PH>I loved the BBS computer literacy project from the eighties. In New Zealand I
  >was lucky enough to have an imported Model B and we also got the speech chip
  >installed. Games such as Elite and the ability to programme made it a
  >fantastic tool. Colour also helped!

I was doing programming on the Apple II+ system I had, mostly doing those
word-maze type 'adventure' games and some strategy games but within a
year or so was writing business programs back when you couldn't buy
things like general database programs and needed to customize one from
scratch to use as an inventory program or for writing up formulae for
production computers. When I later got into IBM type systems I learned
how to do the same things there and, even though my compiling programs
are now pretty old, I still use a lot of utilities that I wrote back then.

PH>The ZX81 I loved. I sold my machine some years ago but then went out and
  >bought another in later years beacuse I missed having one to play with and
  >also show my kids the kind of systems Dad first cut this teeth on. The RAM
  >pack wobbles were notorious and we ended up soildering the contacts to negate
  >that (many did the same).

The first ones I built, friends had learned about that sort of thing the
hard way and passed along the warnings and I was buying military quality
EProms and gold plated machine-head sockets for mine. I never had any
problems with loose chips, not until I started buying machines made by
other people.

PH>I also recall the finesse required to set the cassette tape volume to just
  >the right level

Gad, that brings back memories. I started out with cassette data tapes as
well because I knew if I'd gotten a floppy drive tight off I'd spend all my
time playing games and I wanted to force myself to learn to program first.

I went through the levels of monitors as well.. first green, then amber,
then an IBM with 4 colours!..  Briefly I had a 256 Grayscale B&W before
getting a 'proper' colour monitor. That was about 3 years after the Apple
but, ironically, with an RF Modulator you could hook the Apple up to a
colour TV set and get (rather poor resolution) graphics in 16 colours..

Best wishes to all..

---
 * SLMR Rob  * Dating is like going on an endless Job interview *
 * PDQWK 2.52 #17


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