>
> and then of course, to create the source tape you used a line editor, and
> typed in many lines of source, asked it to save, at which point you got many
> lines of error message because you hadn't gone into edit mode :)) Quick, on
> with the punch to catch as much of the output as possible.
>
Or running as fast as you can to the puch card reader with your program (on a pile of punch cards) for the nightly batch run, slipping and dropping the hole pile.... ;-)
I guess we will look at what we do today in the same way as we look at the things we did twenty years ago. Working with an ICD2 today is quite nice. Just as hand disassembling and hex coding was "back in time". I once hand disassembled the Commodore VIC-20 ROM code. Nothing strange at the time but I would not even think the thought today.
>>Nice to feel younger than someone for once... Not usual today... ;-)
>>
>>I saw my first micro 1979. Don't remember what it was but probably an 8080. Later I built something with an 6800 and was hooked. The wounder full thing is that its still as fun nowadays as it was then. I really love embedded programming (oh well... most of the time). And its a lot of new interesting stuff ahead still... mmmm
>
>
> I saw 8080s and 8008s, and even some 4004s, but the first one I ever wrote code on, was a 6502 in an OSI-C1P. A nice little machine, 8k of SRAM, video output, tape (which sort of worked sometimes..) I hand-built a 32k ram board for it, 64 1kx1 Sram chips!
>
> Not many years later, I was designing credit card terminals with 4 2kx8 chips, and I had them pinned for multiple 32kx8 chips. In those days, our development machines were S-100s, running 6 MHz Z-80's, and 64k of ram. 1M of ram was a total fantasy.
>
> Everyone told me that was nuts to put so much sram capability in the terminals, the would never use it.. A while later, they maxed it out, then they came out with the 512k expansion board for the same model. :)
Funny. My first project after leaving university was a credit card terminal. It was built around a Motorola 6809 and used OS/9. Great stuff. I have written a lot of assembler for the 68xx series. Before that the 6502 was my baby. I really liked that processor.
You must have been very visionary to forsee the use of that amount of memory. I would't. It was a time when the debugger, editor and assembler shared 8K of RAM.
I must admit that when the first C development tools came for uP's I was strongly against them. Taking to much resources as I saw it. Was an assembler Guru after all... ;-) But *wrong* I was and have learnt something from it.
>
>Funny. My first project after leaving university was a credit card terminal. It was built around a Motorola 6809 and used OS/9. Great stuff. I have written a lot of assembler for the 68xx series. Before that the 6502 was my baby. I really liked that processor.
Which one? I don't remember a 6809 based system.
>You must have been very visionary to forsee the use of that amount of memory. I would't. It was a time when the debugger, editor and assembler shared 8K of RAM.
I had a bios for my system, that included multi-initiator, arbitrating SCSI, all in 8k.
>I must admit that when the first C development tools came for uP's I was strongly against them. Taking to much resources as I saw it. Was an assembler Guru after all... ;-) But *wrong* I was and have learnt something from it.
The first experiments we did with C were extremely dissapointing. Triple the code space, quadruple the ram, and execution time was rather sluggish. And this was with some pretty sharp guys writing the code.
I'm still not using C much. It's faster to develop in of course, but it just can't keep up with hand coded assembler for economy or speed.
>>Funny. My first project after leaving university was a credit card terminal. It was built around a Motorola 6809 and used OS/9. Great stuff. I have written a lot of assembler for the 68xx series. Before that the 6502 was my baby. I really liked that processor.
> Which one? I don't remember a 6809 based system.
It was called cash. It was sold in Sweden and the Nordic Countries late 1984 and onwards.
> The first experiments we did with C were extremely dissapointing. Triple the code space, quadruple the ram, and execution time was rather sluggish. And this was with some pretty sharp guys writing the code.
> I'm still not using C much. It's faster to develop in of course, but it just can't keep up with hand coded assembler for economy or speed.
I do most of my work in C today. It still takes more space, execute slower etc but its been vastly improved from the old time. I'm a lot more productive using C and it's very seldom it makes a difference. When it does I can code that part in assembly getting the best of two worlds.
I coded a couple of modems after I did the credit card terminal. This was on a 6805 (Motorola/Hitachi) with very little ram. Most positions had to be used for different things in different states. A lot of balls to keep in the air at the same time. I seldom have that kind of problems anymore. In my current project I use an 18F258 and have problems to fill the flash up to half. The price difference down to an 18F248 is so low that it does not matter if I use the 258. And RAM is an ocean...
I understand that this is different for large series but 10K units is often a lot to me. Haven't been near 1M series and above. Would have been nice though...
On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Dave VanHorn wrote:
>
> >
> > Funny. My first project after leaving university was a credit card
> > terminal. It was built around a Motorola 6809 and used OS/9. Great
> > stuff. I have written a lot of assembler for the 68xx series. Before
> > that the 6502 was my baby. I really liked that processor.
>
> Which one? I don't remember a 6809 based system.
I haven't been following the thread until now, but the 6809 reference
caught my attention. My first computer (a Tandy/RadioShack Color
Computer) used a 6809 as the MPU. It was a great little machine. (I
think I still have a CoCo 3 and monitor gathering dust in the house
somewhere. I should dig it out and fire it up again for old times
sake.)
-- Robert
> On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Dave VanHorn wrote:
>
>>>Funny. My first project after leaving university was a credit card
>>>terminal. It was built around a Motorola 6809 and used OS/9. Great
>>>stuff. I have written a lot of assembler for the 68xx series. Before
>>>that the 6502 was my baby. I really liked that processor.
>>
>>Which one? I don't remember a 6809 based system.
>
>
> I haven't been following the thread until now, but the 6809 reference
> caught my attention. My first computer (a Tandy/RadioShack Color
> Computer) used a 6809 as the MPU. It was a great little machine. (I
> think I still have a CoCo 3 and monitor gathering dust in the house
> somewhere. I should dig it out and fire it up again for old times
> sake.)
> -- Robert
>
Give it a gentle caress from me... ;-)
>Dave VanHorn wrote:
>
>>>Funny. My first project after leaving university was a credit card terminal. It was built around a Motorola 6809 and used OS/9. Great stuff. I have written a lot of assembler for the 68xx series. Before that the 6502 was my baby. I really liked that processor.
>>Which one? I don't remember a 6809 based system.
>
>It was called cash. It was sold in Sweden and the Nordic Countries late 1984 and onwards.
Mine was called Verifone. (Zon, Zon Jr, XL, Tranz etc)
>I coded a couple of modems after I did the credit card terminal. This was on a 6805 (Motorola/Hitachi) with very little ram. Most positions had to be used for different things in different states. A lot of balls to keep in the air at the same time. I seldom have that kind of problems anymore. In my current project I use an 18F258 and have problems to fill the flash up to half. The price difference down to an 18F248 is so low that it does not matter if I use the 258. And RAM is an ocean...
I do think that it's best to start out in assembler, so you know what you're asking the machine to do..
