Hello to All.

Hi Craig, welcome to the forum!  So glad you like the videos, thank you very much.

I actually had a C64 as well, but I got it after they had sort of fallen out of fashion. Not sure if you remember the Commodore Pet, it was before the C64 and looked a bit like it - I had one of those. The real computer that did the trick for me though was the Apple II.

From what you say you've done with your robot experiment it sounds like you're more than a "newbie" to me - let's call you an "advanced amateur"!

Glad you signed up., looking forward to chatting with you.

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Bill

Hi Bill,
My first computer/game console was a Dick Smith Wizzard. This was more a local thing, so not sure if that would mean anything outside of Oz. My first real computer was a 286 PC clone. It had 1 Meg of ram and a whopping 40 Meg hard drive. How things have progressed!

Wow Craig!  What a wondrous computer for your first.  My first was a an Altair (at 1.4MHz) with just 1K of static ram (and that was four times what most in our local computer club had) with no other peripherals.  I/O was via front panel switches and LEDS.  Programmed in 8080 machine language.  Any assembly language was hand assembled.  Eventually got a serial I/O board and a Teletype Model 33 so I only had to key in a relatively short monitor program so I could then use the TTY.

And I still have the Altair but it now has a full complement of 64K of RAM but still no hard drive or even a floppy drive.  Storage is cassette tape.  Now that is how things have really progressed!

Posted by: codecage

My first was a an Altair (at 1.4MHz) with just 1K of static ram (and that was four times what most in our local computer club had) with no other peripherals.  I/O was via front panel switches and LEDS.  Programmed in 8080 machine language. 

And I still have the Altair but it now has a full complement of 64K of RAM but still no hard drive or even a floppy drive.  Storage is cassette tape.  Now that is how things have really progressed!

You are so lucky to still have yours!  ?   I too had an Altair 8800 and wish I still had it today just as an antique to display if nothing else.  

Here's a picture of one for those who have never seen one.

Another computer I wanted to get but never did was the Heathkit Analog computer.

Back in those days it was still a question of whether digital or analog computers would  be the way to go. I wanted to buy the Heathkit analog computer just to see what the idea was and how they worked.  I never did get one, but I eventually learned about analog computing when I studied OP-Amps in electronics.

Strangely the analog computer fell to the wayside as being judged not so hot.  Yet, today the idea of analog computing is actually making a comeback in the field of A.I. research and modeling real-time Neural Networks.  I digital computer can never do anymore more than simulate a neural network, but that's nowhere near as efficient as actually modeling one real-time with an analog computer.

But yeah, it's cool to hear about the Altair again.  That was back when coding in bits one at a time and reading bits back out on LEDs was still exciting.    It's pretty hard to get anymore primitive than an Altair 8800.

Hi Guys,
Feeling like the baby here. The closest I can come to that was when I did some machine level programming for the C64. I didn't have an Assembler program (though I think they were available). I had a 6505 (<>6510) processor reference book, looked up what I wanted to code, converted it to decimals, then wrote a basic program to 'Poke' the values into ram, then jump to the start address. 
Sounds like I jumped onto the bandwagon late compared to you guys, but I do have some understanding of programming byte by byte. Those old machines sound very interesting. I hadn't previously heard of the Heathkit Analog computer.
When I first got interested, it was the Atari, TRS-80, Microbee, Spectrum, etc, that were around.
Arh the good old days, hours of fun.
Regards, Craig.

Posted by: claven

Feeling like the baby here.

Well don't worry about that.  You might have gotten started a few days after us, but what you did with it after that can make a world of difference.  I started with computers early, but then got distracted into electronics, and finally physics.   I ended up spending most of my life working with R&D in electronics and physics, with very little programming experience.   At least on a professional level.  I did do a lot of programming, but that was more of an aside than the main focus.

I too moved on to the TRS-80.  In fact, I still have two of them out in my garage in boxes.  Not sure if they would even fire up now.  But after being sorry I got rid of the Altair 8800 I kept the TRS-80s just for nostalgia.

I don't consider myself an experienced programmer today.  In fact, I've probably forgotten more than I ever knew.  I was big on Visual Basic 6.0 for quite some time.  I really liked that language.  But then I got out of it for a while.  When I got back into it again VB had become fairly obsolete so I switched over to C# which I am now a big fan of.   I also use Python now mainly because of the Raspberry Pi.   But I still prefer C# on the PC.    And like I say, I'm far from an expert on it.   When I program I'm always looking up on the Internet for how to properly code various functions.   Thank goodness for the Internet.  Without it I probably wouldn't  be able to write a program today at all.   And I'm sure my coding isn't very efficient.  As long as I can get it to do what I want that's all that matters to me.  "If it works, don't knock it" that's my programming motto. ?