I still remember playing around with my Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer. We had to store programs on little cassettes using a specially made tape player that hooked up to the computer. It had a big slot in the side that you could plug in game or educational cartridges into, and those were quite expensive at the time.

I use to write programs in Basic all the time when I was seven or eight years old. I obviously had an older model, as mine did not have the floppy disk drive, but it did have an expansion interface to increase the RAM to 48kb.

What a beast it was at the time though. I still remember writing a "high resolution" graphics program that took up every byte of that Ram, and allowed a user to type coordinates and colors in order to create lines....

I even wrote programs that allowed a different tone to be played with each key press, and corresponding lines or shapes of varying colors to be displayed onscreen during the key-press event.

Good memories. Simple times indeed now that I look back with an adult's eyes.

did you delve into twanging the memory?

I had one of those too. I recall that when I did my Masters thesis I had a very complex stats analysis to do - an Anova - and the Spectrum could not handle such a complex program. So I asked my supervisor if the Uni had any computer I could use (this was in '83). I was taken to a 'special' 'Computer Resourse Centre' where some keyboards were running some equally useless machines. And there were queues of 20 year olds waiting. There was no way I was going to fumble my way through with a queue behind me looking over my shoulder. 16k was a big deal back then.

So he took me down into the basement where they kept the very first computer the Uni bought. It was in a 'secret' room, all by itself. Indeed it took up most of the room. It must have been some ten foot long, four wide and three high and was encased in steel. he asked me if I recognised it, and sure enough I did. It was the gun-laying computer from a Chieftan tank. It was 64k!!

Sperry had made it 'bespoke' for the tank and then on-sold an adaptation to whoever would cough up a quarter of a million squids. That was a lot back then.

I had to code the program on a big iron keyboard that punched a tape. It took hours. Then feed the tape into one end of the machine. It took more hours to churn and eventually spat out another tape which had to be fed into the typewriter again, which then auto-typed the results.

Down there in the crypt all by myself for hours on end, listening to it whirl and crunch, smoking my pipe. Ahhh. Memories.

For '83, the punch-tape system you're talking was archaic, though 64K must have been mind-blowing stuff for computers of the era... Most systems of the early 80's were on drums, magentic tape (as oppose punch-tape) or even diskettes of one or another variety.

But, keep in mind, NASA got men to the Moon on only 32K in the 60s.


Accounting that every 1K of RAM offers 1024Bytes of data and each command only required 1-Byte of data (plus more for each argument required), you could still spend hours upon hours writing the necessary code for your project within the confines of the 16K model and be left with room to spare.

Today's computers are intensely resource hungry & wasteful in terms of memory compared to the 8bits.

Back in the day, ingenuity was paramount in programming.

I used to often use CHR$ codes in place of words where able to in order to reserve several bytes of memory.

Say I wanted to write a program and called it "Code", I could either waste four bytes typing the letters "C"+"O"+"D"+"E" or I could use the command 'CODE', saving 3 bytes of data instantly. Now, apply that logic throughout the entire program structure and you can potentially save hundreds, if not thousands of bytes.

My main thing was protecting my data though, I used to love finding new ways of ensuring my listings were illegible to the human eye. Several methods could be applied to piss off any would-be hackers. Changing font pointers to random locations (so letters appeared as gibberish), applying super-long clicks (10second + would annoy even the most patient hacker) to key-depressions, using embedded colour-codes to black out he screen, edit ROM locations for numbering so it would infinitely repeat line zero, crash out on depression of 'break'... oh the fun I used to have pissing off my class mates with protection stuff.... arf arf arf.

I could have done with this video tutorial some 25yrs ago lol

This is a bit like reminiscing over old girlfriends.

James, I also lost my computer virginity to a Tandy.
She was a bit over-priced. Within months a Welsh company ripped off the electronics and produced a cheaper version called "The Dragon". Maybe they should have called it "The Scrubber".

Next came a BBC for educational work. There was even a TV series on how to make the most of her!
She taught me all the technical stuff and was always reliable. I gave her a Pascal ROM on our first anniversary and that really instilled some mental discipline.

But I soon became enchanted with an Atari ST. What a beauty! Stunning graphics! You wouldn't believe the tricks she knew! It broke my heart when her power supply failed.

As the years passed I tried a few American PC models but they tended to crash when I needed them most.

When the internet came along, exchange of reliable data was always slow and frustrating.
Communication is a problem in any relationship

The latest setup is customized. I went to one of those little back street shops where they give you a list of different motherboards, RAM configurations, hard-drives sizes etc, and you tick the boxes. Then she's assembled. When I asked how long it would take, they said, "a day".

If only . . .

Quote from Marx

But, keep in mind, NASA got men to the Moon on only 32K in the 60s.

NASA pretended to get men to the Moon.

If you can`t make it - fake it !!!

Quote from RobYork

NASA pretended to get men to the Moon.

If you can`t make it - fake it !!!

Well, if they didn't make it to the moon, then I am going to be first!

Quote from Yan Yan

James, I also lost my computer virginity to a Tandy.
...cheaper version called "The Dragon". Maybe they should have called it "The Scrubber".

Next came a BBC for educational work.

But I soon became enchanted with an Atari ST.

...I tried a few American PC models but they tended to crash...
... they said, "a day".
If only . . .

Wow, you have a history of picking really crap computers lol.

My first computer, a Commodore PET with 32K, basic, a FORTRAN compiler and cassette tape storage system.

I don't remember what the first computer I used was, I just remember it played Centipede.