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  3. How much computer illiterate were you when...

How much computer illiterate were you when...

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  • D dan sh

    ...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P

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    Paul Conrad
    wrote on last edited by
    #25

    I started off with a Timex Sinclair computer in 1980 or so with a black and white t.v. set as the display and a cassette drive as the "mass" storage ;P

    "I've seen more information on a frickin' sticky note!" - Dave Kreskowiak

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    • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

      I had nearly forgotten: My Uni course was a "thin sandwich" - 6 months Uni, 6 months industry - and my first industrial training was this the Atlas Computer Division of the Rutherford Labs, a UK government research institution. At the end of the training a report on my work was sent to the college: "Was determined to find out 'all about computers' and showed great ingenuity in doing so" It wasn't a compliment. :-O

      Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

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      L Offline
      Lost User
      wrote on last edited by
      #26

      Hey Griff, I was at Rutherford 83-87. Any overlap?

      OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
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      • Kornfeld Eliyahu PeterK Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter

        I knew nothing of computer when I got my C64 and started to do some basic and assembly (I got a book with)... I learned side-by-side about how to use and how to program.

        I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)

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        Paul Conrad
        wrote on last edited by
        #27

        I still have the book that came with my C64 around here somewhere, probably buried deep in the attic somewhere. Might be time to go treasure hunting :laugh:

        "I've seen more information on a frickin' sticky note!" - Dave Kreskowiak

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        • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

          .NOLIST
          #define EQU .equ
          #define equ .equ
          #define END .end
          #define end .end
          #include "ti83plus.inc"
          .LIST

           .org 9D93h
           .db $BB,$6D
            xor a
            ld (CURCOL),a
            ld (CURROW),a
            ld hl,text
            B\_CALL(\_PutS)
            ret
          

          text:
          .db "Hello, Harold!",0

          .end
          end

          Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

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          Paul Conrad
          wrote on last edited by
          #28

          I found something very strikingly similar on wikibooks about TI83 Assembly :cool:

          "I've seen more information on a frickin' sticky note!" - Dave Kreskowiak

          OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
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          • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

            .NOLIST
            #define EQU .equ
            #define equ .equ
            #define END .end
            #define end .end
            #include "ti83plus.inc"
            .LIST

             .org 9D93h
             .db $BB,$6D
              xor a
              ld (CURCOL),a
              ld (CURROW),a
              ld hl,text
              B\_CALL(\_PutS)
              ret
            

            text:
            .db "Hello, Harold!",0

            .end
            end

            Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

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            L Offline
            Lost User
            wrote on last edited by
            #29

            So, you're a TASM user? That's getting quite rare, Brass and SPASM are so much better that almost everyone switched.

            OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
            0
            • L Lost User

              Hey Griff, I was at Rutherford 83-87. Any overlap?

              OriginalGriffO Offline
              OriginalGriffO Offline
              OriginalGriff
              wrote on last edited by
              #30

              No - I was there the summer of '78, working for Rob Witty on Dimensional Flowcharting.

              Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

              "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
              "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

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              • P Paul Conrad

                I found something very strikingly similar on wikibooks about TI83 Assembly :cool:

                "I've seen more information on a frickin' sticky note!" - Dave Kreskowiak

                OriginalGriffO Offline
                OriginalGriffO Offline
                OriginalGriff
                wrote on last edited by
                #31

                Thats probably where I stole it from - but I made it more efficient: the original used "ld a,0" which is one M state and 3 T states slower, and uses a whole extra byte in memory! :laugh:

                Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

                "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

                1 Reply Last reply
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                • D dan sh

                  ...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P

                  R Offline
                  R Offline
                  Ravi Bhavnani
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #32

                  Not very. Wrote my first program in Pascal on a Multics time-sharing system using punch cards (1980) before graduating to a VAX in 1981. /ravi

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

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                  • L Lost User

                    So, you're a TASM user? That's getting quite rare, Brass and SPASM are so much better that almost everyone switched.

                    OriginalGriffO Offline
                    OriginalGriffO Offline
                    OriginalGriff
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #33

                    No - I haven't touched Z80 in years - and most of mine was IAR Z80 cross assembler/C compiler (Gawd damn it's rotten, black heart, may it rot in silicon Hades) I stole that because I needed a Z80 environment you would be familiar with: my code was all home brewed on custom hardware and probably wouldn't have made a whole lot of sense to most people:

                    disp equ 4000h
                    #ORG 8000h
                    text: defs "Hello Harold!"
                    defb 0
                    textl equ $-text
                    #ORG 0000h
                    INI:
                    ld de,disp
                    ld b, 30
                    LOOP:
                    push de
                    push bc
                    ld hl,text
                    ld bc,textl
                    ldir
                    pop bc
                    pop hl
                    ld de, 80
                    add hl, de
                    ex hl, de
                    djnz LOOP

                    Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

                    "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                    "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

                    L 1 Reply Last reply
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                    • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                      No - I haven't touched Z80 in years - and most of mine was IAR Z80 cross assembler/C compiler (Gawd damn it's rotten, black heart, may it rot in silicon Hades) I stole that because I needed a Z80 environment you would be familiar with: my code was all home brewed on custom hardware and probably wouldn't have made a whole lot of sense to most people:

                      disp equ 4000h
                      #ORG 8000h
                      text: defs "Hello Harold!"
                      defb 0
                      textl equ $-text
                      #ORG 0000h
                      INI:
                      ld de,disp
                      ld b, 30
                      LOOP:
                      push de
                      push bc
                      ld hl,text
                      ld bc,textl
                      ldir
                      pop bc
                      pop hl
                      ld de, 80
                      add hl, de
                      ex hl, de
                      djnz LOOP

                      Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

                      L Offline
                      L Offline
                      Lost User
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #34

                      A 80x30 textmode screen memory-mapped at 4000h? Makes enough sense, very different from a TI-84+ (and its highly annoying display) though obviously.

                      OriginalGriffO 1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • D dan sh

                        ...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P

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                        P Offline
                        PIEBALDconsult
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #35

                        d@nish wrote:

                        I could not even start a computer

                        I still don't know how to start a PDP-11 (running RSTS/E), but I quickly learned how to crash one. :cool: (1983) Then on my first few jobs I was a System Manager for some VAX and Alpha (and Stratus) systems, so I became proficient at that. Today I work with a bunch of virtual Windows Servers on VMware and I wouldn't be able to start them myself.

                        You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.

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                        • D dan sh

                          ...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P

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                          S Offline
                          S Houghtelin
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #36

                          I was in 5th grade and we used HP Educational Basic punch cards. Had no idea how they worked, some guy would come in with a card reader and a Teletype to remote to a main frame at the nearby college. I do remember is that to get closer to the front of the line one could surreptitiously remove a card and replace it to a different location in the program stack of the kid in front of you. This way the card reader would reject the program stack prior to executing the program. :suss:

                          It was broke, so I fixed it.

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                          • D dan sh

                            ...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P

                            L Offline
                            L Offline
                            Lost User
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #37

                            That was in 1978 with a TRS-80 in a Radio Shack. I knew nothing, but that did not stop me from looking into the manual and trying things out.

                            The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
                            I hold an A-7 computer expert classification, Commodore. I'm well acquainted with Dr. Daystrom's theories and discoveries. The basic design of all our ship's computers are JavaScript.

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                            • L Lost User

                              A 80x30 textmode screen memory-mapped at 4000h? Makes enough sense, very different from a TI-84+ (and its highly annoying display) though obviously.

                              OriginalGriffO Offline
                              OriginalGriffO Offline
                              OriginalGriff
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #38

                              Yeah, with a separate attributes plane mapped at 0x5000 - so a massive hole in the memory preventing the EPROM being bigger than 16Kb... and no MMU in those days! I loved the HD64180 when we started using that because of the 1Mb memory space and a built in MMU. Bliss! And the SIO came in handy too. I was still using that in some new equipment designs in 2000, in its 32MHz form (purely because of the legacy Z80 code base, I moved to Arm processors as quickly as I could)

                              Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952) Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)

                              "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                              "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

                              H 1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • D dan sh

                                ...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P

                                S Offline
                                S Offline
                                Steve Mayfield
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #39

                                I was given a copy of an IBM FORTRAN reference manual in the late 1960s from one of my Boy Scout merit badge mentors and until my first programming class in college, I thought FORTRAN was a IBM computer model...found out quickly in class that it was a computer language :doh:

                                Steve _________________ I C(++) therefore I am

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                                • D dan sh

                                  ...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P

                                  M Offline
                                  M Offline
                                  Marc Clifton
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #40

                                  I was playing around with flip-flops (the IC's, not the footwear), timers and logic gates before I ever wrote my first program. I cut my programming teeth using BASIC on a PDP-11 and had a pretty thorough understanding of how the machine worked at the ripe old age of 13. I ditched BASIC in favor of 6502 assembly language on the PET and C-64, and then other processors, so I was working always close to the hardware (it was the nature of the work I was getting.) Marc

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                                  • C chriselst

                                    Define Computer Literacy. When I wrote my first program I could plug the Commodore 64 into the TV, turn it on, get to the bit to type in the code and then run it. There wasn't a lot else to do, I could also put the tapes for the games into the tape player to load and then start the games.

                                    Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

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                                    Ger Hayden
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #41

                                    Same method - but on a ZX Spectrum 16K

                                    Ger

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                                    • D dan sh

                                      ...you wrote your first program? In my case, I had no idea what operating system is. I did not knew I was using windows. Hell, I could not even start a computer. It was really scary. However, if someone could open the "black screen" for me, I could write C++ programs for them. This was the state for a long time. I was proud of myself thinking I could do anything in C++ but had no clue how to reach that black screen. I say anything as I was easily able to understand concept of pointer and templates and was even able to do graphics code. I thought I was awesome back then in year 2000. How about you? Edit: The sole purpose of this post is to feel young. ;P

                                      L Offline
                                      L Offline
                                      Lost User
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #42

                                      AmigaBASIC, modifying a demo. I only knew that Big Fat Agnus, Paula and Denise were respsonsible for the output, and the result of the tinkering was predictable[^]. I should really get a 512 kb RAM upgrade.

                                      Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]

                                      M 1 Reply Last reply
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                                      • R Ravi Bhavnani

                                        Not very. Wrote my first program in Pascal on a Multics time-sharing system using punch cards (1980) before graduating to a VAX in 1981. /ravi

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

                                        M Offline
                                        M Offline
                                        Member 4194593
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #43

                                        Ravi, I'll have you know that I worked on that CPU long before you accessed it via time-sharing. I worked for GE and brought these 645 CPUs up just after they had been manufactured. The CPUs didn't even run (typically) without swapping out several (discrete component) boards and correcting several wiring errors (no LSI in this era). My first real programming experience was to write a small (4 punch cards) program (manually punched using a keypunch in multi-punch mode) that could be booted and the program could be hardware single stepped through its execution and would check out the memory segmentation LRU logic to determine which segment descriptor to discard in order to load a new descriptor. This program was later used to debug a replacement LSI implementation of the discrete component logic circuts (trust me, the engineers first try was totally hosed). I'll give you a "not very", and raise you a "really not very". Dave.

                                        R 1 Reply Last reply
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                                        • L Lost User

                                          AmigaBASIC, modifying a demo. I only knew that Big Fat Agnus, Paula and Denise were respsonsible for the output, and the result of the tinkering was predictable[^]. I should really get a 512 kb RAM upgrade.

                                          Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]

                                          M Offline
                                          M Offline
                                          Member 4194593
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #44

                                          Quote:

                                          I should really get a 512 kb RAM upgrade.

                                          My first PC was a Step386 with (wait for it) 4 Megabytes of memory, the "Bleading Edge". Paid $1,000.00 for each chip. Dave.

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