>Things have changed since I was in high school. MegaMeyer (aka Dr. Meg Meyer, who got stuck with me for my first formal computer course when I was in high school) did a remarkable job of keeping a pretty bright class completely spellbound, teaching us about the guts of the PDP-8i and basic algorithms. We started day 1 with Macro8 assembly language...and learning to toggle in the paper tape loader on the front panel switches.

You know Ed, the funny thing is, teaching kids this *same exact material* today would get them further toward understanding computers than what they do with them now. My 11 year old nephew (and his 8 year old sister) came over to our house when I was putting together a new machine, and they were both very interested.

*rant*
He mentioned his computer teacher(I use that term VERY loosely)had instructed them that the main box was in fact correctly called a CPU, because that's the only thing that's in there!! I suggested my nephew tell him that his uncle had a CPU's at home since his had two in there *bg*

My nephew watched and helped for 3 hours stopping only to get more soda, and yet his teachers tried to have him labelled ADD a couple of years ago. Maybe its the teachers who need replaced. This clown he has for "computers", hasn't gotten them past turning the damn things on yet, and they are using old 1st gen Mac's (the ones with the 6" screens) that my wife used when she went to that school (They could spend a couple of mil' for a new football stadium though). Ugh
*end rant*

PDP-8i huh, jeeze Ed you really are an old school hacker :) That makes my high School teacher teaching us Pascal on a Commodore Super Pet sound modern.

Best,
Bill