Everything you SHOULD know about your Computer but don't!

How does a computer actually draw text on the screen? How does it scan the keyboard? Dave takes us back to basics to show us how a computer works by exploring an ancient one: the Commodore PET.

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[jaysonl]

I miss when computers used to come with manuals. And those manuals had schematics.

[lesliesanford]

"When we use a modern computer, we're standing on the shoulders of giants so tall that the details are obscured by clouds."

That's just poetic, man.

[StarsManny]

I'd love to see you walk through everything that happens from the moment of powerup, through someone typing PRINT "HELLO WORLD" on the keyboard, and finally hitting return and the output shows. It would be quite a journey!

[richie]

I started a new project and went from c# to embedded c and c++. I went from thinking I understood computers to spending hours relearning what I thought I understood. I fell from the shoulders of giants but gained a giant respect for them climbing back up.

[hubster]

A series on the C64 (assuming there is to much for a single episode) would be amazing. Interesting stuff as always look forward to seeing more in the future.

[jeffreyphipps]

This is so valuable. I also grew up in that era and slightly before. By the time I was teaching programming at university, students were already getting abstract information without any base history. It was a little painful to watch. I still teach, and I’m now having to make videos on steps to programming that I never thought would be necessary. Students come to my courses with nearly no understanding of what a computer is or does, even if they are reasonably good at using one. The horrors of tech support are hilarious reading, but also a tale of shame. If you get a chance to read Reddit’s tech support tales, highly recommended.

[borisbosnjak]

As a 14-year-old, I cut my coding teeth handwriting machine code and punching it into a ZX81 (and then a TS 1000 after I fried the ZX81 when clumsily trying to upgrade its SRAM to 4K :P). Your video reminded me of those old days when you could actually fully understand both the hardware and software of a machine. Zoom forward to 2022 and I have no idea how or what, let alone why, my Windows machine is doing what it is doing :S

[SteveBrecht]

This is where I learned to code, ended up having 3 of them. A 2001, a uncommon Purple screen 4032, and a SuperPET 9000. I still have all three tucked away.

[eDoc]

It's nice when you have the schematic for something, but even nicer when you fully understand it and know exactly what each part does and why that's useful.

[cowasakiElectronics]

Literally the first computer I ever used and I’ve always had a soft spot for it. I rebuilt one recently on my channel (barely more than a 100 subs) but I got it like a museum piece. I have made the point many times that old 8 bit machines were totally different in that even as a teenager I could understand assembly language, understand the hardware and understand the OS. I wrote an expansion ROM for the CPC range that added 150 new commands whilst still at school and a disc copier better than literally any on the market for the BBC micro. Videos like this really take me back!

[joonglegamer]

Commodore's way of editing was so underappreciated, but so innovative.

[simonm]

The book "Microprocessor interfacing techniques" by Rodnay Zaks is a great introduction to this kind of stuff, first published in the late 70s, it's a brilliant read

[uirwi]

Dave, thank you so much!
Your story telling skills are pretty much godlike, metaphorically speaking of course.
But yeah, the way you present the information in your stories is so much fun to watch and absorb.
Big hug!

[justtube]

It used to be more fun when we still could at least pretend to understand the whole stack from digital circuits to all levels of software. Becoming a software or system person was possible and even beneficial to start from digital circuits, hardware and moving upwards.

[darranstyler]

I bought a second hand Pet in about 1988 off the company I worked for at the time. The only experience I had at the time was with cheap home computers such as the ZX81 and Oric 1, plus a week long 6502 assembly course when I was 13 in 1984. With no instructions, and of course no Internet it was a great learning experience. I actually managed to program a rudimentary BASIC horse racing game where you could bet on the outcome of each race, each horse was just the number 1-6 moving along a track made of the minus symbol and a random number generator to decide if each horse moved based on their odds. If I remember correctly the entire screen was redrawn at every passthrough of the code. Years later I managed to get a job in IT support but knowing how to code certainly helped my career, especially in the early days of DOS and UNIX support. Still dabble in C based languages to this day. Videos like this remind me of those days and how exciting computers were before they became a tool just for work, and help reignite the passion :)

[baxtermullins]

“In the beginning…”, I used assembly language for my coding. I had to write drivers, I/O interfaces, BCD to binary, clock timing, etc. I wrote floating point algorithms for fixed-point machines that were 16-bit words but included 16-bit, 32, 64, 128, and 256-bit using some great algorithms, graphics for screens, radar screens, antenna patterns, all in critical time - real-time is I hit a key and an answer shows up, critical time is x eqns in your time. Any time left over was used for background stuff, so interrupt structures. I loved it - absolute control of everything! I even restrung core memory!

[nwrl]

Dave is the man!! Really enjoy these trips down memory lane. I was a TRS-80 Mod-1 guy and loved Z-80 assembler.

[osgrov]

I love this. I could listen to you for hours talking about PETs and C64s, and enjoy myself while doing so.
I hope you continue with this old school stuff now and then! :)
The PET was the first actual computer I ever saw and got to play a bit with, back in the late 70s. I was totally hooked.
A few years later and after endless begging, my father got me a C64. The world changed forever that day.

[rodneysmith]

Thanks, Dave for yet another amazing episode. What a rich plethora of information that I, like most other grandpa's have forgotten or at least pushed further back into the recesses of near oblivion call my memories.

[jeffmorris]

Throughout the early 90s as the only programmer on a project, Visual Basic for DOS made me a hero. In some cases literally over night.