Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the looking-back-in-the-past dept.
cmowire writes "I didn't realize this till I was debugging a stock database and saw the PR piece, but today is the twentieth aniversary of the IBM PC. IBM has a tribute page."
Re:How many people started with the IBM PC origina
by
brocktune
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Ditto. My first computing experience (ignoring the six-digit calculator given to me as a child) was with the original IBM PC in 1982. 64k of memory, monochrome display (no graphics), came with DOS 1.1. I was 14, and had my first part-time job programming (in BASIC) a year later.
Games were the original Adventure (ported by Microsoft), Zork I and other early Infocom games, and "Friendlyware", a set of fairly imaginative games in BASIC that used ASCII characters for graphics. In 1984 I bought a CGA card for $300 that I'd earned mowing lawns and coding simple databases. I didn't have enough money for a monitor, so I connected the CGA card to a television set using an RF modulator. The display was completely illegible at 80 columns, so I ran DOS at 40 columns. ("MODE CO40" anybody?)
1982: parents bought IBM PC for ~$4500
1986: bought used PCjr for $900
1988: bought 10 Mhz XT clone for $1700
1990: bought 386SX/25 for ~ $1900
1992: bought used 486/33 motherboard for $400
1994: bought P/133 for ~$3200
1997: bought P2/333 in pieces for ~$2100
1999: bought P3/700 for ~$1700
2001 (last week): bought P3/1000 for $600
Christ, I sound like one of those old farts talking about punch cards. Somebody stop me.
Re:house built upon the sand
by
kfg
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Indeed. Either/or Microsoft/IBM are generally given credit for the computer economic 'miracle.'
In fact it was the reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS that let the Genie out of the bottle and let the clones out of the lab to ravage the land and the netscape, and yet this event, the KEY event in the development of the PC as we know it today, isn't even mentioned in most short histories of the development of the PC.
KFG
Wow, am I THAT old now?
by
Arandir
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I had used friend's computers in high school to play games on, but it was the IBM PC in college that I first used as a serious computer.
Rememberances...
IBM PC: Rock solid, reliable, trustworthy.
Compaq: A rock solid, reliable and mostly trustworthy suitcase.
AT&T PC: An 8086 instead of an 8088.
Other clones: cheap knockoffs.
Macintosh: You needed a Lisa if you wanted to do any development. And what's this? You had to ask the computer for permission to eject the floppy? It was great if you just wanted to use the computer as a tool, instead of as an end-product.
Amiga: More great ideas per cubic inch than any other personal computer before or since. But it never caught the attention of the general public. Video artists and programmers still remember it fondly.
Operating systems...
The PC came with four: PC-DOS, UCSD P-System, Xenix and CP/M. I really wish CP/M would have been the standard. But with the small memory of the entry line PC, only PC-DOS could cut it. UCSD P-System wasn't really an operating system, but a glorified IDE. And Xenix tried to do too much in too small of memory (and was way overpriced).
DR-DOS: MSDOS was a joke, PCDOS was okay, but pricey. DR-DOS was affordable, reliable and did a heck of a lot of stuff that other DOS's couldn't do.
GeoWorks: An operating shell, not an OS. Just like Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 95, 98 and ME. At one time GeoWorks was preinstalled on a few computers. And it was better than Windows. But there was no SDK.
OS/2: The best user interface before or since. But it was TOO compatible with Windows, so no one bothered to write OS/2 applications.
Freenix: Walnut Creek offered up CD's on a wide variety of topics. 44BSD-Lite, 386BSD, FreeBSD and Slackware Linux. Eventually I tried Slackware 96.
The big trends...
Compatibility: Hardware compatibility aided the proliferation of clones. But it also meant that we would be stuck with an archaic architecture to this day. Ditto for software compatibility.
Code Bloat: Word processors used to fit on a 360K floppy disk. Now you can barely fit them on a 360M hard drive.
Open Source: It was always there. But it was never mainstream. The average user will gain the benefits of Open Source, but only the developer and the ideologue will really ever care that the source code is available.
-- A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Re:Interview with the Ctrl-Alt-Delete Guy
by
roguerez
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I dunno, it's kinda disturbing actually.
by
DreamSynthesis
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I started out programming on a TRS-80, then moved to an AT&T PC 6300 (8086 w/ Wietek match coproc.), and on up the PC line from there. There's just one thing that really bothers me...
Why haven't other, arguably superior, architectures made it to prime time for home users? The PC (and by this I mean x86) has managed to blossom in homes and offices around the globe, but other architectures are still remanded to use in only "high need" or "unique" situations. Yes, I know it's redundant to use Apple as an example, but I just did. Give me a G4 running OSX any time, please. Then, of course, there's others (sun, etc) as well.
What's the deal with this? I know it can't all be due to the cost involved in manufacturing... does this really just boil down to marketing?
Of course, since my bread and butter is pretty much coding for x86 servers and desktop, I'm not complaining all that loudly, mind you. All replies welome!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Games were the original Adventure (ported by Microsoft), Zork I and other early Infocom games, and "Friendlyware", a set of fairly imaginative games in BASIC that used ASCII characters for graphics. In 1984 I bought a CGA card for $300 that I'd earned mowing lawns and coding simple databases. I didn't have enough money for a monitor, so I connected the CGA card to a television set using an RF modulator. The display was completely illegible at 80 columns, so I ran DOS at 40 columns. ("MODE CO40" anybody?)
1982: parents bought IBM PC for ~$4500
1986: bought used PCjr for $900
1988: bought 10 Mhz XT clone for $1700
1990: bought 386SX/25 for ~ $1900
1992: bought used 486/33 motherboard for $400
1994: bought P/133 for ~$3200
1997: bought P2/333 in pieces for ~$2100
1999: bought P3/700 for ~$1700
2001 (last week): bought P3/1000 for $600
Christ, I sound like one of those old farts talking about punch cards. Somebody stop me.
Indeed. Either/or Microsoft/IBM are generally given credit for the computer economic 'miracle.'
In fact it was the reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS that let the Genie out of the bottle and let the clones out of the lab to ravage the land and the netscape, and yet this event, the KEY event in the development of the PC as we know it today, isn't even mentioned in most short histories of the development of the PC.
KFG
I had used friend's computers in high school to play games on, but it was the IBM PC in college that I first used as a serious computer.
Rememberances...
IBM PC: Rock solid, reliable, trustworthy.
Compaq: A rock solid, reliable and mostly trustworthy suitcase.
AT&T PC: An 8086 instead of an 8088.
Other clones: cheap knockoffs.
Macintosh: You needed a Lisa if you wanted to do any development. And what's this? You had to ask the computer for permission to eject the floppy? It was great if you just wanted to use the computer as a tool, instead of as an end-product.
Amiga: More great ideas per cubic inch than any other personal computer before or since. But it never caught the attention of the general public. Video artists and programmers still remember it fondly.
Operating systems...
The PC came with four: PC-DOS, UCSD P-System, Xenix and CP/M. I really wish CP/M would have been the standard. But with the small memory of the entry line PC, only PC-DOS could cut it. UCSD P-System wasn't really an operating system, but a glorified IDE. And Xenix tried to do too much in too small of memory (and was way overpriced).
DR-DOS: MSDOS was a joke, PCDOS was okay, but pricey. DR-DOS was affordable, reliable and did a heck of a lot of stuff that other DOS's couldn't do.
GeoWorks: An operating shell, not an OS. Just like Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 95, 98 and ME. At one time GeoWorks was preinstalled on a few computers. And it was better than Windows. But there was no SDK.
OS/2: The best user interface before or since. But it was TOO compatible with Windows, so no one bothered to write OS/2 applications.
Freenix: Walnut Creek offered up CD's on a wide variety of topics. 44BSD-Lite, 386BSD, FreeBSD and Slackware Linux. Eventually I tried Slackware 96.
The big trends...
Compatibility: Hardware compatibility aided the proliferation of clones. But it also meant that we would be stuck with an archaic architecture to this day. Ditto for software compatibility.
Code Bloat: Word processors used to fit on a 360K floppy disk. Now you can barely fit them on a 360M hard drive.
Open Source: It was always there. But it was never mainstream. The average user will gain the benefits of Open Source, but only the developer and the ideologue will really ever care that the source code is available.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
For the paranoid out there, here's the plain URL:
http://video.cnet.com/cgi-bin/visearch?user=cnet_n ews&template=playhiasf.html&query=*&squery=+ClipID :0++VideoAsset:t080901_1130&inputField=&ccstart=15 015&ccend=99533&videoID=t080901_1130&value=default &which=1&old=yes&override=http://video.cnet.com:80 /cnet_news/template/override_config.js&overrideChe ck=no
I started out programming on a TRS-80, then moved to an AT&T PC 6300 (8086 w/ Wietek match coproc.), and on up the PC line from there. There's just one thing that really bothers me...
Why haven't other, arguably superior, architectures made it to prime time for home users? The PC (and by this I mean x86) has managed to blossom in homes and offices around the globe, but other architectures are still remanded to use in only "high need" or "unique" situations. Yes, I know it's redundant to use Apple as an example, but I just did. Give me a G4 running OSX any time, please. Then, of course, there's others (sun, etc) as well.
What's the deal with this? I know it can't all be due to the cost involved in manufacturing... does this really just boil down to marketing?
Of course, since my bread and butter is pretty much coding for x86 servers and desktop, I'm not complaining all that loudly, mind you. All replies welome!!!
High-quality Linux web hosting for geeks and coders.