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I am envious of all you guys who grew up with the original computers, learning how to use code on the way. I did not use a computer until my late 50’s, and have often wished that I had taken time out to see what it was all about.
However, I was busy doing all kinds of other stuff and having some (often heavy) life experiences on the way. No point in regrets I guess, and I have learned a heck of a lot since that first beige box, with a Cyrix 586 and a whole 8MB of memory! Then I bought better bits and built a better PC, using these as well as floppies, remember them? –
I had 10 of them, then read about the “Click of Death” and formatted them, sold them, bought a bigger Hdd (whole 8GB!) I carried on learning, building and picking up so much from MM and the forum, still learning and getting help from all the good voices here. I just wish I had learned from the ‘bottom up’ but life is what it is I guess.
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.Another chip in the 8 bit Atari’s was a standard motorola GPIO. This was wired out to the joystick ports and was fully software programable for input or output. At the time I connected up a couple of my own project boards and wondered why nobody else seemed interested. Now we have the raspery Pi and people rave about it
I can tell you why I did not get interested at that time – soldering.
Soldering with non-temperature controlled irons and clunky tips was at best hit or miss, and if you ever soldered in a (relatively expensive) clock chip it was 50:50 whether or not you zapped it with static. I really only got back into playing with electronics when decent low-cost solder stations and anti-static mats made their appearance.
The Pi is different again, you can do a lot with no soldering at all. Lego-like electronics.
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