I didn’t get an AMD64 computer until sometime last year.
As a result, I’ve been somewhat conditioned to conserve memory...like the developers and engineers of old...though I would have never been responsible for a Y2K bug, if I travelled across time...and placed in such a situation...
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...I’ve been somewhat conditioned to conserve memory...like the developers and engineers of old... LOL. :-)
True story. Long ago I designed an 8-bit A-D/D-A X/Y converter interface, with X-Y joystick input, and the D-As could place a single dot on the screen of an oscilloscope CRT for a split second. That was my input and output. Using hand-assembled (pencil and paper) machine language I designed and programmed:
- Input routines that would read the X-Y position of the joystick about 20 times a second.
- Output routines that would repeatedly run an X-Y list and refresh the dots on the scope to form 7-segment numeric digits.
- And a small lunar lander figure, with variable-length retro-thruster.
- Wrote a lunar lander program that started you at a given altitude with a certain amount of fuel for the retro.
- As you descended to the moon surface, the digits displayed your altitude, downward velocity, and remaining fuel. The idea, of course was to land safely (below a certain velocity.)
- The assembly program, including input, display, calculation, and timing routines, PLUS the global data variables, dot display list, and the subroutine stack, ...
- ... all fit into ...
- ...
- Less than 1KB of RAM. Just over 1000 bytes.
I didn't have any choice. You see, my entire RAM was 1KB. This was on a homebrew 6502 1MHz computer, in 1976.