One for us old farts who have been around computers too long.

I guess the Atmega328 chip will go the same way soon. I bought a radio kit a couple of years ago which used one. It was a multi-pin chip which pushed into a socket like the Z80. Last year I bought an upgraded version of the kit. It came with a surface mounted 32 bit ARM cpu already fitted to the board.

Everything keeps getting smaller and more suited to automated production.
 
DBK said:
I guess the Atmega328 chip will go the same way soon. I bought a radio kit a couple of years ago which used one. It was a multi-pin chip which pushed into a socket like the Z80. Last year I bought an upgraded version of the kit. It came with a surface mounted 32 bit ARM cpu already fitted to the board.
Click to expand...
You can still buy them in both formats luckily. I think they will be around for a very long time thankfully.

Dirt cheap still even when sourced from a proper electronics supplier like mouser.

 
Wow, my first assembler programs were written for the Z80! Sad days.

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Jane And Rog said:
Wow, my first assembler programs were written for the Z80! Sad days.
Click to expand...
Mine was 6502. But I did do machine code on a Z80 at college using toggle switches and a couple of push buttons :eek:
I never really enjoyed assembler until I got hold of a Motorola 68000 based computer. All those lovely registers.
 
When I were a lad…

I debugged mine with an oscilloscope, on a delay line computer. I used lego bricks with machine code instructions written on the side to create and dry run the program then soldered links on a board to “hard code” it.
 
80x86 was my (Jane here btw) sweet spot. My claim to fame (warming blows own trumpet alert!) is leading the kernel team for Psion and writing the new 32-bit OS, then called EPOC32, later Symbian OS. I wrote all the assembler for the x86 port, which was the first written even though our target was ARM (to ensure good portability design practices, and as a decent ICE was available for x86.)
 
G-RMPS said:
I debugged mine with an oscilloscope, on a delay line computer. I used lego bricks with machine code instructions written on the side to create and dry run the program then soldered links on a board to “hard code” it.
Click to expand...
That trumps the ICE!
 
Jane And Rog said:
80x86 was my (Jane here btw) sweet spot. My claim to fame (warming blows own trumpet alert!) is leading the kernel team for Psion and writing the new 32-bit OS, then called EPOC32, later Symbian OS. I wrote all the assembler for the x86 port, which was the first written even though our target was ARM (to ensure good portability design practices, and as a decent ICE was available for x86.)
Click to expand...
I remember EPOC32. I was a big Psion fan. Starting with the Psion 2. Strange device but really useful. I finally ended up with a 5MX.
I had the Nokia E70 and N97 before moving to the N900. The first two were Symbian devices. So I think I must have used some software based on your code :) (y)
I loved the N900 which was Linux based and attracted me instantly. I was so sad when that Microsoft asshat killed Nokia :(

I never really got on with x86 assembler. 64K segments, real mode, protected mode and paging were a pain in the ass after you came from a 68K background with a flat memory model.
The 68K could address 16MB which made the 640K of real mode a bit of a joke and moving to protected mode in assembler was a pain to deal with from memory.
Fortunately, I then learned C and had a library which I can't remember the name of to handle that stuff. I never went back to assembler after that.

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nicholsong said:
I know nothing about the new-fangled stuff of which you talk.

'In my day' there were no private computers. If one wanted to play around with one (programme) IBM 1401 punch cards and tapes, you had to get employment.
Click to expand...
Likewise, in 1968 working for Mullard we used a punchcard machine, each card made one instruction. We had lots of fun poking holes in other folks cards and watching them search through the cards to find the one that crashed the tape compiling machine.
I might add, we had to share a tape making machine with the factory in Blackburn so the cards we made had to be packed, sent to Blackburn, coded into tape, packed, returned to us only to find some sh1t had poked a hole in one of the cards so the tape would not compile.
 
I remember working on this ruddy great thing at Bletchly Park but I'll not bore you with the details :whistle2:
 
I got to play with punched cards briefly but they were already obsolete by then really and had been replaced by a shiny new VAX...

Being inquisitive and mischievous young teenagers we quickly cracked the admin password (massive Spurs fan with the password "Tottenham" - wasn't too difficult!) and messed about with the group login script so that it would tell us a joke etc on login. The admin never twigged so we carried on trying stuff until someone decided to see what would happen if the very first command was 'logout'.

What happened was a three week delay while external experts came in to try to fix it!

....ooops :D
 
nicholsong said:
I know nothing about the new-fangled stuff of which you talk.

'In my day' there were no private computers. If one wanted to play around with one (programme) IBM 1401 punch cards and tapes, you had to get employment.
Click to expand...
I remember those days, having to book time to punch the cards and then to run them.
PhilMary said:
Likewise, in 1968 working for Mullard we used a punchcard machine, each card made one instruction. We had lots of fun poking holes in other folks cards and watching them search through the cards to find the one that crashed the tape compiling machine.
I might add, we had to share a tape making machine with the factory in Blackburn so the cards we made had to be packed, sent to Blackburn, coded into tape, packed, returned to us only to find some sh1t had poked a hole in one of the cards so the tape would not compile.
Click to expand...
Happy days!!!! Or not.
fishplug said:
I got to play with punched cards briefly but they were already obsolete by then really and had been replaced by a shiny new VAX...

Being inquisitive and mischievous young teenagers we quickly cracked the admin password (massive Spurs fan with the password "Tottenham" - wasn't too difficult!) and messed about with the group login script so that it would tell us a joke etc on login. The admin never twigged so we carried on trying stuff until someone decided to see what would happen if the very first command was 'logout'.

What happened was a three week delay while external experts came in to try to fix it!

....ooops :D
Click to expand...
If you want to find the weakness in a system offer a reward for crashing the same to a gifted group of teens.

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Wow, I had no idea ZX80's were still available, that takes me back!

I hope you don't mind some some reminiscing from computing back in the 70's and early 80's, but my Dad was into computer software (DB and GIS) and for his business he had Prime and Vax servers, but he liked Apple kit, so after the ZX80 at home we had an Apple 2, followed by an Apple Lisa which was the predecessor to the Macintosh.

He went to the US for the launch of the Macintosh, and he arrived home with this big carry case which he opened on the kitchen table, whilst proclaiming that it was the future of computing! The US/UK power transformer though was contained in a separate stove enamel metal box, and was almost as big as the Macintosh itself!

We earned pocket money at the weekends going into the office to help with the tape backups, and for many years there was always a box of punch cards in the garage at home, used for writing shopping lists!😊
 
March Hare said:
We earned pocket money at the weekends going into the office to help with the tape backups, and for many years there was always a box of punch cards in the garage at home, used for writing shopping lists!😊
Click to expand...

A bit line for apples and B bit line for Bananas? :LOL:
 
nicholsong said:
I know nothing about the new-fangled stuff of which you talk.

'In my day' there were no private computers. If one wanted to play around with one (programme) IBM 1401 punch cards and tapes, you had to get employment.
Click to expand...
Been there, worked for BAC, had decks of cards 30 inches deep, occasionally they can back from ops with the legend "The card reader has shuffled your deck". Used to draw diagonals across the top.

Taught a 5 day basic IBM 370 assembler course a few times
 
March Hare said:
for many years there was always a box of punch cards in the garage at home, used for writing shopping lists!
Click to expand...

We never had those as such, but the comment reminded me of 'that sort of thing' which people don't do as much I don't think.

I still have the leftovers from a box of DL envelopes that had been on the shelf too long and the glue had gone. I worked in a printers at the time so they were no use commercially but if you took them home and ran a pritt stick over them they were absolutely fine. A few of us shared out the box between us as no-one needs 1,000 envelopes at home. These days they'd probably just go into the paper recycling. Interestingly we used to pay to have scrap paper taken away and disposed of and over time we saw that change to being paid to buy our waste for recycling. It started to get separated into stuff with ink on it and stuff without - the 'virgin' paper being worth significantly more.

Back to computers....

Our school had a single solitary Commodore Pet that we weren't really allowed anywhere near as it was just for the 5th years. Things moved fast in the computer world though and I had my own Spectrum by the end of 3rd year. Mum had an Amstrad PCW 8256 and was working from home long before such a thing existed. My first ever paid job using a computer was to take the local taxi firm's dockets and use mum's computer to do data entry. I wasn't officially employed by them and they didn't know a 12/13 year old was doing it! It was subbed out to me by a friend of the family who was clearly too lazy to do it himself!

I remember typing code for my Spectrum (a 16k, which I fried and repaired with a 48k upgrade) from a magazine and then going back when it didn't work to proofread and see where I'd gone wrong. Sometimes I hadn't and there would be an apology and the 'fix' for the code in the next issue!

Printing was where I saw my first computer in a 'proper' commercial setting. The first Apple Macintosh - 1984 (we all still remember the advert don't we?) It was as underpowered and useless as it was brilliant and revolutionary. The printing industry was still heavily unionised at the time (although nowhere near what it had been in the 70s) and little did any of us know that this little beige box had just opened a door that would change the industry forever.

I'm glad we didn't grow up with mobile phones and social media though.
 
fishplug said

"I'm glad we didn't grow up with mobile phones and social media though."

I am glad I now have a mobile phone, but I am glad I have not descended into the depths of 'social media'. unless you count LinkedIn as that.

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