Any Linux Developers?

[joecar]

I started with the TRS80 at the Tandy store, I learned Z80 assembler and BASIC (the early form of it)...

I got a Z80 "box" from Dick Smith which ran CP/M from 5.25" floppy disk... CP/M came with assembly source code, so it was very interesting seeing how to write device drivers...

then I went to uni where I learned stuff like 6800 and 68000, hardware (analog and digital) and software (C and Pascal)... when I got a full time job I worked on 68K stuff alot, and then slowly after switching jobs a few times somehow ended up doing 386+ stuff... I hardly touch application code, I mostly do driver code (in linux).

[JezzaB]

Vic 20
Atari ST 1040i (Yes I hated Amigas :p)
Atari Falcon 030
286+ and so on with x86 machines

Jez

[GMPX]

Atari ST 1040i (Yes I hated Amigas :p)
Jez

Ah yes, I forgot about the rivalry between Amiga and Atari owners, on the specs sheet the Amiga ate the ST, particularly for gaming, but the ST did find it's niche market with the MIDI support built in. Remember when Atari released the STe, it had similar advanced graphics capabilites as the Amiga (4096 colours, blitter etc), only problem was that came 4 years after the original Amiga release and most people's reaction was "so!"

Atari dropped the ball again on the Falcon, it came out just after the Amiga 1200 which once again killed it in specifications apart from the Falcon having the 68030, the A1200 had the 68020, but you could get 030 cards with an FPU for the A1200.

If I find an ST for the right price I think I'll buy one just to have a play around with it. I am a bit of a retro geek!

Still, it could have been worse, you could have said you owned an Amstrad

Cheers,
Ross

[redhardsupra]

hey, no making fun of Amstrad and its 3 inch floppy...

I started on a Timex 2048, a clone of ZX Spectrum 48. I was like 7 or 8 and I loved it to pieces. Then I got to touch the aforementioned Amstrad 6128 with the built in floppy and a ginormous 128k memory and a green 'hires' monitor. Then Atari 65XE, which I swapped with a neighbour for a Commodore 64 II, while envying another friend's Commodore 128D, as it could boot as C64, C128, or CP/M. Then I saw an Amiga 500 and the graphics blew me away. Then I saw a 286 playing 'test drive' and I wanted a PC which I didnt get until years later in a form of a 486. By '98 I worked for a dotcom doing NT sysadmining, and started to hate windows dearly. So with the first paycheck I bought myself a 64bit Alpha 533MHz, which forced me to run Linux. Then I haven't touched Windows for half a decade, until I got into tuning, and had to get a windows and a laptop. These days I have flavors of Linux or BSD running on every piece of hardware I own, including the PS3, and a tiny ARM box that runs a webcam snapshotting a bird in a nest right outside my window

wow, I've been a geek for a long time... I hope that estabilishes my geek cred without using words like 'DnD' or 'Rush'

[Stealth97]

hey, no making fun of Amstrad and its 3 inch floppy...

I started on a Timex 2048, a clone of ZX Spectrum 48. I was like 7 or 8 and I loved it to pieces. Then I got to touch the aforementioned Amstrad 6128 with the built in floppy and a ginormous 128k memory and a green 'hires' monitor. Then Atari 65XE, which I swapped with a neighbour for a Commodore 64 II, while envying another friend's Commodore 128D, as it could boot as C64, C128, or CP/M. Then I saw an Amiga 500 and the graphics blew me away. Then I saw a 286 playing 'test drive' and I wanted a PC which I didnt get until years later in a form of a 486. By '98 I worked for a dotcom doing NT sysadmining, and started to hate windows dearly. So with the first paycheck I bought myself a 64bit Alpha 533MHz, which forced me to run Linux. Then I haven't touched Windows for half a decade, until I got into tuning, and had to get a windows and a laptop. These days I have flavors of Linux or BSD running on every piece of hardware I own, including the PS3, and a tiny ARM box that runs a webcam snapshotting a bird in a nest right outside my window

wow, I've been a geek for a long time... I hope that estabilishes my geek cred without using words like 'DnD' or 'Rush'

Warhammer 40k. Magic: The Gathering.

Let the geekiness protrude. I admit in front of gatherings of my friends that I used to play and sell Magic cards and that I made a lot of money trading and selling pieces of cardboard before I ever had my first job.

I remember my old Atari gaming machine. It was my fathers. He had a game with some chick and a sword that my mom wouldn't let me play because it was possibly sexual in nature? Or the chick was scantily clad? I dunno, but I remember not playing that game.

My first PC was a 133mhz Pentium. Old School. And at school we used to have the Apple 2e's and the 2e+, wasn't there also an Apple 2c?

Why did schools always get Apple PC's? Weren't they more expensive?

Eric

[Blacky]

Talking about early home computers - here's an interesting article:
http://technologizer.com/2009/06/14/...sign-mistakes/

Paul

[GMPX]

Very funny, but it was all new back then, what seemed like a good idea at the time didn't turn out that way (eg, the Apple Lisa Disks).

Another good article on that website:
http://technologizer.com/2008/09/18/errormessage/

Cheers,
Ross

[abkimble]

Warhammer 40k. Magic: The Gathering.

Let the geekiness protrude. I admit in front of gatherings of my friends that I used to play and sell Magic cards and that I made a lot of money trading and selling pieces of cardboard before I ever had my first job.

I remember my old Atari gaming machine. It was my fathers. He had a game with some chick and a sword that my mom wouldn't let me play because it was possibly sexual in nature? Or the chick was scantily clad? I dunno, but I remember not playing that game.

My first PC was a 133mhz Pentium. Old School. And at school we used to have the Apple 2e's and the 2e+, wasn't there also an Apple 2c?

Why did schools always get Apple PC's? Weren't they more expensive?

Eric

That brings back some memories for sure. I remember over clocking a Pentium 75 to a 90 and thinking wow, I better hold on now. And that 540 meg hard drive it came with..... Those were the days....

[Chevy366]

Another good article on that website:
http://technologizer.com/2008/09/18/errormessage/

Cheers,
Ross

Oh , forgot about the , "abort, retry, fail" .

That brings back some memories for sure. I remember over clocking a Pentium 75 to a 90 and thinking wow, I better hold on now. And that 540 meg hard drive it came with..... Those were the days....

Yeah , or the turbo button for instant power , ROFL .

On side note , make Linux a Mac : http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/.../run-linux-mac

[redhardsupra]

you laugh at the turbo button, but the new cpus both over and underclock themselves as needed. isnt that a modern equivalent of the turbo button?