This thread prompted old memories and I thought people might get a kick out of them. People complain about how long it takes their computers to start up. On that H8 after turning it on I would have to use the keypad to punch in a short program in octal code, not decimal. This was called a bootstrap program and gave the computer just enough smarts so it could actually wake up. Once you got used to it it took about a half an hour. At that point you could either continue to enter your application program byte by byte on the keypad or you could actually load one in from the audio cassette player. Some of those programs were really pretty big, maybe even as big as 5 or 6 k. Of course, one wrong digit and you started all over again. So using tape could save you a day or two of keypad entry. Loading by tape still took a long time and it didn't always load properly the first time. As a result I would avoid turning off the computer if at all possible. Occasionally at work I would hear thunder. Such things would give me minor panic attacks for if I lost power at home all my computing effort would vanish. Eventually a half decent BASIC became available (Micorosoft... who else?) and this led to much easier programming potential. Whenever I successfully wrote a program I would show it to my wife with great pride and satisfaction. She would watch it in silence for a few moments before comment. "How nice. A bouncing ball made out of As and Zs. And it only took 3 weeks to program!" Then she would pat me on the head and quietly depart, muttering something about needing the services of a good psychiatrist. Of course I did serious work too with such things as fractal experiments. I recall a particularly efficient program I wrote that generated simple Mandlebrot fractals. People were quite impressed with its speed. If I started a generation on Monday morning sometimes it would even be finished by the weekend. Still, I must admit that learning about computers this way was a remarkable experience. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that my wife is still with me. Perhaps the most unsettling thing about it is that old as that machine is, I am even older. In those days you were thought to be rather eccentric if you had a computer at home. In other words, you were nuts. I would talk about where I thought these things were headed thereby confiming peoples' disbelief in my sanity. But 25 years later microcomputers have vastly exceeded even my wildest expectations of yesterday. Our computers aren't perfect but compared to those days they really are cheap, powerful, easy to use and incredibly stable.