Home
| Calendar
| Mail Lists
| List Archives
| Desktop SIG
| Hardware Hacking SIG
Wiki | Flickr | PicasaWeb | Video | Maps & Directions | Installfests | Keysignings Linux Cafe | Meeting Notes | Blog | Linux Links | Bling | About BLU |
On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Rich Braun <richb at pioneer.ci.net> wrote: > Jerry Feldman mentioned an old computer: > > My first home computer was an Apple II (1978). What Jobs saw back > > then was that a desktop computer could be useful to real people. > > At the time, there were a few hobby computers. I almost bought a > > MITS Altair > > The first desktop I ever ran across was in my math teacher's class in > Arlington, VA in 1977: an HP 9830A (you can find pics of it via Google). > Anyone else remember those? It had 4K of RAM, kept your programs on a > cassette tape, printed out (quickly) on an 80-column wide thermal printer. > You programmed it in BASIC; I remember writing a banner printing program > and a > biorhythm chart generator. > > Being exposed to bigger mainframe computers starting around '72, I never > thought of these micro things as anything other than toys. So when the > TRS-80 > and Apple ][ came out, they held little interest for me--my first > factory-built (i.e. not cobbled-together) home computer was a 1982 DEC > surplus > PDT-11/150; it ran RT-11. The first "real" home computer, that rivaled > mainframe performance, came along about 10 years later: the Intel 486. > That's when speed-of-light constraints came to favor microchips over the > "frames" containing CPUs in multiple circuit boards spread across a > backplane, > and transistor density has accelerated ever since. > > By the time of the 486, Linux was available: today's supercomputing > clusters > usually run Linux. > > -rich > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss at blu.org > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > Mine was a Commodore Pet. Dad bought one for his business and one for home. Matthew Shields Owner BeanTown Host - Web Hosting, Domain Names, Dedicated Servers, Colocation, Managed Services www.beantownhost.com www.sysadminvalley.com www.jeeprally.com Like us on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/beantownhost> Follow us on Twitter <https://twitter.com/#!/beantownhost>
BLU is a member of BostonUserGroups | |
We also thank MIT for the use of their facilities. |