Re: For the fun of it

[Scott Hemphill <hemphill@hemphills.net>]

"Bill Heckel" <wheckelny1@verizon.net> writes:

> Hey gang,
> 
> Let's have some fun....
> 
> Post your current age and the first computer you ever used. 

I'm 51.  The first computer I ever used was an IBM7044 at the University
of California at Davis, although I really knew nothing about it.  I was
13, and had borrowed my high school geometry teacher's book on Fortran.
After reading it, I invented a method to calculate the value of pi, and
wrote a program to do it.  When my teacher saw my program, he asked me
if I wanted to try it out.  (I had not imagined that I would actually get
to run the program I had written!)  I went with him to his Saturday class
on Fortran at UCD, and after debugging my program, it printed the very
enlightening "3.14159".

Other computers in high school and college: IBM1620, HP2000, IBM360, IBM370
and PDP-10.

My first exposure to the 6502 was right out of college when my housemate
put together a KIM-1 system on a piece of plywood.  I wrote some 40-bit
arithmetic routines just to try them out.

The first computer I owned was a TRS-80 model 1.

I was always curious about the Apple II.  When I went back for grad school,
I found the Apple //e Technical Reference Manual in the bookstore, so I
wrote an emulator for it which ran under Unix.  There were ROM listings
in the back of the manual, so I typed them in and wrote an assembler so
I would have a ROM for the emulator (no BASIC, though).  It worked--I could
run diagnostics and enter the mini-assembler.

Shortly afterwords, I bought a Laser 128/EX.  I was able to capture its
ROM and converted my Apple //e emulator into a Laser 128/EX emulator.

I finally bought an Apple //e on ebay just a couple of years ago.

Scott
-- 
Scott Hemphill	hemphill@alumni.caltech.edu
"This isn't flying.  This is falling, with style."  -- Buzz Lightyear