From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Nov 17 2002 - 05:27:19 MST
Michael M. Butler wrote:
Thanks for the stroll down memory lane. :-)
>Dr. Dobb's Journal (of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia--Running Light Without Overbyte) was the
>bastion and lightning rod for a tiny BASIC that could fit into a few K (the target was 4k or less; ISTR
>somebody crammed an integer TinyBasic into around 3.5K).
>
I had a Tiny Basic that was just a hair over 2K. I didn't write it. A
friend of mine who was a true dysfunctional geek in everything else did.
>I think that Gates' BASIC barely made it into 8K; it did make heavy use of paper tape.
>
>
Another techno-hippie friend hooked an 1802 based ELF kit up to an old
IBM magnetic core memory unit. Very funky but really cool!
>I can and will also remark that Alan Kay had a great point when he said, referring to the IBM XT/AT, "I
>_invented_ the term 'personal computer,' and that's *NOT* what I was talking about!"
>
>
Yep!
>But then, life goes by slowly when you're young.
>
>And then I discovered FORTH, and what you could do with *that* in 8K.
>
>
>
I discovered it when I got out of the techno-hippie space because I
couldn't tell the real crazies fromt he genuises any more. In school
the first assembler class found me building a version of forth and
writing the rest of my assignements in that. But that was on a PDP-8.
It was all assmebler and Basic on the early micro kits for me. Dunno
now why I didn't use more forth there.
- samantha
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