I started in the late '70s when I built a processor technology sol-20 from tubes of ICs, a circuit board, and parts for a case. The damn thing didn't work when I powered it up. I was crushed. I took it in to the Milwaukee Computer Store and the tech guy (I wish I could remember his name) pointed out that one of the EEPROM pins had bent underneath the chip. He straightened it and boom! I learned to program the Intel 8080 based Sol from the "intel 8080 Microcomputer System's User's Manual", September 1975.
In what must have been an early example of software piracy, I dumped a hex dump of my University's Intel development system's macro assembler and typed it in by hand. I hand edited the code in hex to use the Sol's cassette tape drive instead of the paper tape, Cool stuff: Load assembler from tape, load assembler sourec from tape, rewind, load again for pass two.
UCSD Pascal came out around that time, but it required more than the Sol's available 48K of memory. I disassembled the Sol's monitor and moved it from 0xc000 up to 0xf800 (I think) and, Hey Presto! I had a Pascal development environment. I think I wrote one or two Pascal programs before I met... C.
I first used Small C on the 8080 and then decided I needed a processor with better addressing modes. I switched to the 6809, wrote the Introl-C compiler, and almost lived happily ever after. :-)
In what must have been an early example of software piracy, I dumped a hex dump of my University's Intel development system's macro assembler and typed it in by hand. I hand edited the code in hex to use the Sol's cassette tape drive instead of the paper tape, Cool stuff: Load assembler from tape, load assembler sourec from tape, rewind, load again for pass two.
UCSD Pascal came out around that time, but it required more than the Sol's available 48K of memory. I disassembled the Sol's monitor and moved it from 0xc000 up to 0xf800 (I think) and, Hey Presto! I had a Pascal development environment. I think I wrote one or two Pascal programs before I met... C.
I first used Small C on the 8080 and then decided I needed a processor with better addressing modes. I switched to the 6809, wrote the Introl-C compiler, and almost lived happily ever after. :-)