Hello from the USA!

Say Hello... tell us your what you know, and what you're interested in learning!
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Please say hello... tell us what systems & CPU's you can program, and what you're interested in learning!
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EvilSandwich
Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Nov 13, 2019 7:36 am

Hello from the USA!

Post by EvilSandwich » Sat Nov 23, 2019 7:56 am

Hello Hello, Everyone! Nice to meet you all!

I've gotten into coding fairly recently in earnest, but I've always been on the fringes on it all my life. I'm a little too young to remember it clearly, but my first home computer was my dad's old Vic-20. It was eventually replaced when I was 6 with a brand new (for the time anyway lol ) Tandy 1000 SX, which I played the ever loving bejeezums out of. So much of my childhood had me using command prompts and I loved my PC-DOS. But, boy howdy, when my parents got me my first windows 95 machine (an objectively terrible Packard Bell) that when I started doing little bits of scripting here and there. Basic robot controls in QBasic, late 90s webpage design in HTML 4 and the odd Hello World program in C++.

In the last few months, I've been really immersing myself into 6502 Assembly, since that CPU has been in so many devices I used as a kid (my old NES, my dad's VIC-20 and my friend's Apple II). It's just fun finding all the old ways people back in the day used to make software for games and programs.

I stumbled on Keith via his YouTube channel and found his tutorials insanely helpful. I've been learning quickly and just seeing all the things I can do with a CPU that was designed all the way back in 1974 is just mind boggling! I've been following along with his tutorials and have been trying things out slowly but surely as I learn, even if my enthusiasm gets the better of me at times.

I'm the guy that's been posting code blocks in your youtube comments section, trying out things you've been showing in the videos. Looking back, my first code block looks kinda silly. Drawing a smiley face using the only two opcodes I knew at the time. Load to Accumulator (LDA) and Store Accumulator to Memory (STA). I swear, I've gotten better since then. haha

After I feel like I'm in a good place with 6502 Assembly, I'm hoping to branch off and learn the Z80 to make software for my old TI-83 from college. And after that, maybe learning what the old Intel 8088 can do so I can make software for my ancient Tandy 1000.

I'm not sure, I'm just kinda playing this all by ear and having fun more than anything. I'm just happy that my wife is so understanding of my silly hobbies. lol

Expect to see me in Show & Tell a lot, since I love doing a bunch of little projects at once and crave constructive feedback to help make them better.

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akuyou
Posts: 562
Joined: Mon Apr 22, 2019 3:19 am
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Re: Hello from the USA!

Post by akuyou » Sat Nov 23, 2019 10:09 pm

Welcome to the forum! I'm glad to hear you're enjoying Assembly, and I'm humbled by the fact you've found my content useful in your learning adventures.

The Tandy-1000 isn't something I've come across, our family were an Amstrad lot so we had the PC-1512 as our first PC

it sounds like your thoughts on CPU's are similar to mine... I was amazed by the technicalities of the Z80, and it made me want to branch out to other systems (though it is hard, because they're all so different)... I'm covering the 8086 next year, so that may help you with your tandy - as I don't think there's any instruction difference between the 8086 and 8088

I'm looking forward to seeing your work on the Show and Tell - it's great to see what people are working on... I'm planning to start another 'random draw' competition in a week or two, and anyone who posts in that forum will have a chance of winning!... so post away!

Thanks for joining the forum, and good luck with your programimng projects!
Chibi Akuma(s) Comedy-Horror 8-bit Bullet Hell shooter! // 「チビ悪魔」可笑しいゴシックSTG ! // Work in Progress: ChibiAliens

Interested in CPU's :Z80,6502,68000,6809,ARM,8086,RISC-V
Learning: 65816,ARM,8086,6809

EvilSandwich
Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Nov 13, 2019 7:36 am

Re: Hello from the USA!

Post by EvilSandwich » Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:00 am

When I was learning programming way back in high school, one thing that always kinda frustrated me was how no one teaching me the high level languages could 100% explain to me how the software programs interacted with the computer. Like, truly interacted. As in, where did the software end and the hardware begin.

I knew what bytes and bits were as an abstract concept, but I didn't completely understand what they were physically. How was the data actually stored. None of my teachers knew anything about ALUs or D-Latches or the idea of making an array of Full Adders out of NAND gates or how two's compliment worked.

Now that I've started learning Assembly, I know now that the main reason they didn't know is that, on the high level you really don't really need to know. And for 99.9% of programming applications and software development, that's completely fine. I guess I'm just a silly person that never completely outgrew the habit children have to repeatedly ask, "But why though?" haha

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Gee-k
Posts: 28
Joined: Sat May 04, 2019 9:35 am
Location: Scotland
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Re: Hello from the USA!

Post by Gee-k » Wed Nov 27, 2019 11:03 am

EvilSandwich wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:00 am I guess I'm just a silly person that never completely outgrew the habit children have to repeatedly ask, "But why though?" haha
Ha, nice to see someone who is the same as me.
Nice to meet you from the other side of the pond. Looks like we have all the oceans covered now.
You don't fail, You learn how it's not done.
https://www.gee-k.net : Where I blog about my random geeky goings on.

EvilSandwich
Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Nov 13, 2019 7:36 am

Re: Hello from the USA!

Post by EvilSandwich » Thu Dec 05, 2019 4:39 pm

I'm legit shocked that I'm one of the few Americans here tbh. But hey, someone's gotta be the first. Might as well be me!

Where abouts do you hail Gee-k?

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Gee-k
Posts: 28
Joined: Sat May 04, 2019 9:35 am
Location: Scotland
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Re: Hello from the USA!

Post by Gee-k » Mon Dec 09, 2019 6:08 pm

Hi,
I'm from Scotland. The greenest country on the planet. Sadly it's that green due to the amount of rainfall we get :lol:
You don't fail, You learn how it's not done.
https://www.gee-k.net : Where I blog about my random geeky goings on.

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