Creatir
New member
Hi there fellow enthusiastic 8-bit lovers 
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I came across this forum a few weeks ago while I was looking for a place to sell my Acorn Atoms, not just to get rid off them. Mid 80's I was a teenager that got introduced to the Acorn Atom by a family member, who was using his computer for... playing games. I actually got quite quickly bored by these games and decided that it would be great to build your own software - make the thing do what you want it to do. So I started teaching myself to program the Atom in Basic first. It did not last long before I ran into the limitations of this and found that machine language opens up the full range of possibillities of such an 8-bit machine. Later I also used a dialect of Pascal that became available as extention ROM for the Atom, created by a member of the dutch atom user group.
Looking back, I firmly believe that programming the Acorn Atom as well as understanding its hardware architecture formed a solid base for my later career. I got my degree in electronical engineering, but in practice I specialised in designing and implementing custom software solutions for the (telecom) industry. I am very thankful to my dad and grand-dad who supported my all this time and sponsored multiple Acorn Atoms and other computers and peripherals in those days. I have kept most of them all the time, hoping that these would one time still be interesting enough for my own kids to get introduced into the world of micro-computers, CPU's and programming. I had also plans to use the Acorn Atom for all kind of small projects controlling devices in and around home. I bet I am not the only one with great plans that never were executed or even started execution. The time has come now to find a new place for my beloved micro's. I hope that amibay enables me to end my former hobby in a satisfactory way - or inspire my so much that I maybe would even consider reviving it...
Looking forward to monitor and perhaps participate in the forums and see how much activity still exists around the 8-bitters.
.I came across this forum a few weeks ago while I was looking for a place to sell my Acorn Atoms, not just to get rid off them. Mid 80's I was a teenager that got introduced to the Acorn Atom by a family member, who was using his computer for... playing games. I actually got quite quickly bored by these games and decided that it would be great to build your own software - make the thing do what you want it to do. So I started teaching myself to program the Atom in Basic first. It did not last long before I ran into the limitations of this and found that machine language opens up the full range of possibillities of such an 8-bit machine. Later I also used a dialect of Pascal that became available as extention ROM for the Atom, created by a member of the dutch atom user group.
Looking back, I firmly believe that programming the Acorn Atom as well as understanding its hardware architecture formed a solid base for my later career. I got my degree in electronical engineering, but in practice I specialised in designing and implementing custom software solutions for the (telecom) industry. I am very thankful to my dad and grand-dad who supported my all this time and sponsored multiple Acorn Atoms and other computers and peripherals in those days. I have kept most of them all the time, hoping that these would one time still be interesting enough for my own kids to get introduced into the world of micro-computers, CPU's and programming. I had also plans to use the Acorn Atom for all kind of small projects controlling devices in and around home. I bet I am not the only one with great plans that never were executed or even started execution. The time has come now to find a new place for my beloved micro's. I hope that amibay enables me to end my former hobby in a satisfactory way - or inspire my so much that I maybe would even consider reviving it...
Looking forward to monitor and perhaps participate in the forums and see how much activity still exists around the 8-bitters.
