On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 04:28:43PM -0400, Ron Goulard wrote: > > And here I thought that at 36, I was an 'old fart' when it came to > playing with computers. By the sounds of it, I'm still wet behind the > ears :) > > I've been doing this since my first computer, a TRS-80 model III > (cassette tapes for storage, 48k of ram (that was the upgrade) and > hexeditors were my favorite toys). I was shown linux for the first time I had my first real experience on a TRS-80 model III as well (in the school library). I used to sit and read "Popular Electronics" magazine and dream of saving enough money to get a Sinclair ZX81 (2K memory and built in BASIC!). First real programming was in 8085 machine language on a single board training computer. It had 24 LEDs for output, a hexadecimal keypad for input, and you entered opcodes in Octal! I remember that Christmas all I wanted was the book "Programming the Z80" from Radio Shack. I think it was $11 and more than I could afford. After that, the standard stuff C-64, to DOS to OS/2, then eventually RedHat 5.2. I suppose there are worse ways to spend the formative years.
