Aegis21 posted:rtr12 posted:DoubleDAZ posted:RTR12, you know I love the challenge and these days there's not much to challenge the old noggin. It brings up memories of when I wrote computer programs in the Air Force. It was always the challenge of doing things that hadn't been done before and doing them with minimum code, something that has been lost today with bloated coding.
Thanks for the tip on curved/numbered switches.
You're welcome and I think your old noggin has absorbed quite a bit of the layout planning software and layouts too! In the mid '80's I started dabbling in MS QuickBasic (it's structured, not like the built in DOS versions) as I got better at it I moved up to MS Basic Pro Development System with some add on libraries written in ASM. It could do about everything the fancier Prog languages could and yes we always tried to optimize the code. PCs were a lot slower back then. It was a lot of fun! Anyway, Windows became usable, MS discontinued development of the DOS based programming stuff (Basic PDS) and went to Visual Basic. To me it was just not the same after that and that ruined my interests in all of it. And so it goes for the old dinosaurs and program language documentation in book form.
I am learning a lot (finally) about what I might 'actually' want in a layout by following along with the design process you guys use to develop plans for others. For me it's still a learning experience. What I thought I wanted earlier on has changed quite a bit.
Apologies for the interruption. Now back to our regular scheduled topic here, the OP's layout...
We are old dinosaurs for sure. I think I still have my MS Basic book and code for testing gaming systems. I did get into visual basic but I too have left those dino days behind. I work with arduino and esp8266 micros and will try to incorporate them into railroading. Lots of neat stuff to do with these micros for sure.
I think I may still have the MS Basic PDS 7 5-1/4 floppies and manuals around here somewhere? Not sure about the QB stuff or my old ASM libraries? It was a fun time. I have dabbled with Arduinos, but I know nothing about C or C+ or whatever they use? Python is supposed to be easier and is becoming popular, some micro boards are now using it as well I think. There is a lot of neat train stuff you can do with the Arduino stuff, some of the forum members here have done some neat stuff with their layouts.
Good Luck with your layout too, Dave will be a lot of help with your layout design, he's good at it and I think he enjoys it too!
