Dell reflects on 25 years of PCs ~ PC arrived in 1981

CNET ^ | August 7, 2006 4:00 AM PT | By Tom Krazit Staff Writer, CNET News.com

[IronJack]

And I used the pronoun "he" to describe that old-timer, because in those days, the only woman in computer programming was Grace Hopper.

[IronJack]

Believe it or not I still have one, along with the tapes and instruction books.

Fire that bad boy UP!

I've got an Apple IIc, circa 1983, but the built-in 5 1/4 floppy drive doesn't work, so it can't boot.

128K of bank-switched RAM, yo!

[LiberationIT]

An article in today's Wall Street Journal recounts how Dell is getting beat by HP. IMO - Dell started losing it when they started selling extended warranties. It shifted risk from Dell to the customer; the quality department hid behind the extended warranty revenues and quality went to heck.

I'm switching to, most likely, HP and advising my friends to do the same. In my little circle of friends I'm the Alpha Geek so they ask my opinion.

BTW - I'm starting a non Microsoft project - It'll be build a PC or Laptop without any Microsoft products, then use it for more secure web access. Should be fun.

[Gabz]

PCs really cost IBM its total control of the computer industry. Very few people I know use an IBM PC.

You may be right, I think they now do more with laptops than PCs.

Although we do kid in this house about all our PC's being IBM.........my husband built them all, and he works for IBM. LOL!!! But none of the parts came from IBM.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Get the latest Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop....not available in the retail stores.....the Conix Desktop is absolutely the best thing yet for serious browsing ., cutting and pasting,...will take some horsepower though,....AMD X2 3800+ drives it nicely.....

[Milhous]

PCs really cost IBM its total control of the computer industry. Very few people I know use an IBM PC.

Intel servers with used IBM notebooks provide all of my computing horsepower. Little if any need to cost justify a Dell Precision 690 for my IT business. When a notebook crashes I simply throw it out like a disposable TV and buy another.

---

The IBM PC concept

The original PC was an IBM attempt to get into the home computer market then dominated by the Apple II and a host of CP/M machines.

Rather than going through the usual IBM design process, which had already failed to design an affordable microcomputer (for example the failed IBM 5100), a special team was assembled with authorization to bypass normal company restrictions and get something to market rapidly. This project was given the code name Project Chess.

The team consisted of just twelve people headed by Don Estridge. They succeeded — development of the PC took about a year. To achieve this they first decided to build the machine with "off-the-shelf" parts from a variety of different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and countries. Previously IBM had developed their own components. Second, they decided on an open architecture so that other manufacturers could produce and sell compatible machines — the IBM PC compatibles, so the specification of the ROM BIOS was published. IBM hoped to maintain their position in the market by royalties from licensing the BIOS, and by keeping ahead of the competition.

At the time, Don Estridge and his team considered using the 801 processor and its operating system that had been developed at the IBM research laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York (The 801 was an early RISC microprocessor designed by John Cocke and his team at Yorktown Heights.) The 801 was at least an order of magnitude more powerful than the Intel 8088, and the operating system many years more advanced than the DOS operating system from Microsoft, that were finally selected. Ruling out an in-house solution made the team’s job much easier and may have avoided a delay in the schedule, but the ultimate consequences of this decision for IBM were disastrous.

Unfortunately for IBM, other manufacturers rapidly reverse engineered the BIOS to produce their own royalty-free versions. Columbia Data Products produced the Multi Personal Computer, the first IBM-PC compatible computer. Compaq Computer Corporation announced the first portable IBM PC compatible in November 1982 (it did not ship until March 1983) — the Compaq Portable.

Once the IBM PC became a commercial success the PC came back under the usual IBM management control, with the result that competitors had little trouble taking the lead from them. (In this regard, IBM's tradition of "rationalizing" their product lines—deliberately restricting the performance of lower-priced models in order to prevent them from "cannibalizing" profits from higher-priced models—worked against them).

As of June 2006, IBM PC and XT models are still in use at the majority of U.S. National Weather Service upper-air observing sites. The computers are used to process data as it is returned from the ascending radiosonde, attached to a weather balloon. They are being phased out over a several year period, to be replaced by the Radiosonde Replacement System.

[radiohead]

U.S. Department of Labor predicts that some secretarial jobs face extinction because the PC has made bosses comfortable with word-processing duties like phone list management and data storage and retrieval.

Interesting point. I am doing my dissertation on information transfer between administrative assistants and their manager; the goal is to inform knowledge management systems design. I'm familiar with this observation by the DOL.

For those admin staff who acquire the skills, they can move into a whole new realm of duties, many of which were previously done by managers. Computers enable them to do research, create and use databases, pull in info from other departments and write the reports that bosses once wrote.

From my research, although managers 'could' use a lot of the typical office technology, they often don't - they are too busy at meetings, making decisions from reports supplied by others, etc. All of my admin participants were quite adept at the technology and handed off work to their bosses pretty much complete.

This work was done in a city government, so it may differ in another type of organization. However, my participants' work covered a wide range of responsibilities, from accounting to animal management. I saw the same thing in every deptartment. I think technology will reduce the number of lower level clerical support staff, but seems to have created this sort of para-professional level of admin assistants who are tech savvy and have a very high level of responsibility w/n the organization.

[Dumb_Ox]

I have a Dell power edge 2300 that aside from power outages, has been running continuously here since 08-1999.

I don't follow the PC wars much, but supposedly Dell's been declining in quality in the past few years. I suspect their expansion into the low-end market has hurt their geek cred.

I have a still-reliable P-100 Gateway from back when Gateway was on top, and I never quite trust my HP bought in 2002.

I am using a five-year-old Dell Laptop right now, still works great except it can't handle internet video very well.

[GoldCountryRedneck]

Grace Hopper. Yeah, "them were the days...".

Trivia: Admiral Hopper is generally given credit for having coined the term "bug" as in "program bug"....

Back in the "Stone Age", logic paths were tubes and electrical switches. During one of the early runs, the 'puter stopped working much to the consternation of the top scientists there.

After days of unsuccessful high-level-and-theoretics-based trouble shooting it was still dead.

While the 'brains' scratched their pointy heads, a low-level technician, by chance, discovered a dead (and fried)moth in one of the electro-latches.

The moth was cleaned up and...."Sha-Zammm!", the 'puter was back on the air!

Admiral Hopper reported the solution to her superiors just the way it went down, i.e. "We found a bug and....".

Thus the expression!

~GCR~

p.s. I still have my old 8088-based IBM PC. Purchased in 1982. And it still works! Regretfully, I don't have an original green-monochome monitor to complete the display....

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Reference item:

Conix 3-D Explorer

[IronJack]

According to legend, the first bug was discovered on the Mark II running at Harvard University in 1947. A moth had become trapped in a relay switch in the complex electro-mechanical guts of the machine. Said moth is preserved on the incident report card with a notation "1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay) first actual case of bug being found". The entry is followed nonchalantly by an entry "1630 arctangent started."

I've got a picture of the incident card in one of my books. It's hilarious.

[LiberationIT]

Thanks for the references. I'd heard about the Novell SUSE and was interested. The Conix is new to me. I'll check it out.

Thanks again.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Related Item:

Fixed the bottom Link for followon Pages....

The 25 Greatest PCs of All Time -- PC World

***************************AN EXCERPT **********************

The IBM PC is 25. And here are the top PCs ever, from machines you owned and loved to systems you've never heard of.

The Editors of PC World

Friday, August 11, 2006 01:00 PM PDT

****************************

IBM's first PC, announced on August 12, 1981, was far from the first personal computer--but when it arrived, there was near-universal agreement that it was likely to be a landmark machine. It was. And 25 years later, it still ranks among the most significant computers ever.

Like the IBM Personal Computer, Model 5150, the greatest systems have always had ambitions to boldly go where no computer has gone before. Without these innovative machines, the PC revolution would have been a lot less...well, revolutionary. So we decided to celebrate the IBM PC's 25th birthday by identifying the 25 PCs that have mattered most--from any manufacturer, and from any era.

No single characteristic makes a computer great. But we managed to boil down an array of winning qualities into four factors, all of which happen to begin with the letter I.

• Innovation: Did the PC do anything that was genuinely new? Did it incorporate the latest technology?
• Impact: Was it widely imitated? Did it become part of the cultural zeitgeist?
• Industrial design: Was it a looker? Did it have clever features that made using it a pleasure?
• Intangibles: Was there anything else about it that set it apart from the same ol' same ol'?

Armed with this scale, we considered dozens of PCs--which meant that we also had to consider the question "What is a PC, exactly?" Ultimately we decided that a PC is anything that's recognizably a desktop or portable computer in design--or, alternatively, anything that runs an operating system originally created for desktops and laptops. After a lot of nostalgic debate, we selected our winners. Which systems we picked--and didn't pick--for our Top 25 may be controversial. If one of your favorites didn't make our roster, check out our list of 25 near-great PCs.

Just to drum up a little suspense, we'll reveal the Top 25 starting with number 25, and then work our way backward to the single greatest PC of all time. (Spoilsports can skip ahead to number 1; we won't be any the wiser. You can also jump to the complete list of our Top 25 picks.)

Ready?

Next page: Greatest PCs: 25-23

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Novell is making a big push with their latest retail package....Novell 1-.1 but as near as I can figure out it does not yet have the 3-D Desktop....I got it by downloading the Desktop Edition RC3 :

Via Distrowatch/....

[TaxRelief]

My first personal computer, in 1981, was a TI-99-4A, from Texas Instruments. It hooked up to the TV, and stored programs and data on cassette tapes.

[Milhous]

Conix 3-D Explorer

FWIW during a starving artiste period I used to write for a geek hobbyist mag named The Linux Journal before it got profitably madeover by people like Doc Searles. :)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See this:

Development Release: SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 RC3

There is some effort to get the OpenGL Desktop working and it requires a Video Card that responds to Open GL 3D commands....I have a Nivida Ge 6200 Turbo I think....but I think the later models of ATI are supported also.

[SoftballMominVA]

My husband tells a great "back in the day" stories of computers when he was doing support.

One was of a woman who called and could not get her computer to work, not matter what they did. Over the phone, he walked her through all the steps and then realized that she might not have it plugged in. So, to save her some dignity, he said "Is this the model with the rabbit ears?" and she said no, and he said, "Oh, well that's your problem, this model has to be plugged into the wall to work. Can you check that?" Yep, not plugged in.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I just bought a copy of the The Linux Journal at MicroAge last weekend....had the OpenSUSE included....but the Cd's had problems/....

[leilani]

My first PC was one of my Mom's homemade castoffs (she's was always a total ahead-of-the-curve computer geek; while other moms were baking brownies, she was cooking motherboards,lol) My first desktop replacement laptop was a souped-up to the max Dell Inspiron. Had it for 8+? 100% trouble-free years until I spilled coffee on it a couple of years ago and drowned the hard drive (no, I was not surfing FR at the time). Replaced it with a fully loaded HP Pavilion my brother talked me into for the reasons you mentioned -no major probs,just minor glitches but I still miss my faithful old longhorn-blooded Dell terribly.It was my first, I guess, & they're hard to get over, as we all know.HP'll should ok by ya tho', just don't expect to share the same kind of passion.;-)