What is the average age on here??

[Garrettimus]

43.

[VincentVega]

(5<<3) | (128 >> 7)

[fuzzel]

I'm 48. Can we have an update on the average age please ?
Good luck with that one because the posts go back to 2013 and people aren't declaring their birthday !

[jgharston]

I'm 48. Can we have an update on the average age please ?

Snap! It was my birthday last month. A few more months and I'll be &23456789AB centiseconds old.

[jgharston]

What surprises me is how many here are so much younger than me, whole decades even. It always felt that the natural time to have encountered BBCs and become used to programming them was at school in 1982-1985 or so, which would result in you being 45-50 now. Any older and you'd have left school before the computers got there, any younger and the computers would have left the schools before you got there.

[FourthStone]

101110

[danielj]

We had Beebs in school from 1982/3 (right when I was starting at primary school) through to 1992 when I finished my GCSEs... IIRC my secondary school finally ditched them in about 1994. (age-wise, you can probably do the maths )

d.

[SarahWalker]

Beebs were still in use at my primary school when I left in 1998. They were still in occasional use at my secondary school when I started, but got phased out there after a year or two. There was one used from time to time in my A-level Physics class, about 2003.

[DigitalDunc]

I used a BBC when still in primary school and my secondary school and I was using them up until I left. I couldn't say whether they kept them much longer however. My age, a springy spritely 40.

[BitWise]

51

[ThomasHarte]

Beebs were still in use at my primary school when I left in 1998. They were still in occasional use at my secondary school when I started, but got phased out there after a year or two. There was one used from time to time in my A-level Physics class, about 2003.

I can confirm they were still in my secondary school at least as late as 1997, though they'd been relegated to typing class. Which I recall having exactly once and even at the time I wasn't entirely sure why.

[Mad Dan]

Er, 70 in two weeks' time...

[daveejhitchins]

Er, 70 in two weeks' time...

Ha! You old sod . . . I've two years to go for that one

Dave H

[roganjosh]

Two fat ladies, 59.

Nurse!

[Andy1979]

I'm 37

Used beebs from the age of 5 and then Arcs at school from 1991. Really got the bug when we looked after a Master Compact from the school my mother worked at one summer (1989 I think) as they didn't want it getting stolen while the building was empty. We bought an Atari ST after that, replaced by an A3010 in 1992. School moved to PCs in 1996, as did I. Looking forward to getting back into it now that I have the space to rescue all my old gadgets - really glad I kept the Acorn stuff.

[marcusjambler]

49 & 11/12ths

we had one computer at high school RML 380Z i think... which was hogged by a friend of mine.
I had a zx81 briefly and then an ATOM, which got sold for a spectrum which in turn got sold for a BBC that I still have ( currently poorly with RAM issues )
At uni we used the HUD mainframe for programming projects mostly SPICE and PASCAL, although there was still a suite of BBCs on econet for wordprocessing duties... I still had my BEEB at this point so I was able to support the college work using ISO PASCAL and WORDWISE... Then I bought an AMIGA 500 and got lost in gaming.....

[John Ferguson]

I am aged 79 and once in 1980 I built a teletext board for the Atom using a circuit diagram.

I drew the circuit on a copper plated board using a special material and burnt off the surrounding copper leaving the circuit paths.

I do not remember why I did this but it may have been that I liked a challenge.

It may have been a way of getting a colour output before I bought the colour board.

John

[Multiwizard]

I am aged 79 and once in 1980 I built a teletext board for the Atom using a circuit diagram.

John

It's a long shot but,, any pictures perhaps?...


Greetings, Wim...

[yellowpig]

You make me feel quite a youngster at just 66.

David

[John Ferguson]

No pictures of the teletext board I am afraid.

John

[joachim]

It always felt that the natural time to have encountered BBCs and become used to programming them was at school in 1982-1985 or so, which would result in you being 45-50 now.

Oh, everyone feels that the way they did it is the only natural way. I encountered BBCs — and wrote my terrible BASIC programs — at infant school in 1982–1985, so I'm not yet 40.

(And now I'm wondering how I knew what to do with them, because of course the teachers didn't. I suppose in those days you could get a long way with the User Guide, library books and understanding parents.)

[tautology]

I'm just the wrong side of 40; but we saw our first beeb in the last couple of years of primary school (only the one for the whole school) - though this was in deepest, darkest Yorkshire (full of inertia for change: I still remember doing maths exercises in £'s, shillings and pence, even though currency was decimalised years before I was born). My class was one of those that had articles on the Domesday book. (I'm also pretty certain my mother is in one of the pictures.)

There was also a Domesday book computer, I think this was got during the last year of primary school; but it may have been at secondary.

In secondary school, there was only one room of BBC Bs, with a manky old 380Z at the end. Later the school got more computers: a Master and Torch in the CDT technology and a room of master for business studies, which had, gasp, a modem!

Before I took my GCSEs we had arcs coming in, and by the time I did my A-levels pretty much all the Beebs had been replaced by Arcs, with one PC for CD-ROMs.

[Wouter Scholten]

It always felt that the natural time to have encountered BBCs and become used to programming them was at school in 1982-1985 or so, which would result in you being 45-50 now.

Oh, everyone feels that the way they did it is the only natural way.

No, what Jonathan writes is correct (correctly reasoned, logical). Exceptions only mean that this 'rule' is not always correct, which is why it is a rule, and why it isn't a fact/law... So the 'natural time' gives the rule, and it is generally correct.

I'm 25, but I look a bit older (just a little, really), and I guess I shouldn't tell this, but it comes from time travelling which is stressful and thus bad for your health. Recently I scored 873k playing Planetoid, and it might interest you that I scored my slightly higher 1996 high-score with Planetoid, next week...

[bprosman]

52 here, (born in 1965) , bought my first atom as a kit in 1980. When the Dutch Acorn magazine was about 3 copied sheets and "cut and paste" meant scissors and glue

[KayjayUK]

Am I the oldest on here ? I'm 66 next month, December. I was born in 1951.

I started with computers at school, a pal and I talked with our maths teacher about building a computer and we designed and built a small unit that added or subtracted binary numbers.

After leaving school and heading into the mid 70's the first microprocessors were making their appearance, I built a 4004 processor based comp project in Practical Electronics, then came the 8008, then the 8080 and the glorious Z80 which was the processor for my first serious computer, the Nascom I, supplied as a kit, it took my about a week of soldering in the evenings to complete. I also built the 77/68 computer which was 6800 based, again in kit form.

These computers worked well for me for many years until one day I was in the pub and a pal of mine who knew I was into computers asked if I wanted to buy a couple of tape games he had, one was Felix and the Factory. Well this was a BBC B version of the game so I took them off his hands and next day went into town and bought a Beeb ..... and there we are. I still have the Nascom and the 77/68 and still use them but the Beeb has some much more going for it especially that I can program in Z80 on it

Keith ... collecting pension tomorrow ...........

[hoglet]

Am I the oldest on here ? I'm 66 next month, December. I was born in 1951.

Not even close:
http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewto ... 71#p147271

[KayjayUK]

Am I the oldest on here ? I'm 66 next month, December. I was born in 1951.

Not even close:
http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewto ... 71#p147271

OH WOW ! I missed that post. I see I have a bit of living to do yet

[Pablos544]

46 I am

[NilByMouth]

PRINT EVAL ("&35")

[northernbob]

goto 42

innit