Slashdot Mirror

Hardly seems like it. The original Amiga had a 4096 color palette, this has 512. Amigas also had 32 colors in 320x200 mode, and this one has 16. The max interlaced screen resolution was also 640x400.

Both had 4 channel sound. But the Amiga had *stereo* sound by default.

So no, it was most definitively not superior.

.. as I unpacked it for the first time from its happy foam box, plugged it into the telly, and proceeded to clik-clik away on its beautiful little chiclet keys. oh, how i love that oric-1, even still today.. trips back home to the family wouldn't be the same without a quick crank of the treasurebox in the attic, a "10 PING; ZAP; SHOOT; EXPLODE; GOTO 10" or two ..

#2: Then, a few years later, the same smell (only much, much, much more intense) when I unpacked my first MIPS Magnum pizzabox, placed it on my desk, watched it boot, and prepared to port my code to it .. oh my, how the raw power of me, professional C programmer, felt that day.

#3: Booting Yggdrasil-Linux on my ol' 386 about 2 years after the Magnum experience ..


#4: booting new hardware i had a small hand in developing for the first time.

I took this approach: I started fooling around with computers when I was 10 with my dad's KIM-1 (http://oldcomputers.net/kim1.html), moved up to BASIC on an OSI Challenger 1P (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp? st=1&c=813), wrote some simple programs, a game, etc.

When I went to college in 1984, I had the fortunate realization that I was there to get an education, not just job training, and that it might be the last opportunity of my life to spend most of my time studying what I wanted just because I wanted to study it.

So I studied English Lit., a subject I truly enjoyed. It isn't, however, where I want to make my living.

After I graduated, I learned very quickly that employers value what you can actually do more than what degree you have, so I found work in IT based on the 10+ years of experience I had doing that kind of work (as a hobbyist).

As a result of layoffs, I've had a new job every year since 2001, felt the ever-mounting pressure to put in more hours on the job, etc. But I still like what I do, and I'm happy with the way I got here.

I play Elite on my Archimedes using RISC OS.

Your idea sounds like this -- except for the help function.

I ran a BBC b connected to prestel for years without getting a single worm, virus or trojan.

http://www.old-computers.com/history/detail.asp?n= 32&t=3

"The product was originally sold in assembled form for $1,195. A kit version would appear few months later, at $995. It could be ordered with a white, green, or amber tube background colour."

For those of you too young to remember, twas this baby which gave rise to the infamous cursors package in UNIX, as well as vi. It's why vi uses the "k", "j", "l", "h" keys to move around, as those keys had arrows on them in the appropriate direction.

You obviously never had a BBC Model B. All the power of BASIC , in Colour!!!!
Happy days.

I'm surprised the article didn't link to old-computers.com:
http://www.old-computers.com/news/default.asp

Plenty of "Replica"-esque machines on mini-itx. The best two are probably
http://mini-itx.com/projects/bbcitxb/
http://mini-itx.com/projects/sx64/

I guess the reason it's so hard to imagine Queen Elisabeth II browsing iTunes is her age. Because our civilization has this prejudice that old folks don't do youthy stuff.
I had a relative, 15 or 20 years ago (he is now deceased) who was an octagenarian (80+ years) and was enthusiastically programming on his ZX Spectrum
He developed a rather sophisticated geodesy program (he was a retired geodesist), which he even sold to a handful of companies. All this didn't look strange to me, as I was still a kid, void of preconceptions. It is only now, that I am grown up, that I see how extraordinary this was. It's the mentality of today's world that makes it sound so incredible. It's also the reason why many of us will have problems finding a job at 50+, in software or hardware development.

I'm waiting for a mouse and microwriter/cykey

very fast touch typing very quick !

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?s t=1&c=558

http://www.bellaire.demon.co.uk/newcykey.htm

There are? There were only 20,000 XT 286 machines made, it's unlikely there are that many out there.

Unless you've got a secret cache of them hidden away, biding your time until their value goes up and you make a killing on the antique computer market?

Actually, according to old-computers.com, the VIC-20 cost $299.95 in 1981, with a whopping 5k of RAM; this could be boosted to a maximum of 32k. If you could have boosted it to 64k (and perhaps you could, given a hit of solder in the right place or some memory-shuffling hacks), then the price would have been around the $400 quoted in the above post.

As for the current value of the 1981 dollar, check out this cool link. You're spot-on with the money, according to this site --- $400 in 1981 is approximately equivalent to $810 2003 dollars.

brwski

Feel the Rainbow.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c =284&st=1

Another way to do it would be to put both a PPC and Pentium chip on the motherboard... There are lots of dual-CPU systems on the market, but very few with two different processors.

You could have bought your Mum a computer with a built in printer; like this one.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?s t=1&c=474

I especially like the movies. Those should last all of 30 seconds after people actually RTFA.

The thing I noticed was the lack of mention (other than in the bottom) of the TRS-80. It certainly qualifies as a PDA as much as the other early PDAs, as it has a notekeeper, and I believe a Real time clock. Since it was easily programable, you could use it as a simple scheduler.

Right on brother! You totally get my meaning.

Hey, found a picture of one of those computers: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c =84

I started with the Sinclair ZX-80 myself. That thing was fun.

--Pete

Back in the late 80's http://www.belfastcityairport.com/ used to run their arrivals/departures information using an Amstrad CPC464 coded in BASIC http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?s t=1&c=84/ the only reason I knew was that it crashed one day and recognised the error screen.

Jonathan

There was a case in the UK where Locomotive Software wanted to trademark their name (they make/made office productivity suites). It was thrown out as too generic as it would, for example, prevent companies who made software for locomotives from using the terms.

How 'bout the first ever slate, the Toshiba T100X Dynapad?

I once had one of those MP-Men. Interestingly in germany it was labeled as a Schneider MP-Man". Y'know, the company that brought you the Schneider CPC back in the 80s.

I sold it for 50 a year ago. It was kinda cool, but honestly I don't regret it. It was too big, had too little Memory and couldn't handle any other files except plain old MP3. It was pretty much an early adopters gadget...

In 1987 (or thereabouts) I had a Toshiba T1200 - it was very advanced for its time:

First use of back-lit supertwist LCD screen that I am aware of (CGA 640x480 4 color monochrome graphics - it had a very bright easy to read screen as a result; I used to play the flight simulator game 'Flight of the Intruder' on it without any problems). It also had built-in ramdisk management functionality (you could allocate a certain amount of the 1mb of ram as a ramdisk) - and had the ability to hybernate (to save battery juice you would put it in hybernate mode - everything would remain active - including the ramdisk).

DOS was already onboard in the form of a ROM chip - and it would boot into DOS directly without having to insert a floppy disk (I had the model that did not have a hard-drive - it was cheaper, and I was a student at the time...)

Here is a link to a write-up of at OLD-COMPUTERS.COM for more details.

It was a great little workhorse - I used it to learn Assembly and C programming - as well as taking notes in class, and playing video games.

I traded it in for a 386 desktop; I wish I had kept it instead now - I would still be using it today for note taking/writing. Sadly, the battery technology was its shortcoming (really all portables from that era); refurbished batteries with more advanced technology would have made that machine useful into the present time (it was built like a tank - but very light compared to its peers).

There was nothing on the market that could touch it until the early '90s (believe me - I shopped around at that time). It always seems to be overlooked in these historical teatments. The best bang for the buck from 1987 thru 1989 IMHO.

An interesting article. Unfortunately, I found it to be very lacking. In 1992, I was a dirt poor college student. Strapped for cash, but needing a computer, I bought a KayPro portable computer. It had a 10MB hard drive and ran MS-DOS. Total cost at the time was $100.00 used. It was the first DOS-based computer I owned.

It's also sad that the Atari Portfolio wasn't mentioned. I'm not sure when it actually sold (sometime between 1997 and 1989). However, at 15.87 ounces with batteries and running a DOS compatible operating system, I'd say this piece of technology should stand out! A bit of notoriety: It was used in Terminator 2 when John Connor hacked an ATM. Full specs can be found at old-computers.com with a nice blurb at atarimuseum.com

I'm Suprised they left out Kapro systems: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?s t=1&c=550

My professor at University had one in his "museum of ancient computing".

The Apricot Portable was significantly drool-worthy back in my day, though I guess it was only in Europe. Speech recognition, wireless keyboard and mouse (via infrared), and folded up into a small suitcase that fit into even the most modest of family saloons. 'Twas a thing of beauty.

Sir Clive Sinclair used defective RAM in the ZX Spectrum way back in 1982. They were chips with only one bank working, but the computers were wired to only use that one bank.

Old Computers Museum

quote: "To keep the prices down Sinclair used faulty 64K chips (internally 2 X 32K). All the chips in the 32K bank of RAM had to have the same half of the 64K chips working. A link was fitted on the pcb in order to choose the first half or the second half."

Remember, many of the best ideas have already been used.

NCR sort of beat them to the finish line. Sure, it's not PCI-E or even ISA, but it appeared to cross 3 architectures (8086|8088/Z80/68000) IIRC. The CPU was added in via a card in the back. Z80 by default, 8086/8088 or 68000 if you had it.

This may sound like the lamentations of an old coot, and perhaps it is.

Back in those early days, computers were so much simpler that any decent hobbyist could understand everything. Simple processors, simple instruction sets, simple memory maps, and simple OSes meant it was all comprehensible. When all your code (and data) can fit in 4k, 16k, or even (if you were rich enough), 64k, you could understand it all. Little beasts like a Kim-1or TRS-80 or Commodore PET were amazing little machines. And with full-size components , macroscopic traces, and sub-MHz electronics, anyone with a soldering iron could hack on some new functionality.

Sorry for the nostalgia.

This may sound like the lamentations of an old coot, and perhaps it is.

Back in those early days, computers were so much simpler that any decent hobbyist could understand everything. Simple processors, simple instruction sets, simple memory maps, and simple OSes meant it was all comprehensible. When all your code (and data) can fit in 4k, 16k, or even (if you were rich enough), 64k, you could understand it all. Little beasts like a Kim-1or TRS-80 or Commodore PET were amazing little machines. And with full-size components , macroscopic traces, and sub-MHz electronics, anyone with a soldering iron could hack on some new functionality.

Sorry for the nostalgia.

This may sound like the lamentations of an old coot, and perhaps it is.

Back in those early days, computers were so much simpler that any decent hobbyist could understand everything. Simple processors, simple instruction sets, simple memory maps, and simple OSes meant it was all comprehensible. When all your code (and data) can fit in 4k, 16k, or even (if you were rich enough), 64k, you could understand it all. Little beasts like a Kim-1or TRS-80 or Commodore PET were amazing little machines. And with full-size components , macroscopic traces, and sub-MHz electronics, anyone with a soldering iron could hack on some new functionality.

Sorry for the nostalgia.

"Wow, the original Game Boy, released in 1989, uses a 32 bit ARM7? I'm not into the cell phone market, so there's no telling how much of that information was false."

The Gameboy at that point used a Z80 cpu. The ARM cpu did exist in 1989, though it was just the 32 bit ARM2, which you'd usually find in Acorn Archimedes series of computers, the A3000, A540 and A4 laptop. The ARM7 showed up later.

The history of the ARM CPU is so much more than just a heart for cellphones! It's just a shame Acorn never made a direct impact in the USA or you'd know.

http://old-computers.com/history/detail.asp?n=30&t =2

Indeed. Model 100 and its variants are really quite awesome (I have a PC 8201a http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?s t=1&c=334 myself). I just want one of the red or blue ones now. 40 characters by 8 lines is enough for simple word processing, and its built in 12k of ram can hold multiple pages of text. Not paying $100+ for a new battery helps too. Did I mention that this is one of the few working, non-spyware vulnerable, non-bloated Redmond products? Mr. Gates himself did some of the ROM's coding. It also boots up in a half a second. Certainly makes Wintel laptops look like power-hungry monsters.

Email is an arcane, brilliant, overloaded, compatible mess. For everyone with an overpowered PC overflowing with spam, there's someone with a museum piece for whom email is a lifeline. It's not going anywhere. I'd love a modern alternative. Something with decent compression and encryption. Digital signatures and proper user authentication for sending. Meanwhile, I just bought a fax in order to better communicate with a new community of people I've recently joined. I'll still be able to send and receive email using my Amstrad PPC XT portable in 20 years time.

And here I thought we were talking about this

The Apple //e was also discontinued in 1993, a far less advanced model than the GS. The Platinum //e sure was pretty though.

Ok, I'm a geek and I love to have the Internet wherever I am but why in the kitchen? Like I don't have enough shit on my crappy counter space... Why not do something like those failed Motorola wireless AIM clients and have a docking station and wlan? Why do we have to have a small form factor machine in the kitchen?

Because Helen Homemaker didn't want to look like the phantom of the opera just to get her recipes?

Ahh, if only we could go back to the days of harvest gold and avocado green. The hiiiiiiillls are aliiiiiiiive... with the sound of togggggle swiiiiitchess!

I kind of wondered how much horsepower they could fit into one of the old-school portable computer packages like the Osbourne 1? Especially to deal with the short battery lifespan of the existing crop of laptops. and BTW, I'm old enough to have used one of those old Obsournes and I know that it didn't run on batteries.

My Dad bought an IBM PC Jr in 1984 so he could run Lotus 123 from home. He showed me how to get started with BASIC, and soon I was writing my own programs. Eventually we bought a 90MHz x486 and I would log on to BBSs in the neighborhood. Then I started calling long distance to connect to BBSs in California, such as Tower of the Screaming Electron. My Dad eventually got me an Internet account, complete with a text-based interface to the WWW. I never realized it then, but the purchase of that first computer set the trajectory for the rest of my life. I don't know if I could give my own kid that same experience with all the pr0n and pedophiles online.

In other words, you seem to have found yourself in one of the few places in the world where Apples were more popular than Commodores. They were outnumbered everywhere else by a 5:1 margin.

I've been using graphical UIs since the early 80s, and I still get mildly frustrated a few times a day with "must click this, that and the-other" instead of "typetypetype -- done". At least clicking is "digital". I can't imagine trying to use a 3D filesystem UI where my mouse's scroll wheel (or movement or any other "analog" input) is a significant input device. "/var.../var/log/apache/...shit.../var/log...OK, easy now, easy.../var/log/apache/2002/10/httpd.log...FUCK FUCK SHIT!! *SLAM* *SLAM* *SLAM*...nfs:/moogie/home/cvs...AAAARGH!!!"

I will gladly admit that I'm very command-line-centric. The first time I tried to use a Macintosh, I whined "But, but...where are all the files!?". My first home PC was a Kim-1. (Hah! When I was a kid, we didn't *have* keyboards! My idea of intuituve input was wiring switches to the serial port)!

Behold the splendor.

Imagine The data capacity and economics (as far as tape costs go) that would be possible with a VHS data backup drive.

I don't have to imagine. At the office where I used to work (20 years ago now), we had an Alpha Micro 1000 that did a nightly backup onto a VHS video recorder. The actual backup was done automatically overnight using something similar to a cron job, and the VCR had to be programmed to do a timed recording at a certain time of the night to capture the data as the computer "played it".

The VCR video-in just plugged right in to the video-out plug on the AM1000 so hooking it up was simple. To restore your data from backup, just hook up to the video-out on the VCR, load the restore program on the AM1000, and press play.

The major downside was that it used a very unusual disk form factor: 3" - while the rest of the world standardized on 3.5"

I've pored and pored through pong-story.com and old-computers.com, and I have not found it. I had no idea there were so many different Pong units. The model I remember was an American release that looked vaguely similar to this, but the controllers had sliders, not knobs, and the deck's finish was silver and faux wood. The controllers also were silver. The game selector slid up and down, and highlighted the selected game in orange. I think the gun may have been detachable, and it may have been one of the lightgun models that had the modular rifle attachments.

Was it the binatone you were looking for? Your description rang a bell except the controllers were detachable and just wheel-like knobs. Memories, if my parents didn't love to dump everything I bet it would still be in the attic getting wheeled out every few years at times like this!

This has been going on for ages; The original Sinclair ZX Spectrum came in two models - one with 16KB RAM and the other with 48KB. The memory was implemented as 8*4116 16kbitx1 chips and 8*half-faulty 4164 32kbitx2 chips. See here for more details.

Eventually, yields on 4164 DRAMs went up and it became hard to find half-faulty devices, so eventually it was cheaper to fit 8*fully-working 4164 devices and just ignore the extra 32KB.

--

What's next, you're going to tell me they can fit an entire operating system on a 20Kb ROM? That's preposterous.