A Atari STE was my first Computer in 1986 and my coding cariier started 1988 on this machine using GFABasic ;-)
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Old programs you wrote years ago...
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I wrote software to control test systems with HP Basic on the HP-85 and then "moved up" to the HP-9826. The joys of HPIB instrumentation!
Can't remember my very first, but here's a good story: Back in 1986, our prof of mathematics, who had a friend asking for a way to prepair combinations of workers' shifts anually, was trying to create a program at his zx spectrum. I had the c64, and 'secretly' created my version, pure assembly. Got them to watch a demo, and finally my teacher's friend bought my app! Don't ask me about the price, it was very very cheap for what it offered, but I was too young to care. Anyway, 2 decades later, I've met this man, and, to my biggest surprise, this program was still in use!!! He asked me whether they should move on to something new, and I said, no way, it's too early for that kind of update 
Liked this thread, brings back good old memories
Liked this thread, brings back good old memories 
OK, here is one. Boeing 777. first paperless airplane.
Boeing used DB Paradox as a front end. They had tried for over a year to get a document management system. They failed. (Remember it is DOS) Boeing, Really?
Sub contractor. My company. (document management system?????) Yeah (LOL) right, 2 programmers and a one receptionist. LOL
Need a scanner custom interface??? My boss wrote device drivers so he did know what he was doing. (Remember it is DOS)
SO. I wrote in DbMan (Dbase clone that ran everywhere - dead now)
It put the scanner output on WORM drives. You Typed in with a few key words and scanned docs and put in the database. We had 28 WORM drives with 660mb each for the documents.
(DOS!!! aaaaahhhhhhh)
Now, How do you get the documents in the field? Out of the office? I wrote program in QB4.5 that ran on six 286 computers. Six computers with fax boards.Yep, The Boeing Paradox program would drop a file in shared folder, then 1 of the 286 computers handled the traffic. Fax me baby!!! Also handled resend. True story
In the end it did work!!!! LOL, it did!!!!
True story. MANY EX WIVES AGO!!!!! LOL
Boeing used DB Paradox as a front end. They had tried for over a year to get a document management system. They failed. (Remember it is DOS) Boeing, Really?
Sub contractor. My company. (document management system?????) Yeah (LOL) right, 2 programmers and a one receptionist. LOL
Need a scanner custom interface??? My boss wrote device drivers so he did know what he was doing. (Remember it is DOS)
SO. I wrote in DbMan (Dbase clone that ran everywhere - dead now)
It put the scanner output on WORM drives. You Typed in with a few key words and scanned docs and put in the database. We had 28 WORM drives with 660mb each for the documents.
(DOS!!! aaaaahhhhhhh)
Now, How do you get the documents in the field? Out of the office? I wrote program in QB4.5 that ran on six 286 computers. Six computers with fax boards.Yep, The Boeing Paradox program would drop a file in shared folder, then 1 of the 286 computers handled the traffic. Fax me baby!!! Also handled resend. True story
In the end it did work!!!! LOL, it did!!!!
True story. MANY EX WIVES AGO!!!!! LOL
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My first attempt at a programming .. if you would call it that, was with a spread sheet program "As Easy As" and the biggest Macro you would likely see !
It was for a week long Darts championship .. 300 players playing teams,doubles and singles. As soon as games were over the sheets were whipped out the back room for input on a very expensive second hand machine ( specs ... or lack of them ... escape me)
They were all treated to constant prints of up to date stats , ladders, graphs etc.. .
All were pretty chuffed at the modern world they were living in .
It was for a week long Darts championship .. 300 players playing teams,doubles and singles. As soon as games were over the sheets were whipped out the back room for input on a very expensive second hand machine ( specs ... or lack of them ... escape me)
They were all treated to constant prints of up to date stats , ladders, graphs etc.. .
All were pretty chuffed at the modern world they were living in .
A simple Basic program on a SVI to play "Fur Elise". First "big" project was to write a program for a Hitachi V90 process computer to tranfer data between the process computer and an IBM PC based on the Kermit serial protocol. I seem to recall that the PC had something like a 20MB hard drive and some stupid number of RAM. It had a turbo button that would put some fire under the processor kicking it from 4.77MHz to 8MHz. Wow! That was fast!
Wow! That was fast!
Fun fact: disabling the turbo button actually underclocked the cpu (it's normal speed was 8MHz).It had a turbo button that would put some fire under the processor kicking it from 4.77MHz to 8MHz.
So basicly buying a pc in those days, if the sales person said: "it's a 20MHz pc with a turbo button to overclock it to 40MHz", you were being scammed
This was my first computer:
Then:
C128
Amiga 500
Amiga 2000
PC
GFA-Basic on the Amiga was brilliant.
Later I got a new job in my company as a COBOL developer (yes, COBOL II). I did a lot of CICS/3270 & database programming (>1 billion rows total) and we created an own document management system in the 9ies (WORM, later harddisks due to the cheaper prices). It's still online but with different frontends/another imageviewer).
Last week there were a tv documentation about the game developers in the 8ies. What an amazing time. Everything was new & fresh. Today it's "just another f**** computer"
Then:
C128
Amiga 500
Amiga 2000
PC
GFA-Basic on the Amiga was brilliant.
Later I got a new job in my company as a COBOL developer (yes, COBOL II). I did a lot of CICS/3270 & database programming (>1 billion rows total) and we created an own document management system in the 9ies (WORM, later harddisks due to the cheaper prices). It's still online but with different frontends/another imageviewer).
Last week there were a tv documentation about the game developers in the 8ies. What an amazing time. Everything was new & fresh. Today it's "just another f**** computer"
Wow, a lifetime ago in my senior year in Engineering at Marquette University In Milwaukee, WI, USA, I programmed an IBM 1620 with Fortran on punch cards (we punched out the cards at night and submitted them to the folks running the computer the next day with a "Ran" or "Didn't Run" notification after they ran the cards). The first program I "successfully ran" was a change-maker program with "correct change" for money paid vs price.
Then I used a Wang Computer with built-in Basic (their version) with 8k of Memory for data analysis in the mid 70's!!
When Microprocessors came along, I used an RCA 1802 (also called COSMAC) CMOS low power micro that could operate from 3 volts to 12 volts and had 16 16bit registers (which were wonderful for data results and storage w/o any RAM). These devices were programmed in machine language. One of the devices I made was a "neck suction device" that applied a vacuum to the baroreceptors in the neck when heart rate was constant for several beats.
Around 1990 a device made by Texas Instruments came out called the TSS400. This device was called an Integrated Signal Processor and had built-in 12 bit A/Ds, timers and 8 (alphanumeric) character LCD capability. The programming language was called Sensor Macro Programming Language (SMPL). I designed solenoid valve control systems, gas measurement devices, liquid flow controllers and other devices.
Basic has been a staple in my life throughout my engineering career and I love B4X!
Then I used a Wang Computer with built-in Basic (their version) with 8k of Memory for data analysis in the mid 70's!!
When Microprocessors came along, I used an RCA 1802 (also called COSMAC) CMOS low power micro that could operate from 3 volts to 12 volts and had 16 16bit registers (which were wonderful for data results and storage w/o any RAM). These devices were programmed in machine language. One of the devices I made was a "neck suction device" that applied a vacuum to the baroreceptors in the neck when heart rate was constant for several beats.
Around 1990 a device made by Texas Instruments came out called the TSS400. This device was called an Integrated Signal Processor and had built-in 12 bit A/Ds, timers and 8 (alphanumeric) character LCD capability. The programming language was called Sensor Macro Programming Language (SMPL). I designed solenoid valve control systems, gas measurement devices, liquid flow controllers and other devices.
Basic has been a staple in my life throughout my engineering career and I love B4X!
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Can't remember my very first program (year 1982 for sure) but I clearly recall my first programming "hack".
Basic 8000, a Basic language interpreter. When you saved your programs you could password protect them, so loading them back will not list the source.
Then I discovered two funny items, "peek" and "poke", to write/read memory locations.. and it didn't take much to spot the single byte to modify in order to break the protection scheme!
It was funny even to build a correspondence table between language keywords and their numerical representation in RAM.
udg
Basic 8000, a Basic language interpreter. When you saved your programs you could password protect them, so loading them back will not list the source.
Then I discovered two funny items, "peek" and "poke", to write/read memory locations.. and it didn't take much to spot the single byte to modify in order to break the protection scheme!
It was funny even to build a correspondence table between language keywords and their numerical representation in RAM.
udg
LOL. Just got to love it!
The Rolls Royce of programmable calculators. How sad that HP discontinued the HP 41CX. There has never been anything like the HP 41CX since then. If anyone knows of one in good working condition (preferably including a math module) and wants to sell it - you have a willing buyer Mine got me through varsity (was in 1984 and 1985 required for our course in Applied Mathematics I and II) but got stolen one evening when my car got broken into. This was an absolute masterpiece and I still rate it to this day.
Mine got me through varsity (was in 1984 and 1985 required for our course in Applied Mathematics I and II) but got stolen one evening when my car got broken into. This was an absolute masterpiece and I still rate it to this day.