tech58761
Experienced Member
Although I don't currently have any vintage electronics (other than one project), I have had some experience with 8-bit era computers.
I remember when one elementary school I attended in the late '70s got its first computer - a PET 2001 with chiclet keyboard, and I remember playing with the Apple ][ series computers in summer camp and middle school. I also remember taking programming classes in high school, and the labs all had Commodore 4016 / 4032 PETs (which were replaced with Apple //c during my senior year).
My parents got me a Commodore 64 for Christmas in 1984, and I spent many hours playing games and dabbling in BASIC and 6502 assembly... by the early '90s, I had upgraded to an Amiga 500 (which gave way to an Amiga 1200 in a couple years), before jumping to the Wintel universe following the demise of Commodore.
Continuing on towards the present - my first foray into emulation was when I got my Amiga, as I wanted to keep some of my C64 software, eventually getting my hands on one of the dongles for StarCommander and copying the software over to the Amiga. When Vista appeared on the horizon, I bugged out of Windows and switched to Mac. I did later pick up a small PC for some software that won't run on the Mac (especially after Apple's switch away from Intel CPUs). If I had the room, I sure wouldn't mind putting together an actual 64 / 1541 / 1702 setup...
The project I spoke of is an early 'smart meter' from the 1980s, the electronics sitting in a 8" square cube behind the meter. I've mostly figured out the hardware side (it uses an industrial variant of the 6800 MPU), but am still trying to figure out the firmware, so I may tap into the brain trust here at some point.
I remember when one elementary school I attended in the late '70s got its first computer - a PET 2001 with chiclet keyboard, and I remember playing with the Apple ][ series computers in summer camp and middle school. I also remember taking programming classes in high school, and the labs all had Commodore 4016 / 4032 PETs (which were replaced with Apple //c during my senior year).
My parents got me a Commodore 64 for Christmas in 1984, and I spent many hours playing games and dabbling in BASIC and 6502 assembly... by the early '90s, I had upgraded to an Amiga 500 (which gave way to an Amiga 1200 in a couple years), before jumping to the Wintel universe following the demise of Commodore.
Continuing on towards the present - my first foray into emulation was when I got my Amiga, as I wanted to keep some of my C64 software, eventually getting my hands on one of the dongles for StarCommander and copying the software over to the Amiga. When Vista appeared on the horizon, I bugged out of Windows and switched to Mac. I did later pick up a small PC for some software that won't run on the Mac (especially after Apple's switch away from Intel CPUs). If I had the room, I sure wouldn't mind putting together an actual 64 / 1541 / 1702 setup...
The project I spoke of is an early 'smart meter' from the 1980s, the electronics sitting in a 8" square cube behind the meter. I've mostly figured out the hardware side (it uses an industrial variant of the 6800 MPU), but am still trying to figure out the firmware, so I may tap into the brain trust here at some point.
