WOW... this might get me back to my geek mode

Don Baer

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Many many moons ago I tinkered with programming and doing projects with small micro processors. I I programmed in machine language mostly and wrote applications in 6800 8080 and Z80 assembler. That's why I got premature grey hair and back in the 70 when I did it I needed to get a real job to feed my family I haven't done any since then. I know that the price for computing power is continuing to drop and since I can no longer do wood working I been thinking about getting back into the design mode just to do some tinkering. Especially since I am in a semi retired state with a lot of free time. what got me thinking was seeing this advertised. It a $15 singe board 64 bit computer. So what do you guys think can a 68 year old former geek get back into the world of electronics?
 
Looks like a good entry back into it. The kits usually keep you on task since they come with most everything you need to "do" something.

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Don't I absolutely believe u can. That's exactly what I am doing.
Warning though this is a slippery slope. It does not end with a raspberry pi board.
I ended up buying a digital storage scope, yeah they available today for very modest cost for their power. For me as a former designer, I need "eyes" on the signals in order to know what's going on.
Unfortunately I am old school in this sense so the battle is learning to code in high level language as opposed to assembler. But there is so much help out there its not like it was back in the day.
When I get settled in new home I plan on having a go at seeing if I can make my old SDK 8085 work again. That will be a test for me. Lol will have to start from the beginning again.
I also think its a perfect hobby once u setup to last u till the end. It does not need standing or any heavy lifting etc. The materials required are pretty cheap now and very accessible so is loads of help. I am chomping at the bit to get going just have too many other things getting in the way.

Give it a go Don.

Here is another company that sells arduino another small processor board
http://www.sainsmart.com/

But take a look at all the sensor do dads that u can get to play with

Also .... sparkfun, adafruit ,seeedstudio and the list goes on.lol

Enjoy have fun get a decent power supply ;)




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The zero is down to $5 https://www.adafruit.com/product/2885 - they were giving them away with a magazine. Ok sure it still needs a power supply, and any peripherals but seriously a 1Ghz processor with 512M of memory for $5 :eek: we do live in the future :cool:

Your assembly skills will treat you well with the raspberrypi, they're basically a linux micro computer so you can program them in any language but C/C++ is common.

There are a TON of accessories available so you can plug together all sorts of monitoring units and controllers for just about anything.

IMHO there are a lot of interesting little opportunities for things to do with some of these. I say definitely go for it - I'm betting you'll have a blast.
 
Sure, Don. Start reading websites like Make (or Make Magazine) and Adafruit. Lots of "hacking" ideas there.
.... and I see that I'm just repeating most of what Rob already posted!! :eek:

But of course, any old laptop can probably run python or perl if you want to just first try out some programming without the hardware add on bits.

...art
 
I guess I had not realized how cheap these hardware items have become. Back in the day we had to build everything from scratch now it seems that it is a matter of matching up components and doing the software to get things up and running.

Rob I had a Techtronics dual trace scope that I gave away 10 years ago when I left California. I believe it was a model 465. I see they are still around.
 
I guess I had not realized how cheap these hardware items have become. Back in the day we had to build everything from scratch now it seems that it is a matter of matching up components and doing the software to get things up and running. /QUOTE]

There is still a bit of work to get everything glued together correctly but yeah, its a whole new world out there. The quality of a lot of it is pretty impressive as well.
 
Don those were the best. Back in SA when I first started out in design dept those Tektronix 465 cost a pretty penny. Now for incredibly little by comparison u get a ton more.
Check out this, I picked it up a while back.
http://www.saelig.com/owon-sds-series/PSBE100008.htm
They have VGA output so u can hook up to another bigger screen also hook up to comp to store results when I bought they threw in a battery too for $400 free shipping in USA. 100Mhz dual trace storage and portable what's not to like for that price. Yes there is even better but I thought this was a good starting point.

Eh Don I guess given ur age u started out learning about good old vacuum tubes. That's where I started my theory training at school. Lol 6 months later I bought my own Intel micro kit because I was not going to wait for the school to catch up. :)

I'll be very very chuffed if I can get my kit going again. Come on Don buy yourself one for Xmas. :)


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Beware, It's a whole nuther rabbit hole to go down. But the cool thing is there is a lot you can do with it and a lot of resources on the internet to help. If you can think of it, you can probably do it somehow.
 
Eh Don I guess given ur age u started out learning about good old vacuum tubes. That's where I started my theory training at school. Lol 6 months later I bought my own Intel micro kit because I was not going to wait for the school to catch up. :)

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While I did catch a little of the era of vacuum tubes since one of my chores growing up was to take the tubes out of the TV down to the corner store and test them when the TV quit working, I really started out in the era of transistors. Curiously enough in the navy I actually worked with magnetic amplifiers and transistors. later progressed to Integrated circuits and finally on to 8 bit processors and DSP's.
 
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I too played machine language Z80 style back in the 70's. In late 70's my kids played Lunar Lander on a hand built Z80 system. Yes I drilled every hole with a hand drill for the homemade circuit boards.
Had a friend who was also into that stuff. He was once asked what was his favorite programming language he answered solder!

Pretty much had the TTL Cookbook by D. Lancaster memorized.
 
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