3 ms·

Well, the concept is glorious. It's not accessible at the moment though. (Memories of me and my mom buying a weirdo european-phono/antenna-to-cable-shoe adapte

by tpmx 6y ago

Well, the concept is glorious. It's not accessible at the moment though. (Memories of me and my mom buying a weirdo european-phono/antenna-to-cable-shoe adapter from a local TV store to make the ZX81 work with the black and white TV from the 1960s we had in the summer cottage, so that I could continue my obsession with the ZX81 I had "inherited" from a richer relative in 1984. I was 7. I'm amazed my parents believed in me so much. And that they spent insame amounts of money, realtive to their income, later on...

gerdesj 6y ago
I suspect lots of us here have some very odd memories! I used a ZX80/81/Speccy at school and at friend's houses and we eventually ended up with a C-64 at home. I still have it now and it has USB nowadays.
- stevekemp 6y ago
  Very much so, I started programming on the 48k rubber-keyed Speccy, and I know I'm not alone: https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html
  - 8fingerlouie 6y ago
    I spent days entering code on the Spectrum 48k from a magazine just to play space invaders. We had a radio show on a local station being broadcast every friday evening at 22:00 where various open source programs for different platforms (C64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, etc) would be aired. You could then record the show (which consisted mostly of "whiirrrzzzzzzbrbrrzzziii"), and load the programs on your computer of choice. Those were the days where you'd spend hours browsing your local magazine shop for new and exiting computer magazines, and debugging included reading manuals, and not just pasting code from StackOverflow :) I often think back to the world when i was a kid, and while the Internet has certainly made a lot of things easier, i'm not always convinced that it's actually helping. When answers to every question you have are readily available, what happens to curiosity ? At age 11 i could hook up just about any home computer, program in BASIC, could take apart electronics and fix them (which was a lot easier back then). I learned by taking things apart (and rarely breaking them in the process), and for those more specialized things (electronics) there were evening classes for kids. We had a "programming class" when i was a kid that was basically just a lab. Show up at 18:30 and "here's a RC 700 Piccolo (https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=650 https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=650) to use for whatever you like". There was no set program, and the instructor was the other kids in class. Those were the best classes i've ever taken.
    - codezero 6y ago
      I never knew that programs were broadcast, that makes total sense and it's completely awesome that you could just analog record a program from a radio program into the system like that! The simplicity of the cassette tape recording (and playing) mechanism and how it works w/ a simple 5V amplitude modulated signal makes me happy thinking about it every time I see something related to it mentioned.
tpmx 6y ago
So the 2h edit window ran out just before I could fix two quite annoying typos. What I meant to write was: And that they spent insane amounts of money, relative to their income, later on... [on an 8086 and then a 486 PC]. I suspect that quite a lot of us now sort-of-old-timers owe our careers to parents who did something similar to what my parents did to me.
- kinard 6y ago
  I was bought a ZX81 after I pestered my parents for months, unfortunately they were not particularly well off, so they couldn't afford a tape recorder, which meant I had to write my own games (copied from magazines at first of course). I now own a couple of software companies and have had the good fortune of making my once hobby my career. Lucky us!
  - ddalex 6y ago
    I'm definitely grateful to my parents for shelling out (after ~1 y of begging) for the first computer, an ZX clone; then for a 386 ! I think starting on a ZX was a blessing and a curse at the same time :) I shaped my career, but I continue to think of processor cycles and RAM as being very expensive in terms of time :(
    - tpmx 6y ago
      Heh, there may be something to that "curse".

by tpmx 6y ago

gerdesj 6y ago

I suspect lots of us here have some very odd memories! I used a ZX80/81/Speccy at school and at friend's houses and we eventually ended up with a C-64 at home. I still have it now and it has USB nowadays.

stevekemp 6y ago
Very much so, I started programming on the 48k rubber-keyed Speccy, and I know I'm not alone: https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html https://blog.steve.fi/how_i_started_programming.html
- 8fingerlouie 6y ago
  I spent days entering code on the Spectrum 48k from a magazine just to play space invaders. We had a radio show on a local station being broadcast every friday evening at 22:00 where various open source programs for different platforms (C64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, etc) would be aired. You could then record the show (which consisted mostly of "whiirrrzzzzzzbrbrrzzziii"), and load the programs on your computer of choice. Those were the days where you'd spend hours browsing your local magazine shop for new and exiting computer magazines, and debugging included reading manuals, and not just pasting code from StackOverflow :) I often think back to the world when i was a kid, and while the Internet has certainly made a lot of things easier, i'm not always convinced that it's actually helping. When answers to every question you have are readily available, what happens to curiosity ? At age 11 i could hook up just about any home computer, program in BASIC, could take apart electronics and fix them (which was a lot easier back then). I learned by taking things apart (and rarely breaking them in the process), and for those more specialized things (electronics) there were evening classes for kids. We had a "programming class" when i was a kid that was basically just a lab. Show up at 18:30 and "here's a RC 700 Piccolo (https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=650 https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=650) to use for whatever you like". There was no set program, and the instructor was the other kids in class. Those were the best classes i've ever taken.
  - codezero 6y ago
    I never knew that programs were broadcast, that makes total sense and it's completely awesome that you could just analog record a program from a radio program into the system like that! The simplicity of the cassette tape recording (and playing) mechanism and how it works w/ a simple 5V amplitude modulated signal makes me happy thinking about it every time I see something related to it mentioned.

tpmx 6y ago

So the 2h edit window ran out just before I could fix two quite annoying typos. What I meant to write was: And that they spent insane amounts of money, relative to their income, later on... [on an 8086 and then a 486 PC]. I suspect that quite a lot of us now sort-of-old-timers owe our careers to parents who did something similar to what my parents did to me.

kinard 6y ago
I was bought a ZX81 after I pestered my parents for months, unfortunately they were not particularly well off, so they couldn't afford a tape recorder, which meant I had to write my own games (copied from magazines at first of course). I now own a couple of software companies and have had the good fortune of making my once hobby my career. Lucky us!
- ddalex 6y ago
  I'm definitely grateful to my parents for shelling out (after ~1 y of begging) for the first computer, an ZX clone; then for a 386 ! I think starting on a ZX was a blessing and a curse at the same time :) I shaped my career, but I continue to think of processor cycles and RAM as being very expensive in terms of time :(
  - tpmx 6y ago
    Heh, there may be something to that "curse".