National Homebrew Club Ireland

Brewing Discussions => Equipment & Chemicals => Topic started by: admin on December 17, 2013, 03:34:34 PM

Title: Latest acquisition
Post by: admin on December 17, 2013, 03:34:34 PM
Picked up one of these, boxed as new for £30! And an MMC card reader that appears to be a floppy drive to the OS (for £31 :()

(http://www.heydon.org/kevan/collection/pictures/acorn-bbc-large.jpg)

Not my one, but just the same.
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: Bazza on December 17, 2013, 03:44:44 PM
Aww... she's beautilful.

I could cry with the nostalgia. I loved my old BBC.
When my affair with the BBC ended so did any love for coding - and I've had 4 years studying computer science and 18 years in the IT industry since then!

-Barry
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: Will_D on December 17, 2013, 04:04:07 PM
Quote from: Bazza on December 17, 2013, 03:44:44 PM
When my affair with the BBC ended so did any love for coding - and I've had 4 years studying computer science and 18 years in the IT industry since then!
To rekindle coding interest just buy a Arduino board and a few extras. Basic peipherals for Arduinos cost cents: Leds, Switches, Pots, Buzzers etc.

Add a few relay boards and some Ds1820 one wire temperature sensors and you can put together some great kit!

Says he who has not ACTUALLY finished a project!
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: JD on December 17, 2013, 05:02:00 PM
Looks in great nick. I always loved 6502 assembly, back in the day. I remember writing beam chasing code to move sprites on a 128x48 screen on a UK101. ??? I used to envy BBC micro owners. Then I bought a ZX Spectrum.   ::)
...and you tell that to the kids these days, and they won't believe you...
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: Eoin on December 17, 2013, 08:28:35 PM
Ah the beeb, I loved that machine too, played lots of blagger and chucky egg.

Sent from my HTC One

Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: Will_D on December 17, 2013, 09:13:44 PM
OK you newbs!

After a lot of searching I found my second mainframe the "Solid State" ICL 1904T:

This came with the upgraded 8K Fortran Compiler!

Yep! a full Fortran compiler that could run in 8K of Ram
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: Will_D on December 17, 2013, 11:29:57 PM
PDP-8!

When I lefy HSA as a mere Cobol programmer I moved to ICL in West Gorton (Home of the Mainframe).

In the CAD/CAM dept. I worked in we had a PDP-8 in a small dark room for a singler use only!

It ran the very first vector based asteroids game I ever saw! The graphics display needed to run in  a dark room but wow was this cool in 1977!

Before I left I had a multi terminal star trek sim running on a 2900 mainframe and as many VDU's that cared to logon.

It was based on a book called "Star Trek Simulation" and the book basically deifined the data structures you needed for the Enterprise, the UNIVERSE! and all the baddies. All you had to do was write the algorithms!!
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: johnrm on December 17, 2013, 11:58:54 PM
I'll bet you love this lady Will...
http://www.google.com/doodles/grace-hoppers-107th-birthday

I managed and developed on PDP11 up to 1996.
We then chucked in favour of SCO on Intel.
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: johnrm on December 18, 2013, 12:05:35 AM
Yup, I'm sure we've had this conversation before...  ;)
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: Will_D on December 18, 2013, 06:57:49 PM
Quote from: johnrm on December 17, 2013, 11:58:54 PM
I'll bet you love this lady Will...
http://www.google.com/doodles/grace-hoppers-107th-birthday
Grace taught me all I knew about Cobol.

That was not long after Ada countess of Lovelace taught me assembler!

And my last language was Ada

I have been round the block a few times ;)
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: Will_D on December 18, 2013, 06:59:07 PM
Quote from: iTube on December 17, 2013, 11:33:52 PM
ICL. There's a blast from the past! I have the predecessor of the ICL OPD sitting in a box on the floor behind me!
For anyone who is too young:

OPD: One Per Desk
Title: Re: Latest acquisition
Post by: johnrm on December 18, 2013, 07:06:20 PM
I worked on one.
The numeric pad was confusing as I recall.