Over the weekend I was reunited with the first two computers I spent extensive time programming. The Sharp MZ-80K (released in 1979) and the BBC Micro Model B (released in 1982). Here's the BBC Micro: with the top off you can spot that I've added my own headphone socket at the back and that this machine was upgraded with the speech synthesis module . And I had the ROM slots maxed out with Basic II, Caretaker, and Acornsoft LISP . And here's the Sharp MZ-80K: Both work fine, but I was struck by my reaction to the machines. I wanted to boot them up and get programming. A little voice in each machine was speaking to me about all the unchartered lands of programs that could be written in just kilobytes of RAM. Of all the possibilities, tucked away in the Acorn MOS and the Sharp's memory. It's the same little voice that still drives me on to write just another line of code, to perfect just another little routine. Just the other night I was dragging