Nostalgia

[Duane Attaway]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, L. Adrian Griffis wrote:

> Ha!!  You had it easy.  On my first programming job, I worked on a
> single board system called a Sym-1.  It was 6502 based, with 4K of
> static RAM, and was programmed through either a flexable membrane key
> pad, or through a software driven serial port, if you had a terminal.  
> I had to hand assemble my own code and enter it into the system in
> hexadecimal.  Also, I designed and built I/O expantion hardware using
> breadboards to test the ideas, and then with a soldering iron and these
> cheap Radio Shack prototyping boards.  Does anyone else out there
> remember how handy a 74145 is for address decoding?

You guys have always been spoiled.  Why back in my day, I had to assemble
my Sinclair computer from parts (I still have and use that Weller
soldering iron from 1981.)  And it had a single 1K dynamic RAM chip.  The
3.58MHz Z80A CPU had to calculate the screen graphics during the video
scan cycle.  Only between sweeping the CRT screen could I do any
calculations.  Let me mention most of that 1K of memory was for the screen
and system variables.

A person can do a lot with 200 bytes of assembly language.  One day when I 
had a stack of cash laying around, I forked out $49 for 16K of memory.  I 
would find it had a single bit error, but learned how to program around 
it.

We had to program our own assembler and disassembler with POKE statements
into a REM BASIC line and make the call.  AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY!

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