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lightman

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  1. It comes down to personal experience, I suppose. Everyone learns in their own way and some people don't develop the same bad habits. Fair enough. I don't mean to copy the default 8-bit implementations.
  2. Yes and those are good, too, in their own ways. PHP can be quite portable. Perl is usually already installed on a lot of systems. However, I think they are all relatively complex and they need larger environments around them. But I think this is a little like complaining that a bicycle can't compete with a car. BASIC was meant to be simple. However, I think if you look at something like QuickBasic, it had those features (or many of them). I tried Amos on Amiga and thought it worked well as a next step. After that, I went on to C.
  3. Agreed. I think you mean, if Atari had been wiser. The Amiga was made by former Atari people and in that sense, it was made by Atari.
  4. Installations, versions, libraries, object-oriented paradigms, IDE and IDE setup, lack of portability, etc. etc. Too many features and requirements. I have had a number of instances where Python scripts didn't work because I had the wrong minor revision of the interpreter and couldn't install some needed library, not to mention all the times I've hit Python 2 vs. Python 3 compatibility issues. I won't go into the silly formatting requirement of Python. I don't agree. I think on a learning level, it has a simplicity that works. Anecdotally, the best programmers I know started with BASIC. However, I do agree that line numbers are questionable.
  5. How niche is it? In any event, assembly language jobs are not going away. They will always be needed and I think especially so with the surge of embedded systems that use low-power 8-bit and 32-bit CPUs. Performance is still critical for some of those machines. At the same time, not everything is about getting a job. There are people who are interested in assembly for its own sake. On an educational level, it gives you important insight into how the computers really work. I wish we had someone teaching 6502 assembly when I was a kid.
  6. Thanks for the insight! I do suspect that Arm assembly might be harder to pick up. I started with Motorola 68K assembly.
  7. That's a good place to start. I am less interested in making something. Ideally, I would buy something already made, like the AgonLight2. However, if I can't find something that meets my requirements, I'm willing to take a shot at making it. What I want to do with the computer is write software for it and use it for teaching. I am working on my list of requirements, which may also help. FPGAs are very interesting. I have a MiST but it had some problem and stopped working. I haven't had to time to try and fix it.
  8. On the "fantasy" side, I think people want to have simple systems that they can understand and quickly develop for. On the hardware side ("new 8-bit" computers), people want to enhance older systems.
  9. Looks interesting! Do you have a thread or site for the project?
  10. Linux can be adapted but it's still too complex for what I am looking for. Modern scripting languages are also too complex and have too many requirements. I think BASIC has been unfairly shunted when it's still a good learning tool. If I could get Linux down to booting in no more than two seconds, there might be a chance. The OS would have to be read-only (like squashfs) and ideally be on some internal flash.
  11. It's definitely a thought. I want a simple computer that can boot instantly, so emulation won't really work. It might be possible to write a bare-metal system for an SBC and have that meet specs. The problem with RPi specifically is that they have been hard to find for a long time. What's been available has been overpriced (sometimes very overpriced).
  12. Thanks. This seems to still be a work-in-progress without any working versions, from what I can tell.
  13. As @Geister indicated, education is probably the most obvious use-case. There is a significant age range where a modern solution presents difficult problems. "Classic" computers are much better environments for children because of several advantages: 1. Very simple setup 2. Instant boot 3. An immutable OS 4. Immediate feedback 5. Lack of networking The fact that an Atari 8-bit could be plugged into any TV and required little more than a power cable and a video cable/adapter was a great start. The hardware was relatively simple, predictable and self-contained. You generally didn't have to worry about models and OS versions. One of the most wonderful things about classic computers is that you can't mess them up in normal usage. You can poke randomly into memory until it crashes, hit reset and you're instantly back to normal. On a modern system, I have seen children erase irrecoverable data in a time-span that few would believe possible. A classic computer can be a great resource because you can let a child do whatever they want and not worry that they delete the file table, corrupt the BIOS or otherwise get into trouble. The instant-on and immediate feedback are also extremely valuable. I have experienced wanting to teach or demonstrate something to a child, only to be hit with the dreaded software update. Software updates alone eat up enough time to kill a child's interest or reduce your teaching time enough to ruin the lesson. Furthermore, the simplicity of classic computer interfaces means that you can very quickly generate graphics and sound. That feedback is important. We aren't burdened by drivers that fail to load, background processes eating up all the CPU, hardware incompatibilities, etc. While our world these days is built on networking, there's a time and place to do without it. Networking itself introduces enormous complexities and frustrations. Lag, missing/moved resources, time-outs, errors and crashes are common. Additionally for anyone working with kids, network access presents a profoundly difficult resource to control in terms of content. I built a "fantasy computer" to share with kids amongst my family and friends, using a cheap single board computer (SBC). I integrated a version of BASIC and some simple graphics. It was slow to boot but it was still a hit (I generally had to boot it beforehand). However, I always had the concern that the kids were going to figure out how to break out into the Linux OS and cause inevitable chaos. That didn't happen because one day, the SBC simply stopped working entirely. I suspect it was poorly manufactured. It only had VGA output, which was also a problem.
  14. For some time, I've been looking with great interest at the various "fantasy" computers, consoles and "new 8-bit" computer projects. Unfortunately, neither category seems to have what I am looking for. The fantasy computers and consoles have some nice ideas but tend to be pretty arbitrary in their design choices. They also tend to lean towards console designs and abstract too far from real hardware. What you get is more like an SDK. On the other hand, hardware projects are a better match but still lacking. I've found a few projects, such as Commander X16, Zeal 8, Agon Light, Mega65, etc. I think the closest thing I've found to what I want is the Agon Light. I bought one but I am already seeing problems. I'll continue working with it. I would prefer something that takes inspiration from the Atari 8-bit line and its designers (i.e. possibly also including the Amiga). However, I don't want to recreate one of the old machines or make something that is backwards compatible. I think there is a need today for a simple computer that operates like one of the classic computers. While primitive by today's standards, they had some advantages that are almost entirely lost to users today. Would other people be interested in this? Is there an existing alternative that I am missing?
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