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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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    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

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                    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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                    • 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
                      BrainiacV
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #66

                      PDP-8/I running TSS-8/I in high school. Used FOCAL-8, BASIC-8, and PALD-8 (Assembler), also IBM S/360 FORTRAN and COBOL when the school finally added a programming class (we spent most of the time teaching the teachers). Univac 418 Model II for first paid job ($5) FORTRAN and ART418 Assembler IBM S/370 first salaried programming in Assembler.

                      Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

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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

                        P Offline
                        P Offline
                        patbob
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #67

                        A PDP-8e with real ferrite core memory. Taught myself Dartmouth Basic from a book my dad had, I wrote the program on paper, he typed it in for me. He had to fix a few typos. It was really stupid.. it printed a picture of an airplane. Later, I'd go into work with him on Saturdays and write Basic on their "mainframe" (an 11/70, I think.. never saw it in person).

                        We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.

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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
                          bryanren
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #68

                          IBM 127 in high school - cards the teacher took and ran at the local community college. Apple II Europlus (1983) - mfd in Ireland, used PAL video. BASIC then Pascal.

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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

                            U Offline
                            U Offline
                            User 8490613
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #69

                            TRS-80 Model III in 1983. 8" floppies, 16K RAM. Got it from a business office when they upgraded - altogether ~$3K worth of gear + software. Learned QBASIC, got exposed to databases, had an outrageous non-WYSIWYG word processor lol. The printer was a mega-industrial very fast daisywheel unit which came in its own very large acoustic enclosure and still sounded like a truck going through when it ran.

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                            • P patbob

                              A PDP-8e with real ferrite core memory. Taught myself Dartmouth Basic from a book my dad had, I wrote the program on paper, he typed it in for me. He had to fix a few typos. It was really stupid.. it printed a picture of an airplane. Later, I'd go into work with him on Saturdays and write Basic on their "mainframe" (an 11/70, I think.. never saw it in person).

                              We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.

                              U Offline
                              U Offline
                              User 8490613
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #70

                              Very cool :). When was this?

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