Rare IBM Schools Computer 1969

retrocomputingforum.com

15 pointscountrymile2 comments

This is quite a find! Thanks for posting this. Really a lot of work by the IBM people to produce just what, a half dozen actual computers?

The power of this computer seems roughly comparable to the Olivetti Programma desktop computer, which was produced at about the same time and was commercially available -- and of course the packaging was much slicker. It has been mentioned on HN many times:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

This post links to the Programma 101's architecture and internals, which you can compare to the article linked in the original post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38173224

Nice, a few English schools were running the programma 101 at a similar time. The use of a CRT and tape drive was about 10 years ahead of its time. I do wonder what would have happened if they'd ever commercialised it. It seemed to have had an impact on Simon Peyton Jones: https://www.archivesit.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/AIT...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com