Hi Everyone, it was interesting to meet so many keen enthusiasts up at the Huddersfield show last weekend. I was particularly impressed at the amount of software under development and it got me wondering whether I could help out (plus DaveM badgered me to sign up!).
These days I'm working with PowerPC and Tricore based micros, mostly in C but I cut my teeth on BBC Basic and 6502 assembler. I'm sure I can't remember half the BBC based hobbyist projects I worked on but I do remember:
- Designing & building my own sideways rom and ram boards (my rom board virtually filled the box and had more sockets than the commercial ones)
- writing my own fairly basic games (and no, I don't think I have copies)
- creating sideways ROMS with utilities and help pages for my own use
- pitching in with the Solinet user group to bugfix the Solidisk DFS Roms (and yes I think I do have copies)
- building various add-ons such as eprom programmers
- upgrading & repairing many beebs
- writing control software for a robotic car
- programming the 6522 timer chip to generate a custom serial data port.
- I did play with the idea of writing a proper game but it didn't get much further than moving a sprite around using keyboard control
And then for years I worked with 68hc11 micros which were basically just 6502 with some extra bells & whistles.
The bad news is, it was all a long time ago so I think I would have to swallow a book or 3 to get back up to speed. I also haven't done much with graphics.
I could help play test games, as I've done that before. Anything else is a maybe.
I think I might just potter around and see if the initial interest still holds in a few days/weeks...and if I get to the point where the beeb comes down from the loft, I'll know I'm hooked
Nige B
