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

How much computer illiterate were you when...

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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

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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

        P Offline
        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

          S Offline
          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

                M Offline
                M Offline
                Marc Clifton
                wrote on last edited by
                #39

                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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                • 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
                  #40

                  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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                  • 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.

                    G Offline
                    G Offline
                    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.

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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.

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          0
                          • M Member 4194593

                            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 Offline
                            R Offline
                            Ravi Bhavnani
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #45

                            Nice! :-D /ravi

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

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                            • D dan sh

                              I am sorry, it is not useless. It is fairly easy to get windows message numbers and their meaning if you want to trap them. Oh and applying a processor patch is easier than that if you can get the correct SDK (I almosttypes APK here :doh:). sarcasm

                              L Offline
                              L Offline
                              Lost User
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #46

                              d@nish wrote:

                              it is not useless

                              You might want to revise that opinion after reading the WDK...

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                              • L Lost User

                                d@nish wrote:

                                it is not useless

                                You might want to revise that opinion after reading the WDK...

                                F Offline
                                F Offline
                                Forogar
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #47

                                Anymore use of TLA's and I will have head out for a KFC!

                                - I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

                                L 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

                                  D Offline
                                  D Offline
                                  Dan Neely
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #48

                                  First attempts around 7 or 8 years old. Coco basic on a TRS80 color. I had multiple manuals for it, but while I figured out what a for loop could be helpful in drawing figures with ASCII block characters, I was totally baffled by lots of other stuff in it like Boolean Algebra. Second attempt around 15/16 yo, turbo pascal for dos. I got pointers and boolean logic this time. Mostly to outsmart my teachers ability to grade my work I taught myself OOP (which she admitted to not knowing); but Borlands docs and late 90s internet totally failed to enlighten me about base classes and inheritance leaving me to try rolling my own by using function pointers as a way to effectively overload methods. So close, yet so far..... :doh:

                                  Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt

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                                  • L Lost User

                                    d@nish wrote:

                                    it is not useless

                                    You might want to revise that opinion after reading the WDK...

                                    D Offline
                                    D Offline
                                    dan sh
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #49

                                    You missed out on word sarcasm in small font size at the bottom of post, didn't you?

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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

                                      P Offline
                                      P Offline
                                      Peter Adam
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #50

                                      In the beginning I have to reset the Spectrum if I made an error typing in the programs from the books or magazines.

                                      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

                                        G Offline
                                        G Offline
                                        greldak
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #51

                                        Does knowing to draw a diagonal line across the card deck count so the code still ran after dropping it on the floor?

                                        K 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

                                          C Offline
                                          C Offline
                                          Clumpco
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #52

                                          Since I started my computer programming by flipping switches on the front of a bare-bones PDP-8 I was probably as computer literate as a 19 year old student could be in 1972. I quickly moved to assembly language on an Intel 8008 (with a brief spell on the 4004 while waiting for the prototype 8008 to arrive direct from Intel) on a dedicated card that I designed and built myself as a project for my sandwich course with BT (then the GPO).

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