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Hi Helen. There are several of your contemporaries around, of whom I am one. Did you ever hear "Beware programmers bearing a screwdriver" during your career? I got that quite often into the 80s, after which everybody had one. I'm hesitant to use a Pi as a workstation, though the 4B is more than I'd need for anything I do on my laptop and I keep a couple permanently running on my LAN. They sit there and eat maybe 50p a week monitoring and serving this and that through the WAN port. The ability to boot the 4B off USB was a major improvement. I still feel the need for a central keyboard/mouse/monitor though and I'd hate to hang those off a Pi directly. Any second hand oldish 13" laptop suits me and I'm sure it minimizes my outgoings while letting me keep my desk surface clear. I get the bonus of taking it to the library on occasion. A stand-alone monitor is a major piece of furniture. I hope you enjoy ARM assembling. If you create a web wiki to record your progress and invite all and sundry to make observations it might add something to the experience. Welcome to the list, John. On Tue, 10 Oct 2023 at 05:56, Helen McCall <helen.wildnfree@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hello Members of Devon and Cornwall Gnu/Linux User Group. > > I am writing this post as a brief introduction to myself, for the group. > > I am a retired research scientist living in Plympton St Maurice. I > first learnt to program computers using ALGOL in the 1960s, at Hatfield > Polytechnic. I went on to use various mainfame computers, mostly ICL > Prime series running PRIMOS. I went on to tinker with various > microcomputers such as Z80 based machines running CP/M, BBC Micro, and > Acorn Archimedes. In the 1980s I had wanted to buy an Acorn Archimedes, > but couldn't afford it at the time, and so bought a second hand Canon > AS100 running CP/M-86. That computer had a truly massive hard disk > drive in its own cabinet, the size of a modern PC tower case, and had a > capacity of a whopping great 5MB! > > At this time, in the 1980s, I switched from using mainframes to using > Unix workstations including those from IBM, Silicon Graphics, and Sun > SparcStation. I worked on several projects including the design of > equipment used for calibrating Earth Observation satellites, and did > some early research developing mathematical techniques for machine > vision and machine learning. In those days, we had to build the digital > cameras ourselves. And email had to be manually routed! > > In the mid 1990s I had started designing myself a simple Unix > workstation built from computer scrap I saved from the laboratory skip, > to run the Minix cut down version of Unix. I then discoved that a young > man called Linus Torvalds in Finland had been doing the same, but had > given up with the awful Minix system, and designed his own Linux. I > experimented with shoehorning the first distributions of Yggdrazil and > Slackware onto my Frankenstein's monster of a scrap-built computer, but > fortunately then discovered the Debian version 1, which was a lot > better put together, and just needed me to adapt a few drivers to work > with the computer I had built from an odd assortment of bits and pieces > from things like a Silicon Graphics Iris, and Kontron Analyser, and > other diverse computing objects. > > That electrified scrap-heap running Debian Gnu/Linux fast became my > favourite workstation, much to the chagrin of my institue director who > kept telling me he wanted me to use a modern PC running that awful MS > Windows operating system. I resisted that idiot's demands, and have > been using Debian ever since, whilst building myself better and better > workstations out of the much higher quality scrap that the computer > department kept quietly passing my way whenever things broke down on > their system. > > To cut a long story short; in 2012 a friend gave me a present of the > new Raspberry Pi model B (the original one with the short gpio). I > loved that Raspberry Pi at first sight. It reminded me of the simple > elegance of the Acorn Archimedes I had once wanted. And it even used > Debian Gnu/Linux as its official operating system, and had the option > of using it with the RISCOS operating system like with the Acorn > Archimedes. I still have that original Model B, which I intend to use > next year to teach myself ARM Assembly, because over the best part of > the last sixty years, I've used nearly 40 different programming > languages, and think it is time I added ARM Assembly to the list. > > Currently I am using a Raspberry Pi 4B as my workstation, and am > looking forward to getting a 5B next year. My RPI 4B is the most > powerful computer I have ever used, and is also the most fun to use. > The 5B is very much better, so I will be in clover next year! > > Lots of love, > Helen McCall > -- > The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG > FAQ: https://www.dcglug.org.uk/faq/ -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG FAQ: https://www.dcglug.org.uk/faq/