@@maynnemillares Eh, the power requirements for RGB is so minimal that I wouldn't be worried about it's carbon footprint, I would however worry about it's utter tackyness.
@@Wizardofgosz That's like saying Steve Wozniak should have been Steve Jobs, just because he had all the technical prowess. But what made Jobs (for better and definitely for worse) Jobs was the characteristics he had that Woz didn't.
Lot of things shown and stated in the video, that people don't realize at first hand. 1) The operating system doesn't have any kind user interface. It is responsible to make the user interfaces to work, is it then a physical like keyboard, or visual like something on the display. It is the software that is hidden, under the hood like a car engine when person is driving a car. The terminal, command line etc ain't part of the OS at all, but standalone programs run by the OS. And all together builds a "System Software". 2) The operating system is what makes possible to run same program on different computer, or multiple programs same time on the same computer. Without operating system, user would be required to run each program separately on the computer, output the data somewhere and then start to run another program and input data to it. And to do something else same time was impossible. 3) The word "terminal" is literally the physical computer terminal. You had one display method (printer, monitor, lights) and one input method (keyboard). And you needed as many terminals as you had programs running on computer or people working. The "virtual terminal" that is represented here is exactly as the word says, a one computer but you can switch between like you would switch computer terminals physically walking on front of another one. And this is still active in Unix like machines where it is called TTY (TeleTYpe).
There is SO much for you to learn. So much you probably never will through a college unless you're spending more than you will probably make in a lifetime on school. You need to find us old timers to really learn stuff like they hint at in these videos. It's a great place to start at that. Yes I know that this is an old post but maybe this comment is still useful.
Then go and read a book from Andrew Tanenbaum about computer architectures. Als buy a book about operating systems from the same author. You will not regret it.
@@pauls640 sad, I did not realise life hit him so hard, the tactics used by the likes of microsoft no doubt not helping, that he apparently became an alcoholic.. Big business has a lot to answer for.
Very well done, considering that they had a bluescreened room, and then imposed the background image on the camera to set all the additional support boxes (the microprocessors, to step on and kneel) and then mark the locations of the parts to point at and talk about. And then run the whole script to explain these imagery parts 😀 While technologically not so impressive considering the used method (and how done in example weather forecasts for TV) the illustration was to the point.
I was impressed by that. Some of the shots aren’t great by today’s standards but I’m trying to figure out how much of that was built and how much was something like rear projection.
Well, it's seamless, because they LITERALLY build a computer in their size! Yes, it's not some bluescreen technology, you can see it when Stuart is standing on the CPU. They build that mainboard in man size in the studio. That was the most practical way to do such stuff in that time and the most cost effective (it's all just normal wood boxes painted so that they look like chips and cardboards that look like the controller card etc.
@@acmenipponair I think it was all a green screen, with some small green platforms. And somehow they had some text on the ground so they knew where to point. The initial card he walks from behind would have been a green divider.
@@gblargg We are talking about the year 1984! Not some production in the 1990s or 2000s. In 1984 computers and also TV equipment wasn't good enough for such stuff yet.
I actually had an interview with Gary Kildall at Digital Research around 1984 or 85. My background was UNIX Gary wasn’t a fan. Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz Operation a few miles up the coast was eating his lunch.
I find it fascinating how Gary Kildall was able to separate himself as Kildall the computer enthusiast and Kildall the CEO of DR. By the time this episode aired, he most likely already saw the writing on the wall for CP/M, but he didn't crack like I would have done. And is it just me or does that HP / MS DOS guy seem a bit smug? I'm sure that's not the case and I'm reading too much into it.
The HP guy looks nervous, he tries to pass questions off to the other guest, it kind of seems like he feels out of his league, but there are some very smart folks in that room.
Poor Gary Kildall. His CP/M OS was basically was what DOS was. When Stewart is sitting on the left side of the table, and Gary is sitting on the right -- that means Gary Kildall is a tech guest and not a co-host.
I actually think that part where they were inside the computer - was actually a really great and simple way of explaining how a computer works, and the BIOS - yes the cables and cards look different today, but it still all works exactly the same. These videos are really great I cannot get enough of them at the moment! 👍
The eye glasses in this episode are particularly outstanding! Seeing Gary Kildall (killed age 52) reminds me that the police never uncovered any answers with regards to his death, 'fell on the floor in a biker bar' sad end to a man that such an impact on the world around us. I guess stay out of biker bars.
It might seem old, but the explanation of how the CMOS, BIOS, CPU, RAM and Disk works is still valid. It hasn't changed that much more than that the modern I/O units are more intelligent and faster. In a way it was easier back than but also harder. If you knew what you were doing, you set things up exactly how you wanted it to work. Then again, no one or nothing held your hand. There was no Google to tell you what to do and usually, if you were a home user, you had to reside to computer magazines with articles which sometimes came with floppy disks that had shareware or other software on them.
there's an episode on plug and play from the 90's, there's a demo of adding a sound card to a PC, the spokesman (a self confessed expert) said it took about 3 days to get it in and properly configured because of IRQ and memory conflicts. of course now all you really need to do is plug it in and the OS will do the rest
+azynkron It was like working on a car, you got your buddies together and some beer then figured the shit out. You had magazines and manuals and shit. The big difference is complexity. I could rebuild a commodore 64 motherboard that has intact chips on a workbench, but a MSI M99? not a snowballs chance in hell.
My experience of the documentation of the 80s was that it was awful, but lots of it, and it was all you had so you had to cope with it and you didn't know any better. I remember wasting days trying to figure some things out before realising that the documentation was wrong. As an example, one OS function call which actually returned it's results in the opposite order to what the documentation said it did.
Yep, I used to build bespoke computers for customers in the early 90s before plug and play and used to often take a number of days to make sure everything was configured correctly, and particularly, optimising the driver loading to maximise the available memory. I remember getting the 'bible' on how to build computers ready for plug and play from Microsoft about a year before Windows 95 was released and before the early pre-release versions were even available and having to explain to the company owner why we needed to start using different/newer/more expensive multi I/o cards so that the parallel ports would support the new standards as well as 'configuring themselves' - which felt like black magic the first time we actually got the Win 95 beta and a new motherboard and cards and it all 'just worked''. The amazement didn't last long as in the early days, plug and play quickly earned a reputation to be plug and pray. Ah, fun times - now the frustration is a distant memory :)
if that is true then build an apple 2gs I dare ya and yes they still make the chips for that computer even today trust me you'll learn alot from doing it
@@raven4k998Exactly, older computers done it best in my opinion. Most of this new crew wouldn't understand anything about programming or computers back in the golden ages
@@forevernow9459 I know there's one kid that bitches about computers not being able to do division just because arm can't do it and I am like seriously nope any x86 can do division even the old Pentiums though some had a glitch with it but meh oh well they eventually fixed it
20:56 "Microsoft has purchased UNIX source code and has fixed it" Of course they did. Having a blast watching this series! Thanks for uploading to preserve this precious history :D I'd be in love with this show and wouldn't miss an episode if I lived back then.
I'll never understand why they had at their disposal a tried and tested, secure OS, and just said 'Feck it. We can do it SOOOOOOO much better!'. Apple 'Thinks Different' because they can. MS 'Thinks Stupid' because they can. Unix/Linux/BSD developers don't just think. They Do what they must because they can.
raydeen2k Your comment makes no sense, especially since MacOS is based on a Unix kernel and utilized a huge chunk of open source components both in kernel space and user space.
They haven't in the sense you think. They just opened a new architecture brand in the code to allow it be compatible with personal computers. It was called Xenix. Many other companies did ports . The most known being BSD and MacOS.
@Ray N Unix is a POSIX compliant OS. So is BSD, Linux, HP-UX, OSX, etc. That doesn't mean OSX is Unix. You're saying that a Ferrari is a sportscar, a Porsche is a sportscar, and therefor a Ferrari is a Porsche. That's bullshit.
@Ray N It proves that the systems are somewhat compatible. Not that they're the same. I can put the same fuel that a Ferrari uses in a Porsche and the Porsche will run just fine. Doesn't mean it's the same car.
2:23 is the most intuitive way of explaining how computers work (that ive seen). Such a great idea - to expand everything to a large scale so the student feels as if they’re walking through a small museum. This should be replicated in a modern context. Would also work really well for biology/chemistry/etc.
That Jean Yates gal was great on this episode. A couple of years after this aired she left technology entirely and didn't look back. Really interesting.
Gary kildall worked hard and actually created something, while everyone else worked hard and actually stole Gary's work. sadly this is still true today, no OS will ever be as fast, as transparent(ACTUALLY SHOWS EVERYTHING), or as cool as CP/M.
Kildall himself said CP/M was influenced by Digital's TOPS-10. Computing ideas rarely have single sources, but I agree Kildall was a leader and innovator probably under-appreciated by those in the field.
yea i get whatcha mean, but its like getting inspired to do better, and making something from nothing is a whole lot less douche bag than making up a plan to buy what was already made and adding what was already in there to it over years. if bill gates was smart he would have made a new operating system instead of hiding the old one under pretty pictures and sprites.
Right. "Everyone else worked hard and actually stole Gary's work." Of all videos to post that comment under, you pick a comparison to Unix which was created well before Gary even THOUGHT about CP/M. Well done. Idiot.
If there's one thing that can be said of early computing, is that users *knew* what the machine was doing moreso than they do now. Most people's experience with computing these days is of an impenetrable slab of aluminum, not know what's even inside, let alone what it does.
Sitting in front of a new MacBook Air, I hear yaz! I made a great career in semiconductors and then computers in the late 70's and all of the 80's. Watched every episode in real time, I think. I wonder if the present generation could follow any of this.
@SteelRodent Not fully accurate. A deal came about where they'd includ both and let the consumer decide. However IBM did a dirty thing of, I forget the exact figures, selling DOS for $50 and CP/M for $100 so of course everyone picked the cheaper option
What an exciting time that was, when home computers were relatively new and there were so many possibilities and ideas. My high school self was excited for the future. Now, not so much.
Yea not much has changed for computers in the last 10 years just better graphics so maybe if you're a hardcore gamer it's progressed, but you can't do anything that you couldn't before. Super boring. Same thing with phones. Last 5 years no progress other than yet again better graphics for cameras and screen resolution, but no new functionality.
also when we're young we're naturally hopeful for the future. now, you're not so much considering you were a high schooler in the 80's. 30 years from today you might not even be alive so whats to be hopeful for. same for me. But there's still things to be excited about today if you're young. we're both not so much anymore. hope is a young people thing.
What a coincidence. I started watching this show last week, and in this month's issue of German computer mag "c't" (more precisely: The "retro" edition), there's an article about Gary Kildall and CP/M, and how ground breaking it was. Apparently what ultimately led to it's downfall was that it was TOO modular (which meant that it wasn't easy to trade disks between computers, as there was no clear standard on how 5.25" disks should be formatted) and it was missing a hierarchical directory structure, which MS-DOS had, and which was that much more convenient than switching between up 16 user spaces, just to find a specific file.
re the segment inside the computer, that was an incredibly advanced bit of work for its day, very impressive how well they matched to the objects they werte interacting with to their movements.
Gary was an admitted drinker. He hated getting to the show so early in the morning because he was still recovering from the night before. The fact that he was still so brilliant is just incredible.
2018 update - Several operating systems lead the pack, no single OS has complete dominance, Microsoft Windows, Apple OS, Linux, are all alive and well. The OS of modern micro computers still provide the 7 functions listed in this chronicle, and due to the evolution of networked computers, "the Internet" and applications running on OS agnostic internet based HTML5 has cleverly worked around and worked with the variants of OS. It appears no single standard will emerge in the near future even in 2018
What? I don’t like Windows, but it’s by far the dominant desktop OS. It’s not even close. While plenty of functionality is online now, it’s delusional to think that Windows is not by far and large way ahead of everything else in the desktop OS consumer world.
OS's have a Duopoly like Coke and Pepsi. Everything is either windows or linux. All those web applications are hosted on one of the Duopoly's so it's still there. It's actually gotten worse, because of all the eating up of small startups even within services there are only a few major players e.g. Google that buys every possible competitor before they can grow and compete.
When my mom would give me crap about electrocuting myself when working on my computers, I would always just say "but it's only 12 volts!" The engineer says this at 3:30 and I feel so vindicated
It's the cutthroats who end up winning. The Gates, Jobs, and Trumps of the world. But Gary was a great guy who contributed a ton to the early years of computing, things that still have impact reaching into today, and it's a pleasure to watch him on these Computer Chronicles episodes.
Gary was smarter than Gates and far less of a nerd. He was more of a renegade like Richard Branson and that type of personality wasn’t appreciated in the operating system world back then. Gary got rich selling to Novell but became a raging alcoholic and died of a suspicious head injury at age 52 after drinking at a biker bar in Northern California. Tragic.
As someone whos in college for computer science i find this show fascinating, I can follow along pretty easy because the fundementals back then are a lot like the same concepts used now
Notice they don't even talk about GUIs. The Macintosh had already been announced, and Windows came the next year. At this point, "serious" computer people thought GUIs were a novelty for amateurs that would never catch on. Which is why Jobs and Gates became billionaires.
MS-DOS was a modified QDOS which in itself was a crude rip-off of CP/M. That is why most people are stuck with drive letters to represent storage, terrible rip-off system. The Unix-way of describing drives makes more sense.
Unix-way of describing drives is... none? A random filesystem path tells nothing of a storage device, and not being able to move/link between two directories is confusing. Drive letters clearly separate filesystems and give the information of the drive type, its availability, etc.
Biggest mistake of Gary Kildall was not to jump when IBM came to him looking for an operating system for the IBM PC XT years before. He could have been what Bill Gates became instead.
To be fair, Bill Gates approached him, not IBM directly. Because Kildall turned down the offer, they went with Tim Paterson, which isn't nearly as rich or famous as Bill Gates. So no, it wouldn't have made that much difference for Kildall, he wouldn't have been what Gates became at all. Another key fact here: Gate's mom was part of IBM's board at the time. Bill, and no one else, had almost guaranteed success in this story from the start. Let that sink in...
The early episodes, like 1983 and 1984, were a lot more formal and it was more like a class, like Herb Lechner explaning what an operating system does and to read Chapter Eight. The later episodes were a lot more formal and you can tell that there probably was no chapters to read. I like the Windows '95 and the Windows '98 episodes. Nobody asked you to read from a textbook in those episodes.
@@PaulHojda correct. a trained eye can see the compositing artifacts around the men as they were in the scene. plus the front lighting that was obvious when the mac guy was "writing" on the clip board.
"Be sure to read chapter 8 in your text. In the next lesson..." Wait. This is a class? Now I'm going to have anxiety dreams about taking a test when I haven't been in class the whole semester.
That's because the Apple II was Steve Wozniak's baby. The Mac and everything after it was Steve Jobs' baby. Though the Mac did get pretty open there for a while in the years Jobs was at Next etc.
@@BlownMacTruck how exactly do you work that out? Just because they based their OS on something that IS open doesn't mean their closed source, walled garden implementation of the code is also open. Surely I've got to be misunderstanding you
Christopher Howlett You really don’t know much about their open source initiatives or projects do you? You might want to look at the number of open source projects they’ve not only started, but consistently contribute to, or their development tool chain, or their open source integration. It’s far more than just a few kernel bits and is pretty obvious if you do even a tiny bit of development on a Mac. That’s actually one of the reasons Macs are super popular on dev teams. The idea that Apple is highly proprietary is totally blown out of proportion by people who haven’t actually used their products in years.
It's mindboggling to think that what they saw as cutting edge system hardware (CPUs, drives, memory) in 1984, today in 2023 would not be able to run the operating systems on our smartphones and TV sets, much less a desktop, laptop, or tablet PC.
Seems like CP/M was much more sophisticated compared to DOS. I mean, multitasking build in? I have never seen that in MS DOS. Curious if CP/M also had the 640kb limit? All in all, I think MS has been holding innovation back for years.
As a human whose dad was in this industry at the exact time of this, it honestly annoys me somehow. Have a life outside of technology. The only advice I can give.
If they were inside a computer today they would have to wear sunglasses because of all the RGB lights.
ruth gay-dar binsberg, yo!
Stupid rgb, just increases the carbon footprint of computers without increasing performance.
@@maynnemillares Eh, the power requirements for RGB is so minimal that I wouldn't be worried about it's carbon footprint, I would however worry about it's utter tackyness.
It would be like friggin"😜 disco in there!
LMAO, nice. :D
Gary Kildall should have gotten more credit , I miss him , what a great guy :) QC
Gary Kildall should have benen Bill Gates. His concurrent OS's were vastly superior to MSDOS. All PC's should have shipped with them.
Gary was a genius.
I miss Quaaludes. Forget Gary.
@@Wizardofgosz That's like saying Steve Wozniak should have been Steve Jobs, just because he had all the technical prowess. But what made Jobs (for better and definitely for worse) Jobs was the characteristics he had that Woz didn't.
@@mahna_mahna jobs was a used car salesman. Woz was the talent.
Lot of things shown and stated in the video, that people don't realize at first hand.
1) The operating system doesn't have any kind user interface. It is responsible to make the user interfaces to work, is it then a physical like keyboard, or visual like something on the display. It is the software that is hidden, under the hood like a car engine when person is driving a car. The terminal, command line etc ain't part of the OS at all, but standalone programs run by the OS. And all together builds a "System Software".
2) The operating system is what makes possible to run same program on different computer, or multiple programs same time on the same computer. Without operating system, user would be required to run each program separately on the computer, output the data somewhere and then start to run another program and input data to it. And to do something else same time was impossible.
3) The word "terminal" is literally the physical computer terminal. You had one display method (printer, monitor, lights) and one input method (keyboard). And you needed as many terminals as you had programs running on computer or people working.
The "virtual terminal" that is represented here is exactly as the word says, a one computer but you can switch between like you would switch computer terminals physically walking on front of another one. And this is still active in Unix like machines where it is called TTY (TeleTYpe).
This show was well ahead of it's time. It's unbelievable this show actually existed during this time.
but they also point out how the os back then didn't spy on you like windows does today
Not really ahead of it’s time. It was of it’s time.
"the weak point in the system seems to be the operator" ....Still the truth today!
+WAQWBrentwood Even more so than back then!
IKR? Right?
PICNIC!
The problem is between the chair and the keyboard
The cause of most computer /IT releated incidents resides between the keyboard and the backrest of the chair.
I love this show, it's so calming and interesting
It's my afternoon de-compression comfort food now.
watching these old episodes makes me want to learn more about computers
did you get the warning about two men inside your computer??
There is SO much for you to learn. So much you probably never will through a college unless you're spending more than you will probably make in a lifetime on school. You need to find us old timers to really learn stuff like they hint at in these videos. It's a great place to start at that. Yes I know that this is an old post but maybe this comment is still useful.
@@raven4k998 Well, at least that's better than Intel inside. 😜
Totally. It’s like watching the foundation of modern life bring birthed. I love this program.
Then go and read a book from Andrew Tanenbaum about computer architectures. Als buy a book about operating systems from the same author. You will not regret it.
Gary Kildall gone too soon, 52 is way too young. I miss those old timers who see computer as a tool to enhance our lives rather then $ sign.
He died in '94, but the circumstances are not clear. Apparently a fight in a bar, hit his dead and died a few days later.
OMG you said a mouthful. We're way past work enhancement tools era.
@@justincase9638 yes, next step, robotic AI..... we're moving fast, the new frontier is here.
@@pauls640 sad, I did not realise life hit him so hard, the tactics used by the likes of microsoft no doubt not helping, that he apparently became an alcoholic.. Big business has a lot to answer for.
Poor Gary, RIP, we will remeber you.
Intrinia Studios, what's remeber mean? is that pig Latin? REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER
Stewart said in a 2016 VCF keynote that the "inside an Apple II" demonstration was one of his favorite things that he ever did on the show :)
It was extremely well done, especially for the era!
Very well done, considering that they had a bluescreened room, and then imposed the background image on the camera to set all the additional support boxes (the microprocessors, to step on and kneel) and then mark the locations of the parts to point at and talk about. And then run the whole script to explain these imagery parts 😀
While technologically not so impressive considering the used method (and how done in example weather forecasts for TV) the illustration was to the point.
3:00 not gonna lie, the integration of the two guys into the motherboard is pretty seamless.
I was impressed by that. Some of the shots aren’t great by today’s standards but I’m trying to figure out how much of that was built and how much was something like rear projection.
@@JasonZakrajsek Same !
Well, it's seamless, because they LITERALLY build a computer in their size! Yes, it's not some bluescreen technology, you can see it when Stuart is standing on the CPU. They build that mainboard in man size in the studio. That was the most practical way to do such stuff in that time and the most cost effective (it's all just normal wood boxes painted so that they look like chips and cardboards that look like the controller card etc.
@@acmenipponair I think it was all a green screen, with some small green platforms. And somehow they had some text on the ground so they knew where to point. The initial card he walks from behind would have been a green divider.
@@gblargg We are talking about the year 1984! Not some production in the 1990s or 2000s. In 1984 computers and also TV equipment wasn't good enough for such stuff yet.
I actually had an interview with Gary Kildall at Digital Research around 1984 or 85. My background was UNIX Gary wasn’t a fan. Meanwhile, the Santa Cruz Operation a few miles up the coast was eating his lunch.
you can see, to me, the disgust in Mr. Kildall's face when Ms. Yates was going on and on about unix. gotta say, she was on point!
Man! I wish that Gary Kildall did not die.
I find it fascinating how Gary Kildall was able to separate himself as Kildall the computer enthusiast and Kildall the CEO of DR. By the time this episode aired, he most likely already saw the writing on the wall for CP/M, but he didn't crack like I would have done.
And is it just me or does that HP / MS DOS guy seem a bit smug? I'm sure that's not the case and I'm reading too much into it.
Gary showed great restraint, I would have ticked the smug MSDOS guy off considering it was a rip off of CPM.
@MichaelKingsfordGray Give us your I.P. Address, Social, all your Passwords, and all your keys. Coward.
@MichaelKingsfordGray There is good reason for why social media networks (some even force) require real names - and its not a good one.
I was thinking, those looks seems familiar for the ms dos guy, then I googled Abraham Lincoln.
The HP guy looks nervous, he tries to pass questions off to the other guest, it kind of seems like he feels out of his league, but there are some very smart folks in that room.
Poor Gary Kildall. His CP/M OS was basically was what DOS was. When Stewart is sitting on the left side of the table, and Gary is sitting on the right -- that means Gary Kildall is a tech guest and not a co-host.
i love the part they are inside the computer
+Tony Montana I know! I always loved that stuff. Lets see...I was 15 in 1984 lol..would have drooled for this ep.
For 1984, that green screen work is absolutely top notch and still looks pretty damn decent today!
DOS ERROR!
TWO MEN INSIDE
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL can't stop laughing
Was that a computer or the inside of an abacus?
Back in those days the green screen was blue! Amazing how far we've come!
That little "standing inside the computer" bit was a pretty impressive display of green screen for a (probably) rather low budget show in the mid 80s
Yeah I was thinking the same thing. Pretty impressive for the time.
They’re computer nerds, it’s their strong suit
Wasn't low budget, was the major computer needs how in the day
Was greatly done
I actually think that part where they were inside the computer - was actually a really great and simple way of explaining how a computer works, and the BIOS - yes the cables and cards look different today, but it still all works exactly the same. These videos are really great I cannot get enough of them at the moment! 👍
did you get the two men inside your computer warning yet I did and didn't care I figured they would avoid getting electrocuted
The eye glasses in this episode are particularly outstanding! Seeing Gary Kildall (killed age 52) reminds me that the police never uncovered any answers with regards to his death, 'fell on the floor in a biker bar' sad end to a man that such an impact on the world around us. I guess stay out of biker bars.
No. Stay away from Gill Bates
I love these tv shows, especially the old ones... This were such a magical times!
Those old keyboard clicks are beautiful.
Mechanical Keyboard - Which can still be puchased.
@@ericinla65 I know. My first computer was a Commodore 64.
Back when computers were big enough that you could get inside of them.
"There has yet to emerge a standard that the entire industry is willing to endorse"
It might seem old, but the explanation of how the CMOS, BIOS, CPU, RAM and Disk works is still valid. It hasn't changed that much more than that the modern I/O units are more intelligent and faster. In a way it was easier back than but also harder. If you knew what you were doing, you set things up exactly how you wanted it to work. Then again, no one or nothing held your hand. There was no Google to tell you what to do and usually, if you were a home user, you had to reside to computer magazines with articles which sometimes came with floppy disks that had shareware or other software on them.
there's an episode on plug and play from the 90's, there's a demo of adding a sound card to a PC, the spokesman (a self confessed expert) said it took about 3 days to get it in and properly configured because of IRQ and memory conflicts. of course now all you really need to do is plug it in and the OS will do the rest
Documentation was MUCH better in the 80s. At least it seems so to me, maybe that's only because systems were simpler.
+azynkron It was like working on a car, you got your buddies together and some beer then figured the shit out. You had magazines and manuals and shit.
The big difference is complexity. I could rebuild a commodore 64 motherboard that has intact chips on a workbench, but a MSI M99? not a snowballs chance in hell.
My experience of the documentation of the 80s was that it was awful, but lots of it, and it was all you had so you had to cope with it and you didn't know any better. I remember wasting days trying to figure some things out before realising that the documentation was wrong. As an example, one OS function call which actually returned it's results in the opposite order to what the documentation said it did.
Yep, I used to build bespoke computers for customers in the early 90s before plug and play and used to often take a number of days to make sure everything was configured correctly, and particularly, optimising the driver loading to maximise the available memory.
I remember getting the 'bible' on how to build computers ready for plug and play from Microsoft about a year before Windows 95 was released and before the early pre-release versions were even available and having to explain to the company owner why we needed to start using different/newer/more expensive multi I/o cards so that the parallel ports would support the new standards as well as 'configuring themselves' - which felt like black magic the first time we actually got the Win 95 beta and a new motherboard and cards and it all 'just worked''. The amazement didn't last long as in the early days, plug and play quickly earned a reputation to be plug and pray.
Ah, fun times - now the frustration is a distant memory :)
Thanks so much for sharing these !!!
To understand the future, you must understand the past. :-)
if that is true then build an apple 2gs I dare ya and yes they still make the chips for that computer even today trust me you'll learn alot from doing it
@@raven4k998Exactly, older computers done it best in my opinion. Most of this new crew wouldn't understand anything about programming or computers back in the golden ages
@@forevernow9459 I know there's one kid that bitches about computers not being able to do division just because arm can't do it and I am like seriously nope any x86 can do division even the old Pentiums though some had a glitch with it but meh oh well they eventually fixed it
Herb Lechner - What a man! This guy had such an amazing voice!
I grew up watching this show. Loved it and learned a lot from this as well as Bits and Bytes (my favourite).
I'm so glad I found these! So awesome!!!
20:56 "Microsoft has purchased UNIX source code and has fixed it"
Of course they did.
Having a blast watching this series! Thanks for uploading to preserve this precious history :D I'd be in love with this show and wouldn't miss an episode if I lived back then.
***** The Unix filesystem was *really* fragile back then, and MS made it more robust.
I'll never understand why they had at their disposal a tried and tested, secure OS, and just said 'Feck it. We can do it SOOOOOOO much better!'. Apple 'Thinks Different' because they can. MS 'Thinks Stupid' because they can. Unix/Linux/BSD developers don't just think. They Do what they must because they can.
raydeen2k Your comment makes no sense, especially since MacOS is based on a Unix kernel and utilized a huge chunk of open source components both in kernel space and user space.
They haven't in the sense you think. They just opened a new architecture brand in the code to allow it be compatible with personal computers. It was called Xenix.
Many other companies did ports .
The most known being BSD and MacOS.
Meanwhile, in Finland...
UNIX/Linux: after more than thirty years, they're still the backbone of the modern Internet.
+Ray N I wish there was more of a push into the home market. It'd be nice to have a major alternative to Windows and Mac.
@Ray N People who don't believe you are right. OSX is NOT Unix. It's NOT Linux. It may be POSIX compliant, but that doesn't mean it's the same OS.
@Ray N No, it's POSIX compliant. And there's no such thing as a "Linux command".
@Ray N Unix is a POSIX compliant OS. So is BSD, Linux, HP-UX, OSX, etc. That doesn't mean OSX is Unix. You're saying that a Ferrari is a sportscar, a Porsche is a sportscar, and therefor a Ferrari is a Porsche. That's bullshit.
@Ray N It proves that the systems are somewhat compatible. Not that they're the same. I can put the same fuel that a Ferrari uses in a Porsche and the Porsche will run just fine. Doesn't mean it's the same car.
2:23 is the most intuitive way of explaining how computers work (that ive seen). Such a great idea - to expand everything to a large scale so the student feels as if they’re walking through a small museum. This should be replicated in a modern context. Would also work really well for biology/chemistry/etc.
That Jean Yates gal was great on this episode. A couple of years after this aired she left technology entirely and didn't look back. Really interesting.
Where can I find information on her?
I love this program! I watch during lunch and enjoy all the memories it brings to mind.
Gary kildall worked hard and actually created something, while everyone else worked hard and actually stole Gary's work. sadly this is still true today, no OS will ever be as fast, as transparent(ACTUALLY SHOWS EVERYTHING), or as cool as CP/M.
Kildall himself said CP/M was influenced by Digital's TOPS-10. Computing ideas rarely have single sources, but I agree Kildall was a leader and innovator probably under-appreciated by those in the field.
yea i get whatcha mean, but its like getting inspired to do better, and making something from nothing is a whole lot less douche bag than making up a plan to buy what was already made and adding what was already in there to it over years. if bill gates was smart he would have made a new operating system instead of hiding the old one under pretty pictures and sprites.
Right. "Everyone else worked hard and actually stole Gary's work." Of all videos to post that comment under, you pick a comparison to Unix which was created well before Gary even THOUGHT about CP/M. Well done. Idiot.
Remember when Tech-bros were calm, soft-spoken people in suits?
Now they wear Mario kart shirts and watch anime religiously
They are talking about unix and xenix. Linus Torvalds was then 15 years old..
Probably the only episode of The Computer Chronicles where Cheifet doesn't keep cutting guests off and hurrying them up.
Stuart’s hair was on point
that bluescreen effect for the 1980s is quite well done
If there's one thing that can be said of early computing, is that users *knew* what the machine was doing moreso than they do now. Most people's experience with computing these days is of an impenetrable slab of aluminum, not know what's even inside, let alone what it does.
Sitting in front of a new MacBook Air, I hear yaz! I made a great career in semiconductors and then computers in the late 70's and all of the 80's. Watched every episode in real time, I think. I wonder if the present generation could follow any of this.
Delightfully quaint, yet brilliant & insightful in its day.
Thanks for preserving this priceless piece of history.
Haha the editing öf two people on a mainboard was kinda funny
.
It's very educational.
Tribute to Gary. I'm thrilled that he could do this show, meet people, and see products!
Ahhh, back when computers were actually exciting.
warning two man are inside your computer run with care sir
19:31 badass smile and mic drop. Feel bad for the CP/M MS/DOS boys after being compared to Unix like that.
Its mad that CPM had multitasking back then but DOS didn't yet DOS took off more.
@SteelRodent Not fully accurate. A deal came about where they'd includ both and let the consumer decide. However IBM did a dirty thing of, I forget the exact figures, selling DOS for $50 and CP/M for $100 so of course everyone picked the cheaper option
@SteelRodent - his wife divorced him after the IBM deal went bad.
What an exciting time that was, when home computers were relatively new and there were so many possibilities and ideas. My high school self was excited for the future. Now, not so much.
Yea not much has changed for computers in the last 10 years just better graphics so maybe if you're a hardcore gamer it's progressed, but you can't do anything that you couldn't before. Super boring. Same thing with phones. Last 5 years no progress other than yet again better graphics for cameras and screen resolution, but no new functionality.
@@rickybobby7276 Well said, totally agree. Tech stagnation 🙄
also when we're young we're naturally hopeful for the future. now, you're not so much considering you were a high schooler in the 80's. 30 years from today you might not even be alive so whats to be hopeful for. same for me. But there's still things to be excited about today if you're young. we're both not so much anymore. hope is a young people thing.
27:35 Don't tell Herb that I didn't read chapter 8 back in 1984, I just skimmed through it.
Lol
I have have laughed too much at "2 guys inside the computer" error message
What a coincidence. I started watching this show last week, and in this month's issue of German computer mag "c't" (more precisely: The "retro" edition), there's an article about Gary Kildall and CP/M, and how ground breaking it was. Apparently what ultimately led to it's downfall was that it was TOO modular (which meant that it wasn't easy to trade disks between computers, as there was no clear standard on how 5.25" disks should be formatted) and it was missing a hierarchical directory structure, which MS-DOS had, and which was that much more convenient than switching between up 16 user spaces, just to find a specific file.
You should also read about DR-DOS. That's what CP/M was transformed into to offer a competitive DOS System to MS-DOS.
I find they are exceptionally educational for anyone interested in learning about how computers have evolved.
re the segment inside the computer, that was an incredibly advanced bit of work for its day, very impressive how well they matched to the objects they werte interacting with to their movements.
What a great episode!
They both have epic combovers!
Hard to remember a time when "calendar" was such a big deal...but it was.
Lol, so true.
Gary was an admitted drinker. He hated getting to the show so early in the morning because he was still recovering from the night before. The fact that he was still so brilliant is just incredible.
I'd be a drinker, too, if I lost an IBM contract to a pirated copy of my life's work. By the way, what motivated you to make such an asinine comment?
2018 update - Several operating systems lead the pack, no single OS has complete dominance, Microsoft Windows, Apple OS, Linux, are all alive and well. The OS of modern micro computers still provide the 7 functions listed in this chronicle, and due to the evolution of networked computers, "the Internet" and applications running on OS agnostic internet based HTML5 has cleverly worked around and worked with the variants of OS. It appears no single standard will emerge in the near future even in 2018
not quite. windows has overwhelming lock on enterprise computing.
What? I don’t like Windows, but it’s by far the dominant desktop OS. It’s not even close. While plenty of functionality is online now, it’s delusional to think that Windows is not by far and large way ahead of everything else in the desktop OS consumer world.
Linux is dominant, the only segment where it is a minority is with desktops and laptops.
@@maynnemillares yup and people forget about NAS and routers, switches, iot devices, etc that they don't realize they are using
OS's have a Duopoly like Coke and Pepsi. Everything is either windows or linux. All those web applications are hosted on one of the Duopoly's so it's still there. It's actually gotten worse, because of all the eating up of small startups even within services there are only a few major players e.g. Google that buys every possible competitor before they can grow and compete.
it still deserves a “BRAVO” in 2020!!!!!
2:20 -That is SO classic PBS! I love it!
“Warning! Two men inside” hilarious
When my mom would give me crap about electrocuting myself when working on my computers, I would always just say "but it's only 12 volts!" The engineer says this at 3:30 and I feel so vindicated
gary was a gent. not so with the guys who "won"
It's the cutthroats who end up winning. The Gates, Jobs, and Trumps of the world. But Gary was a great guy who contributed a ton to the early years of computing, things that still have impact reaching into today, and it's a pleasure to watch him on these Computer Chronicles episodes.
@@kingcrimson234 Gates and Kobe, yes. Trump just inherited Manhattan.
Gary and Tony look like brothers.
Gary was smarter than Gates and far less of a nerd. He was more of a renegade like Richard Branson and that type of personality wasn’t appreciated in the operating system world back then. Gary got rich selling to Novell but became a raging alcoholic and died of a suspicious head injury at age 52 after drinking at a biker bar in Northern California. Tragic.
As someone whos in college for computer science i find this show fascinating, I can follow along pretty easy because the fundementals back then are a lot like the same concepts used now
2:19 that was so well done :O
Susan Boyle from UNIX....
"We all deal with operating systems, but frankly not many of us understand what it is." Well, it's nice to see some things _haven't_ changed...
Linux is open source, you can download its sourcecode since 1991.
As a fan of microcomputers, this show was made for me.
When HP still meant something and treated employees like human beings.
was this a kids show back in the day? this is awesome.
This was for any age. It tried to be novice friendly
I like it when they ask, "what ia the diff between MsDOS and CP/M?" Msdos is cp/m clone 16bit! Hahaha
If they brought this back i would still watch it. It would be better than reality tv trash.
4:38 That's what she said.
Notice they don't even talk about GUIs. The Macintosh had already been announced, and Windows came the next year. At this point, "serious" computer people thought GUIs were a novelty for amateurs that would never catch on. Which is why Jobs and Gates became billionaires.
Thanks it's very instructive for learning history of computer operating system. My favorite system is AmigaOS a derivative of UNIX.
lol Stuart asks him how DOS is different from CP/M and he just basically lists all the ways they're the same...
I remember running GEM on an Amstrad, five years before Windows.
MS-DOS was a modified QDOS which in itself was a crude rip-off of CP/M.
That is why most people are stuck with drive letters to represent storage, terrible rip-off system.
The Unix-way of describing drives makes more sense.
Unix-way of describing drives is... none? A random filesystem path tells nothing of a storage device, and not being able to move/link between two directories is confusing.
Drive letters clearly separate filesystems and give the information of the drive type, its availability, etc.
Bruce Tognazzini!! I remember first seeing his name on Apple II programs like BRICK OUT and the APPLE PRESENTS APPLE demo disk.
Biggest mistake of Gary Kildall was not to jump when IBM came to him looking for an operating system for the IBM PC XT years before. He could have been what Bill Gates became instead.
To be fair, Bill Gates approached him, not IBM directly. Because Kildall turned down the offer, they went with Tim Paterson, which isn't nearly as rich or famous as Bill Gates. So no, it wouldn't have made that much difference for Kildall, he wouldn't have been what Gates became at all.
Another key fact here: Gate's mom was part of IBM's board at the time.
Bill, and no one else, had almost guaranteed success in this story from the start. Let that sink in...
2:31 He's looking at his imaginary watch... what a magician!
why not today isn't these kind of tv :(???
Meanwhile in 1984... Journey, Van Halen, Bon Jovi were touring. This computer stuff was not mainstream...yet.
more illuminating than today's nonexistent tv lessons.
I'd like their thoughts on the level of bloatware and ads in the latest release of Windows 11.
The early episodes, like 1983 and 1984, were a lot more formal and it was more like a class, like Herb Lechner explaning what an operating system does and to read Chapter Eight. The later episodes were a lot more formal and you can tell that there probably was no chapters to read. I like the Windows '95 and the Windows '98 episodes. Nobody asked you to read from a textbook in those episodes.
An Incredible level of detail was put into making a human sized computer to walk around in.......
It was probably green screen
@@PaulHojda correct. a trained eye can see the compositing artifacts around the men as they were in the scene. plus the front lighting that was obvious when the mac guy was "writing" on the clip board.
Gary was awesome, made multiple consoles on one machine. That is something MSDOS never copied.
2:35 Tog! Long-time UI guy. Ran the “Ask Tog” column in one of Apple’s developer publications, and I have the book of his compiled columns.
Battle of the dignified combover
in metaverse i wanna live in 1984
"Be sure to read chapter 8 in your text. In the next lesson..." Wait. This is a class? Now I'm going to have anxiety dreams about taking a test when I haven't been in class the whole semester.
Taking notes, as I know this is going to be on a pop quiz at any time.
2:25 Lol back then Apple were more open
That's because the Apple II was Steve Wozniak's baby. The Mac and everything after it was Steve Jobs' baby. Though the Mac did get pretty open there for a while in the years Jobs was at Next etc.
If you don’t think Apple software is incredibly open, you have no idea what modern MacOS runs on.
@@BlownMacTruck how exactly do you work that out? Just because they based their OS on something that IS open doesn't mean their closed source, walled garden implementation of the code is also open. Surely I've got to be misunderstanding you
Christopher Howlett You really don’t know much about their open source initiatives or projects do you? You might want to look at the number of open source projects they’ve not only started, but consistently contribute to, or their development tool chain, or their open source integration. It’s far more than just a few kernel bits and is pretty obvious if you do even a tiny bit of development on a Mac. That’s actually one of the reasons Macs are super popular on dev teams. The idea that Apple is highly proprietary is totally blown out of proportion by people who haven’t actually used their products in years.
back then apples did not yet overheat and burn themselves out like they do today
It's mindboggling to think that what they saw as cutting edge system hardware (CPUs, drives, memory) in 1984, today in 2023 would not be able to run the operating systems on our smartphones and TV sets, much less a desktop, laptop, or tablet PC.
9:59 Captain Dallas from the Nostromo did survive the xenomorph attack.
Damn, love that edm.
That last sentence she said made the most sense. Shes brilliant. Take notes ladies of 2020.
Who t.f we kidding no women will read this comment.
Seems like CP/M was much more sophisticated compared to DOS.
I mean, multitasking build in? I have never seen that in MS DOS. Curious if CP/M also had the 640kb limit?
All in all, I think MS has been holding innovation back for years.
As a human whose dad was in this industry at the exact time of this, it honestly annoys me somehow. Have a life outside of technology. The only advice I can give.