I hope I'm doing this right?
Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2020 4:39 am
Hi.
Forgive my manner, having seen the Arduino and RPi forums, I'm reluctant - they're just mean!
Anyways, my age is 37-38. Older I get, the more I measure in decades. Might seem weird to someone in their 50's but you see, I've spent a number of years studying Philosophy and History (even got the snooty credentials) so I've developed a 4000 year perspective to most things. It's kinda messed up stuff.
I also spent some time in the service, and most of my bread has come from industrial trades - construction, cabinetmaking, machining. I "own" my company Tributary House Ltd. The quotes are because I pay the LLC fees, and have made about $300 in five years... I am not a businessman.
I also "own" my research lab - MERLInc - wherein I tinker and think about all the neat stuff that was supposed to have become commonplace by the year 2000. Remember that feeling? When Fusion energy was only 50 years away - and still is? Had a patent once, I learned the hard way that nobodies don't get phone-calls returned. Patent expired.
Anyways, I got sucked into the likes of 8 bit guy, LGR, Tech-Connect, etc... and the nostalgia mixed with the sad (I am disappointed with how we've gone - but that's another rant).
I got my start in GW BASIC on a 386 Epson Equity II+, with DOS 3.2 in sixth grade. Moved on to QBASIC and ended up making a LORD clone in QB45 before life did what life does - that was in '96 or so. One summer semester, about four years ago, I took C++ and it was horrid.
In many ways, I miss DOS.
I did not know there was any such thing as a Commodore 64 until that YouTube video "Gates v Jobs" came out. I thought the 8086 processor was the first from Bell Labs for years - and before life went all sideways, I visited the last of the BBS's on my HP 150 touchscreen (running windows 1.0 and PAM!) - before playing Castle of the Winds on my Tandy (something or other) running windows 3.2 - my Highschool had thrown out that Tandy, so I major scored. I do not come from a world conducive to childhood programmers.
One forgets a great deal of BASIC in 20+ years, but I still remember what a good day it was when I learned what GOSUB could do, and it was cause for celebration when I first OPEN "filename" for INPUT as #1.... (or something like that) - because now I could make player stats for my LORD clone ?.
My purpose on the forum is primarily because David's review of the Maximite 2 Color showed me a BASIC run microcontroller. Sure, I can use ArduinoIDE to flash my 3D printer, and if I really sat down to do it, I'm certain I could make Python make my RPi do stuff, but C++ and Python just... I don't enjoy them.
My other purpose on the forum is more ethereal.
I've had to explain to one of the little ones (who is turning 13 soon) that after school ends, making friends and finding people only gets harder.
I have an R&D laboratory, a Master's Degree, and basically nobody to tinker with me, or to bounce ideas.
- How about a GPS including topo-maps, but use an electrophorescent display, with a resistive overlay for outdoor use?!!? - stuff like that.
I ask the pertinent questions about stuff like that in Arduino or RPi forums, and frankly, they get mad. It's a real thing - the rudeness to the noobs. I don't even bother asking them anymore because it's so off-putting. It's all Wiki products now.
You guys seem much nicer - possibly because 8-Bit computing has no practical-ambitious dimension, and you all seem to understand why I fondly remember learning GOSUB...
That, and I imagine you guys would understand if I said "Good software is designed to run well on a 286 - then you give it an i5 and watch it fly..."
Anyways, I hope the X16 flies - that I can afford one, and that maybe I can make some friends who would be willing to entertain and even try crazy ideas.
Afterall, you're all here to build David's "Dream Computer" which is, aside from a little weird, pretty cool friendship in my mind.
Sorry to be weird. When in doubt, honesty is the only fallback.
I hope I haven't broken any server rules!