Quote from: walkstall on June 07, 2021, 08:09:50 PM

This was working about 5+ years ago when I gave it to my son.

Oh man.  When I was a kid, my friend down the street had a Commodore 64... the graphics were way better than my Atari 800 and I was so jealous.

Quote from: rp5x5 on June 14, 2021, 10:38:09 AMI still have a couple of them and some ST's and lots of software and some cartridges.

Atari ST's legally licensed GEM and sued Apple and won...MS also legally licensed GEM. but history was rewritten by APPLE.  SO I cannot use APPLE. They were evil.

Warner Bros will forever be in Infamy for screwing it up.

I vaugely remember those but never saw or used one (unless I did at an Atari users group my dad used to let me attend -- God I must have been adorable).  Later I had a 130 XE and thought I was king of the world.  After that, my Atari years were done.

Quote from: rp5x5 on June 14, 2021, 11:17:59 AMI'll confess I built an Altair 8800.

Did you program on it?

All of this is giving me flashbacks.

I now remember, my earliest introduction to a computer was the one in my classroom -- I think 2nd or 3rd grade.  This beast:

http://www.oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html




I remember going home each day and just dreaming for us to get one.

Quote from: Hoofer on June 07, 2021, 07:06:18 PM"Our" first business machine, we got it for the Darkroom we ran, 6 months later, I started our BBS on it, then learned programming (the hard way).


I still LOVE that machine - We had a bunch of them, networked.

Nice!  Man, I wish I was ____just____ a little bit older (you know... after Vietnam draft age) to have experienced more of that.  Many of you probably find it boring or no big deal because you were late teens or adults at that time, but my little 8-9 year old mind was BLOWN when my dad dropped the coin to bring a computer into the home (that Atari 800 at the top).

He even ordered the computer magazines which at least kept me in the loop of what was happening and what was available in the computer world at that time.

I was obsess with the moving "War Games" because of how the lead character was able to dial into other systems.  After this scene:



I begged my dad "Dad, we GOTTA get a modem!!".  He said "no".

Quote from: taxed on June 14, 2021, 12:05:51 PMDid you program on it?

I tried to figure out Assembly language, but It was not my primary interest.  I played with it.

Quote from: rp5x5 on June 14, 2021, 12:58:08 PMI tried to figure out Assembly language, but It was not my primary interest.  I played with it.

What's funny is that's the language I tell kids nowadays to learn first.

Quote from: taxed on June 14, 2021, 11:57:17 AMOh man.  When I was a kid, my friend down the street had a Commodore 64... the graphics were way better than my Atari 800 and I was so jealous.

And then Sam Tramiel (Commodore) bought Atari Computing.  Chip designer of the Motorola chips was the same Rick Minor for older Ataris and Amiga. 

Quote from: taxed on June 14, 2021, 01:01:34 PMWhat's funny is that's the language I tell kids nowadays to learn first.

I was very worried about kids becoming silicone beings. I think I was right.    I had an automatic aversion to kids becoming robotic.

Quote from: rp5x5 on June 14, 2021, 01:29:00 PMI was very worried about kids becoming silicone beings. I think I was right.  I had an automatic aversion to kids becoming robotic.

I find that highly illogical. Speaking for myself, when I interface with another human, I am alway

am alway
am alway
am alway
am alway
am alway

taxed has generated a coredump at address: 0xFA8768CB2CC3

Quote from: rp5x5 on June 14, 2021, 01:06:19 PMAnd then Sam Tramiel (Commodore) bought Atari Computing.  Chip designer of the Motorola chips was the same Rick Minor for older Ataris and Amiga.

I am fascinated by the lineage of all the PC/internet/hardware manufactures.

Quote from: rp5x5 on June 14, 2021, 12:58:08 PMI tried to figure out Assembly language, but It was not my primary interest.  I played with it.

My first BBS was PBBS... a Canadian author.  Limited to 100 messages, Assembly.  I looked at it, and winced, "there's gotta be something I can get up to speed faster" (1984).  Switched RBBS (Basic), had to write serial port drivers for 300 & 1200 baud modems - got a lot of help from a guy in Chicago (he was running a Heath 89, several others were running Kapro 4).  The long distance costs were so high, one of the programs we pre-processed ASCII text files - stripping extra spaces, TABS, and formatting to 65 character line length.  For the C-64 users, 65 became 32 characters, we split the lines.

LD was such a hassle, we'd meet at the Chicago Area Computer Hobbiest Exchange "CACHE"...?  and swap 5.25" disks, single, double and quad formatted.  We had some really great utilities - can't remember the names, the disk formats were so proprietary, you'd have to fire up a program to get the data off the disks you'd bought.... or transfer it over the phone lines.

All of us struggled to "just make things work"...  and often bought "stuff" that was useless, like a Bell 212 modem.  I worked a deal with US Robotics in Skokie, IL - got the first go on any of their new modems, they just wanted to "get them out there" and become the defacto-standard.  When they were introducing quadrature framing - it was a race to get it online, I had to re-write so much code to take advantage of the higher serial speed.

We drank Mnt Dew by the gallon, and ate Freeze Pops by the case, while programming.
Several re-writes, we had expanded to unlimited messages, users, data files, everything searchable, including 7 Bible translations, CB type chat between the phone lines (data channels) - by the time we shut it down... years of coding. 

Sometimes, I wonder, if all that time was wasted or not.

Quote from: taxed on June 14, 2021, 01:39:13 PMI find that highly illogical. Speaking for myself, when I interface with another human, I am alway

am alway
am alway
am alway
am alway
am alway

taxed has generated a coredump at address: 0xFA8768CB2CC3

I always enjoy working with humans.

Quote from: rp5x5 on June 14, 2021, 04:11:08 PMI always enjoy working with humans.

They're such interesting creatures.