[Elecraft] Computers in the Stone Age

[Tony Estep]

My first computer was a Sol-20 (1977), with an 8080 and 16K of RAM. There
was a skeletal OS in ROM, but you could load a bigger OS and/or Basic from
cassette. Later, I got floppy drives and North Star Basic, and still later
8" floppies and the CP/M OS. I wrote a machine-language driver to relocate
North Star Basic and link it to CP/M -- the state of the art for a couple
of months. I also made some hardware I/O gadgets with spring
lever-switches, and a space battle game to go with them. When you hit your
target, it rang the bell on the printer.

The power of that machine was way, way less than what's in a dishwasher now.

Tony KT0NY