiga 500, PC, back to Amiga 500 (since when I was at Uni we used Macs and I was able to run a Mac emulator on the Amiga at home) then back to PCs from then on since. These days I do a lot with micro-controllers, various Arduinos and Teensys mainly, for work. I use them a lot in my home projects too.

Simon

Apple //e (on loan from future employer) -> C64 -> Taiwanese AT clone w/80386-25 -> C64 -> IBM PC/XT -> Dell AT clone w/80286 -> AT clone w/80386-25 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 2000 -> Amiga 3000UX -> Apple //e (same unit, acquired from former employer) -> C64

I bought the C64 because I could afford to pay cash for it*. I really wanted an Apple //e, but upon turning on the C64 for the first time, instantly changed my mind. The C64 was vastly superiour in every way except the disk drive (which in some ways even that was vastly superiour; you can't run 6502 code on a Disk ][). The C64 didn't live long. First the sound quit, then the colour monitor lost its colour. In retrospect, the C64 power supply was probably dying, and the PLA was bad. I bought a SID trying to fix it, but should have bought a PLA. The monitor should have been easy to fix too.

The "obvious" choice at the time was something "IBM compatible". I learned Pascal with that and learned the BIOS and DOS functions inside and out. But I missed the C64, so I went back to that, sans colour and sound! For practical reasons, when the C64 finally died, I bought a PC/XT for about what I paid for the C64. I eventually worked my way back up to an 80386-based AT clone, which I used to the max. I had both a VGA and an MDA, with dual monitors, and I ran DESQ/view, typically running four or five tasks simultaneously all the time.

I then acquired an Amiga 500 from a guy who owed me money. At first, I didn't want it, because I had seen Amigas on display in a store when they were new, and I was unimpressed; the demo software was very lacking. But my debtor, being unable to pay me back, was very insistent. He showed me the A500, and before we could even get it running (corrupt boot disk), I was thouroughly impressed with it. Shortly thereafter, Windows 95 came out. Seeing what it was like compared to the Amiga, I put the AT clone in storage. I worked my way all the way to an A3000 running OS4.0. My CyberstormPPC board died the day I installed OS4.1. I lost my internet connection around that time. I had been playing with the //e which I had re-acquired (saved it from the trash), but, ended up putting together a complete C64 system, and that's where I am today.

I have an A2000 running mostly for financial bookeeping (and it makes an excellent "tweener"). Anything I need to do on the internet is pretty much done on "phones" and this "phablet". Everything else gets done on the C64.

*When I bought the C64, I couldn't afford any peripherals. I bought a black and white TV at a rummage sale, and saved programs by recording the video on a VCR and listing the program! It was a couple years before I got a used 1541 and a new 1802 (I think) monitor. I still have the TV https://youtu.be/cPe_T2h4MQM

That's quite an up-and-down journey - great use of VCR as a hard copy storage!

CyberstormPPC is an interesting and new one to me: an internal PowerPC expansion for Amiga, with a GCC toolchain. A development from Amiga's final push, which was to port AmigaDOS to the PPC, apparently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerUP_(accelerator)

BTW, I never really had a "post-6502" machine, as I have used the 6502 in one form or another continuously since 1977. The first commercial 6502 machine I owned was a C-64, purchased in 1983. A C-128 followed in 1985 and several C-128Ds followed in 1987. I used the C-128D for software development up until 1994, when I started cross-assembling for the 65C02 on my UNIX box (x86). I still have one C-128D here, as well as a Lt. Kernal hard drive subsystem, but have not powered either for about seven years.