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The home computer war

technicshistory.com

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Re: The home computer war

#21

Post by speed_spread »

greenbit wrote: post #10
speed_spread wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool kids had C64s. I had every other boring, flawed model. Tandy MC-10. TI-99, ZX80 (not even 81!) and some other CoCo with chiclet keys. Now I know the 6809 is actually pretty interesting but back then without video or graphic chips there wasn't much you could do as a 12 year old. Weirdly the most fun I had was with the BASIC programmable SHARP PC-xxxx line. I still have my PC-1350 somewhere.

That 6809 bewitched my middle school self. Having already learnt Z80 assembly language, the 6809 just looked so much more elegant. It had index registers that were actually useful! It had position independent code! It could do multiplication in one instruction! So when faced with choosing a CoCo or a C64 .. of course I chose the machine with the MUL instruction. Naturally, within mere months, that horrid 32x16 black…

My worst hardware choice (later) was to save with a monochrome VGA screen to afford a 24pin Fujitsu dot matrix vs the 9pin Epson. It forged the person I am today.

Re: The home computer war

#22

Post by SilentM68 »

Love the article. In my teens, I loved the RadioShack COCO in the 80s & its Assembly Language EditASM+. A manual to the 6809 assembly language can be found here: https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Prog.... That was my first intro to assembly.

In High School, I used the TRS80s for programming in BASIC as well as for electronics stuff. We had access to Apple IIs but used them mostly for VisiCalc, spreadsheet and word processing. Having a RadioShack next to the high school, probably influenced my choice to keep using those brands of machines as opposed to Atari/Commodore. In my original move to Florida, before I returned, the COCO was shipped via land transport, when it arrived, I was informed that the shipment was damaged including the COCO. Life is not kind :(

Re: The home computer war

#23

Post by MisterTea »

mghackerlady wrote: post #15
MisterTea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fun part about old computers we won't get back with microcontrollers is actually building the computer part. You started with a CPU and from there you added memory such as DRAM, SRAM and ROM like EPROM/EEPROM and Flash, UART controllers, IO controllers, and interrupt/DMA controllers. Then you mapped those into memory or IO space and routed interrupts. The you started writing code and watch your computer come to l…

for what it's worth, there are kit computers you can buy still. It's a niche market, but there are a good few z80 kits out there and ben eater sells a kit for building a custom 8bit CPU on a breadboard and a 6502 based kit

I think they still make the Z80? In my uni it was an 8088 in minimal mode. At work we have a few JK Nd:YAG lasers running on 6809's still making money.

Re: The home computer war

#24

Post by mghackerlady »

MisterTea wrote: post #23
mghackerlady wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for what it's worth, there are kit computers you can buy still. It's a niche market, but there are a good few z80 kits out there and ben eater sells a kit for building a custom 8bit CPU on a breadboard and a 6502 based kit

I think they still make the Z80? In my uni it was an 8088 in minimal mode. At work we have a few JK Nd:YAG lasers running on 6809's still making money.

They made the original Z80 until a year ago or so. They still sell Z80 based chips that are compatible, but aren't just a Z80

Re: The home computer war

#25

Post by rbanffy »

SilentM68 wrote: post #22

Love the article. In my teens, I loved the RadioShack COCO in the 80s & its Assembly Language EditASM+. A manual to the 6809 assembly language can be found here: https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Prog... . That was my first intro to assembly. In High School, I used the TRS80s for programming in BASIC as well as for electronics stuff. We had access to Apple IIs but used them mostly for VisiCalc,…

This whole series is amazing.

Re: The home computer war

#26

Post by rbanffy »

x______________ wrote: post #18
ido wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BASIC was a programming language, it was a joke.

Thanks for validating my initial assumptions.. Was hoping for something more than hello, world :/

BASIC for 8-bit computers was an interesting language. It was limited in many aspects, but taught a whole generation about how computers actually worked. Apart from non-native data types (strings and floats), it was quite close to the machine - GOTO and GOSUB map very neatly to (in 6502) JMP and JSR.

Re: The home computer war

#27

Post by rbanffy »

cfmcdonald wrote: post #17
mghackerlady wrote: post #12

I wish these kinds of computers would come back. Maybe with a language like Lua or Ruby instead of BASIC in ROM. The closest is the 400 and 500 series of Pis but those just aren't the same :(

While writing this post I actually got an itch to buy a Commodore 64 Ultimate, even though I never owned a Commodore 64 before. (I believe I used one once at friend's house.) Nostalgia by contagion.

The Ultimate sounds great. I have the lesser C64 Maxi. Would be nice if it could emulate the Plus 4 or the C16.
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