4 ms·

No luxuries when programming an IBM 5150 PC (video)

7 points by joshwa 19y ago

brk 19y ago
Yeah, that era was pretty rough. But when Desqview 386 came along, things really took off :)
comatose_kid 19y ago
The same guy also wrote code on the 5150 to do video: http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption
- phaedrus 19y ago
  I thought he seemed familiar.
allenbrunson 19y ago
that's turbo pascal! not long after that one, borland produced a similar ide for the C language, and later, C++. and that's how and when i started programming.
- noonespecial 19y ago
  That turbo pascal IDE is how I started programming as well. I had dabbled in basic on c-64 before that but the limitations were too confining. Back then, it felt like pascal could do anything! I actually had a serious nostalgic moment watching him page up and down and wait for the refreshes. I miss the feeling of endless possibility that blue cga screen imparted...
  - SwellJoe 19y ago
    I was the opposite. I had written quite a bit of BASIC and a tiny bit of assembly on my C-64 and then a C-128, but when I got Turbo Pascal on my dads PC I was utterly thwarted in my attempts at building something. A few years later I was able to breeze through the AP computer programming course in high school, which used Pascal on Apple IIe systems, but I was never able to do anything useful with Pascal. I started making progress again on my Amiga with ARexx, C (using Matt Dillon's DICE environment, which was very UNIX-y), and Amiga E. I think OOP concepts just threw me.
mynameishere 19y ago
Not sure that's the best example. Try interfacing with a computer thus: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_141505.html http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_141505.ht...
nickb 19y ago
Jim Leonard = Trixter... one of the originators of North American demoscene. I met him in 1998/1999... he's a great guy. Glad to see him still plugging away at cataloging old hardware. In that video he's debugging a simple mod tracker... a program that allows you to compose music by adding various samples/notes/effects to a track. Tracker allowed you to create great sounding music (for that time anyway) in a small space and one that was using a small memory footprint. You could forget about decoding MP3s (they weren't even invented then but) since the CPU was nowhere near fast enough to decode the stream. Once you had a mod file, you could synch it to your graphics and play it back together in a demo. Ah, those were fun times!
redorb 19y ago
guess Im young at 24, my first programming was with quick basic
edw519 19y ago
I love history and I love computers, but combining them? Ewww. Glad those days are gone. </removes floppy 5.25 disk from Kaypro II>
henning 19y ago
Some people like Lisp machines. Others like the original Nintendo. This guy is just a masochist.

7 points by joshwa 19y ago

brk 19y ago

Yeah, that era was pretty rough. But when Desqview 386 came along, things really took off :)

The same guy also wrote code on the 5150 to do video: http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption

phaedrus 19y ago
I thought he seemed familiar.

allenbrunson 19y ago

that's turbo pascal! not long after that one, borland produced a similar ide for the C language, and later, C++. and that's how and when i started programming.

noonespecial 19y ago
That turbo pascal IDE is how I started programming as well. I had dabbled in basic on c-64 before that but the limitations were too confining. Back then, it felt like pascal could do anything! I actually had a serious nostalgic moment watching him page up and down and wait for the refreshes. I miss the feeling of endless possibility that blue cga screen imparted...
- SwellJoe 19y ago
  I was the opposite. I had written quite a bit of BASIC and a tiny bit of assembly on my C-64 and then a C-128, but when I got Turbo Pascal on my dads PC I was utterly thwarted in my attempts at building something. A few years later I was able to breeze through the AP computer programming course in high school, which used Pascal on Apple IIe systems, but I was never able to do anything useful with Pascal. I started making progress again on my Amiga with ARexx, C (using Matt Dillon's DICE environment, which was very UNIX-y), and Amiga E. I think OOP concepts just threw me.

mynameishere 19y ago

Not sure that's the best example. Try interfacing with a computer thus: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_141505.html http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_141505.ht...

nickb 19y ago

Jim Leonard = Trixter... one of the originators of North American demoscene. I met him in 1998/1999... he's a great guy. Glad to see him still plugging away at cataloging old hardware. In that video he's debugging a simple mod tracker... a program that allows you to compose music by adding various samples/notes/effects to a track. Tracker allowed you to create great sounding music (for that time anyway) in a small space and one that was using a small memory footprint. You could forget about decoding MP3s (they weren't even invented then but) since the CPU was nowhere near fast enough to decode the stream. Once you had a mod file, you could synch it to your graphics and play it back together in a demo. Ah, those were fun times!

redorb 19y ago

guess Im young at 24, my first programming was with quick basic

edw519 19y ago

I love history and I love computers, but combining them? Ewww. Glad those days are gone. </removes floppy 5.25 disk from Kaypro II>

henning 19y ago

Some people like Lisp machines. Others like the original Nintendo. This guy is just a masochist.