Hi from sunny South Australia

[Sherm]

Hey hey, I'm Sherm. 



I got my first taste of coding back in 1979 on a Wang 2200 and haven't stopped since. The Wang was short lived having discovered the Apple II in 1980. That was probably for the best. The apple was a great machine to learn to code on. Our library had two wire bound manuals that were almost exclusively borrowed by myself and a school mate in our small country town. In the end the library gave us one each when we left school. I still have mine all these years later. During that time I daydreamed and saved up for years to get my first Commodore 64 in 1984. That was such a trip moving to 16 colours in a device I could easily carry on my bike to see my friends for coding parties. I fell in lust with the Amiga 1000 the very next year before buying one in 1986 when I could finally afford it (I really couldn't afford it but I bought it anyway) then upgraded to the A2000 around 1990 to start taking advantage of all the third party cards. The Opal Vision, and the GVP Video Toaster were the two things I'd coveted and I spent countless hours pushing both to my limits. Stayed with the Amiga until around '97 when the PC started getting better graphics and I finally slipped over to what has really been a barely exciting growth since. Don't get me wrong; What a modern PC can do now is amazing, but it's been slow change and nothing that has felt as exhilarating as the C64 and Amiga for me. Linux and the Raspberry Pi sort of had a familiar buzz about it, but still not at the same level as those young years. Electronics engineer by trade, my love has always been the marriage of interfacing code with external devices. There's a lot more to me, but I figure there's a lot of people just like me here watching with keen interest, and old memories.

[Lucky Phil]

Great 'South Aussie' memories there, Sherm... despite never having been lucky enough to see one in the flesh, I always had a soft spot for the Wang 2200 given its release date coinciding with my birthday! I also share your sentiment for spiral-bound manuals - over the years I've managed to acquire fine copies for my Commodore 64 and VIC-20 machines, in addition to one or two others - and they're certainly still treasured. Emulators and PDFs can only go so far in reviving the glorious past of 8-bit computing!

[Cyber]

On 2/10/2021 at 1:26 PM, Sherm said:

Stayed with the Amiga until around '97 when the PC started getting better graphics and I finally slipped over to what has really been a barely exciting growth since.

Man, you holded for quite a long time!