Bloody rubbish

[MRAB]

On 2021-05-06 21:35, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Thursday 06 May 2021 13:54:23 Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>> > Machine language is so much simpler, and you can code with just a
>> > hexpad.
>>
>> Pshaa... All you need are front panel switches. ;-) (Yes, I had a
>> professor who required is to 'key' in our programs on the front panel,
>> of a rack mounted PDP-11 as I recall. Needless to say, we didn't use
>> an assembler either. We just wrote raw opcodes and their arguments on
>> paper. This was in the late 70s.)
>>
[snip]
> Sounded like a good idea, so I ordered a quest super elf board which only
> had a hex keypad and hex monitor, along with a copy of RCA's programming
> the 1802.  This was in 1978 IIRC. That grew an s-100 backplane and a
> $400 4k of static ram kit.  And I built the rest of the interfaceing
> including the video  to lay a new, digital academy leader countdown out
> of whole cloth.
> 
4K? Luxury!

My first machine was a Mk14 from Science of Cambridge. I had the extra 
RAM and the I/O chip, giving a total of 768 bytes (256 + 256 + 128, 
non-contiguous, of course). And one of the bits in the second block was 
faulty.