[stevekemp]

That's almost exactly my route to coding too - though I used the ZX Spectrum in the UK. I started with BASIC, then "assembled" programs by hand, looking up the opcodes in the back of the manual.

Even now I remember a lot of Z80 opcodes, largely as a result of hacking and patching games to get infinite lives.

I'm slowly working on building my own computer at the moment, with a real Z80 processor and an arduino to drive it. Fun stuff, but I've stalled for the past few months.