Loads of hardware (1)
I mainly describe myself as a hacker. I won't debate here about the real meaning of that term, because zillions of webpages already debate about what hackers really are. To keep things short, my definition of hackers corresponds to computer enthusiats which like to break limits of their machines and constantly work to improve their knowledge about programming and problems solving.
So, as this hobby is focused around computers, what best way to present my progress other than presenting the computers I used to spend my time on ...
This article is a short enumeration of the computer harware I had the opportunity to use and program on. I will make a further description of each of them in a series of upcoming different articles. As my time for writing this blog is not infinite, I certainly will take my time to present everything, and I certainly will forget things. I will post different articles when my memory gets back (and if it is worth it ! ;)).
So, here we go with the list :
Hector 2HR+
I had the opportunity to use that computer in a weekly camp when I was around 9 and 10. The director of this camp was a visionary and allowed some children to play a bit with these machines instead of breathing fresh air and doing sports, which I disliked a lot at this time.
This activity gained a lot of success as children knew it was an opportunity to play videogames all day long. So the director decided to specialize the activity by removing the games and letting us try things on the Basic programming language. So this is the machine on which I wrote my first program.
Thomson TO7
Several Thomson computers were installed in a computer club I used to go to every saturday afternoon. There were TO7's, MO5's, and the mighty TO7/70 with its rubber keyboard (now featured on Apple's laptops, top of modernity ! :p ).
Thomson's computers were also available in a lot of primary schools all around France, to get used with programming. I knew the machine better than my teachers, and when they pretended teaching us programming with Logo (doing graphics with it was a nightmare), I remember having said ``why not in Basic ? You can do graphics with it, and a lot much more''.
Apple //e
This is the first computer my parents bougth for my brothers and I. I enhanced my programming skills a lot with it, but it also had very good games we spent hours on. It still is one of the computers I had most fun with.
Atari 520 STF
This computer was the machine which really made me become what a hacker really is. Of course, I spent hours playing excellent games such as Speedball, Arkanoid 2, Nebulus and Captain Blood, but I also witnessed the beginning of the Atari demoscene. I spent hours watching demos such as the Cuddly demos, Punish Your Machine, Ooh Crokey Wot a Scorcher or Dark Side of the Spoon. This definitely pushed me into thinking "yay, I want to do the same !".
The Atari ST also featured excellent programming environments, especially GFA Basic and Devpac 2.
I wrote zillions of programs using in GFA Basic and assembler on it. I will talk about these later.
Atari Falcon030
This computer was the successor of the ST series. I had the same activities on it as I had on the ST: programming, especially desktop utilities and demos.
I will also present my activities on the Falcon in a separate article.
Well, that's all for the moment. The list is not over. I will finish it in a next article.