Comment by andyjohnson0
9 hours ago
> I think it was a lot more common for 8bit systems to allow for 16 bit addressing though.
The 6502 and Z80 could use 16 bit addressing to access up to 64kb of memory. The 6502 had various other addressing systems, including iirc 8 bits, but none of them were wider tha 16 bits.
Oh yeah. I had loads of 6502 and Z80 systems (still do in fact). Can’t believe I forgot about that!
Though in fairness, I do mostly now just use those systems to teach my kids BASIC
Just curious how do you teach kids BASIC. I’m sure my 6 year old won’t sit tight.
I usually start with game: guess the number.
The computer generates a random number between 1 and 100. And you have to guess. When you’re too high, the computer says “too high” and likewise when you’re too low.
It’s a great starter program because it teaches you strings (the output printed), integers, comparisons, conditionals, and iteration (you keep guessing until you get it right). And the whole thing only take around 20 lines (give or take).
Then the kids plays a few games of that.
And after the novelty of that game wears off, I tell them to customise it however they want. Eg different messages, different ranges to guess from, etc.
It’s the same way I teach Python to primary school / kindergarten kids.
The nice things about this is even if the kids don’t learn and remember the basic primitives, they still get a feel of “proper” coding in the same way that we did when we grew up. And they still get something they can play, even if the game itself is super basic (no pun intended).
I’m not saying this will work with every child, though. All kids are different. But it’s been super successful both at home and in the schools I’ve helped out at.
Well, most of the addressing modes of the Z80 used a 16-bit register pair (i.e. 0 to 64K-1 bytes) to address, the 6502 used a somewhat stranger set of addressing modes, but once again you could address 0 to 64K-1 bytes.
Psst! Let's blow their minds and tell them about the MC68008. (-: