HPR4666: How I got into tech episode artwork

EPISODE · Jun 22, 2026

HPR4666: How I got into tech

from Hacker Public Radio · host Lennart Benschop

This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. I started out with Basic on the TI-99/4A in 1984. The bare machine could not be programmed by the user in machine code. In 1985 I bought a ZX Spectrum, that gave me total control over the machine. I wrote two FORTH systems on the ZX-Spectrum. In 1988 I got my first 8088 PC, also programming it in FORTH. In 1992 I got an 80386 PC and I ran Linux on it. MCC Interim Release from v. This was the first Linux distro. I have been using Linux ever since. From then on I obtained newer PCs, such as a Pentium in 1995, a Pentium-2 in 1998, a Pentium-4 in 2003 and a Core-2 Duo in 2006. I used several Linux distributions: but I always return to Debian. Links: https://github.com/ForthHub/F83 F83.COM is the ready to run FORTH system. https://github.com/uho/F-PC F-PC - a Forth system optimized for IBM-PC, XT and AT machines running DOS https://www.latte.org/latte.htmlLatte The Language for Transforming Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe's_Own_Editor https://www.freebsd.org/ https://www.debian.org/ https://www.gentoo.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Bridge_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser) https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400/ https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/217838/12th-generation-intel-core-i5-processors.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_11 Provide feedback on this episode.

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I started out with Basic on the TI-99/4A in 1984. The bare machine could not be programmed by the user in machine code. In 1985 I bought a ZX Spectrum, that gave me total control over the machine. I wrote two FORTH systems on the ZX-Spectrum. In 1988 I got my first 8088 PC, also programming it in FORTH. In 1992 I got an 80386 PC and I ran Linux on it. MCC Interim Release from v. This was the first Linux distro. I have been using Linux ever since. From then on I obtained newer PCs, such as a Pentium in 1995, a Pentium-2 in 1998, a Pentium-4 in 2003 and a Core-2 Duo in 2006. I used several

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