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Your 1st experience with a computer?
Week 296 Group Rant
Voxera
2y

My first contact with an actual computer was the Sinclair ZX80, a monster with 512 bytes of ram (as in 1/2 kbyte)

It had no storage so you had to enter every program every time and it was programmed in basic using key combinations, you could not just write the commands since it did not have memory enough to keep the full text in memory.

So you pressed the cmd key along with one of the letter keys and possibly shift to enter a command, like cmd+p for print and it stored s byte code.

rant

wk296
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Comments
  • 4
    2y
    Was this when you were a child or teenager?
    It must have been quite an adventure to experiment on such machines!
    I feel quite spoiled with our first family PC having a Pentium II, 233 MHz with a whopping RAM of 256 MB... 😄
  • 4
    2y
    @PonySlaystation I was 10 at the time.
  • 0
    2y
    @PonySlaystation I need your address let's talk soon
  • 0
    2y
    Im unclear on your description of the programming. You mean to say there was no disk storage at all so instead of typing commands with ed, you had a manual with key combinations that you typed in liu of writing commands?
  • 0
    2y
    I have so many questions. Was the operating system sharing memory with your programs? Was it in some kind of firmware ROM?? I wish I could have experienced computers pre 2000s era. I started on Windows 98 as a 90s child so I missed the Wild West of computing.
  • 1
    2y
    @Diactoros more or less, the command where printed on the keys so you had a cmd key. So cmd + P was print and so on.

    Variables was I think single letters only.
  • 1
    2y
    @Diactoros and no persistent storage no, you had to type in the program when you turned the computer on.

    There might have existed tape storage but I never saw one.
  • 1
    2y
    @Diactoros There was not really an operating system as such.

    It had a basic interpreter in rom that was started on power on and that then ran the program but the program shared memory with screen output so if it was a long program you could not fill the whole screen with output.
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