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A post over at
mentioned the Z80 processor, which had me remembering having a "Timex Sinclair" computer (I *believe* with a 16K (whoa!) memory expansion unit), on which I first tinkered with assembly language (vaguely remembering the book describing the instruction set seeming to cost a fortune at the time).
That had me remembering having an Amstrad PPC-640 computer... and then also a Commodore 64 (Motorola CPU) (not sure I got the timeline ordering right..). I'm vaguely remembering loving the Motorola CPU (68000?) for having a flat memory model (versus 8080/8085 segmented memory).
~tatterdemalion wrote (thread):
I had a VIC-20, though solidly in the C64 era; my parents bought it from a hobbyist friend when he upgraded to the C64. I never programmed on it in anything other than BASIC, though (with POKE and PEEK serving the function of inline bits of assembly).
Pedantry: The C64 had a MOS Technology 6510 CPU, a successor to the MOS 6502 used in the VIC-20 and the Apple II. It was designed by people that formerly worked at Motorola, though. And you're also right about the 68k having a flat memory model; it's just that it was a bit later (original Macintosh). The segmented memory model on the Intel architecture bit me in the ass in college, trying to port a simple linked list implementation in C from the school's Suns to my Windows 3.1 machine... the annoying bit being that it was an 80386, which had I been running a better operating system, was perfectly capable of providing a flat view of memory.
~the_bebop_cowboy wrote (thread):
Can you have nostalgia for things from before you were born?
I love old computers. Some from my childhood but many older than that. I'm often spinning up emulators or browsing eBay, window shopping for C64s or Ataris.
Sometimes I wish I had been born 10 or 20 years ago so I could have experienced the 8-bit machines in their prime. My first experience programming was in BASIC, maybe that's not uncommon for some but this was in the late 90's for me. On a Windows 95 machine, diving into DOS to run QBasic. Ha! I guess I was a retro computer enthusiast even when I started.
In recent years, I've been satisfying my retro computing urges with fantasy consoles. The TIC-80 is my recent favorite. It's meant for making games, but i like to consider that you could use it almost any way you like. Word processor, drawing, music. If you haven't heard of it before, I hope you enjoy.
I was having trouble getting to sleep because I was thinking about all the different micro blogging platforms out there including write.as. If you like the breadbin look of the C64, there is a Mini-ITX C64 look-alike case coming out on Kickstarter on June 13th from My Retro Computer.
Man, the Z80 brings me back as well. I spent the last few years of high school tinkering with Z80 chips I was able to get for really cheap. I ended up making a few breadboard computers and they could do really basic things like flash LEDs and one could even run 4k BASIC, granted very poorly and with a lot of broken text.
It surprises me that they are still actively in production, and even still being used in modern technology. I'm not sure about the newer models, but the TI calculators we used in high school, the TI-84 models, used a Z80 processor. I wonder for how much longer this little 8-bit gem will continue to be relevant.
6800, you added a 0. I see these exact model computers referred to (and even worked on) all the time on The 8-Bit Guy on YouTube. Fun channel, a lot to learn :)
I read the post you're referring to by Paolo Amoroso this morning, and it had me clicking and reading about that device (the Z80).
All of these machines were before my time, and I never owned any of them (the oldest model I remember ever tooling with was an Apple IIe in the school library in grade school), but I want to build my own retro-style home rig for the purposes of writing only (though other ish will be done with it, more than likely).
Here's a link, if interested (I put this post on (sub)TMO real fast, because I had it "locked down" on Notion.so, and that service is abysmal) -
https://write.as/sub-tmo/writing-and-a-hypothetical-writing-setup-aka-init-commit-project
...but, I want to do something in this space eventually. It would be cool :)