[Xastir] The ultimate editor...
Lee Bengston
lee.bengston at gmail.com
Mon Apr 20 01:27:27 EDT 2009
I started out "editing" on a keypunch. Oh well, at least that
mainframe had a hard drive.
Lee - K5DAT
Murphy, TX
On 4/20/09, Curt, WE7U <archer at eskimo.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Apr 2009, Richard Polivka, N6NKO wrote:
>
>> Altair 8080. Having to write the bootstrap loader in 32 bytes (may be
>> wrong
>> on that length) to set the serial port, initialize the disk controller and
>>
>> where to start loading the bios, that had to be hacked on for your system.
>> Of
>> course both had to fit in one track on a 8" floppy.
>
> I started out w/o hard drives, w/o floppies, w/o tape drives.
> Programs disappeared if you shut off the computer. Input was 8
> toggle switches (one byte wide) and a pushbutton, plus a few mode
> switches. Put it in load mode, start flipping toggles in binary and
> then push the pushbutton. Make a mistake, start over.
>
> The entire memory was 256 bytes.
>
> Output was two LED hexadecimal displays.
>
> I still have it somewhere. I should frame it. Or let my kids try
> it.
>
> --
> Curt, WE7U. archer at eskimo dot com
> http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
> Lotto: A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
> Windows: Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
> The world DOES revolve around me: I picked the coordinate system!"
> _______________________________________________
> Xastir mailing list
> Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
>
More information about the Xastir
mailing list