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Doh. Darn tags. Dumb, non-previewing user. Whatsit

I had a lot of fun programming this thing in machine code, writing the codes in pencil & paper before hex-keying them in. Wrote several actually useful programs. One was a Morse code sender and receiver for amateur radio. Another analyzed signals I had coming from a $5 ADC chip I got at the local store. This is straight machine code, not assembly.

I really liked playing with this chip, and it started an interest in hardware and down-to-the-metal coding that I still enjoy sometimes.

The 1802 chip was never big in the home computing world, but was very successful in embedded designs. Space hardware used them often. Whenever I see something in the news about computer makers worrying about ever-increasing power consumption, I suspect that maybe we have forgotton something that was known long ago with the old power-stingy CMOS designs.

I found a pic of it on the web here.

I posted about his original list here on /. when it was first mentioned here. By tacking on the Amiga he really hasn't fixed a thing, and he hasn't adequately addressed any of the substantial complaints made the first time around.

For starters, the Tandy Sensation doesn't belong on *anybody's* list. CD-ROM drives and "multimedia" abilities were already commonplace on the Macs by the time Tandy slapped together their Sensation. Being the first major manufacturer to do in the clone market what Apple had already been doing for quite awhile really doesn't count for much - it was obvious that's where the market was heading at the time. It's not like the Sensation was a sales . . . er, um . . . sensation that inspired other clone makers to follow in its footsteps. They all continued to do what they'd been doing for some time,and would continue to do straight through the '90s - chase the Mac. And I guarantee you could have purchased a similarly equipped PC straight out of the pages of ComputerShopper back in the day. The Trash-80 is arguably the only important machine Tandy ever released, given the sheer number of programmers and students who cut their teeth on that system, although the CoCo had its devotees too I suppose.

If he wanted to cite a revolutionary multimedia clone, he should have put the Mindset PC in his list instead. That system was well over 5 years ahead of its time when it was released in 1984.

And I don't think the Amiga belongs on his list, either. He claimed to be listing "important" PC's in "home computing", and the Amiga certainly wasn't any more important than the Atari ST, the Sinclair QL, the Acorn Archimedes or any of the other Macalike systems that came out in the mid-'80s. None of them established themselves as a standard the way the Macs and PC's did, and while much ado has been made concerning the Amiga's multimedia abilities, little of note happened to the home computing market because of them. The Amiga's video editing abilities were certainly neat, but like the Atari ST's MIDI interface, there wasn't much use for those abilities in the home. How many home PC users had a video editing setup or a bunch of MIDI keyboards?

The PC's and Macs were both able to successfully exceed the Amiga's graphics and sound abilities within just a couple of years, mostly because both the PC and Mac leveraged their formidable economies of scale to rapidly adopt more powerful 32-bit processors and more capable expansion interfaces. Custom chipsets are nice, but they're no match for the rapid adoption of faster, better CPU technology. And all of those Macalikes quickly fell behind the PCs and Macs when it came to offering faster chips and higher-resolution displays.

If you want to list an "important" home computer with multimedia capabilities, swap out the Amiga with the Atari 800. When it was released in 1979 it was far ahead of its time, and it maintained that lead really until the Macintosh came out in 1984. The C64 came close to equaling it, but no 8-bit system ever truly bested it, and in many respects as a home computer it was superior to the IBM PCs (it was certainly easier to configure and use, and sported the best game titles of the era).

And I see Compaq's stupid clone is still tops on his list. What a joke that is. Sure Compaq was the first to successfully reverse-engineer the PC, but they hardly would have been the last. Japan, Inc. would certainly have gotten around to it eventually even if nobody in America had bothered. As I said about the first article, the hardware doesn't matter all that much, anyway. It's the interface and the abilities that count. If you want to look back in history to choose an important home computer, I should think you'd want to look for the first successful machines to implement the interface and abilities commonly used today. Since we continue to utilize the same interface introduced to the home computing market by

This is where the real stuff is: The Trailing Edge and Trailing-Edge.

The 80186 (and its 8-bit version the 80188) was also used in a few computers like the original Gateway Handbook and the Mindset PC. Still, probably much, much rarer than 8086 based machines.

I always wanted to take apart an old mouse, and mount two dials on the front end of the keyboard.

That way, you could have perfect orthogonal motion when doing CAD or drawing work. Doing diagonals will take some skill.

Remember the old Tektonix 4010 graphics terminals of the 70's who had just that for the graphics cursor: two thumbwheels on the right side of the keyboard?

But the best BM (before mouse) user-interface I've seen was on a Hewlett-Packard 9836 series desktop computer. It had a single thumbwheel on the left of the keyboard that sent the cursor in the direction of the last cursor key pressed.

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What I am interested in is some info on some older multi processor boards, just so that I can get the last bit of milage from some older cpus I have kicking around.

But then I remember advice I used to give some retail customers, half in jest:

Remember, if you can buy it here at (mass market store), technically it is obsolete already.

But then, some people love living on the trailing edge of technology.