> I think it's fascinating how far we've come during my career.   The first
> thing of this nature that I remember being exposed to was the 74181 in a
> magazine article, then the various S-100 machines, and at the time those
> were crazy expensive.   I have an Altair clone on my desk by Briel
> computing that emulates the Altair on an AVR, and even runs the original
> Basic from Bill Gates.  =F0=9F=98=8A     At Masters, I kept thinking of t=
hat quote
> from Arthur Clarke, "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishabl=
e
> from magic".
>
>
> --
> David VanHorn
> Lead Hardware Engineer
>
> Backcountry Access, Inc.
> 2820 Wilderness Pl, Unit H
> Boulder, CO =C2=A080301 USA
> phone:=C2=A0303-417-1345 =C2=A0x110
> email:=C2=A0david.vanhorn@backcountryaccess.com=C2=A0
>

I agree! My first computer experience was an IBM 360 in college. We'd turn
in our deck of punched cards, come back 12 hours later for our printout of
errors. There was also a model 28 Teletype connected to a timeshare
computer running Basic. I then started building stuff with 7400 series
logic. I built stuff to drive a Teletype model 15. UARTs either did not
exist or I didn't know about them, so I put a bunch of 8 bit shift
registers in series to generate a sequence of characters to drive the
model 15. Next, in college, worked a little with the Intel 8008. It took a
TON of support chips. Then an 8080 development board. A friend got a
MC6800 development board (with LED display and keyboard). I then built my
first computer (wire wrapped) with the Motorola MC6802. It used a bunch of
1k x 4 RAM chips. I bought a Sunrise Electronics EPROM programmer and
programmed the system in hex. I used a Lear Siegler ADM-1 terminal to talk
to it. Built a "Kansas City" cassette tape interface (modem). Bought an
integer Basic interpreter from Southwest Technical Products. Signed up
with The Source timeshare service to use their 6800 compiler. I'd type in
my source code and get back a hex file to put in the EPROM programmer.
Bought a Cromemco Z-80 S-100 computer from a guy at Apple. It had two 5.25
floppy drives, but CP/M software was distributed on 8 inch floppies, so I
added a couple of those. I got an MC6800 assembler to run on the Cromemco.
Next, for the product I had in mind, I needed a floating point Basic
compiler. So, I licensed one from Microsoft, a partnership of Bill Gates
and Paul Allen. My license is at
http://bh.hallikainen.org//wiki/uploads/harold/MsLicense801210.pdf . This
led to the PCC-180 and DRC-190 described at
http://bh.hallikainen.org/wiki/index.php?pagename=3DHallikainenAndFriends .
The PCC-180 circuit boards were laid out on mylar film with tape. The
DRC-190 schematic capture and board layout were done with a CAD system
from Dasoft that ran under CP/M. I still have the Houston Instruments
DMP-29 plotter used to plot schematics and boards. The first
microcontroller I saw was the Motorola MC6805. I experimented with it a
bit, then sold my company. The new company wanted to use PICs, so I got
started with them. First with ceramic packages an UV erasure. Then one
time programmable (UV chip in plastic package), then flash. Most of my
work now is PIC32MX with code in C or PIC24H, also in C. I've also got a
PIC16 project I did 10 years ago (in assembly) that I'm currently
updating. The chip requires the debug header, and I'm working on getting
that working.

So, that's what I've seen over the past 50 years since graduating high
school. A LOT has changed. But, I think a lot changed over the previous 50
years also.

By the way, I see you are in Boulder. I work from home in Arvada, so we're
neighbors! I'm in Boulder every couple weeks (like this evening).

Harold



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