|
General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc. |
|
Thread Tools |
22nd May 2020, 8:14 pm | #41 |
Heptode
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: Nottingham, UK.
Posts: 648
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
stevehertz, you've pretty well summed up where I was back in the early eighties with computers. Like you, I could see that you could learn about them with the basic games etc, but as for using them in everyday life, I didn't really see the link. I stayed in the servicing trade as the thrill of getting something back to life was a real buzz, and is so still today. That said, I should have pushed myself more into the computing side of things during the eighties, as clearly that's where it was all headed.
Computing has changed the servicing trade in many ways for the good, just look at the number of trees saved from conversion to service manuals by the PDF! Up to quite recently there were engineers who were still very 'digital afraid' and refused to learn, but their days are numbered. I use my old laptop every day, have fixed it a couple of times, but still find a computer a means to an end, rather than an interest in it's own right. SJM. |
22nd May 2020, 8:21 pm | #42 | ||
Nonode
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Nuneaton, Warwickshire, UK.
Posts: 2,039
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
__________________
Life's a long song, but the tune ends too soon for us all. |
||
22nd May 2020, 9:59 pm | #43 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Fakenham, Norfolk, UK.
Posts: 4,259
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
It's about 41 or 42 years since I had the occasional date with a Durham terminal of the Northumbrian Universities Multiple Access Computer and a pile of punched cards. I think the beast itself lived somewhere in Newcastle.
I'm another who couldn't see any attraction in a personal computer until much later on, the end of 2003, when after a friend finally persuaded me to acquire one I promptly signed up here and within a month had launched the Hacker Radio Group. Paul |
22nd May 2020, 11:05 pm | #44 | |
Nonode
Join Date: Aug 2015
Location: Cambridge, Cambs. UK.
Posts: 2,198
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
Not the greatest reception to our new forum member. Swahili? Matherp is recounting interesting vintage technology of, I guess, 40 years ago. Up to you if you’re not interested in grasping it, but this is how today’s processor based electronics began. I guess that this will constitute an increasing proportion of forum content of the future - no doubt alongside continuing interest in grid leak detectors, tuned circuit Q values and output transformer ratios. Electronics is always moving on. We’re a broad church. Martin
__________________
BVWS Member |
|
22nd May 2020, 11:32 pm | #45 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2019
Location: Worthing, West Sussex, UK.
Posts: 6,604
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
I started out on home microcomputers around 1978 with a Nascom 1 in kit form that I greatly expanded on. I loved the microprocessor hardware and also the associated Z80 machine code.
At an amateur level I dabbled with machine code, assembler and some high level languages like BASIC, Pascal, PLM & C. |
22nd May 2020, 11:46 pm | #46 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK.
Posts: 11,575
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
I think the Z80 is the P-51 Mustang of 8-bit microprocessors - The Z80 has such a luxurious instruction set for a processor of that era. Mind you, there are those who think the 6809 is better - not one I really played with.
|
23rd May 2020, 12:21 am | #47 | |
Octode
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Staffordshire Moorlands, UK.
Posts: 1,479
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
Steve.
__________________
Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking... Last edited by fetteler; 23rd May 2020 at 12:26 am. |
|
23rd May 2020, 8:14 am | #48 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: West Cumbria (CA13), UK
Posts: 6,130
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
I must admit to preferring to write programs in assembly languages (a symbolic representation of the machine code), as they give a direct control of the processor that is lost in high-level languages such as BASIC, C, C++ and the multitude of others available. The only downside to assembly languages is that each is specific to a particular processor, so it involves learning a new variation with different facilities when moving from one sort of computer to another.
__________________
Mending is better than Ending (cf Brave New World by Aldous Huxley) |
23rd May 2020, 8:31 am | #49 | ||
Dekatron
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Rugeley, Staffordshire, UK.
Posts: 8,833
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
__________________
A digital radio is the latest thing, but a vintage wireless is forever.. Last edited by stevehertz; 23rd May 2020 at 8:36 am. |
||
23rd May 2020, 9:48 am | #50 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Biggin Hill, London, UK.
Posts: 5,215
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
It's a pity the BBC micro didn't use the 6809. Acorn did make a (rare) 6809 processor board for their 'Systems' (the 19" cardcage machines). In many ways the 6809 parallels the V2000 video recorder. It came out last, and although it was technically superior to its competitors (6502 and Z80 in the case of the 6809 ; VHS and Betamax in the case of V2000), it was too late to make much of an impact. Although the 6809 does turn up in a lot of 1980s embedded systems (there's one in my HP 1630 logic analyser, one in most of HP's HPIB disk and tape units, one in my Facit N4000 paper tape punch/reader, etc..) As for what is supposed to have replaced the 8 bit home computers to get people into programming, interfacing, etc now, I don't much care for them. The RPi seems overcomplex, while I like unix-like OSes for a lot of things, the linux on the RPi is not a real time system, and to be honest it just gets in the way for a lot of things I would want to do. And I can't find my way round the Arduino documentation. It seems to be far too much of 'buy these modules and plug them together', 'download these libraries', 'write a bit of code' and it works. That's far too high level for me. I do not design by sticking modules together. If I have to program I am happiest at the 'bare metal' -- assembly language, machine code, or microcode. |
|
23rd May 2020, 10:02 am | #51 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK.
Posts: 11,575
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
It's true that Arduino seeks to allow people to 'do' embedded programming without needing any understanding of the underlying hardware, in fact properly written Arduino programs are 'hardware agnostic', they will run on any Arduino.
What you possibly may not have realised is that Arduino does allow going directly to the hardware if required, I recently posted an Arduino sketch to another thread in which certain parts of the AtMega328 processor are directly accessed in order to perform parallel reads from / writes to the ports at high speed. With regard to libraries, etc, there is no sense in reinventing the wheel if someone else has already written the exact code you need and put it in the public domain. I'm always grateful to find that someone has already done exactly the thing I was about to do, saving me hours of work in the process. |
23rd May 2020, 10:33 am | #52 |
Pentode
Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
Posts: 110
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Ahhh the missed opportunities of missapplied technology.
I had a Sinclair Spectrum when I started high school. It would have been capable as a word processor but nobody ever used it as such. All of the written work for the Scottish Exam Board Higher Certificates was banged out on an old manual typewriter. By the early 1990s, my university essays had graduated to an electric typewriter-with 20 character display and 10 page memory! Banks of 386 (!) machines with either DOS or windows 3.1 had just begun to appear at university, but they lacked the student convenience of working from bed. When I started working, (1993) we had a typewriter each, and a 286 DOS -based computer between two . BUT we also had a typing pool - which saved much time, quality, tipex, and triplicate paper. (We also had access to telex and fax, mainly for issuing press releases) . In 1996 I was still using lettraset, spraymount and graph paper on an offset litho printing press for leaflets etc. But the point remains. My 1984 Spectrum would have been capable of word processing. But was only ever a games machine, and for more than a decade, in both education and industry, we used various workarounds for written material when I actually had the technology necessary. And that was commonplace. Why? |
23rd May 2020, 11:10 am | #53 | ||
Octode
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Ware, Herts. UK.
Posts: 1,082
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
In my second job in '85 I looked at OS9-68K as an alternative to running Unix on 68010 based boxes. For some reason, OS9-68K ran so slowly on the hardware we were using that it offered no advantage at all and the idea was abandoned. John |
||
23rd May 2020, 11:42 am | #54 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Charmouth, Dorset, UK.
Posts: 3,601
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
I found the ZX81 invaluable, it had an excellent morse tutor programme, that's what enabled me to get my HF licence.
Peter |
23rd May 2020, 11:50 am | #55 |
Moderator
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Fife, Scotland, UK.
Posts: 22,899
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Why did people buy early-ish personal computers?
Well at one point the vendors used a trick out of the encyclopaedia salesman's repertoire. "You need to buy your family our encyclopaedia/computer or else your kids will all grow up thick." Yeah, right, and the kids used that BBC model B for 100% playing games, didn't they? As did their father? One local amateur was a serious type and he wrote software for tracking satellites which got circulated and used widely in a cut-down form. Unfortunately he wrote it for the Sinclair QL. My first computing was submitting card stacks for the acolytes to run on the ICL1403 at uni, and typing basic into a 4-bit DEC Minic in the EE dept lab. 4 Bit At HP i started doing real work on an HP 9810 desk top programmable calculator (inc thermal printer like a cash register width) It was on a trolley with a telescopic whip and flag so you could look around the lab and find it. 9820 was a step up. THe 9825 was getting good. Others hogged the 9835 for one project but I did get the use of a 9845 from time to time. I was writing stuff for control theory, analysing PLLs and doing circuit design. I wrote my own 'Matrix Masher' for the 9845. The HP85s were another step along the road and I had one to myself for a couple of years while prototyping the HP3708A and planning the modus operandi of its 6809 firmware (I didn't write the firmware, but the trial stuff and sorting all the I/O became my master's dissertation) I had various hand-me-down Unix workstations and then I bought a PC for home. Ti'Ko assembled in beautiful downtown Broxburn. 486DX33 230 meg disc, 8 meg RAM and a couple of 3.5 inch Sony floppies. Win 3.1 and DOS5. Bought Word5 and used it to write the oscillators and synthesisers chapter for the ARRL handbook. THis machine got a new motherboard and more memory/bigger disc, NT5 and a copy of tomb raider. That was replaced with a shiny new Apple iMac G5. Power PC - Well named processor, it certainly used power and it all came out as heat. The waypoint with this machine was my first home internet connection. Pipex as ISP After some years, the fan speed controller sensor (on PPC chip) failed and I moved to one of the Intel iMacs. That ate a graphics card under warranty, the a connector failed to the backlight in one corner. Apple fix £600 new display. My fix, 2 hours, some microsurgery with scalpel and tweezers, a dod of solder and voila! Eventually the second graphixs card failed just like the first. Bad solder under a BGA. No spares available. So along came the iMac in front of me. David
__________________
Can't afford the volcanic island yet, but the plans for my monorail and the goons' uniforms are done |
23rd May 2020, 12:58 pm | #56 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK.
Posts: 11,575
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
All my written correspondence in that period was composed on the Spectrum and laboriously eaked out in 'Letter Quality' mode on whatever dot-matrix printer I had at the time. There were programs which would print out a text file as a graphics image so it looked exactly like typewritten output. Very slow, but unlike me, typing, it didn't make any mistakes. |
|
23rd May 2020, 1:36 pm | #57 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Biggin Hill, London, UK.
Posts: 5,215
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
The real 'step up' in the family is the HP9830. Same processor [1] but with BASIC in ROM, a full QWERTY keyboard and 32-character alphanumeric display). OK, a fairly minimal BASIC (no strings, for example) but still BASIC. And there were add-on ROM modules to add strings, matrices, extended I/O commands, plotter commands, etc. In many ways it's a strong contender for the title 'first personal computer' [1] 4 PCBs of TTL and PROMs (80 ICs total or thereabouts) making a bit-serial 16bit processor. |
|
23rd May 2020, 7:54 pm | #58 | |
Nonode
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Bognor Regis, West Sussex, UK.
Posts: 2,300
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
Quote:
I was very proud of it but it was soon replaced by the 68000. Peter |
|
23rd May 2020, 10:33 pm | #59 |
Nonode
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: Kirk Michael, Isle of Man
Posts: 2,350
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
I am much like some others here. I could not see the point of taking something analogue and converting it to digital then back again (CD players), and those little early things meant nothing to me. In 1989, my circumstances changed, and I had to find a job. Mostly simple audio stuff, but there were many of these things needing repairs as well. C64s, BBCs, Spectrums etc.. Fortunately I was working with a guy who was bright, and UNDERSTOOD computers. He used to read the "BOOK" on the 6502 whatever that was, and having worked for Amstrad, was fully conversant with all their stuff. He taught me how to locate faulty RAM (though I did not really know what it was). He taught me stuff like "Print, POKE etc" by which he could say WHICH RAM chip was faulty (I wrote it down, never understood it) and so it went on for 8 months, then circumstances forced me to leave and back to the UK. Before I left, the Boss had given me a Commodore PLUS4. A better replacement for the Commodore 64 that never caught on, so it was worthless new old stock. It had a built in word processor, and I managed to pick up both a floppy disc and a printer (7 pin DM type) and with that, I wrote a few articles for John Reddihough in TV mag.
Later I picked up an IBM XT with DOS and Wordstar, making the Plus4 redundant. Since then, I regularly updated what I had, but ONLY to use. The hardware side I mastered, but never the software. Next I found myself having to repair CDs, and finally understood the apparent nonsense of taking an analogue signal, converting it to an 8 bit, then converting that into a 14 bit version. What a palaver that seemed, but in due course i "got it", with the result that we got back to the analogue world after all at the 'speakers. I later returned to the Isle of Man and the same employers, now computer stuff only, building something less than two thousand PCs, but studiously avoiding the software wherever possible. Now I use various software programmes to do my bidding, all courtesy of a Linux operating system. I have learned a few command line routines (but all copy and paste), still not understanding any of it. Les. Last edited by MotorBikeLes; 23rd May 2020 at 10:37 pm. Reason: Correct XT and add a space where missing. |
23rd May 2020, 11:04 pm | #60 |
Nonode
Join Date: Sep 2017
Location: Stockport, Cheshire, UK.
Posts: 2,004
|
Re: Early personal computers - what for?
At primary school and my early at secondary I used BBC Micros, which were always a good machine for introducing someone to computing.
My parents bought an Acorn Electron for Christmas which when not used for playing games was easy to write simple programmes for. Later my school got some Acorn 3000s which seemed a bit jump in computing power but still fairly user friendly. At the same time my parents bought an IBM PS/1, which was a mixed bag, being DOS based but having Works pre-installed, which helped building up my word processing and spreadsheet skills. It was still working OK in 2004 when I was on parental orders to get rid of it. I still have the hard drive & mouse from it somewhere.
__________________
Hello IT: Have you Tried Turning It Off & On Again? |