Ahh.. I started in the early 80's with an Atari XL then moved to a Commodore 128. Did 6502 assembler and basic via the Blitz! compiler! Wow those were the days of harmless 2400baud phreaking... these days, I would get in serious trouble. I got some of my stuff published in Compute! magazine, if anyone remembers that. . . . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Melvin Columna www.JascomSolutions.com <http://www.JascomSolutions.com> +++ NO CARRIER _____ From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Kenzig http://ThinHelp.com Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 1:20 PM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: Microsoft Certified Architect Program I was blowing up resistors by plugging them into electrical outlets long before that! (don't try this one at home) <http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/tsmileys2/03.gif> Heck I learned electronics on radios and TV's with Tubes in them. I remember the hum when I fired those babies up. I used to take those giant speakers out of the radios and hook them together and rock the house. (yeah I was a mobile Disk Jockey for abut 10 years also). I still have all the old records. I started working on computers on Digital PDP11's. The drives in those things were wack. If they went bad the springs and mechanisms would explode out every direction. I also was manager of a Radio Shack store when the first PC's came out. Model 1, 2, 3's, and Color Computer and finally the Tandy 1000 PC. Right in the thick of things...I could tell some stories. Jim Nick Smith <> wrote: Pah! Just remembered that my first computer (As opposed to Mum's) was one we built as a science project. Soldered the switches on, had little metal copper plates running as circuits, and small laboratory light-bulbs to give feedback to the user. The switches were binary ones and we had two rows of four I think. This enabled us to flick switches to 0 or 1 and then the logic of the circuits was such that the lights lit up to show the addition of the two rows. I presume we could only add to 30 altogether. So in terms of the Yorkshireman competition; No RAM No External Storage No Machine code No silicon whatsoever And a CPU (OK bundle of badly-wired switches) that was about 2 feet by 6 inches. Beat tha', you Southern p*nsies. Probably 78 or 79. Nick From: David Finch [mailto:david.finch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: 23 June 2006 12:15 To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] Re: OT: Microsoft Certified Architect Program OK, with my pedantic hat on, the certification is only given "Unlike other IT certifications, this credential was built and is granted by industry architects, as candidates must pass a rigorous review board with previously certified architects." So how did the FIRST architect get certified? J And to enter the "Four Yorkshiremen" competition Lookshury! My first system was a Microbee (Australian) Z80 with 32K RAM and a cassette tape....that was about 1983 I think....It had BASIC, but I used it to teach myself Assembler programming The first system I actually worked on with a Hard Drive had a 5Meg Disk Platter that was nearly 2 foot across, and used tapes for long term storage. That was in about 1986. And my mum and dad used to dance on our graves and sing Hallelujah! But tell that to the kids of today and they won't believe you