Who is Icky - Hope you like a story
Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2017 12:03 am
Well where do I start? Usually at the beginning.
I was born - skip forward a few years.
Electronics was my first love ever since as a young boy I used to watch the TV repair man coming round in the 70’s to fix the TV and trying to see how it worked. Electronics and computing has been intertwined in my life. As a friend of the family the TV guy gave me a box of old radios and TV parts to tinker with. Getting one of those radios working was my first hook into the electronic world. Things progressed from there where every month I waited for the latest issue of Practical Electronics (I didn’t wait that long as my father was a newsagent). This is where I started to build projects from the magazine. Gradually I started to get interested in the projects around building your own computer based on Z80 or 6502 processors. Unable to afford the price of the components I would pour over the adverts for the kit computers that were appearing in these mags. Finally working at weekends for my father I managed to save enough money to buy a ZX Spectrum. The ZX80 and ZX81 which I had longed to build were now being replaced by a new colour computer.
Becoming a proud owner of a 16k rubber keyboard ZX Spectrum changed my life and I think shaped where I have ended up today. I had spent all my money on getting the speccy that I did not have a tape player to load games. Sounds crazy but this got my into programming by typing in the firstly Basic based games from magazines into the machine and leaving the machine on over several days as I had no way to save the games. The last straw came when my younger sister came into the room once tripped over the power cable pulled it out the socket and I lost all my typing.
With a tape player purchased to stop this from happening again I then began to copy games from magazines but from the hex dumps they used to provide. I started to modify the hex to see what happened and gradually started to learn to program Z80 assembly. This allowed me to understand the inner workings of the speccy and I needed more memory to write code. With electronics still in mind I got hold of the memory upgrade from 16k to 48k. This was a case of soldering in the new memory chips. My first ever memory upgrade at the age of 14. Not content with this the Spectrum+ had come out with a new plastic housing and keys, not perfect, but better for typing. This was the next upgrade as they sold Spectrum+ kits.
My time was nearing an end in the Z80 world as I started to look towards the Sinclair QL with its 68008 chip and those strange microdrives. Again saving my pennies I managed to eventually get hold of a QL with a little help from my parents. This is where my programming skills where taking off with 68008 assembly and starting to venture into the C world.
Whilst this was going on my electronics was also growing at school where they had introduced a new O level (yes I’m that old) electronics course. This allowed me to continue my love of electronics and many music (synth related) projects ensued. Electronics featured as the theme from school to college etc. However during this time the QL was starting to feel limited and there were these new kids on the block sporting the 68000 in the guise of the Atari ST and Amiga. Again with saving my pennies I managed to become the proud owner of an Atari 520 STFM. Turning it on putting in the Goldrunner game that came with it and hearing that sample played back was one of those wow moments. Defender of the Crown had awesome graphics for the time making the previous blocky and colour limitations of the Speccy and QL look like something from the dark ages. Another memory upgrade was performed on the ST to take it to 1MB.
At this point in my life electronics was really taking over as this was the career plan I had. After leaving education I went to work for an electronics firm where I started to design thick film hybrids. We used to use this old VAX based CAD system by Calma. It was very clunky. The thing I remember the most about it was the terminal keyboard had solenoids under the keys that clacked back at you to make it feel like a typewriter and the radiator type box under the desk that boosted the RGB signal to the monitor that ran from the computer room across the ceiling.
The firm started to look at replacing the old CAD system and this is where electronics and computing flipped in my life. The new CAD system was from Intergraph and their software was running on their System V based units. The CAD software was based on the Microstation package and plugins could be built in C. This is where I started to look at how my programming skills could start to improve and automate things around the CAD design. The flip was complete I was programming and networking these machines with the accounts departments system running Netware (yep IT departments in most companies started out in the accounts departments as computers were only used for doing accounts).
Then the unspeakable happened, I dropped electronics. I left the electronics firm and went to be a computer trainer. This got me more and more into the world of Microsoft, training courses from Windows NT, MS-SQL and their Visual development platforms. Electronics all but forgotten my career progressed in the computing world mostly around software development. During this time I had started to see these old machines starting to pop up in car boot sales and on eBay in its early days. I started to buy the machines I once knew for very little money as they where at their lowest ebb.
I have now built up a large old collection each one with many peripherals and add-ons but there are a few gaps.
* Atari VCS (woody)
* ZX81
* ZX Spectrum 48k
* ZX Spectrum Plus 48k
* ZX Spectrum 2
* Amstrad CPC646
* Commodore Plus/4
* Sinclair QL
* Atari 520ST - yep the one with a separate PSU and floppy drive
* Atari 520STE
* Atari MegaSTE
* Atari TT (my holy grail)
* Amiga 500
* Amiga 1200
* MiST FPGA
Now that last one is a menace. The MiST box got me back into the old computer space a few years ago and especially the Atari ST space.
So where am I now?
Workwise I am no longer a computer trainer but a software development manager and now spend a few precious hours that I can manage in this day and age going through the collection and upgrading or restoring where appropriate.
I have skirted the various Atari forums but people like Exxos, TerribleFire and many others have inspired me to get more active and begin to flex my electronics muscles again. I have dusted off my old equipment but some is either lost or too old so have a wish list for a scope, a bench psu and various other items.
This new forum has started me off on that path and it is good to see the community alive and full of like minded souls.
I was born - skip forward a few years.
Electronics was my first love ever since as a young boy I used to watch the TV repair man coming round in the 70’s to fix the TV and trying to see how it worked. Electronics and computing has been intertwined in my life. As a friend of the family the TV guy gave me a box of old radios and TV parts to tinker with. Getting one of those radios working was my first hook into the electronic world. Things progressed from there where every month I waited for the latest issue of Practical Electronics (I didn’t wait that long as my father was a newsagent). This is where I started to build projects from the magazine. Gradually I started to get interested in the projects around building your own computer based on Z80 or 6502 processors. Unable to afford the price of the components I would pour over the adverts for the kit computers that were appearing in these mags. Finally working at weekends for my father I managed to save enough money to buy a ZX Spectrum. The ZX80 and ZX81 which I had longed to build were now being replaced by a new colour computer.
Becoming a proud owner of a 16k rubber keyboard ZX Spectrum changed my life and I think shaped where I have ended up today. I had spent all my money on getting the speccy that I did not have a tape player to load games. Sounds crazy but this got my into programming by typing in the firstly Basic based games from magazines into the machine and leaving the machine on over several days as I had no way to save the games. The last straw came when my younger sister came into the room once tripped over the power cable pulled it out the socket and I lost all my typing.
With a tape player purchased to stop this from happening again I then began to copy games from magazines but from the hex dumps they used to provide. I started to modify the hex to see what happened and gradually started to learn to program Z80 assembly. This allowed me to understand the inner workings of the speccy and I needed more memory to write code. With electronics still in mind I got hold of the memory upgrade from 16k to 48k. This was a case of soldering in the new memory chips. My first ever memory upgrade at the age of 14. Not content with this the Spectrum+ had come out with a new plastic housing and keys, not perfect, but better for typing. This was the next upgrade as they sold Spectrum+ kits.
My time was nearing an end in the Z80 world as I started to look towards the Sinclair QL with its 68008 chip and those strange microdrives. Again saving my pennies I managed to eventually get hold of a QL with a little help from my parents. This is where my programming skills where taking off with 68008 assembly and starting to venture into the C world.
Whilst this was going on my electronics was also growing at school where they had introduced a new O level (yes I’m that old) electronics course. This allowed me to continue my love of electronics and many music (synth related) projects ensued. Electronics featured as the theme from school to college etc. However during this time the QL was starting to feel limited and there were these new kids on the block sporting the 68000 in the guise of the Atari ST and Amiga. Again with saving my pennies I managed to become the proud owner of an Atari 520 STFM. Turning it on putting in the Goldrunner game that came with it and hearing that sample played back was one of those wow moments. Defender of the Crown had awesome graphics for the time making the previous blocky and colour limitations of the Speccy and QL look like something from the dark ages. Another memory upgrade was performed on the ST to take it to 1MB.
At this point in my life electronics was really taking over as this was the career plan I had. After leaving education I went to work for an electronics firm where I started to design thick film hybrids. We used to use this old VAX based CAD system by Calma. It was very clunky. The thing I remember the most about it was the terminal keyboard had solenoids under the keys that clacked back at you to make it feel like a typewriter and the radiator type box under the desk that boosted the RGB signal to the monitor that ran from the computer room across the ceiling.
The firm started to look at replacing the old CAD system and this is where electronics and computing flipped in my life. The new CAD system was from Intergraph and their software was running on their System V based units. The CAD software was based on the Microstation package and plugins could be built in C. This is where I started to look at how my programming skills could start to improve and automate things around the CAD design. The flip was complete I was programming and networking these machines with the accounts departments system running Netware (yep IT departments in most companies started out in the accounts departments as computers were only used for doing accounts).
Then the unspeakable happened, I dropped electronics. I left the electronics firm and went to be a computer trainer. This got me more and more into the world of Microsoft, training courses from Windows NT, MS-SQL and their Visual development platforms. Electronics all but forgotten my career progressed in the computing world mostly around software development. During this time I had started to see these old machines starting to pop up in car boot sales and on eBay in its early days. I started to buy the machines I once knew for very little money as they where at their lowest ebb.
I have now built up a large old collection each one with many peripherals and add-ons but there are a few gaps.
* Atari VCS (woody)
* ZX81
* ZX Spectrum 48k
* ZX Spectrum Plus 48k
* ZX Spectrum 2
* Amstrad CPC646
* Commodore Plus/4
* Sinclair QL
* Atari 520ST - yep the one with a separate PSU and floppy drive
* Atari 520STE
* Atari MegaSTE
* Atari TT (my holy grail)
* Amiga 500
* Amiga 1200
* MiST FPGA
Now that last one is a menace. The MiST box got me back into the old computer space a few years ago and especially the Atari ST space.
So where am I now?
Workwise I am no longer a computer trainer but a software development manager and now spend a few precious hours that I can manage in this day and age going through the collection and upgrading or restoring where appropriate.
I have skirted the various Atari forums but people like Exxos, TerribleFire and many others have inspired me to get more active and begin to flex my electronics muscles again. I have dusted off my old equipment but some is either lost or too old so have a wish list for a scope, a bench psu and various other items.
This new forum has started me off on that path and it is good to see the community alive and full of like minded souls.