Something that I really enjoyed doing as a child was typing around on an old Sharp PC-1401 [0] calculator. To be honest, I completely forgot about that "machine" until I read this article. Heck, I didn't even google for it in 15-20 years.
The amazing thing about it was, that I had BASIC and so I taught (with the help of my dad) myself to write easy games on it (you know: Guess the number and such).
I just right _now_ discovered that the thing has an RS-232 interface and you could use PEEK, POKE and CALL. Oh my, the missed opportunities; But hey I was just to young at that time.
I think I know what I'll do, when I get home for christmas: Grab that PC 1401 and try out the RS-232 to see what's possible. Good times.
I have one of these (it was my first computer too, as in the first one that I owned) and stuck a couple of batteries in it some months ago. It immediately booted up, I was quite surprised that it had survived 3+ decades in storage without any trouble at all. The weak point in old hardware is capacitors and my guess is that because it is battery powered and has no need for much power stabilization that all the caps in there are either small or non-electrolytic. Props to Sharp for building an extremely rugged product, I don't have any other hardware from that age but everything I bought after that has died by now.
Very neat. I wish I would have had something like this when I was young. Instead I had a pocket dictionary / organizer that I would type code into while bored at church with my mom. When we got home, I would copy the code line for line into the computer and hope it would run. Before that organizer, it was a notepad and a pencil, or even the back of the service leaflet.
Amazing now how much processing power you can carry in your pocket for almost nothing...
The amazing thing about it was, that I had BASIC and so I taught (with the help of my dad) myself to write easy games on it (you know: Guess the number and such). I just right _now_ discovered that the thing has an RS-232 interface and you could use PEEK, POKE and CALL. Oh my, the missed opportunities; But hey I was just to young at that time.
I think I know what I'll do, when I get home for christmas: Grab that PC 1401 and try out the RS-232 to see what's possible. Good times.
[0] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_PC-1401