Meanwhile, I managed to roast an EEPROM that contained a assembler/disassembler for Z80 by pluging it the wrong way in a weird expansion board for a CPC 6128. It was an expensive Xmas present, I almost passed out when I realized my mistake. I don't remember how old I was when it happened, but definitely not enough to RTFM cautiously.

So I had to stick with Basic until I finally got my first PC. It was the time when one could order floppy disks preloaded with "sharewares" you selected from a catalog. The first and only I order contained A86/D86 [2] and PygmyForth [1]. I picked up a Forth because I saw ads in magazines for Forth systems featuring multitasking and other wonderful things.

I spent a lot of time with those two, and eventually started to program my own Forth interpreter as any sane person should do... I ended up writing a minimal assembler with the help of A86's extensive manual in order to be able to boot my system from a floppy, modify its source with a block editor, and recompile it from scratch, boot sector included. It's sole use ever was to prove myself I could do those "difficult" things.

[1] https://pygmy.utoh.org/pygmyforthmanual.html [2] http://eji.com/a86/

Given how much any kind of peripheral used to cost in the 8 bit home computer days I imagine how much that hurted.

All my stuff on those days were equally Christmas or birthdays gifts, or having to save up during months.

My first Assemblers were a mix of hand translating opcodes into DATA code blocks, and then I upgraded to hexdump editors, never managed to acquire a proper 8 bit Assembler, and during the first year of PC, MS-DOS debug was the only way.

My first Assembler was also A86/D86 shipped on a 5 inch floppy in a book I think from Sybex, no longer certain.