Early Home Computers

me | today | me

[eyedigress]

If you were a Douglas Adams reader his “hitchhikers guide” game was available on tape. I made it through that. Must have been at least 6 or 25 years ago.

[mlocher]

TRS-80 Model 1

That has to be about 30 years old. It was probably one of the best PCs on the market at the time, but it was a marketing failure.

[Political Junkie Too]

I know I have an old GRiD computer in storage somewhere...

-PJ

[GeronL]

I know. I do too.

Never used papertape. lol. I guess I was too young.

[mlocher]

Must have been at least 6 or 25 years ago.

LOL! How time flies when we are having fun!

[mlocher]

I had a professor in college who claimed that to program his computer when he was in college, he had to rearrange the wiring of the computer, and then pray that the vaccuum tubes did not burn out!

[GeronL]

Was it a Univac? lol

[aruanan]

If you were a Douglas Adams reader his “hitchhikers guide” game was available on tape. I made it through that. Must have been at least 6 or 25 years ago.

I first got it on tape some time in the 80s and then later on CD in the later 90s. Before that I had taped it off NPR. The edited for radio version is actually much better than the unedited one. The editor was excellent and made it a lot tighter and funnier, especially in the part aboard the Vogon ship commenting on the Vogon commander's poetry and later aboard the B-Ark and after it crashes into the prehistoric earth.

[mlocher]

He did some work at the University of Illinois. I think it was a successor to the Illiac or Iniac or some such monster.

Help me out.... what is the Univac? For some reason I have it associated with company that was bought out by Honeywell in the late 1970s, but can't remember the company either.

[eyedigress]

I think we are better off knowing the early start to actual home computers. It is much the same way I envy the pioneers of radio and TV that made it possible. The information and memories are priceless.

[Lmo56]

In college I took an advanced graphics class and we used Radio Shack computers, perhaps they were called TRS-80.

I worked for a telecom company in the 80's - we called them "Trash-80s". But, they were really good for interfacing with telecom equipment in order to program ...

[Texas Fossil]

I built it up from units that were broken. That was in 1982. We found a supply of them. Eliminated the expansion interphase by piggybacking RAM chips and hardwiring a strobe pulse to the appropriate pin with wire wrap wire.

They were very very noisy. Poorly shielded. Forget about using near a radio. (I am a Ham Op)

Z-80’s were what they had in the beginning.

We built up a CMOS computer controller for our local repeater/remote base a couple of years after that using the RCA COSMAC 1802 CPU. The quiescent current on the repeater was 50ma in standby. It was solar powered on a 9,020 feet peak (In NM), talk about coverage. It was 3 miles from the nearest commercial power.

There were places I could work through the VHF mode from 100+ miles.

[mlocher]

Impressive. I stuck with software and only ocassionally dabled in hardware.

[mlocher]

I worked for a telecom company in the 80's

Not too many of them in the early 1980s, but they multiplied after 1984. I will take a wild guess and say you worked for AT&T.

[off-roader]

Ah, now let's talk about the PC that held the most promise with an Operating System that is more important than any other today.

[eyedigress]

Figuring out the semantics of that game was quite a challenge. I would get a six-pack and sit down for a couple hours when I could. It was quite a novelty for a guy just starting out in the world of high-tech.

[mlocher]

I think we are better off knowing the early start to actual home computers.

I agree. It is truly amazing how far the computer industry has come in 50 years. I turned down a job with TI to work on a parallel computing system project in the early 1980s. There were hundreds of people on the project. Today, I have that much power at my fingertips for less than $500.

[mlocher]

Ah, now let's talk about the PC that held the most promise

Unfortunately, Rich Allen did not know what to do with this product. CI-II did not help either.

[Texas Fossil]

If it has wires or PC boards, I have probably had my hands in one at some time or other. Especially if it generates RF. Built lots of home brew PC boards, still have the screen print equipment to make them.

But I never worked in that business. Spent 35 years in wholesale hardware distribution. Until 2 months ago. Company closed. Less than 30 surviving companies in US.

[mlocher]

Sorry about your job loss. I hope that you can find something in the future.