Deconstructing the PC Revolution

coondoggie writes to mention that room-sized computers and other recollections were shared over the weekend at the Vintage Computer Festival in Silicon Valley. "About 200 people, many of them of the gray-haired pony tail, bifocals and middle-age paunch variety, attended the event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif."

Comments

From the article

[Wellington Grey]

From the article: One of the first microprocessors on the market, the Intel 4004 introduced in 1971, featured 4-bit computing, a 750KHz clock, completed 75,000 instructions per second, held 4KB of ROM and 640 bytes of RAM.

"By today's standards, this is totally unremarkable," said Tim McNerney

Unremarkable is a 5-year old processor. But when things are the first of their kind, they will always be remarkable by any standard.

-Grey

Smarter than that

[Wellington Grey]

From the article: The refrigerator-sized machine stored just 5Mb of data. Hoagland's PowerPoint presentation on the restoration project, at 9.16MB, would have crashed it.

I'll bet that the old guys who wrote it were smart enough to actually check the size of a file before copying it -- you know, actually worrying about resource management. Not like these young pups who think that CPU speeds and hard disk space are so large as to be infinite and not worth bothering with.

-Grey

Re:Smarter than that

[wizardforce]

Not like these young pups who think that CPU speeds and hard disk space are so large as to be infinite and not worth bothering with.

no, software bloat took care of that. You can't tell me there isn't something wrong with the fact that a computer with 20x less power can do the same basic things as a modern computer.

Re:Smarter than that

[mcleland]

Yes, things like: -Halo -Video editing -Statistical analysis for hundreds of thousands of data points -Half-Life -Videoconferencing -Google Earth Sure, software has bloated, but remember all these things you couldn't do in any reasonable amount of time on an older machine. Sorry for being obvious.

Re:Smarter than that

[p0tat03]

And take twice as long to develop for, generate codebases that are 10 times more difficult to maintain... Computing power in general is being put to very good use. Look at Expose on Mac OS X, it can render *all* of your windows in real-time in an arrayed view. This is extremely useful for multitaskers who need to be able to get an overview of all of their open tasks, and switch between them quickly. Try doing that on a 100MHz machine (20 times slower than a 2GHz "modern" CPU).

Or heck, voice recognition input for handicapped people, try doing that to the same reliability and responsiveness as we can now, with a 100MHz machine. Or text-to-speech output, for visually impaired people, without the stuttering stilted sounds of yester-year, only possible because we have so many cycles to put towards it. Or for other visually impaired people - seamlessly scaling up UI elements without pixelation, using all vector resources, you can't do that on a 100MHz machine either.

Or more productively, photo manipulation and video production. Do you seriously mean to tell me that a 100MHz machine can edit videos just as well as a 2GHz machine? Way back in the day when I used an early version of Adobe Premiere to edit videos, you couldn't preview effects added to a video stream until you rendered it - simply not even CPU power to keep things smooth if you tried.

So yeah, if you're stuck in a CLI all day, maybe a modern computer can't do much more than an old busted one, but for the rest of the world it's fairly obvious where all the power is going.

Re:Smarter than that

[wizardforce]

Yes, things like: -Halo -Video editing -Statistical analysis for hundreds of thousands of data points -Half-Life -Videoconferencing -Google Earth Sure,

no no no... those are all examples of work which inherantly requires more computational work. What I meant was that it is that there exists no reason what so ever that modern operating systems require at least 300 megabytes of RAM to render a basic GUI when a computer with 32 megs can do it *better* than that. Go ahead, try it some time, try and use a modern OS on 32 megs- see how far you get. Now try loading an old OS, not too old as to not be able to load whatever software you require and you will find that it runs faster on older platforms than it does a modern one. Fascinating isn't it? And before anyone suggests that security is the reason- that's also a lie. Properly configured an old OS is still pretty safe and very usable. Many are supported by long term security patch efforts and work just fine.

Re:Smarter than that

[mini me]

What I meant was that it is that there exists no reason what so ever that modern operating systems require at least 300 megabytes of RAM to render a basic GUI when a computer with 32 megs can do it *better* than that.

Yes, there is a good reason. The market isn't willing to pay someone to spend the time to fit a modern GUI into 32MB of RAM. It's much more cost effective for everyone to just have 300MB of RAM instead.

Re:Smarter than that

[betterunixthanunix]

"Now put them in front of a box running DOS 6.22 and well, you can figure it out."

Depends on what you are trying to get them to do. The librarians at the Queens public library don't use a GUI to manage transactions. Everything from checking in/out books to issuing library cards is handled by a console app, and I've seen 80 year old librarians do it with no problem. The keys are plainly labeled on screen. The bar code ready just acts as a keyboard, and enters a single line of text followed by a newline after every scan.

That being said, there is no need for a system with Mac OS X graphics. It wastes battery life, it wastes program code, it increases complexity (and the probability of a bug goes up with it), and all the effort spent on flashy graphics could have been spent on better software design. I once sat down and figured this out: I could do everything I need to do for school using only:

• vi
• groff or latex
• lpr
• w3m
• ssh/scp

That's it; things like Matlab are running on our Unix servers. That software could be run in 4MB of RAM, which is the cutoff for NetBSD, and is therefore feasible for a modern OS. Prove to me that a student needs more than that.

Hey!

[MECC]

About 200 people, many of them of the gray-haired pony tail, bifocals and middle-age paunch variety

... hey!

Re:Hey!

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I can't read that little bitty light grey blockquote font, but I bet I know what you're objecting to.

I wonder if Ken Olsen was there

[ackthpt]

Explaining how we would never need a massive life controlling server in our own home, which Microsoft still thinks they can sell us all via the XBox.

Re:I wonder if Ken Olsen was there

[ackthpt]

If they'd just work with the modders, I think the original Xbox would have come pretty close.....I'm actually considering modding an old one for this purpose.

What Ken was refering to was these computers which would run every aspect of the home, popular in sci-fi in the 40s and 50s. I think there was a Ma and Pa Kettle film to show how luddites would have conflict with the Home of Tomorrow.

Honestly, to run most of what you need in your house, you could probably get by with an old Sun Sparcstation running Linux.

Old technology and kids.

[iknownuttin]

...told their grade school age child that computers once filled whole rooms.

I knew someone who tried to explain how a LP record works to his kids. They were incredulous. Groves recording sound?! It wasn't digital?!? No way!

I can just imagine what kids will say a few years from now: "You carried your computers in bags?! They were that big?!"

Re:Old technology and kids.

[rueger]

Groves recording sound?! It wasn't digital?!? No way!

No Gramps, it was grooves that recorded sound. Grove's was a paper based database that recorded biographical information about the musicians that composed and played the sound. My copy ran to two dozen volumes.

Re:Old technology and kids.

[n6kuy]

What really freaks the kids out is a 45.
'Specially when you point it right at them.

Oh wait. Is there a different kind of "45"?

Vintage computers

[sm62704]

From Growing Up With Computers (2005):

A half an hour or so later I arrived at the facility, swearing, with air conditioners in tow. To my amazement there were two guys standing outside in the snow waiting for me.

"What the fuck do you need a God damned air conditioner in the snow for? I demanded.

"Oh, man," one replied excitedly, "this is so cool. You have to see it!" These guys were bouncing around like kids at a birthday party. One showed me around as the other hooked up the hoses from the air conditioners and turned them on.

Inside was what looked like a library. Every room was filled with rows and rows of what appeared to be bookshelves. However, instead of books, these shelves held printed circuit boards. There must have been thousands of them. I was duly impressed, and had nerdily forgotten about the beer I had wanted so badly.

"Cool. But what is it for?" I asked.

"Ahh," he said, "come in here," and led me to yet another room. This room was huge, and had little in it that I recognized. It was straight out of a science fiction movie, only less corny looking.

"Ok," I replied stupidly, "what is it?"

"It's a C5 simulator! Come on inside!"

And inside the contraption was the cockpit of a C-5A cargo plane, at the time the largest aircraft in the world. We had several C5s there at Dover, which was, of course, why they needed a C5 simulator. And two SUV sized air conditioners to cool the contraption's circuitry.

It was identical to a C5 cockpit, right down to the bolts and carpets. The only difference was that the windows were ground glass rather than clear, for projecting images on.

They let me "fly" it. It was incredible! It sat on hydraulics, so when you accelerated, it felt like acceleration. Likewise banking, diving, etc. You could even crash the thing! This was even cooler than the other computer I had seen back when I was 12.

Again, I lusted after a computer of my own.

-mcgrew

Re:Old hippies

[ackthpt]

It's hit some people in Silicon Valley hard, the ones who don't keep up. Anyone who's been to the Hacker's Conference in the last decade will recognize this.

Stay in tech for 20 years, or more, and see how you keep up. It's changing all the time. With one of those old mainframe computers you could be an expert on everything. With the great variety of things now, you have to specialise. You have to specialise very carefully. If you only do Microsoft .net security you could do very well for a salary for a spell -- that is, until something else comes along and replaces it and you have to study like a fiend to be up on it, too.

I've been in programming for about 27 years, it's not easy keeping up anymore. To damn much to keep track of, and like I said, changing all the time.

I don't know about you, but

[greenguy]

...every time I deconstruct a revolution, the same thing happens. I put it all back together, and there's one piece left over, and I can't figure out where it goes.

Usability

[msimm]

I feel like the bloat argument has been being over-used lately. Yes, computers are more powerful and doing similar tasks. But they also tend to be more user friendly and over all the user experience is much nicer. They also have to cater to a much broader audience then they used to.

Re:Usability

[Ephemeriis]

I feel like the bloat argument has been being over-used lately. Yes, computers are more powerful and doing similar tasks. But they also tend to be more user friendly and over all the user experience is much nicer. They also have to cater to a much broader audience then they used to.

I realize that our modern-day computers do all sorts of things that the old machines didn't... You didn't see a whole lot of streaming video playback, or MP3s on those old machines. But, really, those are specific applications - specific tasks. The OS itself really isn't being asked to do much more than it had to do 10 or 20 years ago.

And when it comes down to simple tasks that we've been doing for years - something like word processing - there really isn't a good reason why my computer has to be 20 times more powerful than it used to be just to accomplish the same goals.

Look at an old machine running an old version of Word, and then look at something shiny and new running Vista and Word 2007. The new machine requires gobs more RAM, faster CPU, tons more drive space, and a fairly beefy GPU...all to do exactly the same thing the old one did. Why?

Sure, I'd expect to need a nicer machine for 3D games, MP3s, streaming video... But why are the system requirements for a simple word processor so much higher than they used to be? Bloat. Yes, there are new features in there...some of them are genuinely useful... But a lot of it is simply overhead - new GUI, new graphics, different animated things, a pile of new templates, some clip art... Stuff that really has almost nothing to do with actually processing words.

There's a reason the bloat argument seems overused lately - it's because bloat is showing up everywhere and people are complaining about it.

I love walking down memory lane...

[sootman]

Although the TRS-80 was launched the same year as the Apple II and the Commodore PET personal computers... it benefited from the distribution network and brand identity of Radio Shack.

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that. Is anyone else here old enough to remember when Radio Shack had a positive brand identity?

Re:I agree with you, but...

[Ephemeriis]

again, it's features. Your copy of Office 2007 can do a lot more then your original word processor.

I will readily accept that a modern word processor will do more than, say, EDIT under DOS. But that's not what I'm talking about. Let's ignore the OS for a moment and just look at Microsoft Word.

According to Microsoft the requirements for Word 2000 are:

PC with a Pentium 75-megahertz (MHz) or higher processor
32 MB of RAM for the operating system, plus an additional 4 MB of RAM for Word
147 MB of available hard-disk space

And the requirements for Word 2007 are:

500 megahertz (MHz) processor or higher
256 megabyte (MB) RAM or higher (Grammar and contextual spelling in Word is not turned on unless the machine has 1 GB memory.)
1.5 gigabyte (GB) HDD

Now, I know 2007 has that fancy new ribbon thing... And it's got the nifty new XMLish file format... I would assume there's some bug fixes in there somewhere... I'm sure there are plenty of other new features in there that I don't know about... But, honestly, does it really do all that much that 2000 doesn't? They're both WYSYWIG, both have spelling and grammer checkers, both let you add graphics into your documents, both do all sorts of stuff with margins and tabs and columns and fonts and stuff.

So why does 2007 require 6 times as much processing power? Why does 2007 need 64 times more RAM? Why does 2007 take up 10 times as much drive space? Does it really have that many new features? Because, honestly, it seems to do almost exactly the same thing that 2000 did.

And that's just Word. Throw a shiny new copy of Vista on your computer and you're going to need even more CPU/RAM/HDD - all to accomplish the same task.

I'm not talking about doing something new... I'm not talking about running some piece of software that didn't exist back in 2000. I'm not suggesting that Half-Life 2 should be able to run on a 2000-era PC. I am asking what exactly it is that justifies making Word 2007 literally 10-times more resource intensive. Because it looks very similar to Word 2000 to me.