Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

CPR Loc: Nature Coast of Florida

My favorite old story was when I modified my Radio Shack Model 1 with a little switch in the case and added 8K of Ram to the 8K already there and a carload of guys drove 27 miles just to see a microcomputer with 16K of RAM!!!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

The thing I remember most about my first computers was sitting and listening to the whirls and whistles while the phone line tried to connect with a modem at the other end of the line! Seems like such ancient history but in reality was only about 40 years ago. Phone watches and the entire history of the world packed into something the size of a box of kitchen matches seemed like some future thing that would not ever be reality.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Ahhh, the tell-tale modem connect hand-shaking!
(I installed a second line for the modem.)

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I worked for Tektronix during that period, and since we sold microprocessor development systems, every sales engineer was required to be able to write in machine language for the 8080, Z80 and 6800 as a start.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

I forgot about the Z80.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Similar to the 8080, but produced by Zilog.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

RiJoRi Loc: Sandy Ridge, NC

More fond memories! I started with a Turtle Slow-1000, then went on to the CoCo2 and OS-9 as a hobby. At work we had the 8085 with 2K ROM and 2K RAM. We then expanded to 8K ROM! No emulators for years, and I wrote my own compiler to make things easier for me. It was all developed on an Intel ISIS machine with 8" floppies. I can still hear the "clunk" of the floppy drive working, and the twenty minutes it took to burn a 2Kx8 EPROM.
Anyone want the motherboard for a NYC Transit Authority token vending machine? :)

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Wow, I don't think I would have written my own compiler!

I used 8" floppies, RK-05 packs, and mag tape on DEC PDP series.
I blew PROMS, EPROMS, and EEPROMS on one test system I used.
Ahh, yes, the memories!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, I remember the DEC PDP-11. We used them for doing FFTs on the digital output of A/Ds (from Analog Devices) to convert to the frequency domain so we could measure distortion products after the DR of A/Ds exceeded what we could see on a Spectrum analyzer. I actually started on the first IBM 360s and then Univac 1100 series. The progress in processors has been truly amazing in 50 years. When we installed one of the first 360s at Univ of NC in 1965, it fit in a corner of the huge room that had previously held a vacuum tube Univac (and the A/C facility to cool it was larger than the computer). It had 64K of core storage and mag tape. Now I carry at least 1000x the processing power and a million times more memory in my pocket. That all started with microprocessors.

BTW, I once talked to a member of the design team from IBM Boca that wrote the original PC open specification that kicked off personal computing and asked him why they chose the Intel processor instead of (arguably the better) Motorola 6800. He said the decision wasn’t made on technical grounds, it was because the Intel sales engineer gave them his home phone number, so they could call anytime, day or night, with technical questions.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Customer relations is supremely important.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Cool!

I was weened with FORTRAN on an IBM OS-360 with 64K of memory, remote terminal... 1972...

RiJoRi Loc: Sandy Ridge, NC

Well, the boss didn't want to $pring for a C compiler, so with my trusty CoCo2, I took a whack at it. The language was post-fix ( ADD VA, VB), and generated the ASM code. Any unrecognized stuff got passed through so I didn't have to do #asm / #endasm flags. It was fun to develop, and more fun to use.
And the BASIC I wrote it in ported to Turbo BASIC well.