On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 16:04, Joost Roeleveld <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sunday 03 April 2011 15:13:09 luis jure wrote: >> on 2011-04-03 at 10:47 Neil Bothwick wrote: >> >It's been done on a C-64, but I think a 3.5KB box with no mass storage >> >might be a little too challenging. >> >> 3.5? wow, i always thought that the name meant it had 20K... like the C64 >> and C128. but no. now, almost 30 years later, i learn that it had 5K, 1.5 >> of them used by the system (you wouldn't want to leave the system without >> ram, would you?) >> >> i never had a vic-20 (my first computer was the atari st-1040 in 1988), >> but a friend of mine had one in the early 80's and i always wondered at >> all the things you could do with the thing. i couldn't program, so i used >> to sit next by him telling him my ideas for a program for algorithmic >> composition, that he tried to code. > > Nice, a walk down memory lane :) > The first computer we had at home (apart from an IBM my dad borrowed a few > times) was an Atari 1040 ST. > We got it in 1986 and I can't even remember all the things I did with it. > It came with a copy of GFA Basic. This was a bit like C or Pascal, but then > with Basic commands. > No line numbers, a decent editor and a compiler and linker. I could mix > machine-code, basic-code and C-code into a final program to get a faster > result. > > The machine still worked last time I tried it and is currently still stored at > my parents with strict instructions not to throw it away :) >
Oh, the nostalgy... :-) My first computer I believe was an Apple ][, a hand-down from an uncle. It ran only for 1-2 weeks before it went to the Bit Bucket in the Sky. Then my parents got me an Atari 800XL. That's where I cut my programming teeth with its built-in BASIC. When its floppy drive (5.25") gave up the ghost, I got another hand-down; a PC-XT compatible no-name with a huge (at that time) 20 MB hard disk. Again, it died after serving me & my brother for a couple of years, and we got a "PC Brand 486 SLC" desktop. And there I dabbled in Pascal and ASM, making replacement drivers for MS-DOS :-P ... I still remember tuning QEMM386.sys trying to eke the last bytes of Low Memory... Afterwards, I started university, and its a blur of PC clones (and Windows 9x)... and I shifted mental-gears to become a network engineer :-) Rgds, -- Pandu E Poluan ~ IT Optimizer ~ Visit my Blog: http://pepoluan.posterous.com
