8 ms·

I had a similar although not as tragic story of my own. My parents were poor (dad was in the USAF) so we couldn't get a Commodore 64 or Apply IIe/IIc like every

I had a similar although not as tragic story of my own. My parents were poor (dad was in the USAF) so we couldn't get a Commodore 64 or Apply IIe/IIc like everyone else had. We got a Commodore Plus/4 because they were literally giving them away. Since I couldn't buy any games for it and there was hardly any software available, I taught myself BASIC and made my own games. Fast-forward 30 years (geez I'm getting old) and now I'm fairly successful (in my own mind) as a software engineer at a Fortune 100 company. I credit being deprived by my parents for becoming interested in computers like I am today.

percept 12y ago
At least it had real keys...
- protomyth 12y ago
  Starting on an Atari 400 probably is the reason I have become so picky about keyboards.
  - pronoiac 12y ago
    I remember having indented fingertips.
dmpk2k 12y ago
Likewise here. In my case it was a Dragon 32 in the 486 era.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That was an absolutely awesome little machine. Did you ever figure out that it really has 64K of usable RAM?
  - dmpk2k 12y ago
    I think the Dragon 32 really did only have 32KB RAM, but yeah, the full 32KB wasn't typically accessible. Part of it went to video RAM, and part of it went elsewhere, so quite a bit less was available to use by default. However, there was some hackery you could do to get close to usable 32KB for your program, although I never did that. My tape drive never worked properly, so my programs were naturally very short… When I graduated to a 286 (in the Pentium era), that was a pretty special moment. It had a 42MB HD!
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Just poking around in the video chip would enable the second bank of 32K RAM for writing. Then copying the basic ROM by reading the ROM and writing the RAM would make it possible to switch to the next stage, which was to enable the second bank of RAM for reading and writing. After that a relocation routine took care of moving the ROM code to the upper portion of the RAM which left you with 48K of usable RAM in BASIC and 64K - the video mode you were using for assembler!
goalieca 12y ago
taught myself qbasic using the helpfile. There were tons of examples on how to draw and how if statements worked. Progress was really slow for the first month or so. I was like a monkey trying to mimic what they saw. Didn't have internet at first so sometimes at school i would go to the library during lunch and attempt to download example programs onto a floppy disk. This was around 2000.
- eropple 12y ago
  The QBasic help system was really, really good and I don't think it gets enough love. I was seven years old when I really got started with it and it was perfectly comprehensible and super helpful.
  - eru 12y ago
    They even translated it to German, I think. Got me started.
icelancer 12y ago
Ha, I had a similar situation. I grew up with a trash-80 well after it was cool in the early 1990s! Though I did get to use an Apple IIe around that time too which was awesome (did not realize how old these computers were, just was so excited to write command line BASIC). My first computer was a Laser 286 and I marveled at the power it had. Even the turbo button from 8->12 Mhz of course :) Oh, and the video card that took 4 AA batteries to run...
- tacoman 12y ago
  I had a Laser computer with the same specs. Even slowed down to 8Mhz, some games that were meant for an XT weren't playable. I popped the cpu out of the socket and I've had it on my key chain since 1995. https://i.imgur.com/qgjDzbm.png https://i.imgur.com/qgjDzbm.png
  - ddoolin 12y ago
    What is the grey material it's encased in? Really cool idea.
    - 0x83F1 12y ago
      It's the resin of the CPU's top surface, just incredibly worn down from being on somebodies keychain for years.
  - icelancer 12y ago
    Ha! Never met anyone who had the same model. It was a beautiful machine.
- tempestn 12y ago
  Ahh I'd completely forgotten about turbo buttons! Thanks for the blast from the past there.
- scintill76 12y ago
  What were the AA batteries for? Do you know why the card wasn't powered with the rest of the system?
prezjordan 12y ago
So amazing. I wonder if it's possible to manufacture that sort of limitation nowadays. Not sure if I would even want to!
- m_mueller 12y ago
  Why not. This is pretty much my game plan if/when I have kids: Start them off with a raspberry pi or similar, a keyboard and a monitor, then gradually explore with them and add more gizmos and software together. Some of my fondest memories as a child was playing around on my father's old IBM mainframe workstation computer with two 5 1/5 inch floppies as a three to five year old. At that age I really didn't need much, seeing something happen on a screen after some keypresses and some analog sounds coming from the floppy drive was enough magic for me. I'm thinking that giving a child an iPad at that age could be really damaging - there's just no sense of wonder and accomplishment outside the prepared paths anymore.
  - increment_i 12y ago
    That doesn't add up to me. The children of today will almost surely look back at the iPad the same way you look back at your dad's IBM mainframe and with the same nostalgia as others on this thread. It'll seem quite primitive compared to the contemporary technology of their adulthood.
    - m_mueller 12y ago
      Here's the big difference: You can't 'play' around with them the same way, they're not built to program on or change / break things significantly. It's not an empowering device.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - peteridah 12y ago
      I bought a kano/raspberry kit for my 5yr old. We explore the terminal, python interpreter, minecraft etc and he is totally pumped, with the ipad lying idly just by his side. What really clicked for him was the fact that he now had a real computer that did stuff like dad's and calls himself a 'real hacker'.
decasteve 12y ago
My not-so-tragic story of programming in BASIC as a kid was on a Coleco Adam. I would pick up 1980's computer books/magazines from the library with BASIC code in them that I would type in. Some weren't meant for the version of BASIC the Coleco had and wouldn't run without modifications. Getting them to run was half the fun. The Coleco Adam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam
- spdustin 12y ago
  The sound of the high speed tape drive when booting up (or playing Buck Rogers) still remains fresh in my mind. That, and the daisy wheel printer's rhythmic whir-rat-tat-tat-chunk-whine whenever I printed out a letter asking for another tape drive. I also had my first generative music experience with the Adam - POKEing numbers into various registers would trigger the waveform generators and if combined with various patterns/functions (sin, cos, and the like) would make some cool sequences.
heironimus 12y ago
If I could have afforded a floppy drive for my C64, I would have been a great Loderunner player rather than a coder.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
I had a similar experience, but what really drove me nuts was the selection of ridiculously good and expensive computers they always had in the PX. Who could afford one of those things on military pay?
girvo 12y ago
Different generation, but I used a Pentium 2 Acer laptop, with 76Mb of RAM and a 4Gb of HDD, from 1999 through til 2005, when I'd finally cobbled together enough spare parts from other people for free to build my own AMD-based desktop. It's what made me learn Linux, as it was so low-spec that Windows XP wouldn't run correctly on it. Slax was an excellent distribution, a Slackware-based Live CD that I forced to boot from the HDD despite it not really supporting it then. Prior to that I ran Damn Small Linux, and Windows 2000. No gaming for me, so I learned to build software instead!
- eru 12y ago
  You could have played nethack.
JeremyMorgan 12y ago
I wish I could upvote this more times. My parents also didn't have a lot and I spent 3-4 years using a 286. I cut my teeth writing code and optimizing like crazy because that's all I had. Couldn't just go get more memory or a better CPU. 20 years later I guarantee you my code reflects the ingrained thinking from those early days.
santacluster 12y ago
Similar story, although I wouldn't call us "poor" for not being able to afford such things. My dad however managed to get his hands on an obscure failed home computer called COMX 35[1]. Not much software, BASIC, same story. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comx-35 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comx-35
- synchronise 12y ago
  I've always wanted to tinker with one of these PC's, something about using the same microcontroller as Galileo. What was it like using it?
reitanqild 12y ago
Seems like a lot of us have a somewhat similar story. I grew up in the countryside without a tv. When I was between 10 and 13 we convinced our parents to let us buy a used c64. Since we had no tv we had to get a monitor as well which took another few month. My career possibly started there but I was already infected by a text adventure that a grown up relative had made/adapted. (Or more specifically I was infected by the idea that you could write code and have the computer do stuff for you.)
- robotkilla 12y ago
  I'm really shocked to see how many people were inspired by text adventure games. My story is similar to the others here (posted the short version). Scott Adams Pirate Adventure FTW!
bjoe_lewis 12y ago
Different generation. Couldn't afford a computer until 2008. Got a celeron clocked at 1.2 Ghz with a 128mb physical memory and 20Gb HDD running a win98. This was when everybody in the neighbourhood was playing Assasin's Creed in their core2duo. If only my machine ran all those amazing games, I wouldn't have been a coder now ;-)
acqq 12y ago
Ah, the "joy" of loading the assembler from the the cassette tape recorder from one tape, then switching the tape to load the code I work with, then changing it and then saving it on the tape before the run it since it will be lost if it crashes or just enters the loop. Then I've added the NMI hardware which allowed me to break the loop and keep the upper piece of the memory. And like some commenters also mention, that computer also didn't have the "real" keys. But don't get me started on using the switches to input the single bits over the console on the even older computer.

percept 12y ago

At least it had real keys...

protomyth 12y ago
Starting on an Atari 400 probably is the reason I have become so picky about keyboards.
- pronoiac 12y ago
  I remember having indented fingertips.

dmpk2k 12y ago

Likewise here. In my case it was a Dragon 32 in the 486 era.

jacquesm 12y ago
That was an absolutely awesome little machine. Did you ever figure out that it really has 64K of usable RAM?
- dmpk2k 12y ago
  I think the Dragon 32 really did only have 32KB RAM, but yeah, the full 32KB wasn't typically accessible. Part of it went to video RAM, and part of it went elsewhere, so quite a bit less was available to use by default. However, there was some hackery you could do to get close to usable 32KB for your program, although I never did that. My tape drive never worked properly, so my programs were naturally very short… When I graduated to a 286 (in the Pentium era), that was a pretty special moment. It had a 42MB HD!
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Just poking around in the video chip would enable the second bank of 32K RAM for writing. Then copying the basic ROM by reading the ROM and writing the RAM would make it possible to switch to the next stage, which was to enable the second bank of RAM for reading and writing. After that a relocation routine took care of moving the ROM code to the upper portion of the RAM which left you with 48K of usable RAM in BASIC and 64K - the video mode you were using for assembler!

goalieca 12y ago

taught myself qbasic using the helpfile. There were tons of examples on how to draw and how if statements worked. Progress was really slow for the first month or so. I was like a monkey trying to mimic what they saw. Didn't have internet at first so sometimes at school i would go to the library during lunch and attempt to download example programs onto a floppy disk. This was around 2000.

eropple 12y ago
The QBasic help system was really, really good and I don't think it gets enough love. I was seven years old when I really got started with it and it was perfectly comprehensible and super helpful.
- eru 12y ago
  They even translated it to German, I think. Got me started.

icelancer 12y ago

Ha, I had a similar situation. I grew up with a trash-80 well after it was cool in the early 1990s! Though I did get to use an Apple IIe around that time too which was awesome (did not realize how old these computers were, just was so excited to write command line BASIC). My first computer was a Laser 286 and I marveled at the power it had. Even the turbo button from 8->12 Mhz of course :) Oh, and the video card that took 4 AA batteries to run...

tacoman 12y ago
I had a Laser computer with the same specs. Even slowed down to 8Mhz, some games that were meant for an XT weren't playable. I popped the cpu out of the socket and I've had it on my key chain since 1995. https://i.imgur.com/qgjDzbm.png https://i.imgur.com/qgjDzbm.png
- ddoolin 12y ago
  What is the grey material it's encased in? Really cool idea.
  - 0x83F1 12y ago
    It's the resin of the CPU's top surface, just incredibly worn down from being on somebodies keychain for years.
- icelancer 12y ago
  Ha! Never met anyone who had the same model. It was a beautiful machine.
tempestn 12y ago
Ahh I'd completely forgotten about turbo buttons! Thanks for the blast from the past there.
scintill76 12y ago
What were the AA batteries for? Do you know why the card wasn't powered with the rest of the system?

prezjordan 12y ago

So amazing. I wonder if it's possible to manufacture that sort of limitation nowadays. Not sure if I would even want to!

m_mueller 12y ago
Why not. This is pretty much my game plan if/when I have kids: Start them off with a raspberry pi or similar, a keyboard and a monitor, then gradually explore with them and add more gizmos and software together. Some of my fondest memories as a child was playing around on my father's old IBM mainframe workstation computer with two 5 1/5 inch floppies as a three to five year old. At that age I really didn't need much, seeing something happen on a screen after some keypresses and some analog sounds coming from the floppy drive was enough magic for me. I'm thinking that giving a child an iPad at that age could be really damaging - there's just no sense of wonder and accomplishment outside the prepared paths anymore.
- increment_i 12y ago
  That doesn't add up to me. The children of today will almost surely look back at the iPad the same way you look back at your dad's IBM mainframe and with the same nostalgia as others on this thread. It'll seem quite primitive compared to the contemporary technology of their adulthood.
  - m_mueller 12y ago
    Here's the big difference: You can't 'play' around with them the same way, they're not built to program on or change / break things significantly. It's not an empowering device.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - peteridah 12y ago
    I bought a kano/raspberry kit for my 5yr old. We explore the terminal, python interpreter, minecraft etc and he is totally pumped, with the ipad lying idly just by his side. What really clicked for him was the fact that he now had a real computer that did stuff like dad's and calls himself a 'real hacker'.

decasteve 12y ago

My not-so-tragic story of programming in BASIC as a kid was on a Coleco Adam. I would pick up 1980's computer books/magazines from the library with BASIC code in them that I would type in. Some weren't meant for the version of BASIC the Coleco had and wouldn't run without modifications. Getting them to run was half the fun. The Coleco Adam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam

spdustin 12y ago
The sound of the high speed tape drive when booting up (or playing Buck Rogers) still remains fresh in my mind. That, and the daisy wheel printer's rhythmic whir-rat-tat-tat-chunk-whine whenever I printed out a letter asking for another tape drive. I also had my first generative music experience with the Adam - POKEing numbers into various registers would trigger the waveform generators and if combined with various patterns/functions (sin, cos, and the like) would make some cool sequences.

heironimus 12y ago

If I could have afforded a floppy drive for my C64, I would have been a great Loderunner player rather than a coder.

thrownaway2424 12y ago

I had a similar experience, but what really drove me nuts was the selection of ridiculously good and expensive computers they always had in the PX. Who could afford one of those things on military pay?

girvo 12y ago

Different generation, but I used a Pentium 2 Acer laptop, with 76Mb of RAM and a 4Gb of HDD, from 1999 through til 2005, when I'd finally cobbled together enough spare parts from other people for free to build my own AMD-based desktop. It's what made me learn Linux, as it was so low-spec that Windows XP wouldn't run correctly on it. Slax was an excellent distribution, a Slackware-based Live CD that I forced to boot from the HDD despite it not really supporting it then. Prior to that I ran Damn Small Linux, and Windows 2000. No gaming for me, so I learned to build software instead!

eru 12y ago
You could have played nethack.

JeremyMorgan 12y ago

I wish I could upvote this more times. My parents also didn't have a lot and I spent 3-4 years using a 286. I cut my teeth writing code and optimizing like crazy because that's all I had. Couldn't just go get more memory or a better CPU. 20 years later I guarantee you my code reflects the ingrained thinking from those early days.

santacluster 12y ago

Similar story, although I wouldn't call us "poor" for not being able to afford such things. My dad however managed to get his hands on an obscure failed home computer called COMX 35[1]. Not much software, BASIC, same story. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comx-35 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comx-35

synchronise 12y ago
I've always wanted to tinker with one of these PC's, something about using the same microcontroller as Galileo. What was it like using it?

reitanqild 12y ago

Seems like a lot of us have a somewhat similar story. I grew up in the countryside without a tv. When I was between 10 and 13 we convinced our parents to let us buy a used c64. Since we had no tv we had to get a monitor as well which took another few month. My career possibly started there but I was already infected by a text adventure that a grown up relative had made/adapted. (Or more specifically I was infected by the idea that you could write code and have the computer do stuff for you.)

robotkilla 12y ago
I'm really shocked to see how many people were inspired by text adventure games. My story is similar to the others here (posted the short version). Scott Adams Pirate Adventure FTW!

bjoe_lewis 12y ago

Different generation. Couldn't afford a computer until 2008. Got a celeron clocked at 1.2 Ghz with a 128mb physical memory and 20Gb HDD running a win98. This was when everybody in the neighbourhood was playing Assasin's Creed in their core2duo. If only my machine ran all those amazing games, I wouldn't have been a coder now ;-)

acqq 12y ago

Ah, the "joy" of loading the assembler from the the cassette tape recorder from one tape, then switching the tape to load the code I work with, then changing it and then saving it on the tape before the run it since it will be lost if it crashes or just enters the loop. Then I've added the NMI hardware which allowed me to break the loop and keep the upper piece of the memory. And like some commenters also mention, that computer also didn't have the "real" keys. But don't get me started on using the switches to input the single bits over the console on the even older computer.