At 03:22 PM 11/21/2007, Chris Kennedy wrote: I'll second that; a few years ago my then eleven- and nine-year-olds had fun with Alice. BASIC on an old Palm was a good choice, too - cheap, easy, very portable. Back in the old days, I remember writing endless lines of BASIC on sheets of paper in the back of the station wagon on long trips... - John

--- Jim Battle <frustum at pacbell.net> wrote: at the risk of making you hurl I guess, Inside the IBM PC by Peter Norton. I doubt you'd keep a 9 year old captivated starting him out with logic gates (of course some kids take to that though). You have to start *higher level*. This would give him a very satisfactory understanding of what's under the hood. I still don't know what goes on inside a cpu (nor most of the chips on a pc mobo). He goes into some low level little hacks, snooping out bios signatures, all that jazz. IMHO a wonderful first book. I didn't read it at 9, I was 19. Can't say if it's too advanced for a 9 year old. But y'all can read it together! Next book - IBM PC Assembler Language and Programming, Peter Abel FIRST EDITION. You cannot ask for a better text on assembler if you asked me (so you didn't ask me, well I done told you anyway!). Very righteous tutorial on binary. As for rudimentary gates and such, yer on your own. Nothing comes to mind, but there's tons out there. Phooee. PCs are arguably the best tools to learn on. It's such a vanilla architecture. Some earlier 8-bit UK and Yank machines wouldn't be a bad 2nd choice, but regarding media and such (he'll want to save programs remember) it couldn't be easier. You can stick a 3.5" HD drive in just about any peecee, even if it sees it as a 720k. Xbox1s are real cheap these days besides. As he moves up, get him Huang's "Hacking the Xbox". It's a great book in so many ways if you want to learn how to snoop/scope-out that sort of thing. Or a breadboard and a bunch of parts from Radio Shack (if they still sell them). Forest Mimm's Engineer's Mini-Notebooks used to be a good way to learn how to throw some goofy circuits together (555 stuff, opto- stuff). You won't find them anymore though. Perhaps a 2nd hand store. If you're looking to teach solid theory, that's another matter (duh). absolutely nothing wrong with that. But the pc is a venerable well documented architecture, and there are a few groovy boxes across the pond that break the mold somewhat to make it more interesting (hectic?). LIKE THE RESEARCH MACHINES NIMBUS! If you can find one. I can't. Frankly though, I don't see how an English home could be called one w/o Clive Sugar's 628?. And Yo, cassette tapes are still easier to find then floppy disks! That's why you should start at a suitable level of *abstraction* if you will. Learn about the innards the get-go. Boredom might set in. BASIC is a staple for the would be hacker... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better pen pal. Text or chat with friends inside Yahoo! Mail. See how. http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/

On Thursday 22 November 2007 00:00:45 Chuck Guzis wrote: Meh. Get a big tube of the bigger ones. For what you pay in onesy-twosey quantities in Maplin etc, you can get a big bag of them from eBay. I'm actually planning on moving my own projects from PIC to Atmel AVR, because the Linux toolchain is better (and programmers are made of four resistors...) ob. on-topic - one planned project is an IDE-to-parallel bridge so I can hang some biggish drives off my PDP11. In theory I could just derive the control signals from the parallel interface myself, but if I can offload some of the command processing to an interface CPU then it might leave some cycles left for RT-11 to run. Remember when we talked about intelligent peripherals? Well, I make that a Z80 or similar in the drive (many modern IDE drives use a Dragonball or similar) and an AVR in the interface. Is it just me, or are things getting silly when it's cheaper and easier to program a microcontroller to just be a bunch of decoder logic than getting random logic to do it? Gordon

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 03:37:56PM -0800, Chris M wrote: I've not seen that, but Zaks "Programming the Z80" is an excellent book. It's obviously a splendid reference, but it also makes a fairly good introduction to assembler programming and contains good implementations of common algorithms (like how to divide and multiply), fully commented and ready to copy into your own code. Learn about them *when you need to* and not before. -- David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence Godliness is next to Englishness

This depends _a lot_ on the person learning the stuff. I find such abstractions to be a major hinderance to learning, it comes under the 'oversimiplifcaiton' I mentioned last night. There are too many books at the 'this processr, this memory, this smack on head' level, and I have never been able to learn anything useful from a book that seems to suggest these various units operate on some kind of deep magic that I'll never understand. Worse still, IMHO, are those books that explain the basic logic gates and the Eccles-Jordan circuit (SR flip-flop) and then jump to the 'processor + memory + I/O' level with no explanation of how you might wire up gates to make a processor. ARCH! There was one reasonable book put out by Radio Shack many years ago. I forget the title, but IIRC it had a geeen cover and sprial binding along the top edge. What made it intereting was that it contained a scehanmtic for a very simple processor (I think it could address 16 4-bit memory locations, nothing more), and gave simple programs to run on it. Totally useless for any real work, it was certainly simple enough that you could analyse the operation of said programs by hand. Of course the fact that I grew up fiddling with transistors (and vlaves for that matter) probably has something to do with the way I regard computers... -tony

--- Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: TCP/IP is one thing. But knowing how a dd works today?? If you're writing i/o it's one thing. Otherwise phew. If my opinion matters, it's a little too intense from the get-go. I'd concentrate on the *vagueries* of ic's and work down as necessary. Even w/assembly language, just how much of what goes on at the gate level is useful? Few, make that precious few have any clue what goes on in a uP at the level you're talking about. Sure it would be great for a kid/? to learn how to build a discrete logic cpu. But that's an awfully specialized area of computing for most of us. Amidst the ensuing cries of treason or the like, a lot of people feel that entering opcodes in hex on a keypad is a tad *tedious* (polite version). Different strokes for different folks I guess though. How many people actually need to program in assembly language these days?? As time progresses, a lot of the knowledge that was essential in earlier times will cease to be a necessity. I know the original question was posed on a vintage list, but is it necessary to learn on an 8-bit unit? There may be some good reasons to, but if at all possible learn on something that's going to be more relevant to today's environment (and even that's a stretch in the case of an early pc). ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ

On 23 Nov 2007 at 15:32, Stroller wrote: ... One thing that I've learned in my life is to never underestimate the capability of a young person to absorb knowledge. I do believe that it's not only possible but desirable to teach technical matters beginning with a "first principles" approach rather than a "cookbook" approach. I'll readily grant that some things may be too complex to effectively teach to the very young, such as economics, cosmological theories, the game of cricket... Cheers, Chuck

On Friday 23 November 2007 16:04, Chris M wrote: Speaking of which, I have a vague recollection of "Tiny BASIC". Never did actually use it, though. Any of you guys familiar with it? Is it all that usable? At all extensible? I can see where it might be handy for some stuff... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 20:35:29 -0800 (PST), Cameron Kaiser wrote: It would be great if he was, my first high level language was Tom's tiny basic for the AMI EVK300. He cut tapes in those days on a 4004 system driving a teletype running out on his porch so he could sleep with it running at night. He had the only 4004 with a floppy controler I have ever seen running. It would have been about 1979/80 when I lost track of him. He had just finished the RCA cosmac version the week I stopped by to see him, and had a few hours to chat. The other Bob

Hi A search on the web will show a couple of listing of a version of Palo Alto Tiny BASIC that I posted years ago. It was slighly modified from the original to allow on to expand it. It had I/O for the Poly88 but it could be easily connected to any serial streams terminal. It fit in 2 2708s which was great for the Poly88. I wrote 3 extentions that I used. These could be loaded on the fly from the cassette tape, with the BASIC program that that used them. I added PEEK, POKE and SAVE. PEEK and POKE were useful with the Poly88's video. SAVE made it simple to save any new programs that also need these extras. The bad part was that the extended code had to be done in assembly code and required a reasonable understanding of how Tiny BASIC worked inside. If one wanted to work with an extensible language, Forth is the most flexible. It is also one of the best for understanding more complex programming concepts. It isn't that it has them built in, it is that it contains all the building blocks needed to create them. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Put your friends on the big screen with Windows Vista? + Windows Live?. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/shop/specialoffers.mspx?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_CPC…

On Nov 26, 2007, at 1:11 PM, Roy J. Tellason wrote: I really, really like FORTH. Any old SPARCstation makes a great FORTH learning vehicle (OpenBOOT), but I opted to build a small Z80 single-board computer and ported Brad Rodriguez' CamelFORTH to it as a machine on which to learn the language. I've had great fun with it, and the language is VERY powerful. I've extended it quite a bit; written a full-screen editor, drivers for new hardware (I2C flash, VF display, I2C tone generator, etc) etc etc. I hope to add analog I/O sometime soon. I have a few Harris RTX2000 chips (essentially a native FORTH instruction set...very neat) but haven't done anything with them yet. I really need more free time. Brodie's books are good; they will serve you well. Here are some URLs to get you going: General information and history: http://www.colorforth.com/HOPL.html http://www.ultratechnology.com/1xforth.htm http://www.ultratechnology.com/moore4th.htm Implementation: http://www.camelforth.com/news.php http://retroforth.org/ http://forthos.org/ http://www.taygeta.com/forthcomp.html -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Hi Your experience is not all that unusual. Many people that get started in Forth find that problems that they thought were complicated to deal with, in other languages, seem to almost write themselves. Many are put off by the noise words ( swap dup over and such ). Still, one finds that as one becomes a better coder in Forth, dup becomes about the only one of these words that gets used in higher levels of coding. The others find them selves in the lower level words. Some don't like the RPN nature but I alway thought that it was more natural in telling a computer what to do. It always reads left to right, top to bottom. No artificial formulas, just what to do and when to do it. Type checking is that last straw for many. It can't be a high level language if it wasn't type checked, could it? Does type checking really produce better error free code? I've only seen one large project ever completed on schedule and with no errors ever found in the end product ( the Canon Cat ) and it was all done in Forth by a team of programmers, without type checking. It was more than just the language but the language didn't get in the way for using better methods that actually did produce error free code. I've got a NC4000 on a board that I've added floppy and hard drive to. I used old XT boards and wrote all the drivers in Forth. I also had an EPROM programmer card that ran on a parallel printer port. The RTX2000 was a great chip that followed the NC4000. They fixed some of the bugs in the NC4000. The RTX2000s were often used as accelerators on the PC bus with 386s and 486s. This was impressive when you consider that the clock speeds of the RTX2000 were on the order of 10 to 15MHz and the 386s were 33MHz and more. The RTX2000s made it into space because they had a rad harden version and they ran so cool for the amount of work they did( never saw one need a heat sink, cool to the touch ). On my NC4000 ( running at 4MHz ) I wrote a sort routine that could sort 1000 signed 16 bit intergers in 19.2ms. That is spending 19.2 us on each value sorted. The last point is that most seasoned Forth programmers actually write better code in other languages. They bring habits and methods along with them that allow them to write better code. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Share life as it happens with the new Windows Live.Download today it's FREE! http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_Wave2_sharelife_112007

It was thus said that the Great der Mouse once stated: I did something like that in college. It had the benefit that I could automatically determine which version of a word to apply (int_plus to add ints, double_plus to add floats, string_plus to concatenate strings). But adding such type information doubled the size of the stack, but it wasn't that bad a trade off, even when I did it a dozen years ago (Unix workstation). -spc (Even made a Unix shell in the language, but the fact that I don't use it should say something about it ... )

On 26 Nov 2007 at 13:11, Roy J. Tellason wrote: Teaching a young person Forth could habits speech strange to lead. - ) ; Chuck Cheers ,

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: Is Japanese a post-fix language? Howzbout starting with Postscript?

At 07:51 PM 11/26/2007, Fred Cisin wrote: I would argue it is. Verbs at the end, objects get tagged along the way, phrases stack. I remember laughing out loud when I made that realization during Japanese class. - John

*sigh*

Fred Cisin wrote: Heck in the 70's and 80's Mr Spock, was the only different person I knew of that used computers. "logical" was the keyword back then. PS. We never did really find out what kids wanted to about computers any how. By the time they grow up, case modding probably will be illegal too. Warning do not let your child read this warning. Warning this product has a 5% of running FORTH and this could lead to Chinese-speaky-talky-fortune-cookie-wordies.

Chuck Guzis wrote: Real or fictional machine? PS. I bet with the right fictional machine, it could be a easy step to building hardware.

On 2007-11-27 4:32, Chuck Guzis wrote: I couldn't agree more! Then again, I have a sick love for COBOL... I very much enjoy the limitations it places on the programmer (especially COBOL-74!), and pride myself to still be able to write obfuscated code in such a chatty and readable language. But I cut my teeth on Z80 assembly, and there are many simulators available that'll get you writing low-level programs in no time at all, teaching valuable lessons about the basic workings of microprocessors. From there, you can go down to learning the gate level workings of computers, or up to learning the software side of things. ,xtG .tsooJ -- Dead end You are at a dead end of a dirt road. The road goes to the east. In the distance you can see that it will eventually fork off. The trees here are very tall royal palms, and they are spaced equidistant There is a shovel here. Taken. You forcefully shove a shovel down your throat, and start choking. You are dead. You have scored 0 out of a possible 90 points. -- Joost van de Griek <http://www.jvdg.net/>

Joost van de Griek wrote: <tag line> Dead end You are at a dead end of a dirt road. The road goes to the east. In the distance you can see that it will eventually fork off. The trees here are very tall royal palms, and they are spaced equidistant There is a shovel here. Forget the shovel ... I want to see the babes under the palm trees. :) BTW I wonder why I never can win at these games.

EAM first! There's nothing like "cardboard technology" to demystify the whole thing. "How can you use an 08x sorter (one column at a time) to efficiently arrange a large deck of cards with a sequence number in 73 through 80?" "Wire a plug board for an interpreter to print last name, then first name, that have fields in the middle of the card, flush left." "Use a 407? accounting machine to print results directly onto a form 1040." "Use a Gerber Data Digitizer ("Etch-a-sketch") to make a deck of cards with a risque picture." OK, NOW write machine language. (1401 emulator on a 1620)?

--- Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: So? The poor kid is likely to develop CTS before he hits 18. I took COBOL in HS, and man did I hate it. FORTRAN was much more funner. Besides, where would you find a COBOL compiler for a peecee or whatever else? Here's a question - what 8-bitters (or defunct 16-bitters, Atari, Amiga, you know, the common stuff) had COBOL available? What was SNOBOL? What about COBAL? I think I have COBAL for the TI PC. A smattering of assembly language to begin with maybe. That's something someone will learn only if they want to. Lots of people have problems with it. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. Make Yahoo! your homepage. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

Fred Cisin wrote: Take a look at Squeak. It's transparent down to the interpreter level (source included) and it's free. It's also the language chosen for the one laptop project. Very cool, based on smalltalk. It's sorta on topic. and it won't cause brain damage. Jim Davis.

--- Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: Yes I forgot. I actually own M$'s COBOL compiler. O joy. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

On 27 Nov 2007 at 16:07, Chris M wrote: SNOBOL4 was/is definitely available for the PC as well as that piece of useless flotsam, the Tandy 2000 (from Catspaw). There may have been a CP/M version of it, but I'm not sure. COBOL was even available for CP/M 2.2 (808x/Z80) and certainly available for a wide range of processors since then. I've never run into COBAL in my sheltered existence. What is it? Were you aware that IBM used to publish coding forms for machine language? IIRC, they called it "(fill in machine name) Absolute Coding System". I used to have some 1620 ACS forms. The left column had space for the location, the next column held the opcode, the third column, the P address and the fourth column, the Q address. The remainder of the line was left for comments. Strange as it sounds, the preprinted forms actually were better than a blank sheet of paper. That punched-card mentality really sticks around ("one box for one character"). I still code on quadrule paper. Cheers, Chuck

Hi, Microsift....they certainly produced one for MS-DOS (dunno if there was ever a "VisualCOBOL" though). There were several compilers which ran under CP/M, "CIS-COBOL" was one I used while at polytechnic (on SuperBrain IIs). "FaST COBOL" ran on the Atari ST, along with "Nevada(?) COBOL". I've never come across a COBOL compiler for the 8-bit Atari, I had a thing in those days about learning almost every programming language I could so had a *LOT* of compilers/interpreters for my Atari, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one out there somewhere. <desperately....holding....back....from....commenting.... - oh, stuff it> Yes, and those are PRECISELY the sort of people who have no business being computer programmers, IMHO; I.E. they couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag. TTFN - Pete.

On 27 Nov 2007 at 23:48, Jim Brain wrote: That's one of the reasons that I suggested a microcontroller such as a PIC (or an AVR or 8051 family). Very simple architecture (a PIC has, what, 34 instructions?). No OS to fool with, easy to program, cheap and you can actually make it do interesting things. Cheers, Chuck

On 28 Nov 2007 at 0:23, Jim Brain wrote: I guess if I were teaching a young 'un, the AVR would be a good choice. Part of the problems with PIC architecture lies in the way said architecture is described in the datasheets leading to some warped thinking. But the other part does lie in the warped implementation. I think discussion of the PIC is probably on-topic, as the architecture dates back to 1975 as a support processor for the GI CP1600 CPU (which had a much more orthogonal instruction set). Of course, the 8051/8048/68HC11 all qualify as vintage architectures and would also be choices for teaching. Cheers, Chuck

At 10:58 PM 11/27/2007, Ensor wrote: Fujitsu Cobol .NET is a "Visual COBOL" workalike. Object oriented COBOL, OLE, etc. Hoping to keep this marginally on-topic, I've used it to keep some code running on Windows that originated on a PR1ME, ported to Wang, ported to VMS, ported to MS-DOS, then ported to Windows. For what it does, COBOL is very portable. -Rick

Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: I'm relatively new to the Amiga scene (6 years experience - 5 on real hardware, 1 under emulation), but I have never heard about any of them being for the Amiga. I know you can program on the Amiga using the following languages: Assembler Amiga BASIC AMOS BASIC Blitz BASIC Rexx Arexx C Machine Code I don't think I missed any. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

On 29 Nov 2007 at 15:30, Fred Cisin wrote: The most common was the 557. You too, with the aid of the plugboard can jumble colums, print them in the middle of the card and all sorts of other neat stuff--except for printing 80 columns in a single row across the top of the card--and enough punctuation to make sense of a deck of FORTRAN source. Cheers, Chuck

On 29 Nov 2007 at 16:33, Fred Cisin wrote: I don't know if that feature was standard for all 029s, but I saw it on every one that I used. You could tell what someone was up to when you saw an 029 with a hopper full of cards sitting unattended going "rattle-rattle-rattle....rattle, ker-chunk" over and over again. Cheers, Chuck

Yes, I think that was actually a different IBM model than the 029, but it was essentially an 029. The proper model number escapes me right now. -- Will

I do not think it was actually an option - it was a new IBM type number, like 0mumblefoo. -- Will

On 29 Nov 2007 at 23:11, Andrew Burton wrote: real hardware, 1 under emulation), but I have never heard about any of them being for the Amiga. I know you can program on the Amiga using the following languages: I think your list is way too short. For example, I don't see "Absoft FORTRAN"... SNOBOL exists as the high-performance SPITBOL for the 68K from Catspaw, Inc. but primarily for *nix platforms. See: http://www.snobol4.com/ What was COBAL? Cheers, Chuck

On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 11:57:34PM +0000, Ethan Dicks wrote: Perl for definite, I used it on the Amiga to do analysis on text for my dads PHD back in 1991. As far as I know there was no separate Rexx implementation for the Amiga, just ARexx (wasn't much call for a separate version after that :)) There was also E EzASM (might not really classify as a full language, it was just a front-end to the assembler) XLisp Scheme Stony Brook Prolog GFA Basic Draco Pascal (Metacomco had an ISO Pascal, and fairly sure there was a more useful one later but can't remember its name) Modula-2 And a ton of others, lots available via the Fish disks and AMINET.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard" <legalize at xmission.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 7:29 AM Subject: Re: Amiga languages (was Re: Teaching kids about computers...) Indeed, I graduated in 1986 from a C64 cartridge based implementation to MVP FORTH on the A1000. Not sure if MVP was the first, but definitely one of the earliest. Still have it, still sometimes (rarely) play with it. Lance // http://www.commodore128.org //

On Nov 22, 2007, at 8:07 PM, Chris M wrote: I suppose it really depends on whether or not one wants to be an effective programmer, or how well one wants to know one's tools. I find myself constantly explaining things to "computer people" who don't know how computers work. Knowing how things work at a basic level allows one to figure out everything else intuitively as they go along. I know a "hardware guy" who had no idea why his hard drive was ruined when he stacked a large magnet atop it while it was on the bench. I've never done such a thing, because I...(wait for it...) know how a disk drive works. If one is content to use a tool without knowing anything about it, one must be content to look like an idiot and always ask stupid questions of those who have bothered to learn a few things about the world they live in. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007

I already knew that. But even you can't get away w/o some coding now and again. And I think s/w is a bit more then a "necessary nuisance". W/o it, the hardware is useless. Now this doesn't mean you personally have to love it, but you lie at an extreme in terms of interests. Even those interested in hardware to whatever degree feel the desire to write some botched up assembly code. For the average orangutang (like me) if you want to *get into* a computer, you're going to learn how to program it, likely at a low level. It's asking way too much of the vast majority of people to alter their h/w, or sometimes even fix something (granted 80% of problems are easy to diagnose. The other 20% call for the ol' chip swapping methodology <for a lot of people>,). ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

On Thursday 22 November 2007 18:48, Chuck Guzis wrote: This reminds me of folks I used to run into back in the day that considered themselves "programmers" -- in dbase! Some of us actually enjoy that sort of thing and some just want to be able to use the end result, or maybe tweak it a bit. Works for me, but then I suspect we're all a bunch of technophiles in here anyway... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Hey! I don't know RPG or dbase, but I have learnt a bit of SQL, and I don't think it's unfair to think, or speak, of working with SQL as programming. It's a rather unusual language, mostly declarative rather than imperative, and somewhat specialized, but it certainly demands many of the same skills and mindsets as programming in more conventional languages, and it's not all _that_ outr? a language. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On Fri, Nov 23, 2007 at 02:50:53PM -0800, Fred Cisin wrote: Or as one wannabe "programmer" I worked with used - Labview! Sorta like saying owning Lego makes one a civil engineer. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 23-Nov-2007 at 23:10 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -31.4 F (-35.2 C) Windchill -47.9 F (-44.4 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 4.6 kts Grid 117 Barometer 678.0 mb (10704 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

On Friday 23 November 2007 19:10, Chris M wrote: I don't have a clue, never having studied it. Feel free to send the books my way and I'll read 'em and see... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Dave McGuire wrote: With all due respect, the attributions are not completely correct. I was NOT the one who made the remark about dBase. My remark(s) was that rejection of dBase based on whether or not it meets the DEFINITION of a "language" would apply similarly to RPG and SQL as well. None of which is relevant to my incompetence at RPG, SQL, and dBase systems.

Any kid who is educationally advanced enough to do these various methods is far enough along to be able to MAKE THEIR OWN CHOICE as to "first principles", "abstraction", "structured", "procedural" PIC, logic gates, etc.

Who?! Are you getting confused with (Sir?) Clive Sinclair (Spectrum's, C5 etc.) and Sir Alan (Michael) Sugar (founder of Amstrad)? They are not the same person! Yeah, I still have a whole bunch of cassette tapes, but I don't know whether I still have my (rubbish) Spectrum games I made. The title of the others escape me, but the last one I worked on (in 1992/3) was UNTTR (United Nations To The Rescue). It was supposed to be a combination space invaders and Star Raiders 2 (classic Spectrum game that gave me and my family hours of play, despite being very small - 5 mins to load), but turned out rubbish. When the in-built tape recorder chewed the tape it was on (which we recovered) I decided to ditch programming and concentrate on playing games. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: Frankly though, I don't see how an English home could be called one w/o Clive Sugar's 628?. And Yo, cassette tapes are still easier to find then floppy disks!

On Thursday 22 November 2007 18:15, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: I still like those, and wish they weren't so darned expensive by comparison with the gray ones... :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Sat, 2007-11-24 at 00:10 +0000, Tony Duell wrote: But a roll of the widest stuff you're going to use, and slit it down? It's not like you'll *never* use it all. I have started buying components and cable and things in large quantities because it's cheaper and easier than buying small amounts. Gordon

Grant Stockly wrote: Yes, but on dial up I did not want to download it. Still trying to remap his windows key to 'any other' key. :)

OK, I've managed to catch up with the thread now. Nice to see so many replies (I figured it'd generate a few, but I didn't expect this many :-) A few individual points: Re. BBC micro: will definitely have one over here at some point. It'd be nice to find a US-spec one, but I expect they're a little rare even in the US (I've only ever seen one on the UK side). Main worry about the BBC though is that it's perhaps overkill for that initial learning step (i.e. focus on ROM/RAM/CPU and basic I/O) but is a fantastic machine once initial concepts have been grasped. (C64 perhaps falls into the same category as the BBC - it might be a bit too daunting initially simply because it can do so much more than the basic stuff) Re. Zaks "Programming the Z80" - good idea. I've actually got two copies anyway, but they're boxed up in the UK; perhaps I could manage to get one sent over 'early' though. Definitely is a good book... Re. Alice. Interesting. I've not come across that before, but looking at the front page of the site it looks like it has potential - I'll do some more reading! I'm still not sure how to approach the low-level electronics side of things. Way back when in the UK, we had some electronics 'kits' at school which had basic logic gates mounted on a board and allowed kids to jump wires between them to make circuits (they contained a few LEDs, an LDR, some switches etc. too). Blue fronts, with the component legends drawn out in white (you couldn't actually see the ICs themselves). Did something similar exist in US schools? That sort of thing might be a good practical introduction... I'd still like to find a 'simple' machine for him to play on - something on a par with a 48KB Spectrum; i.e. just ROM/RAM/CPU, keyboard, cassette storage, and TV output. Extra credit for having a 'common' CPU such as the Z80 or 6502 :-) (didn't the 48KB Spectrum sell in the US via Timex? Did it have a 'proper' keyboard? Having something with a 'real' keyboard would be nice...). Maybe an Apple ][ is a good candidate and still readily obtainable in the US? Reluctant to go the emulator route (just because it feels wrong to me personally :-) but maybe that's another option... I think I'm sort of aiming for a three-pronged 'attack' here: give him the ability to learn some electronics, learn how a computer fundamentally works, and learn how computers are programmed. Maybe he'll naturally gravitate toward one area (but, like I was, maybe he'll enjoy all three equally). Too early to tell at the moment though, so it'd be nice to keep options open. cheers Jules

It was thus said that the Great Jules Richardson once stated: A Color Computer or Color Computer 2 seems to fit the bill. The CPU is the nicest of the 8bits (IMHO) and the video screen is more logical than anything you'll find on the C64, Atari or Apple. You can even do multichannel sound, but that tends to suck up the CPU 8-) -spc (Learned to program on my first computer, a Coco)

Mark Meiss wrote: Hmm, interesting. Is that the one that was the same as the Dragon 32 in the UK (i.e. built from the 6809 app note)? If so, I'll be bringing a Dragon 64 over at some point ( > 6 months), and I have the disk controller cartridge for it, along with the disk unit itself and quite a stack of software... So yes, maybe I'm best off looking for a Coco (I assume 'Coco' == 'Color Computer') right now, and then one day (assuming the lad's still keen) 'upgrading' him to a BBC micro, C64 etc... cheers Jules

On Nov 28, 2007 4:43 PM, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: As I understand it, the Color Computer / "CoCo" is very similar to the Dragon 32/64, except with some differences in memory locations -- things like the location of the "speedup poke" and so forth. I don't have the slightest idea whether the CoCo version of OS-9 runs on a Dragon. If you happen to try to get a US CoCo, be aware that there are a number of levels to which they can be upgraded -- from 4K to 64K of memory and Color BASIC vs. Extended Color BASIC. (Many 32K systems actually have 64K installed, with half of it jumpered away.) The keyboards are nice, though: you can take them completely apart for cleaning without much effort. The CoCo 3 is a very different beast inside. It's a great little computer (wouldn't give mine up for the world), but something to stay away from if understanding the design is a big deal: almost everything outside the processor is implemented on a custom ASIC.

I also suggested it before reading the rest of the thread. The 6809 is probably the easieest 8-biotter to learn. I think you mean 6847 here. In any case the video is geenrated by a combination of the 6883 SAM (which adderesses the main meory) and the 6847 VDG (which turns the data read from RAM into the video signal). IIRC, the semigraphics mode come from programming the SAM for graphics and the VDG fro text. The I/O is very simple. 2 6821 PIAs. One essentially scans the keyboard. The other cotnrols the VDG, drives the DAC (used for sound, cassette out, and joustick ports), and handles bit-banged I/O to the cassette and serial ports. -tony

There's no real need to get a US-spec one. Any beeb other than th very early ones will have an SMPSU, and there's a clear link to fit to the PSU board to make it work on 115V mains. And I am sure you cna find soemthing that will display one of the Beeb's video outputs (darn it, you've got composited PAL video or serparate TTL-level RGB signals there). But if you think of soemthign simpler, then it's either hard to larn to use (becuase yyou don't have a high-level language in ROM), or it's full of kludges (I am thinkin of the ZX80 and Jupiter Ace here) that makes it very hard for a beginner to understnad because the tricks are _not_ in the introductory books. Maybe a single-board computer based round one of those microcontrollers with Tiny-BASIC (Intel 8052 and successors, for example). Hook up a video terminal, and you can play about flashing LEDs on the I/O pins, etc. And the circuit should be easy enough to understnad. The problem is that many of the better educational kits are now collector's items in their own right, and hard to find. There is a review of some of the currently-available ones in the latest Elektor magazine, BTW, some of thelm look tolerable with a plugblock type breatboard, real loose components, and so on. Actually, wahat I'd doo is get a plugblock, a few simple TTL ICs, LEDs, series resistors, etc, and teach it that way. Yes, you'll get blown components, but they're cheap enough to replace. Tandy CoCo 1 or 2? It's essentially the Motorola application circuit for the 6883 SAM, so it's straightforward. OK, the CPU is a 6809, which is not as common as the others, but it _is_ a nice, easy, CPU to learn. And I cna't believe they're rare. -tony

---snip--- ---snip--- Hi The tricky thing I recall was how they interleave video and execution. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ You keep typing, we keep giving. Download Messenger and join the i?m Initiative now. http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGLM

The ACE used that obnoxious trick of contenting a totem pole output in series with a 1k resuistor against a 3-state output. If the latter was enabled, it drove the output signal (overriding the signal for m the 1k resistor), if the latter was disabled, then a totem pole drive the output. That 'trick' is not going to be mentioned in any introductory book on digital electroncs (thank %deity!), so it might well cause a lot of confusion. -tony

Most small SPMSUs start out by rectifying and smoothing the mains to give about 340V DC (in Eurrope). If you have such a supply, you can replace the input stage with a voltage doubler circuit and run it off 115V -- the output of that will be about 340V DC, so the rest of the supply will neither know nor care. You run into problems if there's other stuff run directly off the mains input -- like a small linear supply to provide the startup voltage, or a cooling fan, or...). You'll need to modify that too. I see them quite offten on E-bay. I don;t think they're rare _at all_. You'll love it. It's waht the 6502 should ahve been. 16 bit index registers, 16 bit stack pointer -- no make that 2 16 bit stack pointers, progam counter relative addressign modes and long branches for position-independant code, 'zero page' in any 256 byte page of memory, 2 accumulators that can be combindd to make a 16 bit one, the most orthogonal instruction set of any 8-bitter, etc, etc, etc. I always wish the Beeb had used that as its CPU. Acorn clearly knew about it (they'd made a 6809-bsed System CPU board), but for some odd reason they didn't use it in the Beeb. -tony

On 29 Nov 2007 at 16:11, Jules Richardson wrote: 1979 sounds right to me. I recall a BYTE magazine interview with the design team. One topic was the low clock speed (initially 1 MHz). The response from one of the team members was something to the effect "if we would have known that people would rate CPUs by their clock speed, we would have put a waveguide on the 6809". I believe that the 6809 actually has *fewer* instructions in its set than the 6800 (depending on what one calls an instruction), which was something very unusual at the time. But the 6809 was an evolutionary dead-end. It came out too late, and while it turned in very respectable performance, it was hampered by lousy product timing--the 68K debuted in the same year and was in a different category altogether. I recall seeing the 6809 datasheet and looking for information at the 1979 Wescon (IIRC) and coming home with a pile of 68K literature and forgetting about the 6809 entirely. It's ironic in a way--6800-family products are still made, as are 68K products. But the 6809 is forgotten. Apparently, there's a VHDL implementation for those amenable to FPGA versions. Cheers, Chuck

Tony Duell wrote: I've successfully installed a 6809 in a previously 6502-based machine: the Compukit UK101. I had to write new EPROM-based firmware for it, of course. As far as the bus and I/O devices are concerned, it Just Works. Even the pinout is similar enough that the socket adaptor is easy to build. -- John Honniball coredump at gifford.co.uk

I just had an evil thought -- a 6502-based CoCo. I wonder how well that would work. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Computers are like air conditioners. They stop working if you open windows.

Cameron Kaiser wrote: Oddly I think it could of sold almost as well the CoCo did. I don't expect more than about 10% of the people ran OS/9 and that is the only 6809 dependant thing ( other than I think the game Joust ) that I can think of. Most of the stuff was in Basic and that is mostly platform independant for a 8 bit micro.

On 1 Dec 2007 at 19:10, Sean Conner wrote: MOS Technology was hurting badly after they withdrew the 6501. You could get a 6502 for about $25, IIRC. A couple of friends even picked up 6502 S-100 cards (SSM? I don't remember) because they were too cheap to resist. I don't know if they did anything with them, considering the momentum x80 software was beginning to experience. Cheers, Chuck

I think I've seen a CPU board, possibly from a Tangerine computer, that had overlapping 40 pin DIL sockets for either a 6502 or 6800. -tony

whoever made it I want it I do imagine there was a floppy disk option (?) --- Andrew Burton <aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better pen pal. Text or chat with friends inside Yahoo! Mail. See how. http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/

--- Ensor <classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk> wrote: Yeah I botched that up good. Amstrad CPC-464. Locomotive BASIC! Were there proprietary chips in the thing? Yikes the 664 had a built in floppy. Were these sold in Canada? I want a 464, and that means now. Alan Sugar I think is his correct name. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

Ensor wrote: Umm I would raise my hand too but lego and tree-houses don't count. :)

On Nov 24, 2007, at 6:56 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Same here, started when I was ~7. My tree house had electricity and running water. =) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Thursday 22 November 2007 00:28:24 Tony Duell wrote: I think my "lightbulb moment" was with the SC/MP processor, really. Among a pile of junk that my Dad had salvaged from stuff getting binned at work was a manual for a Sinclair MK14. I never saw the board, but I still have the manual. Now, this looked like an interesting little project, so I set out to find as much as I could about it. The answer turned out to be "not much" - this was well before the Internet was such a pervasive thing. A few scattered articles in old copies of Wireless World, and the manual. And that was about it. I had a very old (mentions drums and discrete transistor logic, and how modern integrated circuit techniques will soon be able to pack as many as 10 or 20 gates into a package no larger than a shilling), which mentioned the concept of a function decoder mesh. Hmm, I thought. Ok, so there must be a pattern. Now I knew from reading the Z80 opcodes in the back of my ZX Spectrum manual that there was a clear pattern - these bits meant "select a register", and so on. So I thought to myself, right, if I make a table of the opcodes in binary, there's only 256 of them at most, so it shouldn't take long, and then I might see the pattern. So then I sat down for an evening of quietish contemplation with the new PWEI album (Now for a Feast) and a glass or two of wine and a big fat A4 pad and some graph paper "appropriated" from the Maths classroom, and got to work. Before long I'd written out all the opcodes, worked out the binary patterns, and started to group them together. Aha! Now we're getting somewhere, I can see how *that* bit controls what the ALU is doing, *that* bit says whether it's a jump or an ALU instruction, and so on. Thus was Friday night spent, and I still have those random jottings and carefully-drawn tables. Saturday dawned wet and windy, so a nice day for staying inside. By teatime, I had a slow-but-workable SC/MP emulator, written in Turbo Pascal on an Amstrad PCW8256. Sunday was spent writing stuff to deal with the I/O (terribly slow). Then I lost interest in it, and found a greater interest in the girl sitting two desks over in my English class, as is often the way with teenagers. Heigh-ho. I still have it kicking around on 3" disks. I must dig the Amstrad out of the attic some time and see if they still work. Gordon

--- Ensor <classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk> wrote: The C64 is a great machine, but you're not going to learn many *deep* details about the hardware (not that it's necessarily an issue). Hardware sprites - dead easy to program and even in BASIC the motion is smooth. The 64 has the weirdest video memory layout you could ask for (afaik), and the books aren't always cheap (eBay). A few of them are a necessity. I went looking for some and was astounded at the prices they were getting. Maybe that's died off. If you can find someone with a whole cache of stuff, you'd luck out. I do have a book about interfacing to it's various i/o ports, and even a book on "advanced" assembler. Even got a book on basic assembler, and it's likely the best one out there. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get easy, one-click access to your favorites. Make Yahoo! your homepage. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

On Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 06:45:32PM -0500, Ray Arachelian wrote: I built plenty of add-on devices for the User Port and the joystick ports when I was a teenager (I got my hands on my first C-64 when I was 15, and by 16, I owned one). How deep do you mean here? It's a little tougher to find a cartridge-port proto board than it used to be, so building your own SCSI or IDE or Ethernet interface from scratch might be somewhat advanced, but hanging LEDs or switches off of one of the other ports is easy enough, and easy enough to control from BASIC. How is C-64 BASIC bad compared to PET BASIC? They are virtually identical. Do you mean because the PET lacks a SID chip and sprites and bitmapped graphics, the BASIC is "better"? As did BASIC 2 and BASIC 4 PETs (just not the original chicklet-keyboard PET - on that one, you had to load the monitor from tape). The ML monitor on PETs was nice to have - better IMO than a blue "READY" screen - but anyone who was serious about it gave up one of their two or three precious expansion ROM sockets for a better monitor. ISTR SuperMon was pretty good. I forget what I have in my 2001-32N, but one nice feature is that it would assemble and disassemble on the fly - scroll up or down to rip though memory. I used that monitor to write a ML Scott Adams Adventure runtime in high school (i.e. - it's good enough for programs larger than the cassette buffer, especially if you don't have a disk drive and a proper symbolic assembler). I think the PET is a great teaching machine for kids, but I admit that I'm biased - the first machine I got to use, and the first machine I owned, was a PET. Given the costs, decreasing availability, etc., of the PETs and PET peripherals, I would probably recommend the C-64 in its place. There were millions and millions of them made, they are still abundant and inexpensive, and they have many of the same features that make the PET interesting, and only lack a small number (like the built-in ML monitor). If you desire a greater hardware angle than a packaged system provides, there are a number of recent reimplementations of classic designs - I've built the Elf 2000, along with many of its peripherals, and I have a MicroKIM here, and am gathering parts. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 25-Nov-2007 at 02:10 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -30.5 F (-34.7 C) Windchill -30.5 F (-34.7 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 0.0 kts Grid 265 Barometer 678.8 mb (10674 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

On Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 10:39:20PM -0500, Ray Arachelian wrote: Ah... now I get you - my early experience was entirely on BASIC 1.0 and BASIC 2.0 machines. I didn't touch a BASIC 4.0 machine until years after I got a C-64 (when I could get them from surplus for $10-$15). Allow me to amend my statement that BASIC 2.0 on the PET and on the C-64 are virtually identical. With the exception of the destructive (to BASIC memory) load of the disk catalog (LOAD "$",8) and the fact that you couldn't query the error channel with DS$, etc., except by writing a program (INPUT #15,$A doesn't work on the command line), I didn't find that not having "DOS" commands in ROM was that bad. I suppose the argument could be made that it was what I was used to, but on other 8-bit micros of the time, you _did_ have CATALOG or DIR or something, and you _did_ see error messages have plenty of other examples of how it could be done. Of course, back in the BASIC 2.0 PET days, most folks who could afford to have disk drives (at $2200 for a C= 4040), also tended to load the old "DOS Wedge" program that added a series of disk commands preceded by either a ">" or "@". I had the DOS Wedge for the C-64 early on, but it came on a Commodore Macro Assembler diskette - not something anyone else I know had in 1982. Fair enough. I just made a different assumption about what PET ROMs you were describing. I did a lot of POKEing back in the PET days... I didn't bother cracking programs much in those days. I used the monitor for software development. I extended my PET with three pushbuttons on the side, wired to the memory expansion port - NMI (which I hardly ever used), RESET (which I used a lot, learning ML) I agree that it depends... when I started, all I had was a copy of "The PET Paper" with the opcodes, and another rag of the era with some simple ML tips. I began coding in hex with TIM, the built-in monitor, _then_ upgraded to the 4K ROM-based SuperMON. Pointing back to the original topic, I would _not_ recommend teaching kids to code in hex as a first step, unless you handed them an unexpanded Cosmac Elf - then you have no choice. It can be a useful learning step, but I can't see how most kids would find it easy to understand, nor anything short of tedious. Yep... that was the CBM Macro Assembler that I used from 1982 on... a tool suite that you loaded into memory to disable the tokenizer and load/save SEQ files, not PRG files, and a series of large and slow assembler and linker applications to produce binaries. I have a disk image of it with me, but I don't use it much anymore - these days, I use dasm or some other cross assembler, then test with VICE (by loading my UNIX-compiled 6502 programs via device '11', an emulated disk). When I did finally get my hands on a disk drive and the Macro Assembler, at age 16, my productivity *soared*. I'd been keeping paper notes of where subroutines went, and I no longer had to guess how large a subroutine would be before coding it (and having to manually relocate code full of fixed memory references). Perhaps I learned more than was obvious from the experience, but once I had a "real" assembler, I was able to write stuff that was far less tortuous and much easier to follow. I still have at easy recall most of the code I wrote 25 years ago. I think it's easy to see the difference. The User Port on all the C= machines is more-or-less the same... 12x2 0.154" edge connectors. There are minor variations (no 9VAC on the PET, IIRC), but you to get 8 bits of I/O plus handshaking plus CB2 sound (I _think_ the 6526 still allows you to make sound the same way as we did on the PET with a 6522, but nobody bothered). Certainly an easier time with working with diskettes. Of course - I use VICE all the time, but I still keep a stable full of real CBM hardware since emulation isn't always perfect, and there's just nothing to compare with running on the original box - you know it's not a trick of brute-force modern speed - it's real. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 25-Nov-2007 at 04:10 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -33.2 F (-36.2 C) Windchill -33.2 F (-36.2 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 0.0 kts Grid 150 Barometer 678.9 mb (10670 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

Re below: This is good on-topic stuff regarding C64 boxes... but perhaps the subject line could be changed so that people in the future can find this type of information more easily? Thanks! Jay West ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net> +

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 01:42:36PM -0500, Roy J. Tellason wrote: Oops... my fingers were probably thinking 25.4mm to the inch when I mistyped the 4. Those all sound common. Various ones... For the C= line, 6/12 and 12/24 were common (cassette port, User Port, IEEE-488), but the VIC-20 had a 22/44 @ 0.156" expansion connector. The C-64 was much smaller, but I can't reliably recall the numbers off the top of my head, so I won't guess. Very common. My COSMAC VIP has a pair of those (one for memory, one for I/O expansion), and there was a standard RCA CPU board that used it as its off-board bus connector. There was the STD bus, and I'm sure many more examples from the 1970s and 1980s. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 26-Nov-2007 at 23:20 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -25.6 F (-32.0 C) Windchill -46.6 F (-43.7 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 7.9 kts Grid 358 Barometer 681.7 mb (10564 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

On Monday 26 November 2007 18:28, Ethan Dicks wrote: I *think* that was also a 44-pin connector, but at smaller spacing. I'd have to look to be sure though. Yes, Radio Shack even used to sell boards that were set up for that connector, and the connectors themselves, in both soldertail and wire-wrap versions. I have a rackmount box somewhere that has room for a bunch of those, though it won't take the very tall cards. I'm thinking STD bus was more pins, 56 maybe? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

I am darn sure they were. There was a UK 0.15" one, which was not quite compatible with 0.156" ptich on long connectors (I found that out the hard way!). And I have seen 0.2" pitch ones. 0.125", 100 pins (50 on each side), obviously (S100 bus, HP DIO slot, etc) 0.125" 36 pins (18 on a side, sometimes just single-sided), DEC flip-chip, etc 0.1" pitch in all sorts of widths. 62 pin is of course the 8 bit ISA slot. 20, 34, 40, 50 are all very common. As is (at least over here), 43 pins with a polarising key in place of contact 37 (that's normally single-sided, I have seen the dobule-sided 86 pin version, though). 0.156", 18, 22, 25 pins pere side are especially common, but many others turn up. In the UK, 0.156" connectors are not common, to the extent that I don't know a UK supplier for them. When I need one for repairs or making test rigs/extenders for USA-designed machines (e.g. HP stuff), I have to order it from Digikey (and pay the shipping...) -tony

Hi, TIM? TTFN - Pete.

Hi, But we're talking about someone who's learning BASIC from scratch, for which the C64's BASIC would be perfectly adequate - and there's always the option of something like "Simon's BASIC" later.... I'd have suggested something running "BBC BASIC" but the Beeb is a fairly formidable system to understand and the Electron, ISTR, has most of the electronics inside a ULA so you wouldn't really learn anything useful about it. TTFN - Pete.

Hi, I disagree. The beauty of the '64 in respect of learning about computer architecture is PRECISELY because the graphics and sound are handled by custom chips, rather than a bunch of TTL. You have a nice relatively simple system divided up into nice logical blocks....nice and easy to get to grips with for the uninitiated. Also, full schematic diagrams for the machine were included in the "Programmer's Reference Guide". Wierd video memory layout? It's been *FAR* too many years since I programmed the 64, but I don't remember it being particularly wierd....or are you referring to the fixed block of "color" RAM? Definitely right about the books! At the very least you'd need the "Programmer's Reference Guide" (worth it's weight in gold) and a kernal disassembly. OK, so eBay is the easy option, but I'm sure you could turn something up ata charity shop...? I never did any interfacing with my 64, all my hobby programming/hacking was done with my Ataris; I was being paid to write games on the '64, other than that I didn't really use it.... Eeek, that brings back memories. I really grew to appreciate how slow the serial bus was when assembling code using Commodore's disc based assembler on a 1541! :-( TTFN - Pete.

Hi, Good point. But I still feel that the schematic which was published would be a useful learning aid despite this. It would only make a difference if you were going to hack around inside the machine itseelf, which may or may not be an issue. I'd assumed that all 64Cs had the combined Kernel/BASIC ROM, was this not the case? Likewise, I was under the impression that the move to a pair of 64K*4 DRAMs also came about with the advent of the C-64C.... TTFN - Pete.

On Monday 26 November 2007 23:17, Ensor wrote: True. Giving the details of what was connected to all of the connectors was a lot of what was useful about it. Not really, though it was more often the case than not. The major difference between those new cases and the old was the difference in the way the keyboard was mounted. The old-style cases had eight screws holding the keyboard to the top of the case, while the newer ones had the keyboard mounted to the bottom half, over some metal support brackets. If you had a new case and wanted that style but wanted to use your old parts otherwise, you'd need those brackets. And they were different for a couple of different form factors-- the later boards with higher density were narrower, front-to-back, than the older ones were. Now that I'm thinking about it a bit further, I also have this vague recollection of them combining the PLA chip with a bunch of the glue TTL and making it even simpler yet, though since the PLA was a common failure part it made it more difficult to repair. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

At 1:55 PM -0600 11/27/07, Jim Brain wrote: Wouldn't that be good advice for *anyone* wanting to use a C64? Recently I was able to pick up a "Phoenix CPS-10" off eBay and the next day was given a Tenex PS for the C128. Question on the original black bricks, do all of them have a Commodore symbol on them, or is the "Recoton" I have a 3rd party supply? I believe all of my bricks are "Recoton's". Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 14:55, Jim Brain wrote: When we had the shop there were a whole lot of times that you couldn't tell which chip was bad without trying a new one in there, and the dropping prices of the machines made wholesale replacement of parts impractical, so it was a policy of mine to *always* unsolder the chip and put a socket in there. Over the years that I worked on that stuff I noticed that c= had *no* apparent patter to which chips were soldered in place and which were socketed. It varied a lot. Sometimes one of the ROMs (not always the same one), sometimes all three, sometimes one CIA or the other or both. It varied... They were fairly robust little machines for the most part, with one or two minor exceptions. Yup! I accumulated such a pile of those at one point (I used to point to it to try and sell people on the idea of an aftermarket supply) that I thought at one point that it might be worth building a "modern art sculpture" out of them and some epoxy and planting it on the lawn down there in West Chester. :-) 1764? With the VIC20, I find the two-pin power connection to be the preferable one. Heh. That's pretty much of what all they were good for. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Hi, Quite, I never had the slightest problem with my PSU (of the black brick type), but then my C64 was 100% stock. OTOH At the company I worked for at the time, the beige "wedge shaped" PSUs were dropping like flies - we found them to be HORRENDOUSLY unreliable, and those were stock unmodified C64s too! The 400 and 800 used a PIA (6520/6820) with 4 bits of each port going to each joystick port. The paddle inputs (analogue in) and triggers were handled by POKEY. The later XL and XE machines dispensed with joystick ports 3 & 4 and used port B of the PIA to map the OS and BASIC ROMs in and out of memory and control paged RAM. Must admit I've never heard of that one, but the ports could certainly be used for generalised I/O. I designed and built my first EPROM burner to attach to my 400 via its 4 joystick ports (it needed all 4), so it's certainly possible. TTFN - Pete.

On Nov 27, 2007 10:40 PM, Jim Brain <brain at jbrain.com> wrote: I'm fairly sure the C64 paddles was handled by the SID... Joe.

On Wednesday 28 November 2007 09:41, Joachim Thiemann wrote: I can confirm this, from my recollection of the 64... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Hi, OK, look here: http://jope.fi/cbm/cbm/c64psu.jpg. The PSU I'm referring to is the leftmost one of the three in that picture; I've always called them "wedge shaped", but I suppose "cheese block" would be closer to the mark, LOL. Just input AFAIR. Thinking about it, I don't think the paddle inputs weren't "real" analogue inputs. Rather they timed how long a capacitor took to charge through the pot inside the paddle controller. Quite, plenty of scope there too. However, by the time I moved onto an 800XL (which only had 2 joystick ports) Atari had given us the PBI expansion bus which made things vastly easier....though it didn't stop me soldering another 6520 on top of the already existing one and using one port for a centronics interface and the other to drive a UART.... :-) My knowledge of those is sketchy at best - I have a couple of TI's and still have at least one Apple ][ but haven't delved into the TI yet, nor have I turned my Apple on for some 10 years! TTFN - Pete.

Jim Brain wrote: Jumping in... Curious. For 'old shape' C64 machines, I've never seen anything *except* the wedge-shape design - I didn't know anything else existed until the time when CBM re-did the machine case itself. Isn't it exactly the same shell as the Plus/4 PSU, but in beige rather than black? J.

I have a wedge 64 PSU for my imported 64GS. However, I use it with an American supply, of course. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Everyone is different. No two people are not on fire. -- Strong Bad #84 ----

This must be the same thing as this: http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/operiph.html There's a cutaway view on the page. I'll add the VIC-1020 as an alias. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Less is more. -- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ----------------------------------

Roy J. Tellason wrote: Yep, a square connector, the same as on the 128, as I recall. I was thinking of a potted wall-wart model that had the old-style electric-shaver 2 prong connector. The only ones I knew that were repairable were the heavy duty PSUs that came with the 128 and the 1764 REUs. Jim

Cameron Kaiser wrote: I thought my 16 has a COAX power connector, but I can't check at present, so maybe it uses the same conenctor. I know the 116 uses the COAX connector. I do own some old VIC-20s with a 2 prong connector that looks similar to this: http://www.alltronics.com/cgi-bin/item/24W023/68/Electric%2Dshaver%2Dtype%2… It delivered 9VAC (or so) to the VIC, which internally created the 5VDC, as seen in the Rev E board schematic (page 3) http://www.mainbyte.com/vic20/e_schematic.pdf Jim

On Sunday 02 December 2007 23:24, Cameron Kaiser wrote: The c16 used a barrel-type coaxial connector, they sold those for a while at Radio Shack after the machine was discontinued. I don't think I ever saw a c16, during the time we had the shop or since then. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

Hi, I wonder if it was a European thing then? Most of the C-64 PSUs I've come across have been of that type, mine was unusual in that it was of the "black brick" type (like the one in the picture of a +4 you mention in a later message). I've seen very few of those though. And in common with Jules, all of the +4 supplies I've seen were "wedge shaped" (just black). Very ingenious, I'd always assumed they'd just wired a quadrature mouse to the joystick inputs.... TTFN - Pete.

On Nov 30, 2007 1:36 AM, Ensor <classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk> wrote: That's the PSU style I got with my C64 in germany, 84 or thereabouts. Great shape to rest your foot on and keep it nice and warm :-) Never saw that style after moving to canada. Joe.

On Nov 27, 2007 5:23 PM, Jim Brain <brain at jbrain.com> wrote: The TI joystick port uses the same 9-pin connector as the Atari and Commodore, but wired differently and without any ADC. Both joysticks share the same connector and signal pins back to the console, which generates "test joystick 1" and "test joystick 2" signals. There are adapters for plugging in an Atari joystick (because the TI ones were really phenomenally wretched), but all they do is rearrange the pins -- there aren't any with an ADC or support for paddle controllers, as far as I know. One very nice item that's still readily available for the Atari and probably works just fine with the C64 or VIC as well is the "AtariLab" kit, which includes a few sensors, basic programming information, and ideas for experiments.

On Nov 29, 2007 12:30 AM, Jim Brain <brain at jbrain.com> wrote: I can't seem to find a good reference, but I seem to recall that at least some of the sensor connectors are bidirectional, as one favorite trick was to use the thing as a model train controller. I actually have one of the things at home, so I'll take a look through the documentation and see if there's some relevant material I can scan for you.

And that's exactly why I think it's a poor choice. You can't _really_ understnad what goes on inside those blocks. There aren't even data sheets published for some of them, let alone real internal descriptions (AFAIK). You have to regard them as black boxes. And as I said before, I regard that is a major problem. I have never understood this love of simplifying things by treating them as composed modules that you don't bother looking inside. To me that's a very confusing way to look at things. Mind you, I am probably one of the few people who actually battled through the transistopr-level schematic for the NE555 timer chip (it is published in some of the data sheets...) -tony

On Friday 23 November 2007 22:01, Chris M wrote: Hm, I do have some books and magazines that deal with the 64. I wonder what box they're in? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

--- Jim Brain <brain at jbrain.com> wrote: From memory, the first memory location in ram corresponded to a pixel 8 in and 8 down from the top left corner of the screen. Then you went toward the screen as you *ascended* in memory. Then...you proceeded to the next line, 1 pixel above where you started. So instead of having a normal rectangular coordinate layout, each 8 x 8 *character* was inverted kind of. 5 to 7 lines of BASIC code to convert to true rect. coordinates. But with boolean operators you could do it in 2. Of course most other computers are more *normal* w/regards to the way their vid mem is layed out. This applies to all *known* peecee video cards also. Anyone know of exceptions? ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ

On Monday 26 November 2007 23:45:20 Chris M wrote: The ZX Spectrum had a fairly bonkers layout, with three blocks of 2048 bytes, comprising eight rows of eight rows of 32 bytes. So - the first 32 bytes were the top row of the display, the next 32 were eight pixels down, the next 32 were 8 pixels below that, until you got 2048 bytes in. Then you started again on the second row of the display, and so on. Once the top third was done, you moved onto the middle third, then the bottom third. After you'd got all the pixels done, you had 768 bytes of attribute memory, to set foreground and background colour, bright and flash. Writing single-pixel vertical scrolling code was a pig. Gordon