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  3. Your First Development Machine?

Your First Development Machine?

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved The Lounge
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  • K Kevin Marois

    I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

    If it's not broken, fix it until it is

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    G Offline
    G Tek
    wrote on last edited by
    #46

    A TI-994A. With a tape recorded for storage... we were never rich enough to shell out for a disk drive. I remember my dad asking if I wanted to get an Atari at Christmas or the TI now... I'm a kid, of course I want it NOW. So while I never got to play the same cool games that all of my friends had (since EVERYONE else had an Atari), it did give me my first introduction to a real computer. After introducing me to programming, I then continued on with the various TI magazines (can't remember the name of any of them off-hand) and learned a lot about line-code programming.

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    • K Kevin Marois

      I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

      If it's not broken, fix it until it is

      G Offline
      G Offline
      G Tek
      wrote on last edited by
      #47

      I think that may have been the same one that my Dad had. I remember being blown away by the graphics demo on it (which essentially showed amazing things equivalent to 1990's Windows screen-savers). He had it hooked up a heathkit power-bar kit. My first was a TI-994A right around the same time frame - I was in grade 3 at the time. I eventually moved on to C64.

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      • G gggustafson

        IBM 1410[^], 1965

        Gus Gustafson

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        R Offline
        Ravi Bhavnani
        wrote on last edited by
        #48

        :thumbsup: /ravi

        My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

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        • K Kevin Marois

          I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

          If it's not broken, fix it until it is

          E Offline
          E Offline
          edmurphy99
          wrote on last edited by
          #49

          PDP-8 in 1981

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          • K Kevin Marois

            I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

            If it's not broken, fix it until it is

            J Offline
            J Offline
            jfwfmt
            wrote on last edited by
            #50

            I taught myself Assembly Language on an IBM 7040 in 1968 or 1969 by reading the code output of the FORTRAN compiler.

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            • K Kevin Marois

              I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

              If it's not broken, fix it until it is

              D Offline
              D Offline
              DaveP62
              wrote on last edited by
              #51

              Wow, this brings back fond memories. My first development machine was a Commodore Vic 20. I wrote a product pricing program on it for the first company I worked for back in the early 1980's. The proof of concept was well received. The company purchased an IBM PC with PFS File and word processing and my IT career was launched. :) And yes, the Vic 20 was hooked up to a black and white TV and had a tape recorder for a storage device. Man those were the days!

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              • L Lost User

                Yep, came with a cassette drive. Slow and buggy as hell! ;P

                Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. ~ George Washington

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                tom1443
                wrote on last edited by
                #52

                +1 for me on the Commodore 64. Soon after I bought myself a Trash-80 and I thought I was really living large until I built myself an Apple II clone. It was so much fun back then.

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                • R Ravi Bhavnani

                  :thumbsup: /ravi

                  My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

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                  G Offline
                  gggustafson
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #53

                  AutoCoder and RPG no less!

                  Gus Gustafson

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                  • K Kevin Marois

                    I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                    If it's not broken, fix it until it is

                    D Offline
                    D Offline
                    dpminusa
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #54

                    The very first, circa 1964 - 1970, was an IBM 360 with Assembler and Fortran IV. In the PC world, circa 1980 - 1982, it was an IBM PC with dual floppies and 64K RAM using GW-BASIC. Soon after I switched to Borland Turbo Pascal. Those systems were so limited even when compared to an Android Tablet today.

                    "Courtesy is the product of a mature, disciplined mind ... ridicule is lack of the same - DPM"

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                    • K Kevin Marois

                      I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                      If it's not broken, fix it until it is

                      J Offline
                      J Offline
                      jnlt
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #55

                      assembler on a z80.

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                      • K Kevin Marois

                        I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                        If it's not broken, fix it until it is

                        R Offline
                        R Offline
                        RafagaX
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #56

                        Wow! All the responses makes me feel really young, my first development computer (the one ever I did something that could be considered development) was a 386 computer owned by my school (don't rememeber brand) that ran the glorious MS-DOS (unknown version), on it I developed some programs on Logo and stored them on these big 5 1/2 floppy disks. Making the turtle move and draw was amazing back then.

                        CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

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                        • K Kevin Marois

                          I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                          If it's not broken, fix it until it is

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                          M Offline
                          Mike Ellison
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #57

                          My initial development experiences were with BASIC first,then assembly on a TRS-80 Model 1, complete with 4K of RAM and tape cassette storage. It was a great day when my dad finally buckled under pressure and sprung for the 48K expansion interface.

                          www.MishaInTheCloud.com

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                          • S Simon ORiordan from UK

                            Ah yes. ICL 1904 with card punches and a batch reader back in 1980. :)

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                            Cliff Cooley
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #58

                            ICL 1901 in 1970, getting ready for decimalisation

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                            • K Kevin Marois

                              I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                              If it's not broken, fix it until it is

                              B Offline
                              B Offline
                              bwallan
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #59

                              I started in 1969 on a PDP 6 with a huge 6K of drum storage (a 3 ft diameter drum with magnetic material on the outside and (about) a 3" read head). Our group was developing analog to digital converters at the time. During the development we upgraded to a PDP 8 with almost twice the processing power and 8K of memory. Fun times!

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                              • K Kevin Marois

                                I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                                If it's not broken, fix it until it is

                                M Offline
                                M Offline
                                MTWill
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #60

                                I fondly remember many long afternoons in junior high school (late 1970's) on the single Radio Shack TRS-80 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80[^]. Hey, it was either that or churn through roll after roll of printer paper playing Star Trek on the teletype terminal. Fortuantely for me, not many kids wanted to spend their free time in the computer lab in those days. We saved our spaghetti code to an audio tape cassette drive! Ah, the good old days.

                                -- Mountain Will

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                                • K Keith Barrow

                                  ZX Spectrum 48k[^] 1983 & at home. Mostly stuff from Byte magazine and stuff garnered from the BBC's various publications at the time. I wonder how many times the Spectrum has paid for itself since I started coding for a living, probably the best financial help my Grandma ever gave come to think of it.

                                  PB 369,783 wrote:

                                  I just find him very unlikeable, and I think the way he looks like a prettier version of his Mum is very disturbing.[^]

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                                  fglenn
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #61

                                  My first programming was done for school on an IBM 360 in 1966. However, my first development was done on an Intel Intellec 8. This was run by an Intel 8008 (not a typo for 8080) chip back in 1973.

                                  Fletcher Glenn

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                                  • K Kevin Marois

                                    I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                                    If it's not broken, fix it until it is

                                    M Offline
                                    M Offline
                                    Mike Riley QUSA
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #62

                                    An HP-2000C via modem using an ASR-33 teletype @ 110 baud in high school. It was available to some schools in the Los Angeles School District if there was an instructor to teach Basic programming (all we had). Programs were created offline on another ASR-33 using paper tape. We couldn't store files, so when done you had to output your program onto paper tape again after making changes or lose them. My first personal computer was a Commodore Kim-1 (6502) with an S-100 expansion board to add 8K bytes of static RAM. The terminal was a Compucolor 8001 19" color graphics terminal, which was an 8080 computer in its own right. This was in 1974 I believe. Mike

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                                    • G G Tek

                                      A TI-994A. With a tape recorded for storage... we were never rich enough to shell out for a disk drive. I remember my dad asking if I wanted to get an Atari at Christmas or the TI now... I'm a kid, of course I want it NOW. So while I never got to play the same cool games that all of my friends had (since EVERYONE else had an Atari), it did give me my first introduction to a real computer. After introducing me to programming, I then continued on with the various TI magazines (can't remember the name of any of them off-hand) and learned a lot about line-code programming.

                                      K Offline
                                      K Offline
                                      kmoorevs
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #63

                                      Same here on the TI-994a. I still have it, though I haven't started it in over 20 years. When I was in high school, I used to write little programs to do all my math homework. I also spent many hours playing the Scott Adams Adventure games. :laugh:

                                      "Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

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                                      • K Kevin Marois

                                        I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                                        If it's not broken, fix it until it is

                                        L Offline
                                        L Offline
                                        Lost User
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #64

                                        A Commodore VIC-20 in 1982 with 4k memory (the other 16k came as expansion and at a price).

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                                        • K Kevin Marois

                                          I taught myself GW-Basic on this Zenith 120[^] back in 1985 while in the Marine Corps. I still have the book

                                          If it's not broken, fix it until it is

                                          D Offline
                                          D Offline
                                          DonFranks
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #65

                                          How about a KIM-1. A Single Board computer with a 6502 processor, 2K ROM, 1K Ram (expandable to all of 4K), a 24 key keypad, and a 2 character single line display. This was in 1978 or so. All assembly language, It could be connected to an ASR-33/KSR-38 Teletype (anyone remember those?). Still have the KIM-1 somewhere.

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