I was born in 1972. I firmly believe that I, and others born around the same time, have a unique advantage when it comes to understanding computers. Those from earlier days often find computers puzzling and mysterious; those born later have not been forced to learn the deep fundamentals to use computers effectively.
When I was just the right age for that sort of thing, the home microcomputer emerged on the market. Sinclair was the chief driving force in bringing affordable computers into the house, starting with the ZX80 and ZX81. My first home computer was a Version 1 ZX Spectrum: we bought the 48K (yes, kilobyte!) version rather than the 16K, as my father had previously run into memory limitations writing a protein simulation program on a 32K BBC B for the school he taught at, and understood the value of RAM.
I also used a BBC B, and had experience with friends’ computers, machines like Acorn Atom, Oric-1 and the Commodore 64 and VIC-20. All of these were radically different machines compared with today’s homogeneous offerings.
As home computers were so basic and so limited at the time, it was important to fully understand the internal workings (both hardware and software) if one wanted to do anything useful with them. Here’s a random list of things I had to get my head around as a kid, when learning and understanding is at its best:
- the difference between RAM and ROM;
- BASIC, assembly language and machine code;
- compiled versus interpreted languages;
- Z80 machine code;
- memory-mapped graphics (where the screen is simply a representation of a section of user RAM, and writing to this memory directly affects the display);
- tape storage and audio data interface;
- serial and parallel interfaces;
- control flow optimization;
- binary and decimal.
I thought it worthwhile jotting down a few memories so that those of a similar age can reminisce, and those pesky kids on my lawn who listen to that terrible noise they call “music” can look in befuddled incomprehension.
- Usborne books with robots running around the inside of the computer, delivering 0s and 1s into a row of little boxes;
- “thermal” printers costing six times more than modern colour inkjets in real terms, printing smudged black characters onto silver paper rolls;
- building user-defined graphics characters as a string of eight bytes;
- fighting for use of the television set: no dedicated monitors for us back then!
- counting each clock cycle in a machine code program;
- typing in a long BASIC program out of a magazine, only for someone to accidentally knock the power lead out of the machine, losing hours of laborious work;
- 45rpm floppy records on magazine covers: plugging the Spectrum into the record player to load up programs;
- program distribution over the radio;
- writing a full-screen video player. The executable was just 11 bytes long and would copy pre-stored frames from the user RAM to the screen memory one after the other. I forget the frame rate, but it was fast. Sadly the RAM could only store six frames, and the graphics system could only do two colours per character space.
- wearing out key matrices playing Daley Thompson’s Decathlon too much: replacing them a couple of times and eventually building a custom box, PCB and keyboard;
- working through all 256 screens on Sabre Wulf while my sister drew a map of the maze;
- learning about pirating (to which I’m now vehemently opposed) and circumventing copy protection. A friend and I once copied the reference card for Jet Set Willy by hand with four felt-tip pens. In today’s world of digital cameras and the Internet, such a copy protection scheme would last about 1/250s in good light.
- learning CAD/CAE fundamentals from VU-3D and Make-A-Chip.
Wow. Now I feel old.
Spectrum owners should visit World of Spectrum for a trip back to the past. Spectrum emulators let you play some of those old classic games legally, thanks to Amstrad and WoS on your modern computer. I must warn you, though: most aren’t as good as you remember…
Anyone who missed this nascent period in home computing missed out on a valuable learning experience, I believe. Some of those who were there went on to start the demo scene, which was undoubtably responsible for many advances in computer graphics. Next time you watch a Pixar film, for example, you’re probably benefitting from the work of people who started out with ZX81 code like:
20 GOTO 10
Well well!
My dad brought some a rubber key Speccy when I was a young un, that was my first steps. I then got a Plus/4 Commodore but never really got "into it" back then.
I remember the BBC used to distribute programs for the BBC Micro over Ceefax (I think) that could be recorded.
I only really became a computer geek with my first PC when I got into x86 assembly.
Glory days indead!
R.
Found it !
Turns out the programme was "4 Computer Buffs" (C4) and here is the YouTube video showing how to make the hardware -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKmu68URUeI
>45rpm floppy records on magazine covers: plugging the Spectrum into the record player to load up programs;
Do you remember the computer programme shown on ITV (IIRC) where they transmitted programs over the air ? They created a black block in the corner of the TV screen, with a flashing white spot in the centre of it. You had to stick a suction cup with a light sensor in it (attached to your computer) over the flashing spot and basically "download" your program. Sadly the name of the programme escapes me at this moment in time.
My (16k) Spectrum was great. I spent ages wondering why 'centipede' looked like about 30 lines of basic. The only thing I didn't really understand was the USR
Then I got some of those Usborne books, worked it out and started writing my own assembler! Then I discovered 48k. And Elite.
Some time later (yes, and Elite :) I got an assembler (it was by Ocean I think) and started writing code properly. I had a notebook with dozens and dozens of pages of handwritten assembly.
Mmmm....z80 assembly...
Then there came 6502 assembly, then 68k, 6805, 6811, then (then!) pascal and then C (and some arm assembly at uni).
Kids of today with all their managed code and garbage collecters don't know they're born!
(And, FWIW, I'm "a" and spent several years professionally trying to stop people copying things. I think you'll find it hard to find many publishers who *doesn't* care about copyright infringement - those few who are well known are really cause celebrite, the rest are crying over their balance sheets)
James
I guess that many people in commercial publishing don't think piracy is a non-issue because, well, they didn't think hard enough about it. Those who do, usually notice it is in fact a non-issue, and that spending a few minutes with the fact "c" isn't paying, or how "b" could be forced into paying, is losing those few minutes. The article below, by a publisher, is a good example:
http://mises.org/story/1473
Basically, he noticed years ago that books available for download have the net effect of increasing sales of printed books. So, he now provides all of them for download for free, and cashes in the profits of the increased paper sales.
IMHO, it's a matter of time until this perception becomes common sense, after all, the beauty of it is that businessmen are pragmatic. :-)
Alexander - good point on emulator copyright, although in this instance, I'm clean. Amstrad, who own the Spectrum system ROMs, have agreed for them to be distributed. The games available on that site either are distributed with explicit permission or because no remnant of the publisher can be found. I've updated the article to reflect this.
As far as your a/b/c categorization goes, I'm in "a" - I won't knowingly infringe licences because I believe it is morally wrong. The common arguments such as "CDs are too expensive" don't cut any ice for me - if it's too expensive, tough, I won't buy or download it. I don't think you'll find many people in commercial publishing who think it's a non-issue... :-)
Nice article. Although I myself never used a ZX Spectrum, I also have fond memories of 80's computers, my first ones having been a TRS-80 and an Apple IIe clones.
But I'd like to point out that you contradict yourself when you say you're nowadays against piracy and a few lines below you suggest people to go after emulation software. The moment one downloads a ROM file, even if he owns the original cassette or floppy or cartridge, he's violating someone else's copyright.
Piracy is a non-issue really. There are 3 kinds of person: a) those who will pay for a license to use that intellectual property no matter whether its available for free at one click's distance; b) those who will never, ever, pay for it, no matter how unavailable it is unless paid for; and c) those in the middle, and will pay for it it's easier than it is to get it for free otherwise. IP producers pay too much attention to "c", when it's usually not worth the effort. Restricting diffusion so that "c" becomes a source of income is something that has a cost. When this cost is higher than the profit "c" may generate, as is usually the case, the effort ends up hurting the bottom line. The easier and also the best approach then is to focus solely on "a". They're a huge enough demographic for it to be worth chasing "c". As for "b", they don't matter anyway.
The emulation scene is a prime example. I have some 2000 ROMs spread around many emulators (Apple II, SNES, Genesis, arcades). Among those, I'd gladly pay for at most 10 or 15, and I would have already done so were them available for sale at the manufacturers' websites (they aren't, I've verified). In relation to these, I'm in "a". For the remaining ones, I'm in "b": I could delete them and I'd miss none, except maybe in an indirect way, the feeling that my collection would become "incomplete". In any case, for none I'm in "c".
Same goes for films or other entertainment. Films I like, I go see 3 or 4 times in the movies, then purchase OST CD, then the special DVD edition etc. Those I download? Well, some I might pay, say, $1.00, at best. As for the remaining, I wouldn't wish to see them if I had to pay $0.01. In short, "a" vs. weak "c" vs. meaningless "b".
Focus on "a" is the key. Once this is understood, the whole debate among those "for" and "against" piracy shows itself as a false dichotomy.
I remember the first personal computer I ever used - a Commodore PET my mathematics teacher brought into class. I purchased a VIC-20 shortly thereafter because I could not afford the PET or SuperPET.
Learning to programme was a great adventure (PET BASIC and 6502 Assembly Language). The mere 3.5 KB of user (5 KB TAM total: 3.5 KB user + 1.5 KB system) available RAM plus the 128-byte (I think) cassette buffer taught me the value of optimized small code.