if you were around during the 8-bit computer era, what computer brand/series/system would you want to have?
Commodore (PET, VIC 20, C64, TED, C128, etc)
Atari (Atari 8-bit line)
Apple (Apple II)
Tandy (TRS-80, TRS-80 Color Computer, etc)
Texas Instruments (TI-99)
Sinclair (ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum, etc)
BBC Micro
MSX
Amstrad CPC
NEC (PC-88, etc)
IBM (5150, etc)
Poll ends at .
@mjdxp I really wanted a TRS-80, but could afford a secondhand PET 2001 only. Learned a ton from it. Had a blast reading through the disassembly of the BASIC ROM. I vividly recall discovering the tokenizer. It seeded my interest in lexers and later yacc and regular expressions. The hardware being way to advanced (a single chip CPU, a 6522 for almost all I/O, etc). I was as elated that my high school had a disused PDP8, with schematics, which allowed me to study how instructions flowed through simple TTL logic. I hate all the black boxes we have to use ever since.
@bertdriehuis the PET is really cool, but honestly the main thing keeping me from getting one isn't necessarily the price, it's more that it takes up so much space which i really don't have :P
@mjdxp mine is in storage for that reason... It's been years since it was last powered up. And I lost the cassette tapes, so I have nothing to run on it. The little spare time I spend on retro computing these days goes to the PiDP11 with its beautiful blinkenlights. If ever I reach retirement age, I will probably sink some time in modifying the PiDP8 into the PDP8/e looks, especially the toggle switches...