Computer Junkie

Introduce yourself and reminisce
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dd6502
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Mar 23, 2013 1:10 am
Location: Birkenhead UK
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Computer Junkie

Post by dd6502 »

Thought I'd pop in and say hello and thankyou for the library of information.

Superboard II was my fourth computer, previous ones being SC/MP, Sinclair Mk 14 and a ZX80, the latter I part exchanged for my Superboard.

It was soon modified to double screen resolution, 2Mhz processor, variable baud rate, tone invert, interrupt debug of the processor, regular interrupt driven from clock circuits, sound-io board(?), extra memory.

The board is a total mess with wires everywhere, I'm partly proud and partly ashamed.

Got CEGMON and one or two of the Basic Roms, had one of the original Roms go down on me, a single bit error which I fortunately found and blew an Eprom replacement.

Computer is still working as far as I am aware, I have loads of cassette tapes with programs I either typed in, collected or programmed in basic or assembly. Also have quite a lot of printed reference material some of which I recognise from the library, including the beautifully produced Cegmon booklet.

Spent many hours disassembling the Roms, writing a labelling, directable disassembler in the process. I managed to relocate Basic into Ram as one exercise.

Wrote a multitasking environment, run from the regular clock interrupt, this could concurrently run Basic, the assembler/editor and another program at the same time with the Cegmon windowing ability coming into its own.

I used the Superboard's Kansas City interface to receive data from the Oscar 9 data satellite and then also continued this theme with radio data transfer, I once "printed" a 300 page document on my friends printer about 20 miles away when mine ran out of ink.

I can safely say that the Superboard taught me more about programming than any other machine, training course or language that I have come across since. Information was hard to come by and expensive at the time, you had to work things out for yourself, seeing some of the tricks others used were fantastic, the screen routines that used a bit of Ram for alterable program code making it fast and efficient, brilliant stuff.

I never got round to disk drives on the Superboard, I then progressed onto a Z80 machine on which I re-wrote the CP/M operating system, after the beauty of 6502 assembly I found 8080/Z80 code so ugly in comparison. Likewise my forays at C were tainted by the beauty of Basic - I maintain that the debug time for vanilla basic is a fraction of any other language.

I started to transfer a lot of the cassette tapes onto floppy (8") discs but realised that I only did a 7bit capture and I had saved them in fast (8 bit) mode - silly mistake.

I still program as a hobby using PHP and VBA at the moment for website generation. My employment has often seen me programming but I have never had a job as a programmer - its the way I like it, I will always see programming as a hobby, challenges are for your soul, not for money.

Well, some good memories, perhaps a bit boring to some and rings bells with others, my Superboard is just behind me, I spotted one of its power supplies in my store the other day, I can see it being booted up again, now where is that cassette drive :D
dave
Site Admin
Posts: 710
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:24 am

Re: Computer Junkie

Post by dave »

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks for posting that. Very interesting stuff! If you ever do get your superboard up and running, it would be awesome if you are able to retrieve and share with us some of your projects. I hope to hear more from you here on the forums.

Dave
Pokemon
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2013 5:20 pm

Re: Computer Junkie

Post by Pokemon »

Hi y'all from Vancouver, Canada

Just happen to be "poking" my nose around OSI sites and ran across this one. From slightly fuzzy memory, around 1978 I purchased, and still have in storage, a lovely Superboard II. Someday hope to fire it up again. And how cool if it can be connected to some kind of drive?

Previous, I owned a Sinclair programmable calculator (I still have) and a Z80. Though it looked very cool, I hated the Z80 for its lousy interference-laden video and returned it for the Superboard. I recall being able to affect the Z80 picture quality just by pushing on the top. (I suspect the Z80 is a bigger collector's item now.) Subsequent to the Superboard II, I purchased a Commodore 64.

Loved my Superboard II though. It was a real computer. Learned BASIC and programmed a number of home games and such. That BASIC was actually very useful when had to learn University-level BASIC and Pascal in business school. Had a subscription to Peek magazine, and upgraded the memory from 4K to 8K. (Oh, the glorious power!!) Liked to doubled the screen font rez... think that was just a software switch. Also purchased a soundboard from Aardvark (as I recall) that I never did assemble. Wonder if I still have that somewhere? Made a vacuum-formed plastic computer cover. Purchased some kind of hobby monitor that had no housing and then coloured the screen green with a glass tint.

Remember getting a second-hand 8?" floppy before understanding you still need a controller. One of those money-down-the-drain technology purchases ranking alongside a new Onstream tape-drive storage I once purchased and used about 3 times as I was discovering cheap(er) hard drives. Out of curiosity, did the techology actually exist then to connect a Superboard to a floppy disk? Can it be connected to a floppy or hard drive today?

Often wondered where the Superboard II ranked when it came to "the first home computer." Believe I saw a Superboard II at a computer museum in Boston more than a decade ago.

Yes sir, will have to crank it up and place it next to my old, perfect, tube ham receiver sitting on the shelf, the first worthy thing I ever bought as a kid. Rosebud.

Cheers for now,
Pokemon :geek:
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