[cctalk] Re: Pragmatically [was: Experience using an Altair 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)]

[Lawrence Wilkinson via cctalk]

On 1/06/24 14:20, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

https://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360/Saga.html

That one? Lawrence is on this list and posts occasionally. He's real:
I've met him. He was kind enough to give me some boxed copies of OS/2.
:-)


Yes, I can confirm that I am real.

Incidentally, I found some of the documents from the time, including 
templates I made to sort out the room layout.


The templates have a basic version, and one that includes the doors and 
logic 'gates' which swing out for servicing.


2030 is the CPU with the 1051/1052 typewriter, 2841 is the Storage 
Control (Disk Controller, if you like.)


The small things are the three 2311 disk drives and the disk pack rack.

Room layout: https://flic.kr/p/2pDGdZc

Templates: https://flic.kr/p/2pDFyZi

--
Lawrence Wilkinson  lawrence at ljw.me.uk
The IBM 360/30 pagehttp://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360

[cctalk] Re: Experience using an Altair 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)

[Rick Bensene via cctalk]

Liam Proven wrote:

> Microprocessors are what created the PC. No µP = not a PC.

So, if I get this right, the term "PC" to means something like the "personal 
computer" of today (children of IBM PC or Apple Macintosh) or at least perhaps 
something as old as an Apple II, a Commodore PET.

Perhaps even an Altair or IMSAI, though these are a bit different than an Apple 
II or a PET or TRS-80 because they required additional "stuff" to make them 
comparable the Apple, Commodore, or Radio Shack machines.  You'd have to add 
some sort of display and a controller card for the display, a keyboard of some 
sort, and at least an output port for an external printer, and perhaps a serial 
port to make it roughly equivalent to an Apple II or a TRS-80.

I find it had to make distinctions in some cases, because some machines tend to 
bend the rules a bit.

How about the Hewlett Packard 9830 "calculator"?  It had BASIC in ROM, and came 
up in BASIC when powered-on. No microprocessor, though.  Instead, it had a TTL 
implementation of a somewhat scaled down version of HP's 2100 minicomputer CPU. 
  It had a 40-character LED dot matrix display, a digital cassette tape drive, 
and you could sit a fast thermal printer on top of it and plug it right into a 
connector on the back of the machine.   It had ROMpack slots for additional 
functionality, and I/O expansion slots that could provide connections to 
external hard disk subsystems (that could be shared among multiple 9830's), a 
plotter, a punched paper tape reader, and a punched card reader, among others.  
 It was expensive.  But, it was intended as a single-user computer.   For the 
most part, this sounds like some early personal computers. 

Some HP 9830s were bought new by people with the means for their home use as a 
"personal computer, and for the time, a quite capable one at that.   This one 
is a little tricky because of its lack of a microprocessor.  But, it still 
seems to be pretty PC-ish to me.

I assume by the definition that since a Tektronix 4051 has a Motorola 6800 
inside, it's a PC, right?  The 4051 had no multi-user capabilities, and was 
fully intended for one person to sit down in front of it and do whatever it was 
they wanted to do, be it playing a game (there were a lot of games for the 
machine), or do some data acquisition, visualization and manipulation, or even 
mundane stuff like inventory, payroll, receivables, payables...you get the 
picture.  It was a truly general-purpose computer.

That said, what about a Tektronix 4052(1978)?   

It doesn't have a microprocessor in it, but it was definitely designed as a 
personal computing device with a graphics display and built-in mass storage 
(cartridge tape), just like the 4051. In fact, looking at a 4052, if you ignore 
the "4052" badge on the machine, you can't tell it apart from a 4051, and from 
a BASIC programming standpoint, they are the same.  

While the 4051 was very successful, and absolutely did end up in the homes of 
individual buyers (base price of $5,995, but there were individuals that had 
the means to buy one as their own personal computer for at home).  The 4051's 
intended markets were engineering, scientific, and data acquisition/data 
reduction work. 

One criticism of the 4051 was that it was a bit too slow on number crunching 
and drawing graphics, requiring some patience if you are doing some serious 
numerical processing/graphics.   

To respond to those critics saying that the 4051 being too slow, Tektronix 
designed a bit-slice implementation of the 6800 (using the 2901 bit-slice 
devices, fast bipolar ROM for microcode storage, and a 16-bit wide bus versus 8 
bits of the 6800 to speed up double-byte operations), added a few tweaks to the 
instruction set to address more memory than the 6800 could natively 
address(separate RAM and ROM space, so RAM could be 64K, and ROM could be 64K, 
but banking of the ROM made even more space available), and hooked in the rest 
of the 4051 (storage tube graphical display, cartridge tape unit, keyboard, 
GPIB, and  ROMPACK slot) such that it was for all intents and purposes, a 
faster 4051.  With no microprocessor.   Of course, it cost more than the 4051.  
 However, like the 4051, some 4052's did sell to individuals to get themselves 
a powerful personal computer at home.  The 4052 was much more powerful than any 
Apple II, Atari 400/800, TRS-80, or Commodore PET/VIC-20/64.   Yes, most of 
those machines could do graphics, and they were raster bitmapped or tricky 
equivalents thereof(Atari), but their graphics were primitiS1281ve in 
comparison to the 4051/4052's 1024x780 point vector storage display.

What about a Three Rivers/ICL PERQ 1(1980)?  It had a microprocessor in it, a 
Z-80. However, the Z-80 was relegated to being used as an I/O processor for the 
hard disk, floppy disk, speech synthesizer, IEEE-488, and RS232-serial port. 
The main CPU was a bipolar custom CPU that used 74S181 high-speed ALU slices, 
and a microcoded ar

[cctalk] Re: Pragmatically [was: Experience using an Altair 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)]

[Jon Elson via cctalk]

On 6/1/24 07:20, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

On Tue, 28 May 2024 at 19:32, Jon Elson via cctalk
  wrote:


There's a story about a guy in Australia that found an
abandoned IBM 360/30 in a storage/shipper's warehouse and
dragged it to a rented office space that had no elevator. He
carefully dismantled it, dragged the pieces up to at least
the 2nd or 3rd floor, put it back together and got it running!

QUITE a story!

https://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360/Saga.html

That one? Lawrence is on this list and posts occasionally. He's real:
I've met him. He was kind enough to give me some boxed copies of OS/2.
:-)

Yes, this is exactly they guy and story I was referring to.  
Unfortunately, I've never been to NZ (I got the location 
slightly wrong) but I'm sure meeting him would result in the 
exchange of many great war stories.


Jon

[cctalk] Re: Experience using an Altair 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)

[Joshua Rice via cctalk]

On 01/06/2024 13:44, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

d they all functionally look a lot like the common home/personal computer of 
~10 years later.

I had some of those in mind -- I mentioned the IBM 5100 in passing.

I don't think any qualify, no, myself. Only if one looks backwards
from a world with PCs in it and looks for earlier similar devices.

It's like saying that steam trains were early cars. They weren't.
Motor vehicles, yes. Self-contained, move under their own power... but
not wherever you want to go, not steerable by the driver, and most of
all,  too big for private ownership for all but royalty.


That's a terrible analogy. The first cars were indeed ludicrously 
expensive and owned almost exclusively by the wealthy and upper classes. 
It took a good 20 years for the car to become affordable to the masses, 
in the shape of the Ford Model T. And even then, the Model T wasn't 
driven in any way similar to a modern car, it would take the Austin 7, 
first built 15 years after the Model T, to truly standardize driving 
controls. So given the whole "car" analogy, the first "personal 
computer" could well date back much further than you claim. Whether it 
is affordable to the masses does not dictate whether it is "personal" or 
not. It's the same argument many use for the Alto being the first 
computer with a GUI. We don't define it by how accessible by regular 
consumers it is, we define it as the first, because it was the first. 
The fact no-one could buy one is irrelevant. I don't see how the 
definition of a "personal" computer is any different. A PDP-8 could be 
defined as a personal computer. It's single user, interactive, it sits 
on a desk, and it doesn't require a team of trained professionals to 
operate it. This argument has been made time and time again. I don't 
think any solid definition could ever be made, because it's so 
subjective. it's the same as asking what is the cutoff for "retro" or 
"vintage" computers. There's no point discussing it because no-one will 
agree on an exact definition. And you can hate me, but in my opinion 
Pentium 4's are definitely retro. Thanks, Josh Rice

[cctalk] Re: Experience using an Altair 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

> With no expectation of changing the opinion of anyone who thinks they have 
> the definitive definition of ‘first’ or ‘personal’, I will just mention that:
>
> • the HP9830 (1972),
> • Wang 2200 (1973),
> • IBM 5100 (1975)
> were all:
> • single-user,
> • desktop (2200 with CPU and PS in pedestal)
> • fully integrated (CPU, memory, storage, keyboard and display),
> • boot-to-BASIC (or APL for the 5100)
> machines.
>
> None of them used a microprocessor.
>
> And they all functionally look a lot like the common home/personal computer 
> of ~10 years later.

I had some of those in mind -- I mentioned the IBM 5100 in passing.

I don't think any qualify, no, myself. Only if one looks backwards
from a world with PCs in it and looks for earlier similar devices.

It's like saying that steam trains were early cars. They weren't.
Motor vehicles, yes. Self-contained, move under their own power... but
not wherever you want to go, not steerable by the driver, and most of
all,  too big for private ownership for all but royalty.

The thing with the handful of very-late-1960s/very-early-1970s
all-in-one desktops is that they were _vastly_ expensive, mostly only
ran one program (possibly a programming language) and only did one
task. Most did not let you go and buy 3rd party software and run it on
your machine.

There's a line here, and it is somewhere around being ownable by an
individual for their own use, usable for multiple tasks via
pre-existing software that can be loaded and used by a non-expert, and
which is usable and useful without programming skills.

A dedicated word processor isn't a PC. An IBM Displaywriter has a lot
in common with the IBM PC but it's not a PC. An IBM System 9000 isn't
really a PC. A desktop machine that can run APL, one of the most
inscrutable and opaque programming languages ever designed this side
of INTERCAL, isn't a PC. It's not even a calculator. What APL can do
can't even be *described* to the average person who might productively
use a spreadsheet. "Matrix arithmetic" is of even less relevance to
everyday life than algebra.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053

[cctalk] Re: Experience using an Altair 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Fri, 31 May 2024 at 18:57, Harald Arnesen via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> Liam Proven via cctalk [31/05/2024 18.07]:
>
> > My first fiancée's dad had what he reckoned was the first mainframe in
> > Norway.
>
> Was it this:
>
>  - in Norwegian, machine translation work ok.

Thanks for the link -- an interesting read!

(I used to speak basic Norwegian but that was too much for me.)

No, this would have been later, I think. Terje Thunem was the man, and
I think he worked for Statoil. I only met him after he had retired.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053

[cctalk] Re: Pragmatically [was: Experience using an Altair 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)]

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Tue, 28 May 2024 at 19:32, Jon Elson via cctalk
 wrote:

> There's a story about a guy in Australia that found an
> abandoned IBM 360/30 in a storage/shipper's warehouse and
> dragged it to a rented office space that had no elevator. He
> carefully dismantled it, dragged the pieces up to at least
> the 2nd or 3rd floor, put it back together and got it running!
>
> QUITE a story!

https://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360/Saga.html

That one? Lawrence is on this list and posts occasionally. He's real:
I've met him. He was kind enough to give me some boxed copies of OS/2.
:-)

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884
Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053