Where did you start with Micro controllers?

[ArduinoN00b]

Hey! Just curious to see where all my fellow programmers started with micro controller's.

[Techone]

I start programing CPU like 8085 back at DeVry in the mid-1990's.

[ajofscott]

Parallax Stamp, the original about 8 years ago, but for the most part cringed at the thought of using a micro to do what I could do in wired circuitry. So until I tried Arduinos I was rather limited on what I could do.

[Grumpy_Mike]

A 2650 in 1975, but I had to design and build it myself.

[nickgammon]

Late 1970s. This:

• 512 bytes of RAM


• 1K of ROM (operating system)


• Clock speed: 0.614 MHz

And this is how you programmed it, tapping away on this in hex:



We don't need no stinkin' assembler!

[winner10920]

I just started 7 months with an. Arduino mega blinking an led XD
never thought I could control led matrixes, tft lcd screens, ir,  motors, sensors, ics, and whatever else I feel like learning about,
it really is amazing how much can be done nowadays so easily,
Kinda feel bad for being born so late and missing out on all that apparently painstakingly slow older technology that probably came with days of datasheeting,
when I started I downloaded a file, plugged in a usb cable and pressed upload, amazing how easy its gotten

[retrolefty]

In late 70s, a 6502 based board that had a Basic rom. Ohio Scientific if I recall correctly. I had a surplus Teletype corp ASR-33 to use as the main I/O. Later I built a Z-80 board and then got into Heathkit H-89 CRT based Z-80 system, moved on to Kaypro CP/M system and then the early 8088 IBM PC clone machines.

[dc42]

Z80 in late 1976. The bootloader was a 16-byte ROM constructed from TTL logic gates, because EPROM programmers were too expensive for me to afford.

[maniacbug]

Oh now you've done it!  Stirred up all the old-timers   You should add a poll option, "I've been doing this since before you were born!"

Anyway, here's my entry...  The original Famicom (aka 8-bit NES), complete with "documentation" "translated" from Japanese.

[ksp1717]

I started just a couple of years ago with a  PIC 18F4520. It was for a class I took. After I heard of arduino I really started playing around with things.

ksp

[retrolefty]

Oh now you've done it!  Stirred up all the old-timers  

Heck, when we started we didn't even have ones, just zeros, so we had to double up on zeros until the ones finally became avalible. And you ain't done nothing until you could memorize and knuckle in the bootstrap program via the front panel switches. Those front panels on 70s minicomputers were a work of art, they were flashing leds before most of you were a gleam in your parents eyes. Flash memory? Blah, we had non-volitable core memory modules!

Lefty

[JChristensen]

...Teletype corp ASR-33...

I was responsible for front-end comm processors that used ASR-33s for their consoles. MTBF was around 10 hours. Our poor field engineer who had to fix 'em said they should have had a crankcase so that they could run submerged in oil. Rumor was the guy who designed the beast eventually went insane.

[ArduinoN00b]

cool, wow so many old timers on this site! I started programing at 13 and im now 14, it hink i bit off a little more than i can chew becuase I preposed id make a robot for my science fair project, wish me luck! XD I'm glad there's so many people to help, things only seem to be getting more complicated. PS: someone asked so yeah, i put another poll option, check it out.

[nickgammon]

Good time to start! Keep that enthusiasm up ... robots and microprocessors are a lot of fun. You can make that robot, just take it a bit at a time.

[keeper63]

Not a real "old timer" (not like some of the luckier fellas here!), but not a "young fart" either (unfortunately - eh). I didn't start to play with microcontrollers until a few years back - with the Basic Stamp. But my first computer as a kid was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with 16k of RAM and a cassette tape "drive" for storage. That was in 1984. Prior to that, my first "programmable" devices were a Milton Bradley Big Trak, as well as this other machine called a "Brain Buggy". I still have all of them, and they all still work fine.