Subj : age required for classic
To   : Don Vally
From : Bob Worm
Date : Tue Apr 08 2025 17:49:06

  Re: age required for classic
  By: Don Vally to BOB WORM on Tue Apr 08 2025 10:55:11

Hi, Don.

 > Classics are in the mind's eye of each particular user. I have zero
 > experience with anything computer related prior to 1981, so you have me
 > beat there. I have read some material on Data General minicomputers from
 > the 70's but I wouldn't consider them personal systems. Maybe an Altair?

Heha, I don't have you beat - my oldest computer is from 1984 according to the QA stickers (BBC micro).

I'm going to be controversial, though, and say it's too limited to use as a daily - it can do 80 cols but only in mono and when you do that it uses most of the system memory up. I'll probably get kicked in the nuts for saying I don't really enjoy doing 6502 assembler, either. Same reason, it's just the wrong side of the fun / work divide for me! Using ARM assembler ruined everything else for me :)

The BBC is great for other things, though - since they were designed for schools they have a 4 channel "analogue in" port which makes it really easy to attach sensors. There are BASIC keywords to drive it, too, so you're not using direct memory read / write to do the analogue to digital conversion and read the values out.

You don't see that kind of thing these days ==> therefore classic, in my book :)

BobW
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