It’s got me my first summer job as a kid (around 16, I think), working at disassembling 8080 code and patching a defective software that was not maintained any more, running on a Wang mini-computer used for typesetting. I learned so much with it, from BASIC, CP/M and Logo to Zilog Z80 / Intel 8080 assembly. These was my real first hands-on experience with the computer world. The Amstrad CPC 464 8-bit computer is specially important to me.
The following screenshot shows PC Ditto running MS DOS 3.21 … on Hatari emulating an Atari 1040 STF … on macOS 12.2:Īmstrad CPC (and ZX Spectrum) emulation with Retro Virtual Machine Alas, I couldn’t find working Aladin disks to mess with. I could find PC Ditto disks and run it without troubles on Hatari. Maybe that’s where this emulation madness came from ! I use to run DOS programs (including Turbo Pascal) thanks to PC Ditto, or even run MacOS thanks to Aladin. It was possible a the time to run a few emulators on ST’s. I could test various versions of TOS (1.04, 1.06, 1.62, …), EmuTOS, including MultiTOS / MiNT.
I had the monochrome 640×400 bitmap display, so it could run “professional” software (and, indeed, very few games). This is the machine on which I taught myself C, C++, 68000 assembly language, event-based programming, GUI programming, and wrote a lot of GFA Basic code.
I have very very fond memories of it, and learned quite a bit with it ! So I opted for the “ Jackintosh” (which was sold for 6 times less, if memory serves) I still remember the price tag of 24 000 Fr (around 4 800 €, not tacking into account a 40-years inflation) when it was displayed at the Fnac stores. At the time, I use to dream of having a Macintosh 512K or a Macintosh Plus. I have been using an Atari 1040 STF back in the late 80’s.
In the last post, I explained how I jumped into the retro-computing bandwagon, and built a few DIY boxes for retro-gaming via software emulation, based on the RecalBox project.ĭuring the same time, I also explored how to run old computers systems on the current hardware I use day by day, namely an Intel Core 7 quad core MacBook Pro.