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Sorry about the TI link, I grabbed the first one I saw from google, and didn't look beyond the front page when I checked it's content.

http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/ti99/ is a better reference. If you know of a better site, please do tell.

TRS-80 Model I/III - these affordable computers were the first to have inexpensive networking. They had a multiplexer device avaiable (think hub) that workied through the casette port - one computer could 'save' to another 'loading' computer. Cheap, by clever, flie-level networking for the masses

C-64/TI-99/VIC-20/ATARI 400(800) - The fist mas market computers that broght comuting to people who were more interested in the applications (word-processing and gams) then the computers themselves.

TRS-80 PC-2/SHARP ??? - the first pocket computers, they had a BASIC interpreter and could do normal computing functions and yet fit in your pocket. Link here . The precursors to PDA and 'smart phones'

TRS-80 Model 100 (Kerocera ???) - the first popular laptops.

ATARI ST/AMIGA 1000 - the first true 'multimedia' computers that broght music composition via computers to the masses.

SETI&Home Project - the first virtual supercomputer.

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You don't need a l33t looking PDA-- from the descriptions in the books, the Guide is just a small computer (with a keyboard), nondescript in appearance except for "DON'T PANIC" written on it in large, friendly letters.

Sounds like an Atari Portfolio, to me. They go pretty cheap on eBay, where I got mine.

~Philly

Unfortunately I got talked into my folks giving it to a guy when I was away who said he was making something for handicapped, which I don't think every materialized. That was dumb!

I wouldn't mind having some LEDs to show what each key on the keyboard was, it would probably be relaxing. Maybe a software version is not that hard but not sure it would be as pleasing.

Any more blinky lights and our computers will regress back to... this. :-)

Wimp! The Sinclair ZX-81 had a much better embedded keyboard!

Let's see... 1983, $40 at K-Mart. Plus another $40 for the 16K RAM upgrade.

Gee, I miss that keyboard. Much better "clickity-clack" than that mushy Model-M keyboard.

Okay.. nostalgia time for all you techie fuddy-duddies out there. (Hmmm.. +90% of the Slashdot community? :)) http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/

Okay, then, children of the modern age (where we live in a world so tied together with wires that Pangaea ain't goin' nowhere!), you tell me if this is a predicament or not.

In the 1980s, you could look up from your Commodore 64, hours after purchasing it, with a glossy feeling of empowerment, achieved by the pattern of notes spewing from the speaker grille in an endless loop. You were part of the movement to help machines sing! You were a programmer! The Atari 800 people had BASIC. They know what I'm talking about. And the TI-994A guys don't need to say a word, because the TI could say it for them!

The old machines don't compare to the desktops of today, or to the consoles of today. But, sadly, current versions of Windows have no immediately accessible programming languages. And what's a kid going to do with Visual Basic? Build a modal dialog? Forget coding for XBox. Requires registration in the XBox Developer Program. Otherwise, you gotta crack the sucker open. GameCube? GameBoy? Playstation 2?

Coding Just Isn't Accessible

Yes, there are burgeoning free SDKs for many of these platforms. But they are obscure and most children have no means of actually deploying or executing the code on their own hardware! This is obvious to us all and likely doesn't seem such a big deal. But ask yourself what might have happened had you not had access to a programming language on an Atari 800 or a Commodore. You tell me if this is a predicament.

It turns out, most of the kids in my neighborhood are exposed to coding through the TI calculator. A handful of languages are available on the TI and its processor is interesting enough to evoke some curiousity. But this hasn't spread to its PDA big brothers, where young people could have more exposure to programming. And undoubtedly the utility of a language on the Palm, Pocket PC and others would be useful to many.

So what's the problem here? We have no shortage of new languages, but they become increasingly distanced from the populace. Are the companies behind these platforms weary of placing the power of a programming language in the hands of users? Is there not a demand any longer? It's got to be some kind of greed, power, money thing, right?

Perhaps this is just another reason to push Linux and BSD on consumer systems. Still, are scripting languages easily accessible to beginners on those systems? OSX has made several scripting languages available (including Ruby and Python), but most users are unaware of their presence.

I should mention that Windows is equipped with its own scripting host for developing in JScript and VBScript. But the use of the scripting host is (I believe) under-documented and limited for beginners. Try doing something useful in a script without using Server.CreateObject. Let's not let kids touch the COM objects, please!

The Christmas List

I'm thinking a toy language for consoles and desktops alike could be monumental. I'm not saying it needs to be cross-platform. A language for GameCube that took advantage of platform-specific features could be more appealing to GameCube users than a language that used a reduced featureset, but could execute on a handheld. Really, we live in a world where both choices should be available.

As for essential features:

1. Transportable code.

On my TI-994A, I could make a little, animated Optimus Prime from pixels. Insert cassette. Record. Pass aroun

Ahem, the VIC-20 had 5K of RAM. (Here's another link. The 3 KiB they mention is the amount of RAM available to programs after the OS and display memory are subtracted. That's probably why it's listed as "3KiB, 5KiB".)

Perhaps you're confusing the VIC-20 with the Commodore Plus/4? That thing had 64K of RAM, and four productivity apps built into ROM. So, maybe you had a VIC-20 but wished you had the Commodore 64 or Commodore Plus/4?

Yes, it was known as the Vixen. The specs I was able to dig up are:

Osborne Vixen
Built in 1984
Price: $1,300 USD
CPU: Z80A 4 MHz
Memory: 64KB RAM
Interfaces: RS232C, parallel
Monitor: 7" Amber
Text Resolution: 80x24
Graphics Resolution: 640x240
OS:CP/M 2.2
FDD: 2 x 360 KB FDD (DS, DD)
Keyboard: 61 Keys
Size: (WxDxH) 32cm x 41cm x 16cm
Weight: 8.2 Kg
Languages: MBasic
Options: 10 MB HDD ($1,500 USD)

For those interested, the Vixen is the system that was pre-announced and caused the demise of Osborne Computer due to the ensuing cash flow crunch.

Having an Osborne 1 at the time and active in FOG I remember lusting over the Vixen. How times have changed...

I came into my office one morning to find a waterfall running onto my desk and into the vent at the top of the case for my Osborne 1. An apartment upstairs had a high-flow sloan valve on the toilet freeze and burst, and the water poured down through the floors. The power cord was live on the O-1 but it was powered off. In those days it took only a few seconds for the PC to boot so we turned 'em off.

I poured the water out of the keyboard and the case. I think the keyboard shell held three quarts of water. I let it air dry then powered it up. It worked fine! I still have that O-1 to this day and it still boots.

One of our members had his Osborne One in the back of his hatchback car when the car was hit in the rear by another car. The hatch flew open and the computer flew high into the air and crashed onto the sidewalk along the street. The main case and the keyboard shell broke into large pieces.

Can you guess it? Yep. When he tried it, it worked fine. It just looked awful.

They don't make 'em let that anymore. I will admit that they didn't have cards in slots or a lot of peripherals that could break loose and do damage.

I came into my office one morning to find a waterfall running onto my desk and into the vent at the top of the case for my Osborne 1. An apartment upstairs had a high-flow sloan valve on the toilet freeze and burst, and the water poured down through the floors. The power cord was live on the O-1 but it was powered off. In those days it took only a few seconds for the PC to boot so we turned 'em off.

I poured the water out of the keyboard and the case. I think the keyboard shell held three quarts of water. I let it air dry then powered it up. It worked fine! I still have that O-1 to this day and it still boots.

One of our members had his Osborne One in the back of his hatchback car when the car was hit in the rear by another car. The hatch flew open and the computer flew high into the air and crashed onto the sidewalk along the street. The main case and the keyboard shell broke into large pieces.

Can you guess it? Yep. When he tried it, it worked fine. It just looked awful.

They don't make 'em let that anymore. I will admit that they didn't have cards in slots or a lot of peripherals that could break loose and do damage.

This computer is unique in the sense that not only is the computer built into the back of the monitor, but the keyboard folds up to cover the screen.

Keyboard folds up to cover the screen? keyboard folds up to cover the screen?! Wait a minute, I'm flashing back to my first-ever computer.

Does the VAIO come with an acoustic coupler for the modem?

Perhaps your computer wasn't slow enough. I, with my incredible 8mhz Kaypro 2000+ laptop, did indeed watch space quest II render piece-by-piece on my 8-colour (actually 8 shades of blue) screen. I remember the wait times vividly, as you may imagine. The horizon would appear, then the trees, then the %#^$% maze that I was perpetually dying in, because I couldn't differentiate between two very similar shades of blue.

Strangely enough, I enjoyed it immensely.

I'm sure there's after-market replacement batteries out there.
Hell I can still get a battery for my Zenith Supersport 286.

Speaking of after-market, aren't there alternate manufacturers that you can get thinkpad batteries from? E.g. request a pack made by Sony/Panasonic/Toshiba/etc.

I don't know. Being able to use a computer to get the right long piece into the right slot could be useful. However it could end up like my old boost of having a big Wang in my bedroom. Girls always left somewhat disappointed.

MS-DOS is an operating system. Since no Atari system has ever run it, nor did the Colecovision (correct spelling), those systems aren't DOS systems.

Pedantic perhaps, but in the interests of accuracy I should point out that Atari did have a line of IBM PC-compatibles that ran DOS. Here's an example of one.

Commodore, another name know primarily for its proprietary systems also made its share of PC clones.

....to post an incomplete, long forgotten URL to a site that hasn't gone ahead and added much in the way of content, when there are some truly excellent sites out there with really great and inspiring content, worked on by people who care.

Yeah, let me throw some URL where my mouth is.

http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/
http://www.computer-museum.org/
http://www.homecomputer.de/
http://www.thelegacy.de/
http://www.mobygames.com/

And the list goes on, and on, and on.....

Check out the Obsolete Computer Museum. It has tons of info and pictures of older machines.

...is a Woz signature, of course.

I started out on an old Compaq Portable (read: luggable). That thing was great. I would practice typing in the word processor, play my math games, and etc. I remember one day, I found a big box of disks, and proceeded to boot off the DOS 2.33 disk and see what was on them. I managed to teach myself DOS when I was 6.

Then we upgraded to a blazing 386 SX at 25MHz with 2MB of RAM and a huge 70MB hard drive. I remember staying up very late on numerous nights tweaking my autoexec.bat and config.sys so I could play DOOM.

From there, we got a Pentium 166 with 16MB and a 1.2GB drive, and eventually a P3 450 with 128MB and 8GB.

Then I moved out and got a P3 800 512MB 70GB which is what I still use today.

You can also check out the Obsolete Computer Museum

I blew up my prototype, Commodore SX-64. See the damage?

F-U-N.

And heyo, I just learned that ultralong DNSes confuse slashdot. Filter fun friday maybe?

To my recollection--and checking a few "computer history" websites seems to back me up--Osborne wasn't killed by rumor sites, Osborne was killed by itself.

The new machine you're referring to was the Osborne Vixen. It could read PC-DOS disks but wasn't PC-DOS compatible; it was another CP/M machine, touted as being better than a PC (and perhaps given 8086 and even some 80286 competition, it was). The Vixen was preannounced by Osborne itself, nearly a year before they were ready to go into production (perhaps because the machine was actually being designed by a consultant rather than in-house). People stopped buying the Osborne 1 waiting for the Vixen, yes, and that did contribute a lot to Osborne's collapse, yes... but that contribution was Osborne's own fault.

What about the portable C64, the SX-64. Detachable keyboard, builtin monitor. Now that was classy.

I love old computers and over the years i've visited more than a few of these museum-site's.

These are my two favorites:

- old-computers.com : a fairly new, well maintained site. They already have a big database and it's growing day by day.

- obsolete computer museum: One of the first really good site's.

P.

Around when IBM sold Business Machines?. Yes

Even managed to kludge some hardware together to drive an IBM Golfball typewriter from my Exidy Sorcerer , which at 2.1 Mhz clockrate was the fastest gun in the west. In 1978 that is. Pre-IBM-PC. Pre-Mac. Contemporary with the TRS-80 Model 1 , the Commodore PET and the Apple II. Just have a look at the Old Computer Museum reference.

So just remember that one day, arguments about RedHat vs Debian will be considered "quaint", as the newest alphageek-wannabes argue shrilly about direct-neural-induction vs alphawave-heterodyning on the new Petaflop quantum-Beowulf-cluster-wearables.

While old codgers like me will still be trying to stop said wearables from having the usual code bloat and buffer overflows caused by AOL-Time-Warner-CNN-MicroSoft-General Motors-Unilever-Bell-Boeing-PepsiCo 31337 hackers rather than Software Engineers.

Around when IBM sold Business Machines?. Yes

Even managed to kludge some hardware together to drive an IBM Golfball typewriter from my Exidy Sorcerer , which at 2.1 Mhz clockrate was the fastest gun in the west. In 1978 that is. Pre-IBM-PC. Pre-Mac. Contemporary with the TRS-80 Model 1 , the Commodore PET and the Apple II. Just have a look at the Old Computer Museum reference.

So just remember that one day, arguments about RedHat vs Debian will be considered "quaint", as the newest alphageek-wannabes argue shrilly about direct-neural-induction vs alphawave-heterodyning on the new Petaflop quantum-Beowulf-cluster-wearables.

While old codgers like me will still be trying to stop said wearables from having the usual code bloat and buffer overflows caused by AOL-Time-Warner-CNN-MicroSoft-General Motors-Unilever-Bell-Boeing-PepsiCo 31337 hackers rather than Software Engineers.

Anyone remember that? I still have my Coleco Adam from that era. Anyone think that a Console shakedown is going to happen this year? If I had to bet, I think Nintendo would be the first to drop.

Here's an interesting site about old computers. It has pictures of most of models. Brings back memories...

Commcdore C16 and Plus/4 are black also. So is the Amiga CDTV.

Commcdore C16 and Plus/4 are black also. So is the Amiga CDTV.

Osborne 1 computer :D http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/osborne/osbo rne.jpg

Tom Carlson has been running htis place for a few years. Fun stuff, looking around his old systems. http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/

The obsolete Computer Museum!

(and another thing...)

The first ruggedised machines I can remember are the Husky portables and the GRiD Compass (not waterproof or anything but solid!).

The Husky series were Z80-based, and ran CP/M I think. I believe the US Army had some.
Old Pic of that, and it seems they are still going.

Going further back, the original IMPs used on ARPANet were ruggedized Honeywell DDP-516 - designed to be dropped from the cargo bay of aircraft.

In there was a working Friden 130 electronic calculator and a working IBM 5100 Portable Computer. Plus several old Contex, Olivetti and Burroughs mechanical calculators, you know the ones baby-boomer geeks used to drool above when they were kids, which all started me nice in collecting those old machines.

There's some great info on the Obsolete Computer Museum

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Everything old is new again!

Famous Last Words: "Oh, hi Laur... err, Sandra!"

Here's something I've been eyeing for a while that just may be the perfect solution to your problem- The Lunchbox PC.

Anyone remember how back in the old days (haha) a lot of consumer-level systems were single-piece units with detachable keyboards? Good old luggables, like the Kaypro II and the slightly more recent Compaq Portable 386 are still around, albeit substantially updated and, if you're willing to pay for them, loaded to the hilt.

BSI Computer makes an entire line of fairly impressive luggables, ranging from older, AT-based systems to dual processor P3-933 or single P4-1.5GHz machines. And for those AMD nuts (such as myself), they also offer Athlon machines.

Probably the best-suited LAN party machine I've seen is the N9 ATX, which allows for standard PCI and/or ISA expansion cards (depending on the motherboard you choose), 3.5" IDE or SCSI hard disks (they currently offer drives ranging up to 75GB). My only concern would be the LCD screen, though the 1024x768 max resolution should be good enough for all but the most demanding gamers, and 15.1" isn't more than an inch smaller than virtually every 17" monitor. Besides, the whole machine's still going to substantially outperform any laptop you can come up with, and it's fully upgradeable.

• Stan Viet's History of the Personal Computer

The first computer I programmed on was in highschool in 1977 on a Processor Technolgy SOL-20 ... a cool machine with a wopping 32KB of RAM and dual 8" floppy drives the likes of which I have seen noplace else ... really weird motorized eject & insertion that quite often jammed. I learned BASIC, FOCAL and 8080 assembler on that box.

My first home system was an Ohio Scientific C1P that I bought in 1978 with money from a part-time job instead of a Car like the rest of my friends. Leaned 6502 assembler and FORTH on that box, and programmed several games and a "word processor". I also wrote an AI program that was like ELIZA, but on steroids and actually learned words and phrases and understood grammer.

For information on the SOL-20 and an emulator check here, and for information on the C1P check here or here.

GOD I FEEL OLD!!!

- subsolar

Here is one. (seems to be down at the moment)
And here is another.

why it looks like sony's designers decided that laptops have been around for generations and so they do the inevitable: creating an oldskool laptop. too bad laptops haven't been around that long -- this one looks like it comes from the 50s (which, nevertheless is a lot better than the osborne 1...

Did you check http://www.obsoletecompu termuseum.org/helpline/helpline.html?
-C

I remember playing games like Zaxxon and Wizardry and Skyfox on my Apple II. THose were classic games. Lots of fun. You could do all sorts of things with them. And considering the relative limitations (compared to what we have now), some of them looked damned good. Do you remember SkyFox? First-person combat flight game. Amazingly cool. I still have my Apple ][+, and I sometimes hook it up to play Skyfox.

And Costikyan knows it, and so do other people. How many great games of the past are lost? Who remembers Choplifter? Who remembers the original Lode Runner? When the point was simplicity and not 'hey, what graphics board can we overexploit today?'.

If Dr. Jenkins is right, if gaming is ever to be understood as an art form that is worthy of study and has valuable things to offer, critics and academics and gamers must come to appreciate the history and development of the form. That appreciation can be created and sustained only if they have access to the games of the past.

Places like the Obsolete Computer Museum are keeping it alive. But looking at some things... I'm not sure people care. Look at the news: Diablo II! Quake 3! Warcraft 3! (with the fifth race!) Yeah, everyone wants the next big thing.

But no one wants the last big thing. Come back, Roadblasters... come back.
----

...an Apple IIc with a squished, monochrome LCD monitor. Was this scene actually there? Or was I on drugs when I (thought I) saw this?
--
New empires...began ebbing and flowing all over the place like Moon Pies on a hot sidewalk.

Hey!
The Atari Portfolio is not obsolete! Thats serving my web site right now.

Oh. Ok.. thats BS. I only wish it was doing something other than sitting on my shelf. Any one want a used Portfolio? I've got the smart parallel port adapter and two 64k memory cards.. Its very cool..
-

http://www.alphasmart.com/