Where is my TI994A manual?
Did you have the expansion bay or speech module? Met a guy who had the works, first case of computer envy!
The first computer board I designed was based on a 6502 with only 1K or RAM.
All hail Bill Mensch, lord of the embedded 6502, and designer of cpu's I actually understood. Learned some assembly on the 6502 but didn't create any hardware with it (though did dream alot about expanding the C64). Later, did use the somewhat related 68HC11 for digital design projects in college and afterwards.
Actually the first I designed was a home made CPU with a custom microcode instruction set.
Brainiac!!!
lol I started out writing code for an 8k machine what bliss when i got upgraded to 16k.
Wow, was that an Apple II or something more esoteric? I'm pretty sure even the Commodore PET and TRS-80 both had at least 32k. My mother was cleaning out the attic over xmas, sent me home with a couple old books:
Dude, we're officially old!
Pre Apple II, pre commodore, pre ZX Spectrum (UK only ??) ... in fact the first model i used might have been only 4k.. memory fades on details, based on z80 processor. I do remember writing page swapping code to load more code from disk .... It was a machine probably only available in the UK, mainly in schools. From a company called Research Machines...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/11/13/archaeologic_the_research_machines_380z_story/
Had to put together an ancient history timeline, though order of introduction may have been different in UK, don't think the 380Z was offered here.
1977 Apple II, TRS-80, Commodore PET 2001
1978 Commodore CBM 3000 series (Europe), Research Machines 380Z
1979 Apple II Plus, TI-99/4, TRS-80 II
1980 Commodore PET 4000 series, Commodore VIC-20, TRS-80 III, TRS-80 Color 1
1981 IBM PC, TI-99/4A
1982 ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Link 480Z
1983 Apple IIe, IBM PC XT, TRS-80 Model 4, TRS-80 Color 2
1984 Apple Mac, Apple Mac 512k, IBM PC AT
1985 Amiga 1000, Commodore 128
1986 Apple Mac Plus, IBM PC XT 286, TRS-80 Color 3
Now to go way off topic....
Something I just discovered and am still in shock over is I started using the above machines back in the 80s and i did computer science in high school at the USA equivalent of AP+/first year college course (UK o-level then A-level). I just found out and was majorly shocked that here in south Florida that computer science even tho "its on the books" as a high school course, it is in fact not available in any high school in the whole of south Florida besides one private school. And last years enrollment was 9 kids and this is not an AP class but a beginner class, theirs no AP computer science classes at all. This is approximately the 7th largest school district in the USA and their is only 9 kids studying computer science at the most basic level WTF !!!!
I mean i knew the USA was behind in many areas of education. Generally USA students being approx 1-1.5years behind uk students at the end of high school. But this is ridiculous, a course i did approx 30 years ago is still not available !!! Is this just a South Florida thing or is this all over the USA.
My first programming was in '81 doing basic on TRS-80 II (local college summer camp course) and PET 4032 hardware (jr high). Our high school which did have AP calculus and physics, didn't have any computer classes whatsoever, took typing to burn up electives (and my WPM has never improved since, lol). Pretty sure they didn't have computer or typing courses when my siblings went through either; they'd been replaced with 'keyboarding' wtf! These days it really depends upon school district whether they have computer classes and if so, if they are required courses or electives. Plano, TX high school has AP CS courses, but that may be the due to local influence of Texas Instruments. Will ask my bro-in-law what the high school he teaches at offers.
To try and counter this my kids are now participating in a local http://coderdojo.com/ but really that's not good enough but at least is something. Not really sure what else to do at the present time open to suggestions...
Well, you've figured out that our public schools are merely a warehousing system for the children of working adults. Beyond basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, they've never really incorporated even the most ubiquitous of technologies into the core curriculum. Yes, think of the children: the less they truly understand, the easier they are to manipulate and propagandize later in life. If that sounds cynical, then you may not believe that I've seen positions advertised by microelectronics manufacturers that specifically disallow candidates with more than a high school education. I've watched whole IT departments be outsourced to Asia, trained by remaining skeleton staff before they too are laid off or replaced by more expensive H1B labor. Read the outdated NSF Engineering Workforce report; even in '99 (peak of computer and IT-related employment) nearly 40% of electrical and computer engineering degree holders didn't even work in an engineering occupation at all.
While I understand that programming is a specialty, I can't think of a single field where basic background in measurement, computation and automation methods wouldn't be worthwhile. That said, it stands to reason that those interested will seek out information, and if there is one field with a plethora of information available online, it is computer science. Hardest part is narrowing down the volume of material to get a good overview of the basics, without getting caught up specific tech like ordering a raspberry pi and downloading a 760 page ARM cpu manual...