Vintage Computing!

[ninebob]

I had been watching this on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5215131428&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MEWA:IT&rd=1

In fact, at the price it finished I should have sneaked in with a bid, I was telling myself I'd pay up to £20 but I was put off by having to collect it (no car) or paying extortionate postage.

What glorious memories it would have brought back. I used to have the same model (+2a) as my very first computer and learned to program with it at age 8:

10 for n=1 to 10
20 print "Simon is cool"
30 next n

etc... what power I thought I had!

Do any of you have anything similar lurking about that you still play with?

 

[breezer]

10 x=x+1
20 print x
30 go to 10

used to go into shops selling comuters and do that

(for those that dont know what it does, it starts at 1 and counts up to as far as it can, showing the numbers on the screeen in a line as it does so)

 

[nstreet]

used to go into shops selling comuters and do that

You little devil

 

[Igorian]

10 x=x+1
20 print x
30 go to 10

used to go into shops selling comuters and do that

(for those that dont know what it does, it starts at 1 and counts up to as far as it can, showing the numbers on the screeen in a line as it does so)

Me too with the classic Hello World version. Loved the Spectrum. There are plenty of emulators for the PC. I downloaded a version for the BBC micro so I could play Elite. Great nostalgia

 

[kendor]

Huh Amateurs! not a Gosub in sight!

 

[kendor]

My memories of first computing was trying to hold onto the teleprinter to stop it chugging along down the corridor and spending hours picking up all the white dots spilled when emptying the ticker tape draw.

 

[breezer]

Huh Amateurs! not a Gosub in sight!

yes, but i could type mine in less than 20 seconds before any one noticed

 

[bpowell555]

I also downloaded a version of Elite. Used to play that for hours. Only ever got to Dangerous though and not Deadly or Elite. Got as far as a mission to send some Thargoid documents to a far off planet but the Thargoids thwarted me. Almost certain had I completed that mission I could have got Deadly!!!


And I have the pleasure of still working with computers:

data _NULL_;
i=1;
x="Hello World!";
do while (i>0);
put x;
end;
run;

 

[AdamW]

Simon simon SIMON! A +2A? Tis herecy, says I! The +2 was perfect, there has been no better computer since!

Did anyone else ever use the "DATA BIN" command on Spectrum basic? was great. You basically had an 8x8 array, where each element corresponded to a pixel. You filled the array with 1s and 0s to determine where it was black and where it was white. Was very useful to create sprites for games.

Wanna know how to do loading screens? All you do is write a program to display the image on screen, make the last command of the program "LOAD", then record both programmes on the tape one after the other

Remember CRASH magazine? And how back in those days they would give away WHOLE games on the cover-tape? Not playable demos, the WHOLE game!!!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

bpowell, I am trying really hard to one-up you by remembering some Assembler, all I can remember is:

move.l d2, d0

Which means, move the value that is in memory address d2 to memory address d0. Impressive, huh

____________________
moderator

please note 10 a

 

[kendor]

What sort of Haunts did you use to practice and hone your nefarious programming techniques? one of my favourites was Selfridges they had many of the computers of the day laid out for you to play with and no-one bothered you so you could play for hours.

 

[Igorian]

What sort of Haunts did you use to practice and hone your nefarious programming techniques? one of my favourites was Selfridges they had many of the computers of the day laid out for you to play with and no-one bothered you so you could play for hours.

I was a WH Smith & John Menzies man myself

 

[kendor]

What sort of Haunts did you use to practice and hone your nefarious programming techniques? one of my favourites was Selfridges they had many of the computers of the day laid out for you to play with and no-one bothered you so you could play for hours.

I was a WH Smith & John Menzies man myself

Ah the good old days of yore
You are extremely knowledgable in the workings of computers how long you been interested in them for?

 

[Igorian]

Lol, have you come down here for peace and quite. A bit lively upstairs

In about 1979 when I was exposed to Adventure and Zork, running on a DEC PDP 11/34. First owned computer (was a present actually) was a ZX80, which came in kit form, in 1980.

 

[bathjobby]

In 1977 (I think) Clive Sinclair brought out his (and the UK's) first kit computer the MK14 under the company name of Science of Cambridge. 8 char LED display, assembler prog only, 128 bytes (yes bytes) of memory, 27 instructions and only 3 registers. I still have it........
Game, Set and Match I think !

 

[Igorian]

Game, Set and Match I think !

Nah, it didn't play tennis.