RealTechNews.com - Independent Tech

Comments on this Item:

How many times is IBM going to exit the PC business? Enter, exit, enter, exit. Holy Cow, make up your mind will ya! Let see, they started with the first pc, then when all the clone makes started saleing more, they made the PS/2 which failed and they exited from the desktop market. Then they came back with a mail order angle, that was closed up, Then they came back again and now are closing up again. I figure 5 years and IBM will be offering notebooks again.

# posted by Anonymous 2:58 PM

That is so true! Can that mean OS/2 will be back?

# posted by Alice 6:08 PM

Well, that was quite the trip down memory lane (and yes, the pun WAS appreciated). It's unfortunate the museum (and others like it) missed quite a few steps between the the 8800 and today's computers. Let's slip into the "way-back" machine ....

1978, sitting in the Heathkit store in Rochester, NY loading the moon lander program into the H-11 (Heathkit's version of the PDP 11/03 more or less) ... a monster of a 16 bit computer about 10 years ahead of its time. Using a daisy-wheel terminal with 14" wide paper. I sat in the front of the store happily typing. The sales folks loved it because up to then, they didn't have any applications to show what their computer would do.

Let's zoom all the way to 1979 ... Atari had their personal computer out ... programming in Basic, using the ship's VCR (a U-Matic in case you were wondering) to feed the shop TV. Little did we know (being about 200 miles off shore at the time) that some TV-starved individual found our computer programming efforts (and a game or two btw) and were watching on their TVs. I think they were even betting on the games, not knowing (or caring) who had what character. Ahhh blobby pixels.

1980 brings us to the Heathkit H-89 ... cranking it up for all it was worth. Modifying the computer to use double sided, double density hard-sectored floppys, and connecting three of those beasts (two were in a matching external case with its own power supply). Hard disks were rumored to exist, but so far, no controller for this computer. Taking a CAT-300 modem and pushing it up to 450 baud to knock down file transfer time. Hanging out at Mike Quinn Electronics at the Oakland airport to find "gotta get it now" parts, and chatting with the guys from that special effects place up north (ILM ring any bells?). Did I mention the bargains on 80 track, dual sided drives? Going to the 5th Computer Faire in downtown San Francisco ... and almost being run over by the only guy allowed to wear roller skates in the place.

Floppy notchers ... get double the data, as long as reversing the rotation didn't bring all the trash off of the liner and onto the heads.

Cleaning and lubricating a floppy drive on Saturday night ... using the only materials on hand ... Old Spice aftershave for the heads, and Afro-Sheen (from one of the guys down the hall) to relube the head slide rails. Hey, it smelled like a .... um never mind ... but it DID work again.

1981 saw an IBM-PC with an expansion 5 MB hard disk drive show up in the office. What speed ... what storage ... what memory. This was an original PC that had been upgraded by IBM from 16 to 64 KB of RAM, and still had the cassette port (Kansas City Standard anyone?). 1200 Baud dial-up was a dream.

1986 brings a Kaypro PC into the picture. Kaypro had a really good thing going with it's passive backplane, processor on a plug-in board. They totally blew it when I could replace the entire computer with a brand new 80286 system for less than the "upgrade board" would run me (and get this ... they wanted the old processor board in trade as well!). They ALMOST had a chance. Changed the Z80 for a NEC-V20 and got an almost 10% inprovement in speed (at 4.77 MHz, even a little bit helped). 2400 Baud modems were just coming into favor, and some local BBSs were blocking out the "slow" 300 baud connections. Sitting up all night to read the comments of others just as crazy as I was.

Now, we toss 2 GHz systems on the curb because they aren't fast enough. I work with at least two computers on my desk, while programming an embedded controller that will be one of the approximate 30 independent processors in this machine we have to get running.

*****

Wow ... all this from reading your comment on the Obsolete Technology Museum. I spent a bunch of time reading about this and that, and branched off looking for information on the Heathkit H-11 to refresh old memory ... and ended up reading an article about Phone Phreaking.

If I start saying "back in the day" ... take my walker away, would you please?

# posted by Rick 6:25 PM

Post a Comment