User:Sinewalker

G'day, I'm Mike Lockhart, aka Sinewalker. I was born in 1974 in Launceston, Tasmania (Australia). I'm a systems administrator, web admin and support engineer.

My first computer was an Amstrad CPC6128 which was gifted to me in 1986 by my parents. Turned out to be a wise investment in my future! Before that I was spending weekends at a school friend's house hacking on an Acorn BBC-B that his dad (a high school math's teacher) would take home from school. I graduated to 16-bit land with a 80286 PC clone in 1991 (and sold my Arnold) but it just wasn't as good: after the first flush of having a hard drive (40MB!) was gone, I started to discover all the limits of MS-DOS (only 520K of my 1024K RAM available? why?! -- and I can't program that VGA properly? -- and only one sound channel!?! -- this sucks, I should have got an Amiga!). Despite this, I'm still with PC's today in 64-bit varieties (I discovered Linux around 2000 and that restored my faith that actual computing is possible on the PC) but I will always have a soft spot for 8-bit machines because they are so tight and elegant.

There's something sweet about British computer engineering: I'm growing quite fond of the 32-bit ARM-based Raspberry Pi, and I enjoy running RiscOS on it occasionally, reminiscing of the Archimedes.

In 1997 or so I bought a second-hand 6128 and restored it. Though I have many projects planned, they are all shelved (literally -- the CPC is down in the workshop with no space to be brought to he light still). So for now I'm getting by on emulators, which are surprisingly good! One day I'll integrate all my computer parts into an actual electronics lab in the workshop. That's the dream, anyway.

You can reach me at my gmail address, or see my blog on milosophical.me