adios, Z80!

[BeenDown139]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/after-48-years-zilog-is-killing-the-classic-standalone-z80-microprocessor-chip/
i got my embedded systems start in 1982.i don't think you could design a more miserable programming environment.

[keith_h]

I never worked with the Z80. My start was with the Intel MCS-48 and Motorola 6800 families. It didn't last long as I moved into mainframes in the late 70's.

[jazzyvee]

I started on a Commodore 128 that i used to self teach myself about programming in the late 80's and then moved to IBM/windows desktops. Dabbled a bit in Dec Vax minicomputers.

[Songdog]

In college, I was first exposed to IBM mainframes... then a friend gave me a DEC PDP-8 Handbook and I was instantly hooked on the simplicity and elegance. This led me to the PDP-11, which was also a beautiful architecture and ran a variety of powerful multi-user operating systems.

So I was already spoiled. When the 8008, 8080, Z80 and 8086 came out I was... underwhelmed. And my reaction to MS-DOS was along the lines of "I've seen so much more done with so much less, what is this crap?"

But... 40 years! I had no idea Z80s were still being made. They clearly got something right, perhaps more in a marketing sense than the technology itself. Whatever were they still being used for?

So what does all this have to do with music? I remember a long time ago reading someone's comments on USENET (anyone remember that?  ) about preferring to hire software developers who were musicians. And I find that programming and music tickle the same creative pleasure centers (although these days I'm getting more of that pleasure musically than from programming).

[cozmik_cowboy]

So what does all this have to do with music? I remember a long time ago reading someone's comments on USENET (anyone remember that?  ) about preferring to hire software developers who were musicians. And I find that programming and music tickle the same creative pleasure centers (although these days I'm getting more of that pleasure musically than from programming).

Two one-time full-time pro players I worked with got into programming when they gave up the dream (both do still gig on the side - which is good, because they're both great); both have told me that was a natural thing, as programming & playing require the same kind of mind.

Peter

[jazzyvee]

Well, whilst i love music more than programming, i think i am better at improvising with programming than i am with music. 😳

[hieronymous]

I never got beyond Basic.

10 PRINT HELLO
20 GOTO 10

Or something like that? My dad worked on one of those big computers that were the size of a house in the '60s but wasn't able to pass on his knowledge to me unfortunately.

[cozmik_cowboy]

As a teen, I briefly worked in one of those vacuum-tube-and-magnetic-tape computers at the college where my dad taught (only room on campus with air conditioning), but I didn't - and don't -  know squat; I just did data entry onto cards with a mechanical keyboard.  The computer was about 5' tall, and ran around 3 sides of the room, with peninsulas extending 3/4 of the way across in, IIRC, 3 places.  The 4th wall was me & the door.

The really advanced students could get the dot-matrix printer to make a calendar with Snoopy napping on his doghouse and each letter composed of many smaller examples of the same letter.

State of the art at the time; now my flip-phone has more computing power.

Peter
 

[pauldo]

I never got beyond Basic.

10 PRINT HELLO
20 GOTO 10

Or something like that? My dad worked on one of those big computers that were the size of a house in the '60s but wasn't able to pass on his knowledge to me unfortunately.

You unlocked a hidden memory for me.   

[keith_h]

My first exposure to a programming language was CALCTRAN when I was in the 8th grade. The middle school I went to had a 4 week computer segment as part of the 8th grade science class. We would code our program on coding sheets then enter them on a teletype terminal to run them on a University of Wisconsin system that we time shared on. I think I might still have a printout and paper tape of that program packed away somewhere. 

[cozmik_cowboy]

My first exposure to a programming language was CALCTRAN when I was in the 8th grade. The middle school I went to had a 4 week computer segment as part of the 8th grade science class. We would code our program on coding sheets then enter them on a teletype terminal to run them on a University of Wisconsin system that we time shared on. I think I might still have a printout and paper tape of that program packed away somewhere. 

Yeah, based on that I'm gonna go ahead and assume that you bring the average age around here down a little......

Peter (whose kids didn't even have programming in 8th grade.......)

[keith_h]

I don't bring the average age down by that much Peter. This would have been in the later half of the 69/70 school year in Geneva, Il. I was working with early versions of microprocessors a few years later. In high school while imbibing a certain herb my friends and I would hold races with 64 bit binary adders we had built. With one exception we all became engineers of one type or another. The other one became a theoretical mathematician.

[cozmik_cowboy]

I don't bring the average age down by that much Peter. This would have been in the later half of the 69/70 school year in Geneva, Il. I was working with early versions of microprocessors a few years later. In high school while imbibing a certain herb my friends and I would hold races with 64 bit binary adders we had built. With one exception we all became engineers of one type or another. The other one became a theoretical mathematician.

Well, I do believe that would make us the same age.
We sure didn't have that stuff in my rural, Appalachian Ohio school* - but my kids did 8th grade in Lemont, and as I said, they didn't, either.  Mad props to Geneva!

*The kind of place where the football team got new uniforms every year, but the choir & band wore robes/uniforms from the '50s, and the art room had to use the sink in the wood/metal shop 

Peter

[BeenDown139]

never got beyond Basic.

10 PRINT HELLO
20 GOTO 10

you should considider yerself lucky. elsewise,you would've had 30 years of tearworking undecipherable screeds of this:

int main(void)
do
{cout<<"hello, world";
}

[edwardofhuncote]

I didn't like computers very much in high school, when AutoCAD was still a DOS program. That was my first real-life exposure and experience with them. I much preferred to work on a drawing table or light board. It was a little while yet until Windows simplified CAD enough that it was same/same enough to actually drawing something that I could appreciate it. By then, it was too late - I was a bass player, stuck in the profession of water utility worker. At least I could use CAD enough that my map-making and blueprint reading skills got me into places and jobs I wouldn't have otherwise got. That, and the old-school hard-ass that was our instructor beat this 'never quit' work ethic into me.


These days, I am literally surrounded by incredible amounts of cyber-technology, just to do all the same stuff I've been doing for 30-some-odd years... and in my opinion, it ain't a bit better than it ever was. In a lot of ways, it's far worse, far too much complicated automation to do a fairly simple task. We spend about as much time troubleshooting the automation that's supposed to make the job simple. Consequently, I've gotten good at telling computers little lies to get them to do what I need done, or trying to figure out why it just did something I'd rather it hadn't.


I should have just practiced more, and learned to live on less. Can't blame that one on a computer...