Found one in the shed!
Sent from my ZX81
Earth calling Tube, come in Tube, I have a pulse Doctor but his eyes have glazed over and he is rambling ::)
CH shuts up as he hears Tubes marbles roll behind the couch, well and truely lost.
but will it blend?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko
(http://i.imgur.com/yQ1vuzr.gif)
How many people on this forum are qualified/ working in engineering/Science fields? I'm defiantly sensing a quantity of electronics engineers.....
Quote from: fizzypish on September 06, 2013, 08:55:18 AM
How many people on this forum are qualified/ working in engineering/Science fields? I'm defiantly sensing a quantity of electronics engineers.....
Tubes post above doesn't necessarily demonstrate that he's an engineer, more an antiques dealer!!
Add hoarder to his CV... he keeps things from a job he had 35 years ago :P
Also, you obviously don't send messages from your ZX81 do you? I had a ZX81, and although I was very young at the time, I remember it being fairly shit! You had to type in all the progam for the games, and I think at that stage it was fairly obvious I would never be a programmer.
Quote from: fizzypish on September 06, 2013, 08:55:18 AM
How many people on this forum are qualified/ working in engineering/Science fields? I'm defiantly sensing a quantity of electronics engineers.....
You sir are very observant,they are everywhere like Triffids :P
Quote from: Il Tubo on September 06, 2013, 10:32:01 AM
No, though I do have a ZX81. Was my first "computer" though it was a piece of shit and as soon as I got it I wanted a Spectrum. Good marketing stunt by Sinclair.
Bad an all as the ZX81 was, it was way better than its predecessor, the ZX80. Now there was a piece of shite.
You want to talk about shite?
My first home comupter (around 1983) was an Oric 1 16K:
(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2811/9687386848_d0290a3aa6_m.jpg)
Thankfully, we quickly upgraded - to the Oric1 32K
Then the Oric Atmos. We never learned:
(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7334/9687399962_3838edb79f_m.jpg)
Our cousins had a Commodore 64. We were so jealous of them. If they wanted to play a game they just loaded up the tape; we had to type them in from a fecking magazine - and they were ALWAYS crap.
Next was a Tohsiba MSX.
(http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5547/9687414096_158e274cc7_m.jpg)
Now that was actually pretty good. Unlike the Oric, it had some games - and a cartridge slot. We had 2 cartridges: a soccer game and a Kung Fu game. Both were excellent, for the time.
Then came the BBC Micro B+:
(http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3774/9684180637_3a1e70b749_m.jpg)
Ahhhh...the old BBC. Loved that machine. I actually coded on that thing as a hobby. 6502 Assembly Language. Many 5.25 inch disks at home full of half-started games.
I've hated coding since I stopped using the BBC. I work full time as a software engineer. Now THERE'S a career own goal :'(
-Barry
P.S. Apologies for the shameless nostalgic interlude there.
I had a BBC as well. It was supposed to be for educational purposes, but had some decent games. Chuckie egg was my favourite, but also played snapper, frogger, hunchback, evil weevil, killer gorilla, planetoid and meteors. I was always a bit jealous of my sprectrum owning buddies, but kid power back then didn't go as far as demanding a particular type of computer, so as I was happy to have anything. Did have a soft spot for manice miner, which I think was a spectrum game.
Didn't the BBC take cassette tapes, that could be easily copied? Don't remember every nuying any games for it.
Ah come on now Tube that would make me your peer sort of ::) first professional programming position in ESB in 1993. Jaysus how can that be. I only finished college a few years ago. Oh dear :-X
Shanna
Quote from: Il Tubo on September 06, 2013, 10:08:29 AM
LOL. Smartass! First job was in 1994.
The games could indeed be copied.
Any of the cassette based games.
It was possible to copy the cartridge games to cassette too, no idea how this was done, but once the original cassette copy was good quality, they could be copied too.
You young wipper snappers:
My First computer was an ICL 1903T and we punched the cards by hand!
Quote from: Will_D on September 06, 2013, 09:53:40 PM
You young wipper snappers:
My First computer was an ICL 1903T and we punched the cards by hand!
I can piss a little further than that, I think. Anyone remember paper tape?
As a student, back in 1980, I worked for a while with Ferranti in Edinburgh. I was working on a rig that tested the guidance system for the Harrier jet. At a time when the world was falling in love with the Apple IIe, I had this fridge sized 12-bit computer with 4K of magnetic core memory, which was probably cutting edge decades earlier. Its programs were loaded from paper tape. First we wrote the code on paper using assembly language. Then we hand translated that into octal machine code. Then that octal made its way to paper tape by typing the octal on a mechanical teletype (with 120dB noise levels in that room) before finally feeding the tape to the fridge and pressing the run button. Any bugs in your code were fixed with tiny strips of paper glued over the holes in the tape which were then repunched by hand.
Given the crudeness of the technologies with which they was built back then, I've no idea how those planes ever found their way at all.
BTW, the first computer I owned was a UK101 (6502 machine with 8KROM and 2K RAM). It worked well (in 1979 terms) only when the power regulator's heatsink was immersed in a class of water. So, while you waited for any program to load from tape, you could make yourself a cup of cocoa. It was an early form of multitasking :)
/JD
Quote from: JD on September 09, 2013, 10:28:35 AM
I can piss a little further than that, I think. Anyone remember paper tape?
The 1903T was back in 1973 ???.
Paper tape was still a bit new at the time and no use for commercial DP so we used cards for the Cobol progs and also the data files.
Apart from the handpunches the BIG card punch machines/sorters and collaters were all made by a firm called Hollerith!
Quote from: Il Tubo on September 09, 2013, 10:34:08 AM
Quote from: JD on September 06, 2013, 01:40:49 PM
Bad an all as the ZX81 was, it was way better than its predecessor, the ZX80. Now there was a piece of shite.
But unlike the ZX81, the ZX80 is worth an absolute fortune now. If boxed can be worth £500 (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300922445787) or more.
Feck, I had 2 of them but they got lost along the way. Used them to program RAM in uC systems I was developing. Still have my Atari ST though.
Quote from: Will_D on September 09, 2013, 11:02:34 AM
The 1903T was back in 1973 ???.
The Ferranti jobbie was from about a decade earlier than that. Although I was using it in 1980, the 'fridge' was built before the first Harrier flew (in 1964, I think).
Quote from: Will_D on September 09, 2013, 11:02:34 AM
a firm called Hollerith!
I must concede defeat in the pissing contest. You have to go back to Charles Babbage to get anything older than Holleriths.
Brings me back to my earliest programming days with Fortran. God how I hated that language. >:(
Quote from: Il Tubo on September 09, 2013, 11:30:45 AM
I had an even rarer yoke (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/230994578694) at one stage. Made by a company in Swansea who used to make floppy drives for the Spectrum. Worth even more than the ZX80 now, and to think I sold mine, boxed with loads of extras for £80 back in the day. Would get in the region of £700 now if it's in the same nick.
I bet it'll show up on the Antiques Roadshow sometime.
"Before we consider value, could you tell me a bit about how you came by it?"
"I paid £80 to this guy who wanted to buy a corny keg"
Quote from: JD on September 09, 2013, 02:02:42 PM
Brings me back to my earliest programming days with Fortran. God how I hated that language. >:(
The ICL Fortran 4K Compiler was called the 4k because it needed 4k of 24 bit memory to compile the early Fortrans.
Easy to see how the 2K Basic Prom chips for home computers became available! My Nascom had a 2k basic "compiler" (used loosley as Basic was not compiled in those days!)
When we got the 4T and 4S computers memory doubled to 8K Oh Happy days!