Is it just me

[JohnW2]

And then, was roughly when I built my first 'computer'. All I remember of it was a rather crude display, and a crude hex keypad, but a computer, you could program with instructions.

Very similar here. It must have been 1975/76 when I built my first approximation to a 'computer'.

What I built later in that decade, was very much more advanced, and ended up as an S100.

Again, very similar. In 1979/80 I designed and built a much 'larger' (in all senses) computer - which was Z80-based (hence '8-bit') and initially had just 8 kB of ('static') RAM (which had to accommodate 'operating system', program and data), eventually increased to 64 kB ('dynamic'), at incredible cost! - and I even wrote an 'operating system', together with crude 'word processor' and 'spreadsheet' all directly in Z80 machine code (none of the 'Assembler' stuff 'for wimps' ) - all all that (plus some 'working space) had, at least initially, to be accommodated within the 8 kB of available memory, which was quite a challenge!

Things got much easier ('space-wise') in the early 80s when I added an (again incredibly expensive) 5¼" floppy drive . The whole thing was massive (I'll try to find it an photograph!), and used so much power that it could probably have been regarded as an electric heater

 

[JohnW2]

IBM 360 was introduced in 1964. ... By the 1970's there were enough around to be well known. ... Not in schools or homes, of course, but universities had access

Indeed - as I just wrote, in 1967 or thereabouts I was attempting to write FORTRAN code which was run on the mainframe (I imagine IBM) in the (London) uni's 'computing centre down the road'.

 

[JohnD]

When I first worked in the business, we had a revered sys prog who was said to be able to work in machine code, and respected as a genius.

I happened to see his entry on social media more recently.

It said (approx wording) "my life, such as it is, has mostly been spent writing computer programs."

 

[ericmark]

Started with Spectrum, then Amiga, the latter used for Packet, is that still being used?

 

[JohnD]

Things got much easier ('space-wise') in the early 80s when I added an (again incredibly expensive) 5¼" floppy drive . The whole thing was massive (I'll try to find it an photograph!), and used so much power that it could probably have been regarded as an electric heater

The "toaster?"

 

[JohnD]

Started with Spectrum, then Amiga, the latter used for Packet, is that still being used?

I started with a pair of 360/65s


(Not my own)

 

[JohnD]

Indeed - as I just wrote, in 1967 or thereabouts I was attempting to write FORTRAN code which was run on the mainframe (I imagine IBM) in the (London) uni's 'computing centre down the road'.

London Uni probably ICL.

 

[JohnW2]

London Uni probably ICL.

I was at UCL at the time. My recollection/understanding was that the 'computing centre' which was running our code was just 'around the corner' in Malet Street - in, or close to, Senate House - but, best part of 60 years on, my memory might be failing me

 

[JohnW2]

When I first worked in the business, we had a revered sys prog who was said to be able to work in machine code, and respected as a genius.

I certainly would not describe myself as any sort of genius, but it was certainly very tedious - and probably would have been impossible (for anyone who was not a real genius!) had it been more than the 8-bit.

Probably the most tedious thing was being surrounded by countless scraps of paper on which I'd had to do scribbled hex arithmetic to work outrelative jumps and offsets etc.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Again, very similar. In 1979/80 I designed and built a much 'larger' (in all senses) computer - which was Z80-based (hence '8-bit') and initially had just 8 kB of ('static') RAM (which had to accommodate 'operating system', program and data), eventually increased to 64 kB ('dynamic'), at incredible cost! - and I even wrote an 'operating system', together with crude 'word processor' and 'spreadsheet' all directly in Z80 machine code (none of the 'Assembler' stuff 'for wimps' ) - all all that (plus some 'working space) had, at least initially, to be accommodated within the 8 kB of available memory, which was quite a challenge!

I did similar, except with an 8080, and static ram up to the limit of a massive 64k, but wrote a rather clever word processor, in BASIC. The BASIC, rapidly ran out of ram, so I ended up having to design a 'memory paging system', a sort of precursor to what the BBC eventually made good use of. They may even of got the idea from me?

From there, I moved onto ready-rolled machines, like the BBC, because I could no longer compete. I ended up with an ex-university adaption of the BBC, using the BBC as the front-end, for a quite massive, multi-processor beast of a machine, then eventually lost all interest, I became just a normal user of computers.