Nostalgia
Friday, 1. February 2008, 16:30:20
A week or so ago I ordered a set of DVDs that contained the full set of scanned copies of Nibble Magazine. It was one of the more popular magazines that dealt primarily with the Apple 2 computer.
Each month had stacks of programs you had to type in yourself! I only ever bought about 4.5 years worth, and it's really interesting to now be able to read the other 8 years. The computer world has certainly come a long way!
Although sometimes it feels like it hasn't... The Apple 2 was a 1MHz 8-bit computer with 64KB of RAM and about 16KB of ROM (it's been too long for me to remember how all the bits of memory-mapped and page-flipped ROM were organized, let alone add them up!).
I've just finished a project with a PIC chip - 6.25MHz (the chip can go up to 40MHz), 8-bit, 64KB Flash 'ROM', 4KB RAM. Of course, the PIC has everything in a 28pin IC, while the Apple was quite a bit bigger!
I still have my old Apple. I always thought I'd one day find some use for a low-computing-power machine that was programmable. However, I can't think of anything my Apple could do that a PIC can't. I can get basic LCD or complex VGA display modules, SD card readers for storage, RS232 or CAN Bus or Ethernet interfaces for communication.
No, the computer world really has come a long way. But my Apple was so much fun! I still can't ever see myself getting rid of it.
Each month had stacks of programs you had to type in yourself! I only ever bought about 4.5 years worth, and it's really interesting to now be able to read the other 8 years. The computer world has certainly come a long way!
Although sometimes it feels like it hasn't... The Apple 2 was a 1MHz 8-bit computer with 64KB of RAM and about 16KB of ROM (it's been too long for me to remember how all the bits of memory-mapped and page-flipped ROM were organized, let alone add them up!).
I've just finished a project with a PIC chip - 6.25MHz (the chip can go up to 40MHz), 8-bit, 64KB Flash 'ROM', 4KB RAM. Of course, the PIC has everything in a 28pin IC, while the Apple was quite a bit bigger!
I still have my old Apple. I always thought I'd one day find some use for a low-computing-power machine that was programmable. However, I can't think of anything my Apple could do that a PIC can't. I can get basic LCD or complex VGA display modules, SD card readers for storage, RS232 or CAN Bus or Ethernet interfaces for communication.
No, the computer world really has come a long way. But my Apple was so much fun! I still can't ever see myself getting rid of it.
WIDGETIZE