Computers made between the 70s and the early 90s | Hacker News Reader

Computers made between the 70s and the early 90s

foorious.com

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It really should include the 1965 Olivetti Programma 101 http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/interface/object/programma-1... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programma_101 , probably the first desktop computer and apparently so similar to the first in the HP desktop-calculator series that HP lost a court case http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/interface/object/hp-9100a-pr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_9100A ; the Programma's industrial design is also unmistakble Olivetti. The MCM/70 is another interesting early computer, a desktop/luggable Intel 8008 APL microcomputer which got to market before the IBM 5100, in 1973: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCM/70 http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/physical... . The Datapoint has a weird claim to fame: the Intel 8008 was designed for it, but in the end Datapoint went ahead and implemented the same instruction set in TTL instead.

EDIT: It's also missing the Dulmont Magnum (alias Kookaburra) http://www.rugged-portable.com/history-portable-computers-ru... , an Australian clamshell laptop which may have scooped the GRiD Compass (the claimed release and marketing dates for the Magnum are all over the place). The linked page mentions some other early-'80s clamshells too.

My father invented something like the Programma during his time at Xerox in the 1960s.

They gave him $1 for the patent rights and didn't do anything with it.

Typical Xerox.

(It was apparently '74 before the first MCM/70s shipped.)

Ah, the good old TI-99 series. I had the TI-99/4A and compared to its rivals like the Commodore 64, it was junk. To do anything cool with it you had to buy the bulky, expensive Peripheral Expansion Box. The TI-99 did make history in two ways:

* giving us the term "sprite" in the computer graphics sense. Such things were called different things on different platforms: "player-missile graphics" on Atari, OBJs on Nintendo, MOBs on Commodore. The designers of the TMS9918/9918A chip which the TI-99s used, named movable graphics "sprites" after the way they floated above the textual-grid display; and TI Extended BASIC provided a CALL SPRITE command.

* providing the first ROM-cartridge lockout system in a dick move that would later be copied by Nintendo and every other console manufacturer. The 1983 "beige" rerelease of the 99/4A would not boot unlicensed cartridges (though cassette- or disk-based games would still run).

Oh yeah - I loved that crappy little computer with all my heart back in the day. I essentially memorized the "Beginner's BASIC" book that came with it which was an amazingly simple and effective book for learning TI's Basic as a kid. And writing games with Sprites was about the coolest thing ever. And I will never forget the sheer joy of saving and loading the programs I wrote onto/from a cassette tape. For 1982, it was truly an amazingly affordable computer that was an absolute blast. Best Christmas present ever - Thanks Dad!

Beginner's Basic (blast from the past) http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/ti/beginbas.pdf

  * REWIND CASSETTE TAPE

    THEN PRESS ENTER

  * PRESS CASSETTE PLAY

    THEN PRESS ENTER

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOcrunchcrunchcrunchcrunchcrunchcrunch

One thing I really liked about TI BASIC as a kid was that it gave you direct access to a graphics API. You could even mess with the font bitmaps from BASIC. On almost every other home computer of that era (e.g. C64) you had to use arcane POKE commands to create graphics.

That was necessary. Unlike the C64 the graphics chip in the 99/4A had its own memory not mapped into main CPU RAM. You had to write a lpad or store command with an address to the memory bus register and then read or write data to access the video RAM. There was an autoincrement so you could read or write multiple bytes with one command, but it was still slow. Oh, and guess where BASIC programs were stored? Video RAM. Guess how the interpreter was written? In an interpreted bytecode that was stored in video-bus ROM (called GROM). An unextended 99/4A had something like 256 BYTES of CPU RAM (it was fast expensive SRAM).

So yes, you had to use POKE commands, but an unexpanded C64 still gave you access to ALL its capabilities from BASIC (even the ability to write and call machine language programs from within BASIC). An unexpanded TI-99 gave you only as much as the BASIC authors provided CALL statements for. We were even cut off from sprites without the purchase of Extended BASIC.

There have been many comments that this is well presented? I think it's interesting, but mostly unreadable. The text over images is hard to read, and there are places where text is actually partially behind an image... not good.

Every time I see a web page that uses things like page-turning animations, I want to grab the person who designed it by the shoulders and say "THE WEB IS NOT A BOOK. THE WEB IS NOT A BOOK. THE WEB IS NOT A BOOK."

It's like a movie from 1910 that's just a camera pointed at a theatrical stage, or a radio show from 1930 that's just a microphone pointed at a big band, or a TV show from 1950 that's just a camera pointed at a bunch of radio actors. We keep dragging the habits of old media with us into the new, and they always hold us back until we muster the courage to discard them.

Agree - very frustrating particularly on a phone. Crashed the browser out after about 15 pages. Could have been done so much better.

Didn't see the Acorn Archimedes [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

A landmark insofar as it was the first ARM-based computer. Planned as a successor to the Acorn BBC series of educational machines, it was a bit of a dead end in personal computing terms -- a British also-ran to the Amiga and Atari ST families -- but the descendants of its CPU are now the only personal computing architecture out there to still be competing with Intel (aaaand if you classify tablets as personal computers, they're trouncing the x86 family on volume).

Missing machines from DEC, Data General, Interdata, Burroughs, Univac, Amdahl, Magnusson, Four Phase, Tandem, Symbolics, Rational, MassPar, Convex, Sun, Apollo, Control Data, Cray, Prime, Scientific Data Systems, Xerox, Wang, Computer Automation, General Automation, Microdata, etc.

Not even close...

For some reason this skips the 80's for me - it jumps from 1980 to 1990.

[edit] Ah - it picks up the 80's again after 1992.

I see that too. Seems chronological other than this, probably an indexing error.

Needs a better Apple I picture. That was a kit computer sold as a PCB only. The photo is of someone's wooden enclosure, which was not the Apple product.

This is very well presented! However, I was hoping to see minis too. Micros were just a side-light during the 70s.

This isn't so much a "history of computers" as it is a history of desktop computers/consoles/etc with something of a hobbyist slant. And even in that respect it's incomplete in that I don't see much in the way of workstations. It's nicely presented but it's not really a representative slice of computing during that era generally.

It's not even a hobbyist slant - it's domestic nostalgia.

These were all machines that were easily portable and you could - in theory - have them at home.

A lot of people did. The UK got a huge start with computing because there was a rash of cheap home machines in the early 80s. It even had its own early startup scene, with kids writing games in machine code and selling the tapes from print magazine ads.

The US had a more complicated scene with an early peak of S100 hardware losing against Apple and IBM's marketing talents, followed by a round of new innovations from Tandy, Atari, and Amiga.

Mainframes, minis, and workstations were a lot more advanced technically, but you couldn't build a business around one without huge capital investment. So most of the population never used one personally.

That's probably a better way of putting it even if some of the machines pictured were primarily business systems. The CP/M / S100 bus systems are an interesting historical footnote in that they don't really have the nostalgia factor that the likes of the TRS-80 do. Yet, when I was shopping for my first computer circa 1982, it was by no means obvious whether to go with an S100-based system or one of those newfangled IBM-PC clone things.

It's very poorly presented. White text (with shadow) on white background and text covering the things we are trying to see both make for a painful experience. On at least one of the pages, the text is unreadable because it is covered by the image of another device.

plus, what does the page transition effect bring? its not like its sophisticated (like any bending, or modelling of a flexible plane required to make it look paper like)

what was the point?

Nicely done.

IMO, could be improved by going back to the 1950's when there was visual and physical separation of a computer's components. The physical separation of storage vs. processing really drives home the point of how a well designed should look (granted that today's well designed system requires separation of components in software vs. hardware).

Heh, I've owned a number of those over the years :-). The author would do well to go back and either fix the timeline (it skips around) or change the navigation options.

They don't mention a number of interesting computers, like the Digital Group Z80 series, or DEC's attempts and CP/M + MS-DOS computers. Of course a complete catalog would be a lot of work and quite the labor of love.

What I really like most is that between 1972 and 1984 computers were all over the map in terms of shapes and sizes and what not, then we hit the "beige box" era where eveything looked like a beige box, from minicomputer to microcomputer. With Apple's emphasis on design we now have people experimenting with all sorts of form factors and I find that much more appealing.

Oric Atmos seems to be missing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric

Really cool, I remember working on many of these. Others I still would like to try out someday.

Slightly off-topic, are there good computers museums where you can see these machines?

Computer History Museum in Mountain View is probably one of the better ones. Along with its own collection, it has a fair number of artifacts from the closed Computer History Museum in Boston. It's mostly focused on pre-PC era.

The National Museum of Computing in Bletchley is good!

In Germany I know of:

Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Paderborn:

http://www.hnf.de/en/museum/video-about-the-museum.html

Computer Games Museum, Berlin:

https://www.computerspielemuseum.de/1210_Home.htm

Museum for Communication, Berlin:

http://en.mfk-berlin.de

>> are there good computers museums where you can see these machines?

How about a good place to donate one? I've still got my Interact (1978) and its original box. I think I've also got a fair number of issues of "Interaction" which was a Detroit area users newsletter produced by (I think) Steve Cook. Mine also has the extra 2K rom monitor program by Walt Henderson. It really is collecting dust but it powered up last time I tried many years ago. I'd make the effort to gather all this up if I thought it would be going to a good home.

There's a nice one in Cambridge, UK. Most of the machines are on and ready for use.

Shit started to get real when the Amiga 4000 came out. Right about then 5.25" floppys & hard drives were becoming main stream.

Very well presented. I still have a couple of these in my collection. It's amazing to think about all of these home computer startups that were founded and went bust in the late seventies and early eighties - there's hundreds listed at http://www.old-computers.com/. I'd have loved to see their investor pitches and business plans. I'm sure they all thought they were #2 behind Apple.

Anyone remember a pre PC era computer with a "touch screen" and a printer built into the screen?

You don't mean the Cannon Printbook?

Possibly the Panasonic Senior Partner? http://electricthrift.com/2013/08/11/panasonic-senior-partne...

I found it and it was a PC sorry for the wrong lead. http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=43 Awesome piece of gear anyway. My first computer, given to me by my uncle in 92.

I remember the HP 150.

edit: That was the computer that inspired 10-year-old me never to get a job that required me to use a computer. That general sentiment lasted until 14-year-old me was introduced to a 486 with a 14" color screen and I realized there might be something to this whole computer thing.

No NeXT cube??

I'm surprised they have my Interact on there. I thought it was a fairly rare machine.

Nice, but to add to the list of missing, I submit the TRS-80 Model 100.

i prefer this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJON-nUg4eA

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