Early-retirement wannabe

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  • gadgetmind
    gadgetmind Posts: 11,130 Forumite
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    I wanted an MK14, and the guy the same age as me at university I went into business with did buy one, but my parents couldn't afford to put anything towards my first computer (or even my first pocket calculator or bicycle) and I had to do it all via men
    ial jobs after school and at weekends. By the time I had enough, the Superboard II was the best choice.
    I am not a financial adviser and neither do I play one on television. I might occasionally give bad advice but at least it's free.

    Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
  • k6chris
    k6chris Posts: 738 Forumite
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    gadgetmind wrote: »
    Superboard II.

    :heartpuls I doff my cap. 6502 processor, a real keyboard and BASIC. Did you build it yourself or (cheat and) buy the ready built one ?!
    "For every complicated problem, there is always a simple, wrong answer"
  • badmemory
    badmemory Posts: 7,793 Forumite
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    k6chris wrote: »
    Science Of Cambridge MK14, with 256 bytes of memory - I win :rotfl:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK14

    Really that much memory? You must have been rich! Our first computer (in I'm sure early 1978) cost way more than a stair carpet did. My mother in law was convinced that her son had forced me to buy that computer rather than the carpet (he didn't I was never that domesticated)! It was an amazing time when even I could write a computer program & actually see the outcome. I am obviously older as I was over 30 then (which was really over the hill by then in computer terms).

    I had had my first introduction to computers back in 1965 when I worked at m/c Uni and we were looking at the 1961 census. The space that computer took up was larger than the average house & now it would only use a fraction of a modern computer's memory. It also used punched cards - do those even exist anymore?

    Well that was a nice trip down memory lane!
  • gadgetmind
    gadgetmind Posts: 11,130 Forumite
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    k6chris wrote: »
    :heartpuls I doff my cap. 6502 processor, a real keyboard and BASIC. Did you build it yourself or (cheat and) buy the ready built one ?!

    I bought mine before the UK101 kit came out. I did however plug in the extra RAM myself and built a lot of veroboard addons.
    I am not a financial adviser and neither do I play one on television. I might occasionally give bad advice but at least it's free.

    Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
  • Linton
    Linton Posts: 17,165 Forumite
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    I wrote my first computer program in around 1965 on a school visit to the computer at Woolwich Poly. You could enter data online directly into your program using a telephone dial. Then a couple of years later the first 2 weeks of the first term of the first year at University was mainly spent on a crash course in Fortran.
  • westv
    westv Posts: 6,084 Forumite
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    The computer geeks have taken over! :eek:
  • gadgetmind
    gadgetmind Posts: 11,130 Forumite
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    It was bound to happen sooner or later.
    I am not a financial adviser and neither do I play one on television. I might occasionally give bad advice but at least it's free.

    Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
  • jamesd
    jamesd Posts: 26,103 Forumite
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    I was a latecomer but my chemistry department final year project was to replace Microsoft's Z-80 Cromemco Z2 FORTRAN library with one using an AM9511 floating point coprocessor.

    One of the more interesting phrases I encountered on the university Honeywell mainframe was "archive restore job, please run". That was printed on the operator's terminal just after a request to mount a tape and just before a request for system manager privileges. The system was short of disk space so they had set up a feature to save to and restore from tape, which needed high permissions to work. One day the person responsible for the security of the system asked me to try to run a job with higher priority than I should have been allowed. I asked for a different "higher" priority instead: the next day I handed him the output of a batch job that had been granted permission to run with a request for the password of the system manager account. But with an error in the JCL so it didn't actually make the request. He literally ran from his office after reading the output...

    The system operators seemed amused by this: instead of granting a higher priority they weren't supposed to grant they had legitimately followed instructions which granted me far greater access.
  • MallyGirl
    MallyGirl Posts: 6,623 Senior Ambassador
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    I am obviously a mere whippersnapper in present company - my first job was with Research Machines and I remember being gobsmacked by the new RM Nimbus which had 4 colours as compared to the BBC B which was just green and black. I also had no idea what to do with a mouse (Windows 1) and had to be shown :)
    I’m a Senior Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on the Pensions, Annuities & Retirement Planning, Loans
    & Credit Cards boards. If you need any help on these boards, do let me know. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com.
    All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.
  • blisteringblue
    blisteringblue Posts: 1,140 Forumite
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    Well I'm only the ZX81 generation but rest assured we are hoping to retire early too. Wow, managed to bring it back on topic nicely :D

    I do follow this thread, personally I had 3 Final Salary Pensions this time last year. I now only have the smallest of these and used last years crazy CETV transfers (56x and 31x) to get me a nice pot (circa 700K presently) but I still have 1783 days until I can retire (can you tell I am keen ;)) so am actively ramping up the contributions between now and then as well as clearing the mortgage (not huge).

    All being well I hope to be between £850 - 950K by then, I'm not an investor so I have some fairly balanced funds. Then at 65 I have about 4K pa from the remaining DB and I will get full state pension at 67.

    Obviously markets permitting, if there is a crash or post brexit headaches I am prepared to work for an extra couple of years if needs be, but hopefully not. My ambition from the time my dad had a coronary aged 56 (still with us, luckily) has always been to retire at 55 and this is my driver in all of this.

    My IFA keeps telling me not to put too much extra in because I could hit LTA but I am a realist so do keep a close eye on things.
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