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Parent Message

days of old

I remember spending hours typing in some game from a magazine into my Sharp MZ-80k (remember them?). Just as I got to the last few lines or so, there was a powercut... argh!

My first taste of computers was a Research Machines 380Z. Here's a link:

http://www.zoo.co.uk/~z0001275/rm380z.htm

Check out the specs on that baby!

51 posts.
Wednesday 31 July, 20:50
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Alas poor Oric...

Seeing as we're reminiscing... My first computer was an Oric-1 - it had a great Yamaha sound chip for its day (the same one used in the Atari ST) that made them a great way for a 9 year old to annoy clueless computer sales staff with a little surreptitious hacking. ;-) Soon after I upgraded to the Oric Atmos that came with a massive 48k memory and the truly wonderful innovation of a compact mechanical keyboard. The Oric computers also had the most amazing little plotter that I've ever used - it was fantastic!

Although I didn't have the same amount of choice in games of my friends with Sinclair Spectrums I wouldn't have swapped my Oric for one of those more popular computers because I had so much fun learning to program the graphics, sound and plotter. (OK... maybe I'd have swapped it for a BBC Model B - Bob you were a lucky young hacker! :-)

47 posts.
Wednesday 31 July, 21:25
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Great Link Rob

Ah sweet nostalgia. Remember this?

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=181

I can remember going down the local electrical dept every saturday morning so I (along wih a pile of other geeky kids) could annoy the hell out of the sales assistants by playing with all these really expensive computers. The Osborne1 looked like something out of a Bond movie.

51 posts.
Thursday 01 August, 01:36
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Z80 programming

Preceding probably all of those the first computer I ever had was a Sinclair ZX80. It was little more than a slab of plastic with a microchip embedded into it. My dad actually bought it thinking that he might be able to do his company accounts on it, but quickly found it to be totally useless.

I used it a little, and managed to type in a few BASIC programs from the user manual, including one called "nibble the cheese". I eventually sold it to an electronics enthusiast friend in the late 1980s, but I wish I'd hung onto it now because I'm sure it would be a collectors item. Plenty of ZX81s were made, but hardly any ZX80s.

- Bob

136 posts.
Thursday 01 August, 02:38
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Window for BBC

Programming on BBC reminds me of one the greatest efforts I put into it...guess for what? I tried to write Window 1.0 (mind you there's no 's') for the BBC. It was during my early days when I was learning Windows, but was quite unhappy with the fact that there's no such GUI for the BBC. So,why not write it urself. Well, what I ended up with is not a GUI, but more of a collection of programs operable from a master program. I used PRINT TAB a lot. And it even had a clock...it works, but u need to insert the time while starting it. Those were such nice days!!! Will share more of my BBC escapades someday.

17 posts.
Friday 02 August, 07:38
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Pre-windoze

I wrote a similar graphical interface, based on the GEM desktop, using the AMX mouse. I did a little wordprocessor, database and graph plotting program, and would use it for writing school essays.

- Bob

136 posts.
Saturday 03 August, 04:04
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