Powerful memories indeed! To tell the secret I wrote my very first computer program in 1969 in college (my father did not allow 'frivolous' games in the house). It was a stack of punched paper cards that I 'programmed' on a great console the size of a steel office desk that sounded like a bren gun whenever I pressed a key. I then handed these precious missives to a gentleman through a window. He loaded them into a great bin with many other 'programs', then, with what I have always described as a genuflection, he placed the 'compiler' as the first group of cards. After a distinct hesitation he pushed a great red button. The machine rumbled to life and began to draw the cards from the deck one by one. We went to the 'operations room overlook' where we could gaze through the glass windows at 'The Machine'. We were all praying to the computer gods that no cards would catch in the works and ruin the 'run'. And my prayers were answered! To my great fortune the 'batch' ran correctly and my program (all of 100 lines) executed correctly. I had then, officially, become a 'computer programmer'. Many thanks for this cool, bracing stroll along memory lane!
Lol the Bren gun is also a dinosaur itself now.... When I was younger in the Irish army I used to love the Bren cos there was a magazine and easily cleaned build It was better than this US belt fed nonsense. Typical British simplicity in design. Whatever happened to this British design simplicity? With brexit the Brits will need to get that back. Notice after all how many of those machines up there were designed built and sales driven by Brits.
@@mickelodiansurname9578 Considering this episode was at the British Computer Museum, it is to be expected that the computers would have a British bent to them. If you go to the Smithsonian (IIRC was a naturalized Brit, but originally born in France) Museum in Washington DC, the focus is US designed and built computers, with a smattering of other countries designs. As is the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and the Computer Museum in Seattle, and others. The General Purpose machine CPUs are mostly US designed and built (80xx, 65xx, 68xxx, Zilog, Cyrex, Intel x86, AMD, etc...) then used by manufacturers around the world...
I remember that I argued for 3 month straight, day and night with my parents for a brand new commodore 64... Finally, one day, when I had lost all hope for ever getting that, my father came home with bunch of boxes and called me down stairs....and there it was, my first PC... One of the condition was that I had to learn programming and not just gaming, so I started going to an institute to learn BASIC language, even today I use the principals I've had learned then for programming and understanding new languages.... PS: I never forget the smell of that brand new C64...
Blimey, does this invoke some great memories! My best mate had a ZX81 and I begged Santa for a ZX81 in 1983. My parents scrimped and saved and, unbeknownst to me with my brother's agreement, bought me and my brother jointly a 16k ZX Spectrum that Christmas. When I opened it, I burst into tears - firstly, because I never expected to receive such an amazing gift, but also secondly because my brother (who at the time we did not get on well with at all) agreed to to it. Without exaggeration, it completely changed my life.
I owned every one of those, including the Atari 400 which I wired to the bus of my TRS-80 so I would have color. I named it the ATARS480. Everything became a chore to program in assembler and finally got the Columbia IBM clone. An amazing time in history.
Jonathan , Aah! Now you're talking about my first PC, the Columbia! This was truly a PC clone, at least more so than the Compaq. It did, however, have a proprietary mother board with "non-standard" (though few standards there were back then) slot spacing so I was never able to upgrade using that case. It was one of the most configurable PC's available back then, with a ton of options from the manufacturer (Columbia). I was on a tight budget and focused on what I already knew was the most important option ... MEMORY! I got the max of 256K of RAM. However, this left me with not enough money for the 20MB hard disk, so I opted for dual 5.25" floppy drives. I also couldn't afford color (plus I was not impressed with CGA resolution), so I opted for the monochrome interface and monitor, which was capable of 80x24 characters display (much more important for a programmer who used a 3270 terminal at work). I used that monitor through my next couple of upgrades, even getting a high-res gfx card that supported it, so I could try out the new MS-Windows GUI (running under[/over?] DOS). I also invested in a Northstar keyboard, which was the best available at the time. It had function keys at both the top and the side. I was used to the side keys on my 3270 terminal. Function keys were really important back then, in the days of CPM & DOS. Now I never use them, even when they're available! Thanks for the memories guys!
I had an Atari 800 and an 800xl wired to a common peripheral bus. I could compile a program on the 800, write it to disk, then boot it on the XL for testing. Which was handy, since the program was too big for the 800 with the language cart plugged in. Fun Times. :D
The first machine I owned was a Columbia VP, the 'luggable' offering from them. I had worked with PC's and CPM based machines for a couple of years before owning it. Eagle computer with CPM and later MS/DOS. At one of my work places, we had upgraded from a TRS80 Model II with Pickles and Trout CPM to a Micromation Mariner that had 8 Z80 slaves, each with 64k of RAM, a 20MB hard disk and ran MPM. One of the printers we had was a Florida Data. It printed at 1200 CPS! It was so loud and made the stand wobble as the print head moved so quickly. Eventually, screws started falling out of it. We built a closet with sliding doors for it along with a NEC Spinwriter, in the end, to cut down the noise.
Had the VIC-20 and the Commodore 128 (it could boot in to C-64 mode as well) and the C-128 was capable of backwards compatibility with C-64 programs. The school however had the Apple IIe's and the RadioShack TRS-80's (Model I and later upgrading to the Model IV). The Model IV's were basically run in a slave/master configuration, mostly for computer typing class as each of the slaves loaded the typing software off the master computer. There were a few games loaded on the master computer by the computer course students and you could run games on the slave machines. Also recall using CompuServe on our family computer at home (C-128). Even though it was a toll-free call, they charged by the minute on the toll-free line. We were stuck with using the toll-free line as there were no local dialup numbers.
My first pc was a Timex . However I quickly returned it and got a Vic20 in its place. Soon after I had a Commodore 64, which I still feel had the best keyboard I've ever used. Later I purchase an executive 64 (luggable) which I had until about ten years ago. Many computers have followed, with my phone being more powerful than all but a few laptops and pcs I've owned. Thanks for your channel, I enjoy it quite a lot and I greatly appreciate you are not long winded nor do you have constant back round music.
Great video! My first computer was the TI 99/4a. It was a great little computer. I still have it packed away, and I get it out every now and then. Still works fine!
I still have two Sinclair 1000s, a Kaypro II, a Texas Instruments 1000 (or something like that) and several other early IBM compatible PCs along with an Atari video game with stacks of game cartridges. I lived in Los Angeles in the '70s and was very much involved with the early days of the "Micro Computer" revolution. I sold "Mini Computers" for Sperry Univac as well as did some programming and system support for Lear Siegler when they were making the ADM 3 line of computer terminals. I even have an ADM 3 and a copy of a Data General Nova 3 "copy cat/knockoff" mini computer Lear Siegler was trying to market in the last '70s. As you stated in you video you did indeed stimulate a stream of fond memories of those times. Having lived through those years wrestling with the problems of trying to get those early computers to do something useful, I am constantly amazed at the capabilities of the current hardware and software that is available for such meager amounts of money these days. Such as the Raspberry PI and the other single board computer systems that are out. I can't begin to keep up with the advancements. Thank you for what you are doing in "Explaining Computers". Cheers
Great stuff Chris. My first computer was an Apple IIC, and I still have an Apple IIGS (in boxes in the garage). I was fortunate to be able to visit the National Museum of Computing while on an extended London layover (airline pilot). Adjacent to the museum is the now Unclassified Bletchley Park, where the Brits broke the German Enigma Code during World War 2 (as depicted in the movie "The Imitation Game"). Very interesting and most worthwhile to visit, you could easily spend a day at each of these wonderful sites.
Powerful memories indeed! I remember getting a used ZX Spectrum with Christmas money (and matching funds from Mum & Dad) and sitting at it with my ALF teddy programming in a firework display from a magazine. No tape back-up of course so it stayed turned on for two days while I input the lines of text - which ran - a couple of sprites shooting up the screen and bursting with a suitable farty sound! Brilliant! :-) Thanks for the video!
mCKENIC The same happened to me with Commodore 64. 5 hours typing the program from the magazine, the computer powered on two days for not losing the game lol
It's amazing to me, as a 22 year old born in 1995, that all of the computers shown in this video are older than me, some by several decades, save for that one PDA style device near the end. Amazing how far technology has come, and how far it will go! What an outstanding video! Thank you for sharing the great wonders at that museum! :)
Wow! - Thanks for this one Chris... it really shows my age!! My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, and then an Amiga 500. I had the Amiga for a good few years, and collected peripherals such as a Star LC 24 pin colour dot matrix printer, the Amiga memory upgrade board, external 3.5"FDD and the massive plug in HDD! - one of my favourite games was "Prince of Persia" which, if I recall correctly, came on 10 Floppy disks!!! I remember the Atari ST being the main competitor to the Commodore Amiga at the time. I briefly owned an Amiga 600 and a 1200 before moving over to, and experimenting with 'IBM' PCs, starting with a 386, then a 486, before the Intel Pentium chips were available. At Secondary School we had 2 computer rooms full of BBC model 'b' machines and a state-of-the-art room full of 486's!! Oh dear, the nostalgia!! Haha
This is an excellent documentary on early home computers. Beautifully produced! I take my hat off to the producer/director - clearly a lot of work has gone into this. I will subscribe and look forward to more videos like this. Marius Gudonis.
I spent a summer working for Commodore Canada before they launched the C64. The machine I worked on had the serial number 8, and a few desks over was a Commodore 64, with the serial number 1. They actually had Vic-20 cases and keyboards, I wish they would have sold them to us at the end. Commodore had hired 10 programmers to port educational software over from the PET to the C64. You would load it in, look for stuff like PEEK, POKE and SYS commands, which all needed to be changed, because the addresses were all different.... Then find the new value, and plug it in....
Great memories indeed. I personally loved my Amstrad/Schneider CPC 464 with its cassette deck. It had a great sound synthesizer and you could spend hours copying programs from magazines or even uploading software directly by recording radio transmissions onto the cassettes. It had a magical feel to it. Thanks for this nice overview!
Thanks Christopher. That was the golden age of computing for me. An exciting time to be a kid in Britain. I remember at my secondary school in 1982 it was near impossible to get on one of the three Apple II computers that were set up in the maths room. It seems it was the norm throughout the UK for the maths teacher to be responsible for the school computers, and it was also the norm they had no idea how to use them and were terrified that the students would break them. So at the age of 12 I went to a computing night-school with my Dad. That was one of the most exciting periods in my early life, having gone crazy over War Games and Tron like a lot of other kids at the time. At night school we used the Commodore PET 2001, already a very old computer but good enough to learn the fundamentals of BASIC. After night school finished I started my campaign of nagging my parents for a home computer and 6 months later we got an Atari 400, and a year later we sold it and got a BBC Micro. I had a few games but mainly I immersed myself in programming, skipping A-levels and starting work in tech at a young age. What a seriously great era to be young and working in tech! Now I follow Explaining Computers to try to keep up with everything that's going on!
It was definitely way before my time, but the BBC Micro really was fantastic. One of my favourite games for it was Elite, which i still think looks quite beautiful even now. Personally im still excited for what future computers might be capable of. Imagine every family owning an affordable computer fully capable of running video editing, or 3D modelling / rendering, and so many other things that arnt too accessible at the moment unless youre a little better off.
Best xmas present my mom ever got for me was a VIC20 back in 82 I think it was. By doing so she set the spark that has helped me get to where I'm at today. Also two years of typing classes in high school and an Apple ][e (w/dual floppy drives!) that my step father used in tax season further launched my computer skills. Great video & trip down nostalgic lane!
Commodore PET, Vic 20 and my very first own ZX Spectrum were my first encounters with computers. The 80's were an incredible time to be computer enthusiast. Thanks for this great journey through memory lane.
Blast from the past there !. Ive been to the NMoC many times now and love it. They have a Research Machines 380z which was the first computer my School got back in 1985. I had lots of the 80's computers, VIC-20, Acorn Electron, BBC B 32k, Dragon 32. All of them different in their own way. Those really were the days. Happy memories.
Brings back memories of my first 3 computers: Timex Sinclair 1000, which I had the light pen, 16K memory module, thermal printer, and color plotter accessories. I now have one under my desk with a 16 memory module, waiting for restoration, and being emulated on my PC. I learned Z80 machine language on it. Commodore 64, with so many hours of fun learning programming in Basic and machine language. Ran my first BBS, learned how to beta test software, and so much more. Commodore PC 10, first as a dual 5.25 drive system, and slowly upgraded with a 3.5 drive, 40MB HD, internal Zoom VFD modem, and so much more. It drove my first business involvement into PCs, and IT departments, and becoming an Enterprise Level Help Desk. So much has happened in the intervening years with computing, and now I while away the time going back with the RPis. What goes around comes back around, and my internal support system is full of VMs and RPis (like back in the day with time share systems and TS1000s...) Thank you for bringing back the memories...
Greetings... I return to your museum series with ever-renewed happiness. Being part of the old generation of computer enthusiasts, I had the opportunity to sit down (a long time ago!) in front of the first Xerox prototypes and with it, at the origin of the graphical interface. If you ever feel like "giving back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar" in this historic field, it would make an excellent publication, as you have mastered it!
Chris -- Where I am watching this it is a mid Sunday morning. Where you are it is middle noon. This connection made through technology makes me realize how far we have come since we have become much more electronically advanced. Like some of your videos this makes me feel my age. I hate to admit this but I recognized almost all of these models, with the exception of some of the Sinclair line as it was not as readily available in North America as it was in the U.K. Thank you for all your videos. :I still need to watch part one of this series which I will be doing..."Very Soon."
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I built a ZX-81 when I was a teen. Had an appleI ][ clone later. Went on to work for DEC later on after school...lots of history on the mini-comper side as well. Fun times!
Really enjoyed that Chris. It did indeed bring back many happy memories of the early days of personal computing. My fist home machine was a Sinclair ZX81, quickly followed by a BBC Micro Model B. My first 'real' computer was a used Osborne Executive (similar form factor to the Osborne 1, but with a better display). I was originally bitten by the micros available in the laboratory in which I worked from the mid 1970s to the mid 80s. First came the Intertec Superbrain - a 64kB CP/M all-in-one affair with dual 5.25 inch floppy drives. Next came the DEC Rainbow, which ran 8 bit CP/M on a Z80, and CP/M-86 on an Intel 8088. Next came a series of ICL PC & ICL Quattro machines running various flavours of Concurrent CP/M-86, with the later models having hard disks (which were sometimes known as 'Winchesters' for reasons which I can't recall). The ICL machines were the first I'd used which had serial terminals attached (up to 4 of them) rather than integrated video displays. After that, both at home and at work, the IBM compatible PC running Microsoft operating systems gradually took over, and I moved into mainframe & mid-range computing.
My first go on a computer was at High School, 1981 and being the chess club guy I needed to play the Apple 2. I booked it for a lunch date, set the predictive moves to far too many and left at the end of lunch with the machine still pondering its first move. I took it as a human v computer success. To be honest, those machines scared the heck out of me; I was sure I'd dodged a bullet... but my next meeting was in 1997 when a youngster on the job got a computer, I so bought myself my very first Windows 95 IBM Aptiva setup (the company refused to buy one for me) including all the essential peripherals it cost me $4,500 NZ. It was love at first sight. Thanks for the memories, I am a recent subscriber and am looking back through your videos. My son recently found my second Aptiva, and finds it all very quaint. Somehow I became an historical artifact.
All this kicked off the year I left school and started as an apprentice with GPO Telephones LOL. A year later I built myself a Transam Triton, which appeared in a late 78 issue of ETI. It was in kit form, but sold in such a way that I could buy a new pack of parts every few weeks to gradually build the entire thing.
Thanks Chris, I could watch this all day, absolutely fascinating, definitely going to make a visit to Bletchley Park museum and thanks for all the links provided. Great video as always.
I remember seeing computers in elementary school in the late 70's. No one at the school knew how to use them, including the teachers. I specifically remember asking our librarian about the the two Apple II computers and she said they had never been turned on. I also remember my first computer, a Vic-20 my parents bought at a yard sale. They didn't quite know what it was, but thought I would like to play with it. I also remember being insanely jealous of my neighbor's C-64. I remember having my mind blown playing Flight Simulator and Zork on an early IBM PC. In High School i was one of the only people that figured out how to use the Amiga 500 in my art class and spent most of the year doodling on it. In contrast, today I am taking and older 3d-printer I own and giving it to the 12-year old son of a friend of mine that owns his own Windows 10 laptop. After watching this video, I have wondered what the 12-year old me from many years ago would have thought to receive a similar gifting of items that during the early 80's would have been the stuff of dreams and science fiction.
The very first computer my father bought was a TRS80 Model I. That thing had only 4K of memory and the early version of BASIC so it couldn't do much but it was awesome. Later my father expanded its memory to 16K and Level II Microsoft BASIC, bought games for us but also added disk drives and CP/M. But it was still his computer. So in 1982 he bought us kids a brand new VIC-20. Sure, those machines were primitive with primitive and blocky graphics and so little memory you would run out of it very quickly, but they were the most engaging machines you could have in your hands. You could write your own programs! Or copy those from magazines and books, and make then work! I am so glad computing has moved to a point where computers are an essential part of our daily lives. It's what any of us dreamed all those years ago. Yet there's still something about those early home computers that makes one nostalgic.
Great video! Thanks for the memories. I built an Altair 8800a from kit in early 1976. With a 4k static ram board kit the total cost was $700. I had to get a personal loan from a bank to buy it. It needed a fix to the CPU clock circuitry before it ran at all (I drove 150 miles to the nearest MITS store for that repair). One of the RAM chips on the 4k board was bad and I tracked that down myself and replaced it. At that point, the only software available was some 8080 assembly language games (like 'kill-the-bit') that came printed with the Altair instruction manual that had to be entered on the front panel switches. (I knew about ALTAIR Basic but had no paper tape reader to load it). I added a VDM-1 video S-100 card and a HItachi monochrome monitor, a parallel port board to support an external keyboard, and a CUTS serial port board that came with a cassette tape OS called CUTER - my first external mass storage! Using this rig I wrote a text editor and assembler in combination, using each of these two programs to bootstrap itself and each other until they were both powerful enough to do some serious assembler work. It was 1978 before I got a dual 8" external floppy drive unit running CP/M. I sold the Altair 8800a on eBay years ago for over $2000 - it still ran fine.
That was a walk down memory lane. 1978 Commodore Pet 8k with a tape drive and a huge dot matrix printer. I learned to program on that and moved on to a commodore 64K then a wonderful machine for the time. A Sword 128 K, with Sword Basic and 1.2 Mb floppy drive. Happy days. At 69, still writing databases. 👍 Thanks for this, especially that Osbourne... 😁♥️
Very nice video ! I myself had some experiences with C64's and IBM 8080 clones throughout the Nineties. They were very reliable and wore so much more class than those current-day computers. Great nostalgic memories resurface watching this video, Thanks !
Brilliant videos, had a c64 that was well past it when I had it, then went to a dell pentuim 2 now to a a Intel I 5, amazing how things have moved on love to see another one of these type of videos in ten years.
Indeed. But what I said in the video was "In attempt to become the market leader, IBM made its ‘PC compatible hardware platform’ an open system, so allowing other manufacturers to copy its technology sell peripherals and ‘clone’ IBM PCs" (ie using an open system enabled clones to be made). IBM did made a very conscious decision to adopt an open architecture, and they certainly wanted others to make peripherals, if not to go as far as they did (ie the cloning of entire systems). This followed a very similar (and successful) approach taken with the IBM Systems/360. PS -- a great channel you have! :)
Well done. I remember about age 12 I bought Atari 800 XL on a closeout sale. I was surprised to get such coolness for only $40 but would not have guessed the Atari I knew was about to disappear. About the same time my brother finally got his first too, ZX 81 mail-order. He tried to build the kit on his own first but it didn't work so he had to spend extra and send it back for them to build. After we both got IBM PC clones it seems strange how I forgot what it used to be like when our computers worked in very different ways so we couldn't even share our games to run on the other's computer. The other thing was that I never knew another person who had the same computer as me. It was more rare in those days to know someone in the neighborhood with their own home computer.
The computer I ever saw was an IMSAI 8080, kinda looked like the Altair shown in the video. The first computer I ever used was the IBM 5150. I learned how to use MS-Word 2.0 on it. Remember styles sheets? I was in College for electronics at the time at Madison Area Technical College (MATC), in Madison, WI. We used to call it Madison's Alternative to College. Got my AS in Electronics in Jan '88. I still repair computers and networks. Love the video. A great trip down memory lane.
Caturday Nite Yeah! The IMSAI came out right about the time of the Altair and those two pretty much started the hobbyist craze, not to mention the arguments over which computer/bus/gfx/OS/language/whatever was the "best"!
So many computers from my past! My first 3D renders and forays into computer art were on an Amiga (now my career), and my first programs written on commodore PETs at school, and a C64 at home. Then there's all the 5150s I learned Pascal on in college, and even a PalmV on a foldout keyboard snuck away in a background shot. One day I'll try and count up how many computers I've owned over the years... may take some time.
Very nostalgic for me. I was in high school when the 80's boom in UK home computing started; the ZX81 was around, the Spectrum was about to be launched, a mate 's dad had the PET (a CBM xxxx model, no doubt), and the machines on the high altar were the Atari 400 and 800. My first computer: a Sharp MZ80A, followed by a VIC-20, C64, then Amigas: 1000, 500, 4000, then a Pentium 75 in 1995. I used to enter data into SuperCalc 2 spreadsheet on an IBM PC XT in my first job.
This was a fantastic video and a trip down memory lane. See all those classic home 8-bit micros brought back some memories. I still own server models of ZX Spectrums and a couple of Commodore Amiga A1200s as well as an Acorn Electron and some other retro consoles in my collection. This was a very interesting video.
This video brought back a lot of memories. I remember using the Apple IIe (and later IIc) in school and playing games on a friend’s Commodore 64. Our first computer at home was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. Eventually, we stepped up to an IBM PC clone with a 10 MB hard drive, and a few years later I headed off to university with an 80286 clone.
I was turned on to programming in the first place through using my school's TI 99/4s. My first computer was a businesslike-gray TRS-80 MIII that came with a whole 16K of memory, soon to be upgraded to (a very expensive) 48K by yours truly. It ran for a year or so being loaded by a cassette recorder as its data drive, but ended up sporting dual 180K floppys.
Thank you for this fantastic walk through memory lane!! I have been (and still am) the proud owner of a BBC micro computer. I often think back at the times of undisturbed linear programming in the beautiful Pascal-like BBC basic of that machine. Thanks again!
I owned and used many of those computers. I worked at ComputerLand in 1985 and got to bring home state of the art computers. I remember taking a laptop (Data General) to a restaurant and attracting a crowd of people around me. Most of whom had never seen a computer close up. In 1984 I was taking notes at College on an NEC 8201. I was an early adapter and none of the other students were using laptops to take notes.
We had Commodore 64 computers at my elementary school in Idaho, and it was a special privilege we had to earn. Later my uncle bought us a Texas Instruments TI-994A. I have many fond memories of playing games and watching my dad write endless streams of code using TI Basic. I currently still use a Brother Power Note from 1996, which has a Z80 processor.
My first ever computer was also the ZX81, I was only 4 years old at the time but even so and whilst I was fascinated with moving black blocks in 'Space Invaders'. What made it special was being able to play with my brother and sister who are 9 and 11 years older than me and to get a higher score lol. It was followed a few years later by the much more powerful Atari 800 XL which still lives in a box in my loft and I still have a pile of games in a suitcase for it. Also had a Dragon 32, an Atari Mega ST, Amiga 500 & A1200 in the 1990's. After 17 years in the loft, my Amiga 1200 is set up to play in front of me right now, proudly amongst my music production equipment and Intel I7 920 custom built desktop.
When I was working with IBM in the early '80s, one of our challenges was finding the resources necessary to build the equipment. It was amazing how many units were being sold - (for something that was originally thought to be only a smart mainframe interface terminal). A serious amount of finances went in to building new automation for this equipment (for this was the first time we had a mass produced computer). For example, Dayton, Ohio at Ochs tool and Die is where all of the cases were built/painted in a brand new high tech, lights out, manufacturing facility. Brand new automatic testing facilities were placed in Austin, Texas, keyboards built in Lexington, KY. There were other facilities across the USA, however, the point being, IBM needed to find resources -- and it was stretched all across the USA.
Another great challenge we had is with yields. Although placing various forms of resist on a silicon substrate was not new, we were pushing the envelope at 3 microns. Today that seems silly because we are at 14 nm, however, the total number of defects on a 150 millimeter wafer was higher than we wanted. Hence, getting enough 808x chips from Intel also was a tight bottle neck until San Jose came fully online. It was a fun time, kind of like the wild west and we were blazing new trails.
One final nugget of info for you - when you are ready to provide a review of the Intel Personal Computer, let me know. No, this is not the IBM, but in the mid 80's, Intel actually built there own (IBM) Personal Computer utilizing there own chips. What is not widely know is the first batch of motherboards that went out had a flaw. Many people were using the new Intel Computer as a CAD stations, and hence, needed the floating point power of the x287. Unfortunately at that time, the x287 was not key'ed and it was important you put it in the correct way or you would blow up the whole motherboard. Intel, unfortunately, place the silkscreen for the x287 backwards, and we were blowing up computers left and right! There was no good way to get the word out to people, and during those times, the only repair people for Intel computers was Intel. Hence, there are a lot of blown up Intel computers out there if you can get your hand on one. Intel got out of the Personal Computer business not too long after that.
Great episode! My first was a ZX Spectrum 48k. Now I'm a proud owner of a Commodore SX64 (portable C64 basically), a Commodore PET 2001, and a PET 200 (Swedish keyboard, only about 7 of them still around) as well as several 70's pong games.
A real trip down memory lane. Had a Dragon 32, a Sinclair Spectrum with 48k ram, then went on to an Atari ST and onto an Acorn 3010 which I had the cpu changed from the ARM250 to an ARM 3. It was fascinating to watch the engineer doing surface mount work! I still have my Acorn, probably still have it when I die. I'm fond of it and might dig it up and mess with it again...
Very cool Video, Chris! Yes, it is really heartwarming to see all those wonderful machines, and it definitely triggers a lot of memories. My first Personal Computer was a Commodore 64 and i made my first steps in BASIC on it. And while i do love the C64 (or "Breadbox" as we lovingly call it in germany), i think it is the Amiga 500 that really got me hooked back then, and made me smile the most in this video! Over the years, i owned several A500s (and still have one, but its pretty barebones) and two A200s (one of em sporting the incredible Picasso Graphics Card), took first looks at Software like Lightwave, FantaVision, Reflections and SCALA (even though i never really owned a dedicated GenLock)... and of course: Gaming! Again, thanks for this Video, Chris, it is always a pleasure to watch them. Amiga Masterrace FTW ;-)
Wow. Lots of memories, there. I got started with the National SC/MP Engineering kit. Had to wire wrap the thing, used a Baudot teletype for in/output. Followed with a Commodore Pet, then a Vic -20 C-64, C128, Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIe, Apple IIc,Osborne, HP, IBM PC, and an early Toshiba Laptop. Early on I got to play a bit on and Apple1 breadboard, running with a Compucolor graphics system. Today, I'm down to only 14 computers in the house. About a third are Raspberry Pi running various operating systems.
This video was giving me a lot of flashbacks. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 and I had the 16Kb upgrade pack. I later went to the Sinclair Spectrum 48K model computer. For a Time I had a Commodore 64 before moving to the Amiga 500. It was with the Amiga 500 I got my very first hard drive adding on an A590 expansion with a 20MB HD in it and an extra 1MB of memory populating the A590 unit giving me 2Mb total memory. I still have the Amiga 1200 computer I eventually replaced it with although a few years back the 120MB HD in my A1200 died. My Amiga 1200 also has an expansion board in it with a 68030 CPU and a 68881 MPU on it. I also had this tiny little board that plugged into the 2.5" IDE header with a passthrough for the IDE HD and allowed for a SCSI device to be plugged in externally converting IDE control signals to SCSI control signals. I had a 100MB iOmega Zip drive with a few cartridges I plugged into that as well as a SCSI CD writer that you placed the discs into a caddy to insert them in instead of an ejecting tray.
Computers shown in a museum does bring back memories from the past such as first seeing these computers in high street shops and thinking about what these computers could do from all those years ago.
Hi Chris! Another great video bringing back many memories!! Wondering why there was just a brief mention of Radio Shack computers as they were an important factor of early personal computers. I still have my TRS-80 Model III and IV both working, as well as a Tandy 600 early laptop also still working. Amazing that the old floppy discs are also still readable and writable! My "Computer Museum" also consists of a DEC VT420 Terminal which I connected to my Raspberry Pi 3b+ and 4b using a serial to USB cable!! I also have Mainframe punched cards, reel to reel magnetic tapes, microfiche, as well as a multitude of old working calculators from Casio, Radio Shack, TI, HP, Sharp, etc. Unbelievable that this old technology from the 1970's and early 1980's still work! I did have to take some of these devices apart to solder some connections and clean keys, etc., but very minor repair work. My old Mattel Electronic Handheld games collection from the 1970's like Auto Race and Football also still work. I have the original Merlin game which I had to fix. My grandkids use them now:) Anyway I love these old electronics. You had to actually work at getting computers going, not like these days where everything is plug and play. It was more fun but glad to see SBC's now and Linux. Brings back some of that old notion of doing things "outside of the box" such as marrying the oldest technology (my VT420) with the newest (Raspberry Pi 4b)!! In addition to my love of electronic I also have a Curta Mechanical Calculator Model I which is a great device from the 1950's (also still works and actually in mint condition)! The mechanics of this device is amazing with over 800 gears, berrings, rods and other parts! Thanks again for this look back in early computer history! Regards- Rich
Earliest memories I have of a computer at home was in the late 80s... this is in Brazil, so tech came late at high prices here. I'm still not sure exactly what computer it was, but it was a blue-gray keyboard style computer that you needed a tapedeck to run programs and it connected straight to a TV. Everything that came to Brazil back then got rebranded to local names like "Itautec". If I'm not mistaken it ran some form of BASIC too, and I remember at least one game - Zaxxon 3D... so it was most likely a TRS-80/CoCo. After this, it was already a PC-XT with that green phosphorous screen. My first contact with a programming language was DBase III Plus with Clipper as compiler. I think the first serious thing I did with it was a sort of costumer control database for a home based console game rental thing... my dad helped me with it. This was probably back in 93-94, so I was around 14 yrs old. xD We also had this ancient 600 baud rate modem that was almost the size of a computer nowadays, heavier all metal, that I don't remember ever being used. Perhaps it came from my dad's work, I just found it one day in home storage. When I started dabbling with BBSs and IPX connections to play Doom we already had a US Robotics 5600 board - that's 5600 baud rate, not the more popular and last of the line 56Kbps. This of course only happened because my dad got into computers very early in the age of computers here in Brazil... he worked with valve computers, punch cards, mainframes with tape storage and the likes. When he died back in 1999 he was still working with a small team porting stuff from old IBM mainframes to more modern platforms, at Itaipu hydroelectric power plant/river dam. He lead the division of computers for HR on one of the main contractors building the dam back in the 80s, Unicom. Great memories of the time. I still remember very clearly the Sundays my dad had to do something in the offices, he took me there... huge floor space filled with offices with dumb terminals with desks built to house them. They were all connected to the refrigerated "server room" filled with mainframes. I was a kid back then, so I was both fascinated and kinda bored. xD Didn't understand the value of it all.
Yes Chris I have memories, My first personal computer was a Packard Bell I don't remember the model number or name off the top of my head but it had Windows for Workgroups 3.1 and DOS 6.2 I still have the computer and the software and 3.5 floppy disk that came with it. I purchased it from Walmart for just over $900.00, with tax just over $1000.00. This computer taught me how to use a computer and this was exciting to me. I had a dial up phone connection with the internal modem and you would hear it squeak and click when it was connecting. If I find it I'll let you know the spec's of it. Also it had a DVD drive and a 1.4 /or 3.5 floppy disk drive. Anyway smaller than the 5.0 floppy disk.
Yes, I started-off with Sinclair's zx81, the vic-20 was next, Commodore 64, an Amstrad '1024?'. The first computer I got to take apart was an IBM XT, running on dos5, with WordPerfect, Supcalc(3/4), I learnt to code on that using b-basic which was included with dos5. Out of all the computers I had the Psion 3 was the most useful, it went into my rucksack, I did library-research on it, wrote-up draft-papers, there was loads of useful software freely available, include critical-path analysis apps, project-management apps, even diagnostic apps for fixing desktops, an awesome bit of kit for the time!
Thank you for that! A great trip down memory lane indeed! I cut my teeth on Fortran bubble cards in high school, where a friend and I also bought a Commodore Pet (8K) because we wanted to created a dating game based on peoples likes and dislikes :-) Although that was left for others to perfect, I was fortunate enough to have owned and used lots of the ones you highlighted and then some. After the Pet, came the ZX-81 (yes, we ordered it from the UK into Canada, so it was not the Timex branded one), Commodore 64, Atari ST (eventually with a brilliant Mac emulator), and so on.
Great video ... brought back fond memories for me. I remember the Altair & Imsai as being out of my price range and I went with the SWTP 6800 ... despite it being a kit. How times have changed ... albeit you could equate the Arduino culture these days with my fun with the SWTP 6800 Thanks for the memories! 👍🏻
So many memories. I had a Commodore Plus 4 (C16) then went on to the Spectrum plus 2 and finally the Amiga 500 & 1200. Both I fitted with a battery clock pack & the 1200 with a 2GB hard drive! After installing Directory Opus 5 + Workbench & all my DPaint software I still had 98% free space!!! Well written programs don't need to be massive like nowadays!
I have used many of the computers seen in this video... Apple IIe, Acorn A3000/3010/3020/BBC Microcomputer Model B, Commodore PET/CBM/VIC-20/64/A-500, Sinclair ZX80/ZX81/Spectrum.... So this is a proper walk down memory lane for me...wonderful! You said that the ZX81 was your first computer...mine too - Christmas present ,1982 I'd love to go to TNMOC, I'm not sure how big it is, or if it can all be viewed inside a day...maybe I'll need to find somewhere to stay in the area and do it over 2 or 3 days. Thank you for this (and the other) video, Chris. Great memories.
ExplainingComputers I was born in '73 (I'm guessing you've been around slightly longer than me), and had been showing an interest in technology by I'd say around age 7 or 8, so my parents surprised me greatly by getting me the ZX81 for Xmas 82 - the ONLY gift I got that year, but that was more than enough. Skip forward to my final year of Primary school in 84/85, and that was when I got my hands on a BBC Micro. The other computers I mostly used during my Secondary school years. I first got my hands on a proper IBM compatible during my final year of Secondary school...a Wang PC 240, 80286 with an 80287 math co-processor (aah, the days of a separate co-processor) and my first experience with Windows, and also my first experience with networks, having used CIX (then Compulink Information eXchange) during that year as well as a few other BBSs.
When I was young, my dad took me to a friend of his, and he introduced me to his Apple II+. I got to enter a couple of BASIC programs and was hooked. My dad could not afford the price tag of the Apple, but I had my eyes on VIC-20 which was much cheaper. ( I just wanted a computer, I really did not care about which. I knew cost was a HUGE consideration) My father instead got me the recently released C-64 instead. That computer basically shaped my education moving forward. I do still have a C-64 here. It has a place in my heart. I never will let it go.....
I remember copying the BASIC for a submarine game from a magazine on my neighbour's ZX81. It wasn't until I got a 16K Spectrum that I saw the delights of tape in action! I'd cheerfully watch an episode looking into detail of each of these computers.
Now this jogged a memory! ..... I still have a Vic 20 in its box in the loft somewhere! This had the special extra of a memory expansion pack of 8Kb (if my memory serves) I also remember being an apprentice working at the West Gorton site of ICL ..... They obtained a "super clean" supply line for their testing by running a motor generator set on site!
I bought the first commodore pet in 1997 from a shop named Sumlock who were on Deansgate in Manchester. I still dare not say how much I paid for it, but I had hours of fun, frustration and utter fascination and so started a 40 year love affair with the PC. Loved this trip down MEMORY lane.
Oh MAN. My very first computer was a TI-99/4A with many peripherals including the expansion box that my parents bought when I was around nine years old in the very early eighties. It was meant to be a "family" computer, although I became the main user. I have been in "computers" ever since. I became a software engineer and eventually led to electronics engineering as well. Oh, the memories of the beginning of my future. I wish you had video of that old unit! I even wrote code for the McDonnell Douglas TI Users Group before I was twelve!
When I was very young there was the atari 800, played many games on that, which came on 5 1/4 disc and small cartridge. It had a memory expansion board that was so large and packed with IC's that it couldn't have fit in the slot if it had a housing (cover) as the other RAM modules did. It got very warm. My Father got the first Macintosh when it came out in '84. I remember Mac Bottom (external hard drive) and the Fanny Mac (after market external fan to prevent the stupid convection cooling-induced failures, of which there were several). Some programs were 'Megaroids' (mac version of Asteroids) , Mac Paint and Mac Draw, Deluxe music construction set (when upgraded to 512k that worked better), eventually Dark Castle. I remember the screen of death where the mac had XX eyes and the messed up checker-board pattern which apparently was really bad. At school there was the Apple 2, then C, then E, then the GS... but of course since this was public school in the mid-late 80's (in the US)... I rarely saw those computers until they were old and beat up.
A lot of these are older than me, and I never got to experience them first hand, yet I have a strong interest at looking at micros and early PC compatibles. I find it so interesting to see where we came from and how we got to the point we are at now.
Thanks for such a great video on the history of computing. During my career in computing have used a good portion of the computers featured. My first exposure to computers in the late 1970s included Commodore PET and Imsai 8800 (a competitor of the Altair 8800). I used a friend's Atari 800. The first computer I owned was a ZX81. The ZX81 played a pivotal role in my future career because it enabled me to become a finalist in a local science fair by programming the computer in machine code to teach biology (phage reproduction) and chemistry (and interactive gas laws program). Also, purchased a Timex Sinclair 2068 which had a raised keyboard and color graphics and 48KB of RAM . In college, I worked with IBM PCs for course work and Commodore 64 for recreation - Saturday nights were gaming night with pizza. In graduate school, I had IBM clone which I built from parts and Radio Shack Model 100. I maintained a computer lab of Macintosh Pluses and Macintosh SEs, and Macintosh II (of various types) and for rest of the department IBM PCs and clones. One small point worth mentioning, is that ZX81 shipped with 1KB of RAM and Timex-Sinclair shipped with 2K of RAM. Does the museum have Timex-Sinclair 1500?
My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. I bought with it the 16k memory, plus three programs: Chess, Frogger and a flight simulator. Learning to program in Basic was extremely interesting. I am still fond of Basic to this day! My next two computers were a Commodore Vic-20 and a Commodore 64. I used the 64 for ages.
Delightful video, brings back great memories and shows how fast the pace of development in new products was. There was literally a new thing on the market every time you turned around. It was exciting trying to keep up with all of it and trying to decide what to buy. No one wanted to seem behind the curve to their friends so we all kept getting new stuff and learning it. It was great that these manufacturers did this, it brought us a long way forward in a short time. The defining moment was in 1990 when Microsoft introduced Windows 3.0 however. No matter what you may think of them, most of all of these early machines simply vanished after Windows was released and everyone became aware of what it could do in the business market. The IBM PC and the clones were suddenly the most important things you could have and the rest is history. Apple could have become a much larger company much quicker if they had adopted the Intel hardware so they could run X 86 programs and share in the vast library of software. Steve Jobs was too stubborn.
I grew up in the late 70's and 80's. Dad was into computers from the get go. He had a Teletype Model 33ASR and TI 99/4 and TI 99/4A. He also had computers that wold boot from 8" floppy discs and just about every IBM PC. His first real hard drive was 5MB and was spun buy a belt driven AC motor. It is all gone now. I wish he would have given it to a museum.
My first computer was a Vic20 and I was very happy with it. Did a lot of programming with it. Never saw it in colour as TV was black & white in those days.
My first microcomputer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 (later rebranded as Model I), which I bought in 1978. I bought it with the expansion interface, 32 K RAM, and 2 floppy drives. Over time I upgraded it to add double-sided, double density, half-height floppy drives. I changed out the TRSDOS for NEWDOS 80. I even had VisiCalc, the proto-Lotus spreadsheet. I also had a word processing program that I used to publish a book. I bought an Epson printer in 1980 for $599.
Being in the electronic components business I decided to make a Triton which was a Practical Electronics design and a kit of parts was available. I would think that this was around 1980 +- a couple of years. The kit was around £350 then! It consisted of an 8080 processor, 2K RAM using around 24 DIL chips . The Tiny Basic and Monitor driver was 0n about 16 2708 EPROM. It was capable of outputting composite video and used cassette tape as program store - MOST unreliable. I learnt a lot by doing that about what's going on "under the hood" which still applies today. It certainly was a trip down memory lane Thanks so much.
Powerful memories indeed! To tell the secret I wrote my very first computer program in 1969 in college (my father did not allow 'frivolous' games in the house). It was a stack of punched paper cards that I 'programmed' on a great console the size of a steel office desk that sounded like a bren gun whenever I pressed a key. I then handed these precious missives to a gentleman through a window. He loaded them into a great bin with many other 'programs', then, with what I have always described as a genuflection, he placed the 'compiler' as the first group of cards. After a distinct hesitation he pushed a great red button. The machine rumbled to life and began to draw the cards from the deck one by one. We went to the 'operations room overlook' where we could gaze through the glass windows at 'The Machine'. We were all praying to the computer gods that no cards would catch in the works and ruin the 'run'. And my prayers were answered! To my great fortune the 'batch' ran correctly and my program (all of 100 lines) executed correctly. I had then, officially, become a 'computer programmer'. Many thanks for this cool, bracing stroll along memory lane!
Great story! :)
Lol the Bren gun is also a dinosaur itself now.... When I was younger in the Irish army I used to love the Bren cos there was a magazine and easily cleaned build It was better than this US belt fed nonsense. Typical British simplicity in design.
Whatever happened to this British design simplicity? With brexit the Brits will need to get that back. Notice after all how many of those machines up there were designed built and sales driven by Brits.
@@mickelodiansurname9578 The Bren was a Czech design
@@mickelodiansurname9578 Considering this episode was at the British Computer Museum, it is to be expected that the computers would have a British bent to them. If you go to the Smithsonian (IIRC was a naturalized Brit, but originally born in France) Museum in Washington DC, the focus is US designed and built computers, with a smattering of other countries designs. As is the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and the Computer Museum in Seattle, and others. The General Purpose machine CPUs are mostly US designed and built (80xx, 65xx, 68xxx, Zilog, Cyrex, Intel x86, AMD, etc...) then used by manufacturers around the world...
I remember that I argued for 3 month straight, day and night with my parents for a brand new commodore 64...
Finally, one day, when I had lost all hope for ever getting that, my father came home with bunch of boxes and called me down stairs....and there it was, my first PC...
One of the condition was that I had to learn programming and not just gaming, so I started going to an institute to learn BASIC language, even today I use the principals I've had learned then for programming and understanding new languages....
PS: I never forget the smell of that brand new C64...
Great story.
When UK Sunday evening TV is mostly rubbish I can ALWAYS rely on this channel to deliver interesting things to watch.
Blimey, does this invoke some great memories! My best mate had a ZX81 and I begged Santa for a ZX81 in 1983. My parents scrimped and saved and, unbeknownst to me with my brother's agreement, bought me and my brother jointly a 16k ZX Spectrum that Christmas. When I opened it, I burst into tears - firstly, because I never expected to receive such an amazing gift, but also secondly because my brother (who at the time we did not get on well with at all) agreed to to it. Without exaggeration, it completely changed my life.
You displayed all my favorite from before I had an IBM clone, AKA Commodore VIC-20 and 64 , and the little known Sinclair!
I owned every one of those, including the Atari 400 which I wired to the bus of my TRS-80 so I would have color. I named it the ATARS480. Everything became a chore to program in assembler and finally got the Columbia IBM clone. An amazing time in history.
Jonathan ,
Aah! Now you're talking about my first PC, the Columbia! This was truly a PC clone, at least more so than the Compaq. It did, however, have a proprietary mother board with "non-standard" (though few standards there were back then) slot spacing so I was never able to upgrade using that case. It was one of the most configurable PC's available back then, with a ton of options from the manufacturer (Columbia). I was on a tight budget and focused on what I already knew was the most important option ... MEMORY! I got the max of 256K of RAM. However, this left me with not enough money for the 20MB hard disk, so I opted for dual 5.25" floppy drives. I also couldn't afford color (plus I was not impressed with CGA resolution), so I opted for the monochrome interface and monitor, which was capable of 80x24 characters display (much more important for a programmer who used a 3270 terminal at work). I used that monitor through my next couple of upgrades, even getting a high-res gfx card that supported it, so I could try out the new MS-Windows GUI (running under[/over?] DOS). I also invested in a Northstar keyboard, which was the best available at the time. It had function keys at both the top and the side. I was used to the side keys on my 3270 terminal. Function keys were really important back then, in the days of CPM & DOS. Now I never use them, even when they're available! Thanks for the memories guys!
I had an Atari 800 and an 800xl wired to a common peripheral bus. I could compile a program on the 800, write it to disk, then boot it on the XL for testing. Which was handy, since the program was too big for the 800 with the language cart plugged in. Fun Times. :D
The first machine I owned was a Columbia VP, the 'luggable' offering from them. I had worked with PC's and CPM based machines for a couple of years before owning it. Eagle computer with CPM and later MS/DOS. At one of my work places, we had upgraded from a TRS80 Model II with Pickles and Trout CPM to a Micromation Mariner that had 8 Z80 slaves, each with 64k of RAM, a 20MB hard disk and ran MPM. One of the printers we had was a Florida Data. It printed at 1200 CPS! It was so loud and made the stand wobble as the print head moved so quickly. Eventually, screws started falling out of it. We built a closet with sliding doors for it along with a NEC Spinwriter, in the end, to cut down the noise.
Had the VIC-20 and the Commodore 128 (it could boot in to C-64 mode as well) and the C-128 was capable of backwards compatibility with C-64 programs. The school however had the Apple IIe's and the RadioShack TRS-80's (Model I and later upgrading to the Model IV). The Model IV's were basically run in a slave/master configuration, mostly for computer typing class as each of the slaves loaded the typing software off the master computer. There were a few games loaded on the master computer by the computer course students and you could run games on the slave machines.
Also recall using CompuServe on our family computer at home (C-128). Even though it was a toll-free call, they charged by the minute on the toll-free line. We were stuck with using the toll-free line as there were no local dialup numbers.
My first pc was a Timex . However I quickly returned it and got a Vic20 in its place. Soon after I had a Commodore 64, which I still feel had the best keyboard I've ever used. Later I purchase an executive 64 (luggable) which I had until about ten years ago. Many computers have followed, with my phone being more powerful than all but a few laptops and pcs I've owned. Thanks for your channel, I enjoy it quite a lot and I greatly appreciate you are not long winded nor do you have constant back round music.
Thanks fr this. :)
Great video! My first computer was the TI 99/4a. It was a great little computer. I still have it packed away, and I get it out every now and then. Still works fine!
I remember those! Glad you still have it working. :)
I still have two Sinclair 1000s, a Kaypro II, a Texas Instruments 1000 (or something like that) and several other early IBM compatible PCs along with an Atari video game with stacks of game cartridges. I lived in Los Angeles in the '70s and was very much involved with the early days of the "Micro Computer" revolution. I sold "Mini Computers" for Sperry Univac as well as did some programming and system support for Lear Siegler when they were making the ADM 3 line of computer terminals. I even have an ADM 3 and a copy of a Data General Nova 3 "copy cat/knockoff" mini computer Lear Siegler was trying to market in the last '70s. As you stated in you video you did indeed stimulate a stream of fond memories of those times. Having lived through those years wrestling with the problems of trying to get those early computers to do something useful, I am constantly amazed at the capabilities of the current hardware and software that is available for such meager amounts of money these days. Such as the Raspberry PI and the other single board computer systems that are out. I can't begin to keep up with the advancements. Thank you for what you are doing in "Explaining Computers". Cheers
Great stuff Chris. My first computer was an Apple IIC, and I still have an Apple IIGS (in boxes in the garage).
I was fortunate to be able to visit the National Museum of Computing while on an extended London layover (airline pilot). Adjacent to the museum is the now Unclassified Bletchley Park, where the Brits broke the German Enigma Code during World War 2 (as depicted in the movie "The Imitation Game"). Very interesting and most worthwhile to visit, you could easily spend a day at each of these wonderful sites.
Very interesting. I was at the museum last year, and it truly is an excellent place to visit if you have an interest in the history of computing.
Oh my God ! .. The good old days, ..sweet bitter memories. Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you for spending your time making your videos as I like seeing your videos. ☺ Good work
Powerful memories indeed!
I remember getting a used ZX Spectrum with Christmas money (and matching funds from Mum & Dad) and sitting at it with my ALF teddy programming in a firework display from a magazine. No tape back-up of course so it stayed turned on for two days while I input the lines of text - which ran - a couple of sprites shooting up the screen and bursting with a suitable farty sound! Brilliant! :-)
Thanks for the video!
mCKENIC The same happened to me with Commodore 64. 5 hours typing the program from the magazine, the computer powered on two days for not losing the game lol
:-) Brilliant!
It's amazing to me, as a 22 year old born in 1995, that all of the computers shown in this video are older than me, some by several decades, save for that one PDA style device near the end. Amazing how far technology has come, and how far it will go! What an outstanding video! Thank you for sharing the great wonders at that museum! :)
Wow! - Thanks for this one Chris... it really shows my age!!
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, and then an Amiga 500. I had the Amiga for a good few years, and collected peripherals such as a Star LC 24 pin colour dot matrix printer, the Amiga memory upgrade board, external 3.5"FDD and the massive plug in HDD! - one of my favourite games was "Prince of Persia" which, if I recall correctly, came on 10 Floppy disks!!!
I remember the Atari ST being the main competitor to the Commodore Amiga at the time.
I briefly owned an Amiga 600 and a 1200 before moving over to, and experimenting with 'IBM' PCs, starting with a 386, then a 486, before the Intel Pentium chips were available.
At Secondary School we had 2 computer rooms full of BBC model 'b' machines and a state-of-the-art room full of 486's!!
Oh dear, the nostalgia!!
Haha
This is an excellent documentary on early home computers. Beautifully produced! I take my hat off to the producer/director - clearly a lot of work has gone into this. I will subscribe and look forward to more videos like this. Marius Gudonis.
Thanks for the sub. Welcome aboard
I spent a summer working for Commodore Canada before they launched the C64. The machine I worked on had the serial number 8, and a few desks over was a Commodore 64, with the serial number 1. They actually had Vic-20 cases and keyboards, I wish they would have sold them to us at the end. Commodore had hired 10 programmers to port educational software over from the PET to the C64. You would load it in, look for stuff like PEEK, POKE and SYS commands, which all needed to be changed, because the addresses were all different.... Then find the new value, and plug it in....
Sounds like a great summer job! :)
That is VERY cool!
Great memories indeed. I personally loved my Amstrad/Schneider CPC 464 with its cassette deck. It had a great sound synthesizer and you could spend hours copying programs from magazines or even uploading software directly by recording radio transmissions onto the cassettes. It had a magical feel to it. Thanks for this nice overview!
Thanks Christopher. That was the golden age of computing for me. An exciting time to be a kid in Britain. I remember at my secondary school in 1982 it was near impossible to get on one of the three Apple II computers that were set up in the maths room. It seems it was the norm throughout the UK for the maths teacher to be responsible for the school computers, and it was also the norm they had no idea how to use them and were terrified that the students would break them.
So at the age of 12 I went to a computing night-school with my Dad. That was one of the most exciting periods in my early life, having gone crazy over War Games and Tron like a lot of other kids at the time. At night school we used the Commodore PET 2001, already a very old computer but good enough to learn the fundamentals of BASIC. After night school finished I started my campaign of nagging my parents for a home computer and 6 months later we got an Atari 400, and a year later we sold it and got a BBC Micro. I had a few games but mainly I immersed myself in programming, skipping A-levels and starting work in tech at a young age. What a seriously great era to be young and working in tech!
Now I follow Explaining Computers to try to keep up with everything that's going on!
It was definitely way before my time, but the BBC Micro really was fantastic. One of my favourite games for it was Elite, which i still think looks quite beautiful even now.
Personally im still excited for what future computers might be capable of. Imagine every family owning an affordable computer fully capable of running video editing, or 3D modelling / rendering, and so many other things that arnt too accessible at the moment unless youre a little better off.
I like these videos on computing history. I think they add a nice touch and variety to the channel. Well done!
Thanks. :)
Best xmas present my mom ever got for me was a VIC20 back in 82 I think it was. By doing so she set the spark that has helped me get to where I'm at today. Also two years of typing classes in high school and an Apple ][e (w/dual floppy drives!) that my step father used in tax season further launched my computer skills. Great video & trip down nostalgic lane!
Commodore PET, Vic 20 and my very first own ZX Spectrum were my first encounters with computers. The 80's were an incredible time to be computer enthusiast. Thanks for this great journey through memory lane.
Blast from the past there !. Ive been to the NMoC many times now and love it. They have a Research Machines 380z which was the first computer my School got back in 1985. I had lots of the 80's computers, VIC-20, Acorn Electron, BBC B 32k, Dragon 32. All of them different in their own way. Those really were the days. Happy memories.
Brings back memories of my first 3 computers:
Timex Sinclair 1000, which I had the light pen, 16K memory module, thermal printer, and color plotter accessories. I now have one under my desk with a 16 memory module, waiting for restoration, and being emulated on my PC. I learned Z80 machine language on it.
Commodore 64, with so many hours of fun learning programming in Basic and machine language. Ran my first BBS, learned how to beta test software, and so much more.
Commodore PC 10, first as a dual 5.25 drive system, and slowly upgraded with a 3.5 drive, 40MB HD, internal Zoom VFD modem, and so much more. It drove my first business involvement into PCs, and IT departments, and becoming an Enterprise Level Help Desk.
So much has happened in the intervening years with computing, and now I while away the time going back with the RPis. What goes around comes back around, and my internal support system is full of VMs and RPis (like back in the day with time share systems and TS1000s...)
Thank you for bringing back the memories...
Greetings... I return to your museum series with ever-renewed happiness. Being part of the old generation of computer enthusiasts, I had the opportunity to sit down (a long time ago!) in front of the first Xerox prototypes and with it, at the origin of the graphical interface. If you ever feel like "giving back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar" in this historic field, it would make an excellent publication, as you have mastered it!
Chris -- Where I am watching this it is a mid Sunday morning. Where you are it is middle noon. This connection made through technology makes me realize how far we have come since we have become much more electronically advanced. Like some of your videos this makes me feel my age. I hate to admit this but I recognized almost all of these models, with the exception of some of the Sinclair line as it was not as readily available in North America as it was in the U.K. Thank you for all your videos. :I still need to watch part one of this series which I will be doing..."Very Soon."
Looking at these old micros does indeed make you think. As you say, we've come so far . . .
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I built a ZX-81 when I was a teen. Had an appleI ][ clone later. Went on to work for DEC later on after school...lots of history on the mini-comper side as well. Fun times!
Really enjoyed that Chris. It did indeed bring back many happy memories of the early days of personal computing. My fist home machine was a Sinclair ZX81, quickly followed by a BBC Micro Model B. My first 'real' computer was a used Osborne Executive (similar form factor to the Osborne 1, but with a better display). I was originally bitten by the micros available in the laboratory in which I worked from the mid 1970s to the mid 80s. First came the Intertec Superbrain - a 64kB CP/M all-in-one affair with dual 5.25 inch floppy drives. Next came the DEC Rainbow, which ran 8 bit CP/M on a Z80, and CP/M-86 on an Intel 8088. Next came a series of ICL PC & ICL Quattro machines running various flavours of Concurrent CP/M-86, with the later models having hard disks (which were sometimes known as 'Winchesters' for reasons which I can't recall). The ICL machines were the first I'd used which had serial terminals attached (up to 4 of them) rather than integrated video displays. After that, both at home and at work, the IBM compatible PC running Microsoft operating systems gradually took over, and I moved into mainframe & mid-range computing.
Powerful memories indeed, Christopher. I had the Apple IIe, Amiga and the Mac SE back in the day.
Great video and great memories indeed! I learnt Basic on a Dragon 32, oh those years...
My first go on a computer was at High School, 1981 and being the chess club guy I needed to play the Apple 2. I booked it for a lunch date, set the predictive moves to far too many and left at the end of lunch with the machine still pondering its first move. I took it as a human v computer success.
To be honest, those machines scared the heck out of me; I was sure I'd dodged a bullet... but my next meeting was in 1997 when a youngster on the job got a computer, I so bought myself my very first Windows 95 IBM Aptiva setup (the company refused to buy one for me) including all the essential peripherals it cost me $4,500 NZ. It was love at first sight.
Thanks for the memories, I am a recent subscriber and am looking back through your videos. My son recently found my second Aptiva, and finds it all very quaint. Somehow I became an historical artifact.
All this kicked off the year I left school and started as an apprentice with GPO Telephones LOL. A year later I built myself a Transam Triton, which appeared in a late 78 issue of ETI. It was in kit form, but sold in such a way that I could buy a new pack of parts every few weeks to gradually build the entire thing.
Thanks Chris, I could watch this all day, absolutely fascinating, definitely going to make a visit to Bletchley Park museum and thanks for all the links provided. Great video as always.
I remember seeing computers in elementary school in the late 70's. No one at the school knew how to use them, including the teachers. I specifically remember asking our librarian about the the two Apple II computers and she said they had never been turned on. I also remember my first computer, a Vic-20 my parents bought at a yard sale. They didn't quite know what it was, but thought I would like to play with it. I also remember being insanely jealous of my neighbor's C-64. I remember having my mind blown playing Flight Simulator and Zork on an early IBM PC. In High School i was one of the only people that figured out how to use the Amiga 500 in my art class and spent most of the year doodling on it. In contrast, today I am taking and older 3d-printer I own and giving it to the 12-year old son of a friend of mine that owns his own Windows 10 laptop. After watching this video, I have wondered what the 12-year old me from many years ago would have thought to receive a similar gifting of items that during the early 80's would have been the stuff of dreams and science fiction.
The very first computer my father bought was a TRS80 Model I. That thing had only 4K of memory and the early version of BASIC so it couldn't do much but it was awesome. Later my father expanded its memory to 16K and Level II Microsoft BASIC, bought games for us but also added disk drives and CP/M. But it was still his computer. So in 1982 he bought us kids a brand new VIC-20.
Sure, those machines were primitive with primitive and blocky graphics and so little memory you would run out of it very quickly, but they were the most engaging machines you could have in your hands. You could write your own programs! Or copy those from magazines and books, and make then work!
I am so glad computing has moved to a point where computers are an essential part of our daily lives. It's what any of us dreamed all those years ago. Yet there's still something about those early home computers that makes one nostalgic.
Great video! Thanks for the memories.
I built an Altair 8800a from kit in early 1976. With a 4k static ram board kit the total cost was $700. I had to get a personal loan from a bank to buy it. It needed a fix to the CPU clock circuitry before it ran at all (I drove 150 miles to the nearest MITS store for that repair). One of the RAM chips on the 4k board was bad and I tracked that down myself and replaced it. At that point, the only software available was some 8080 assembly language games (like 'kill-the-bit') that came printed with the Altair instruction manual that had to be entered on the front panel switches. (I knew about ALTAIR Basic but had no paper tape reader to load it).
I added a VDM-1 video S-100 card and a HItachi monochrome monitor, a parallel port board to support an external keyboard, and a CUTS serial port board that came with a cassette tape OS called CUTER - my first external mass storage! Using this rig I wrote a text editor and assembler in combination, using each of these two programs to bootstrap itself and each other until they were both powerful enough to do some serious assembler work. It was 1978 before I got a dual 8" external floppy drive unit running CP/M.
I sold the Altair 8800a on eBay years ago for over $2000 - it still ran fine.
Great story, thanks for sharing.
Awesome trip down memory lane Chris, thank you.
That was a walk down memory lane. 1978 Commodore Pet 8k with a tape drive and a huge dot matrix printer. I learned to program on that and moved on to a commodore 64K then a wonderful machine for the time. A Sword 128 K, with Sword Basic and 1.2 Mb floppy drive. Happy days. At 69, still writing databases. 👍 Thanks for this, especially that Osbourne... 😁♥️
Very nice video ! I myself had some experiences with C64's and IBM 8080 clones throughout the Nineties. They were very reliable and wore so much more class than those current-day computers. Great nostalgic memories resurface watching this video, Thanks !
Ultimately one of the best videos of computer science 😊
Brilliant videos, had a c64 that was well past it when I had it, then went to a dell pentuim 2 now to a a Intel I 5, amazing how things have moved on love to see another one of these type of videos in ten years.
Great video! But one small error: IBM never wanted the PC to be cloned. IBM in fact sued Compaq over the first PC clone.
Indeed. But what I said in the video was "In attempt to become the market leader, IBM made its ‘PC compatible hardware platform’ an open system, so allowing other manufacturers to copy its technology sell peripherals and ‘clone’ IBM PCs" (ie using an open system enabled clones to be made). IBM did made a very conscious decision to adopt an open architecture, and they certainly wanted others to make peripherals, if not to go as far as they did (ie the cloning of entire systems). This followed a very similar (and successful) approach taken with the IBM Systems/360. PS -- a great channel you have! :)
Got it. I see the point you're trying to make! Thanks for the reply!
I was trying to avoid getting too bogged down and going off at a tangent. But I get your point too! :)
ps/2 pcmcia - hardly open ;)
cp/m stuff was easy to 'bit-copy' :) remember super-calc?
It hard to imagine this stuff existed 30 years ago. Amazing work Chris!
Well done. I remember about age 12 I bought Atari 800 XL on a closeout sale. I was surprised to get such coolness for only $40 but would not have guessed the Atari I knew was about to disappear. About the same time my brother finally got his first too, ZX 81 mail-order. He tried to build the kit on his own first but it didn't work so he had to spend extra and send it back for them to build. After we both got IBM PC clones it seems strange how I forgot what it used to be like when our computers worked in very different ways so we couldn't even share our games to run on the other's computer. The other thing was that I never knew another person who had the same computer as me. It was more rare in those days to know someone in the neighborhood with their own home computer.
The computer I ever saw was an IMSAI 8080, kinda looked like the Altair shown in the video. The first computer I ever used was the IBM 5150. I learned how to use MS-Word 2.0 on it. Remember styles sheets? I was in College for electronics at the time at Madison Area Technical College (MATC), in Madison, WI. We used to call it Madison's Alternative to College. Got my AS in Electronics in Jan '88. I still repair computers and networks. Love the video. A great trip down memory lane.
Caturday Nite
Yeah! The IMSAI came out right about the time of the Altair and those two pretty much started the hobbyist craze, not to mention the arguments over which computer/bus/gfx/OS/language/whatever was the "best"!
The Amiga still has a very active fan base and user groups, thanks for the vid , a great history walk through :)
being a young subcriber..ive a great interest in the older PCS or MCS as they where known..Keep up the good work Chris
Very good video!!!
So many computers from my past! My first 3D renders and forays into computer art were on an Amiga (now my career), and my first programs written on commodore PETs at school, and a C64 at home. Then there's all the 5150s I learned Pascal on in college, and even a PalmV on a foldout keyboard snuck away in a background shot. One day I'll try and count up how many computers I've owned over the years... may take some time.
Just want to say I really love these historical videos.
Thanks for your kind feedback. :)
Very nostalgic for me. I was in high school when the 80's boom in UK home computing started; the ZX81 was around, the Spectrum was about to be launched, a mate 's dad had the PET (a CBM xxxx model, no doubt), and the machines on the high altar were the Atari 400 and 800. My first computer: a Sharp MZ80A, followed by a VIC-20, C64, then Amigas: 1000, 500, 4000, then a Pentium 75 in 1995. I used to enter data into SuperCalc 2 spreadsheet on an IBM PC XT in my first job.
This was a fantastic video and a trip down memory lane. See all those classic home 8-bit micros brought back some memories. I still own server models of ZX Spectrums and a couple of Commodore Amiga A1200s as well as an Acorn Electron and some other retro consoles in my collection. This was a very interesting video.
This video brought back a lot of memories. I remember using the Apple IIe (and later IIc) in school and playing games on a friend’s Commodore 64. Our first computer at home was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. Eventually, we stepped up to an IBM PC clone with a 10 MB hard drive, and a few years later I headed off to university with an 80286 clone.
:)
Yes! been waiting for this one :)
farmerwoody123 same here!
I was turned on to programming in the first place through using my school's TI 99/4s.
My first computer was a businesslike-gray TRS-80 MIII that came with a whole 16K of memory, soon to be upgraded to (a very expensive) 48K by yours truly. It ran for a year or so being loaded by a cassette recorder as its data drive, but ended up sporting dual 180K floppys.
Thank you for this fantastic walk through memory lane!! I have been (and still am) the proud owner of a BBC micro computer. I often think back at the times of undisturbed linear programming in the beautiful Pascal-like BBC basic of that machine. Thanks again!
I owned and used many of those computers. I worked at ComputerLand in 1985 and got to bring home state of the art computers. I remember taking a laptop (Data General) to a restaurant and attracting a crowd of people around me. Most of whom had never seen a computer close up. In 1984 I was taking notes at College on an NEC 8201. I was an early adapter and none of the other students were using laptops to take notes.
I had one of those timex computers and added a teletype keyboard. And made the function keys single Stroke keys. had the expanded MEM to.
We had Commodore 64 computers at my elementary school in Idaho, and it was a special privilege we had to earn. Later my uncle bought us a Texas Instruments TI-994A. I have many fond memories of playing games and watching my dad write endless streams of code using TI Basic. I currently still use a Brother Power Note from 1996, which has a Z80 processor.
My first ever computer was also the ZX81, I was only 4 years old at the time but even so and whilst I was fascinated with moving black blocks in 'Space Invaders'. What made it special was being able to play with my brother and sister who are 9 and 11 years older than me and to get a higher score lol. It was followed a few years later by the much more powerful Atari 800 XL which still lives in a box in my loft and I still have a pile of games in a suitcase for it. Also had a Dragon 32, an Atari Mega ST, Amiga 500 & A1200 in the 1990's. After 17 years in the loft, my Amiga 1200 is set up to play in front of me right now, proudly amongst my music production equipment and Intel I7 920 custom built desktop.
When I was working with IBM in the early '80s, one of our challenges was finding the resources necessary to build the equipment. It was amazing how many units were being sold - (for something that was originally thought to be only a smart mainframe interface terminal). A serious amount of finances went in to building new automation for this equipment (for this was the first time we had a mass produced computer). For example, Dayton, Ohio at Ochs tool and Die is where all of the cases were built/painted in a brand new high tech, lights out, manufacturing facility. Brand new automatic testing facilities were placed in Austin, Texas, keyboards built in Lexington, KY. There were other facilities across the USA, however, the point being, IBM needed to find resources -- and it was stretched all across the USA.
Really interesting, I've never heard about this before.
Another great challenge we had is with yields. Although placing various forms of resist on a silicon substrate was not new, we were pushing the envelope at 3 microns. Today that seems silly because we are at 14 nm, however, the total number of defects on a 150 millimeter wafer was higher than we wanted. Hence, getting enough 808x chips from Intel also was a tight bottle neck until San Jose came fully online. It was a fun time, kind of like the wild west and we were blazing new trails.
One final nugget of info for you - when you are ready to provide a review of the Intel Personal Computer, let me know. No, this is not the IBM, but in the mid 80's, Intel actually built there own (IBM) Personal Computer utilizing there own chips. What is not widely know is the first batch of motherboards that went out had a flaw. Many people were using the new Intel Computer as a CAD stations, and hence, needed the floating point power of the x287. Unfortunately at that time, the x287 was not key'ed and it was important you put it in the correct way or you would blow up the whole motherboard. Intel, unfortunately, place the silkscreen for the x287 backwards, and we were blowing up computers left and right! There was no good way to get the word out to people, and during those times, the only repair people for Intel computers was Intel. Hence, there are a lot of blown up Intel computers out there if you can get your hand on one. Intel got out of the Personal Computer business not too long after that.
Great episode!
My first was a ZX Spectrum 48k. Now I'm a proud owner of a Commodore SX64 (portable C64 basically), a Commodore PET 2001, and a PET 200 (Swedish keyboard, only about 7 of them still around) as well as several 70's pong games.
I just knew you'd have been an Amiga owner! Loved my Amigas back in the day.
A real trip down memory lane.
Had a Dragon 32, a Sinclair Spectrum with 48k ram, then went on to an Atari ST and onto an Acorn 3010 which I had the cpu changed from the ARM250 to an ARM 3.
It was fascinating to watch the engineer doing surface mount work!
I still have my Acorn, probably still have it when I die. I'm fond of it and might dig it up and mess with it again...
Very well presented. Good content. Brings back memories
you definitely took me down memory lane.
In a universe far far away and a long time ago.
Very cool Video, Chris!
Yes, it is really heartwarming to see all those wonderful machines, and it definitely triggers a lot of memories.
My first Personal Computer was a Commodore 64 and i made my first steps in BASIC on it.
And while i do love the C64 (or "Breadbox" as we lovingly call it in germany), i think it is the Amiga 500 that really got me hooked back then, and made me smile the most in this video!
Over the years, i owned several A500s (and still have one, but its pretty barebones) and two A200s (one of em sporting the incredible Picasso Graphics Card), took first looks at Software like Lightwave, FantaVision, Reflections and SCALA (even though i never really owned a dedicated GenLock)... and of course: Gaming!
Again, thanks for this Video, Chris, it is always a pleasure to watch them.
Amiga Masterrace FTW ;-)
Wow. Lots of memories, there. I got started with the National SC/MP Engineering kit. Had to wire wrap the thing, used a Baudot teletype for in/output. Followed with a Commodore Pet, then a Vic -20 C-64, C128, Amiga, Apple II, Apple IIe, Apple IIc,Osborne, HP, IBM PC, and an early Toshiba Laptop. Early on I got to play a bit on and Apple1 breadboard, running with a Compucolor graphics system. Today, I'm down to only 14 computers in the house. About a third are Raspberry Pi running various operating systems.
This video was giving me a lot of flashbacks.
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 and I had the 16Kb upgrade pack. I later went to the Sinclair Spectrum 48K model computer. For a Time I had a Commodore 64 before moving to the Amiga 500. It was with the Amiga 500 I got my very first hard drive adding on an A590 expansion with a 20MB HD in it and an extra 1MB of memory populating the A590 unit giving me 2Mb total memory. I still have the Amiga 1200 computer I eventually replaced it with although a few years back the 120MB HD in my A1200 died. My Amiga 1200 also has an expansion board in it with a 68030 CPU and a 68881 MPU on it. I also had this tiny little board that plugged into the 2.5" IDE header with a passthrough for the IDE HD and allowed for a SCSI device to be plugged in externally converting IDE control signals to SCSI control signals. I had a 100MB iOmega Zip drive with a few cartridges I plugged into that as well as a SCSI CD writer that you placed the discs into a caddy to insert them in instead of an ejecting tray.
Computers shown in a museum does bring back memories from the past such as first seeing these computers in high street shops and thinking about what these computers could do from all those years ago.
The Amiga (I had an A500 in 1988) was such a joy! Those were the days my friend, I thought they'd never end........
Loved this been waiting for part to i had the amstrad cpc 464 as a kid I still got all the games to this day and still play them via emulation
Hi Chris! Another great video bringing back many memories!! Wondering why there was just a brief mention of Radio Shack computers as they were an important factor of early personal computers. I still have my TRS-80 Model III and IV both working, as well as a Tandy 600 early laptop also still working. Amazing that the old floppy discs are also still readable and writable! My "Computer Museum" also consists of a DEC VT420 Terminal which I connected to my Raspberry Pi 3b+ and 4b using a serial to USB cable!! I also have Mainframe punched cards, reel to reel magnetic tapes, microfiche, as well as a multitude of old working calculators from Casio, Radio Shack, TI, HP, Sharp, etc. Unbelievable that this old technology from the 1970's and early 1980's still work! I did have to take some of these devices apart to solder some connections and clean keys, etc., but very minor repair work. My old Mattel Electronic Handheld games collection from the 1970's like Auto Race and Football also still work. I have the original Merlin game which I had to fix. My grandkids use them now:) Anyway I love these old electronics. You had to actually work at getting computers going, not like these days where everything is plug and play. It was more fun but glad to see SBC's now and Linux. Brings back some of that old notion of doing things "outside of the box" such as marrying the oldest technology (my VT420) with the newest (Raspberry Pi 4b)!! In addition to my love of electronic I also have a Curta Mechanical Calculator Model I which is a great device from the 1950's (also still works and actually in mint condition)! The mechanics of this device is amazing with over 800 gears, berrings, rods and other parts! Thanks again for this look back in early computer history! Regards- Rich
The focus in this video was on early PCs at the National Museum of Computing -- not early PCs in general! :)
@@ExplainingComputers Got it. Thanks!
Ah the memories. I had a Commodore 64 and a friend had a Commodore 128. Loved it so much
Earliest memories I have of a computer at home was in the late 80s... this is in Brazil, so tech came late at high prices here.
I'm still not sure exactly what computer it was, but it was a blue-gray keyboard style computer that you needed a tapedeck to run programs and it connected straight to a TV. Everything that came to Brazil back then got rebranded to local names like "Itautec".
If I'm not mistaken it ran some form of BASIC too, and I remember at least one game - Zaxxon 3D... so it was most likely a TRS-80/CoCo.
After this, it was already a PC-XT with that green phosphorous screen. My first contact with a programming language was DBase III Plus with Clipper as compiler. I think the first serious thing I did with it was a sort of costumer control database for a home based console game rental thing... my dad helped me with it. This was probably back in 93-94, so I was around 14 yrs old. xD
We also had this ancient 600 baud rate modem that was almost the size of a computer nowadays, heavier all metal, that I don't remember ever being used. Perhaps it came from my dad's work, I just found it one day in home storage. When I started dabbling with BBSs and IPX connections to play Doom we already had a US Robotics 5600 board - that's 5600 baud rate, not the more popular and last of the line 56Kbps.
This of course only happened because my dad got into computers very early in the age of computers here in Brazil... he worked with valve computers, punch cards, mainframes with tape storage and the likes. When he died back in 1999 he was still working with a small team porting stuff from old IBM mainframes to more modern platforms, at Itaipu hydroelectric power plant/river dam. He lead the division of computers for HR on one of the main contractors building the dam back in the 80s, Unicom.
Great memories of the time. I still remember very clearly the Sundays my dad had to do something in the offices, he took me there... huge floor space filled with offices with dumb terminals with desks built to house them. They were all connected to the refrigerated "server room" filled with mainframes. I was a kid back then, so I was both fascinated and kinda bored. xD Didn't understand the value of it all.
Yes Chris I have memories, My first personal computer was a Packard Bell I don't remember the model number or name off the top of my head but it had Windows for Workgroups 3.1 and DOS 6.2 I still have the computer and the software and 3.5 floppy disk that came with it. I purchased it from Walmart for just over $900.00, with tax just over $1000.00. This computer taught me how to use a computer and this was exciting to me. I had a dial up phone connection with the internal modem and you would hear it squeak and click when it was connecting. If I find it I'll let you know the spec's of it. Also it had a DVD drive and a 1.4 /or 3.5 floppy disk drive. Anyway smaller than the 5.0 floppy disk.
Yes, I started-off with Sinclair's zx81, the vic-20 was next, Commodore 64, an Amstrad '1024?'. The first computer I got to take apart was an IBM XT, running on dos5, with WordPerfect, Supcalc(3/4), I learnt to code on that using b-basic which was included with dos5. Out of all the computers I had the Psion 3 was the most useful, it went into my rucksack, I did library-research on it, wrote-up draft-papers, there was loads of useful software freely available, include critical-path analysis apps, project-management apps, even diagnostic apps for fixing desktops, an awesome bit of kit for the time!
My first machine was a Sinclair's ZX81. Happy days of expanding and programming! I now have Raspberry PiS (3) and enjoy the same sort of tinkering.
Thank you for that! A great trip down memory lane indeed! I cut my teeth on Fortran bubble cards in high school, where a friend and I also bought a Commodore Pet (8K) because we wanted to created a dating game based on peoples likes and dislikes :-) Although that was left for others to perfect, I was fortunate enough to have owned and used lots of the ones you highlighted and then some. After the Pet, came the ZX-81 (yes, we ordered it from the UK into Canada, so it was not the Timex branded one), Commodore 64, Atari ST (eventually with a brilliant Mac emulator), and so on.
Great video ... brought back fond memories for me. I remember the Altair & Imsai as being out of my price range and I went with the SWTP 6800 ... despite it being a kit.
How times have changed ... albeit you could equate the Arduino culture these days with my fun with the SWTP 6800
Thanks for the memories! 👍🏻
Ah! I remember SWTP (Southwest Technical Products?). I built the "01" audio amplifier from their kit (.01% THD).
Great video. I really need to go visit the museum soon. Our first computer was the 48K rubber key Spectrum and I still have it!
So many memories. I had a Commodore Plus 4 (C16) then went on to the Spectrum plus 2 and finally the Amiga 500 & 1200. Both I fitted with a battery clock pack & the 1200 with a 2GB hard drive! After installing Directory Opus 5 + Workbench & all my DPaint software I still had 98% free space!!! Well written programs don't need to be massive like nowadays!
My second was a radio shack with 20meg hd and the salesman said I'd never need more than that...
Same experience. I added a Corvus constellation with 30 meg, I have single files that big now
I have used many of the computers seen in this video... Apple IIe, Acorn A3000/3010/3020/BBC Microcomputer Model B, Commodore PET/CBM/VIC-20/64/A-500, Sinclair ZX80/ZX81/Spectrum.... So this is a proper walk down memory lane for me...wonderful! You said that the ZX81 was your first computer...mine too - Christmas present ,1982
I'd love to go to TNMOC, I'm not sure how big it is, or if it can all be viewed inside a day...maybe I'll need to find somewhere to stay in the area and do it over 2 or 3 days.
Thank you for this (and the other) video, Chris. Great memories.
I think we are from the same era. You can do the museum justice in a day. :)
ExplainingComputers I was born in '73 (I'm guessing you've been around slightly longer than me), and had been showing an interest in technology by I'd say around age 7 or 8, so my parents surprised me greatly by getting me the ZX81 for Xmas 82 - the ONLY gift I got that year, but that was more than enough.
Skip forward to my final year of Primary school in 84/85, and that was when I got my hands on a BBC Micro. The other computers I mostly used during my Secondary school years. I first got my hands on a proper IBM compatible during my final year of Secondary school...a Wang PC 240, 80286 with an 80287 math co-processor (aah, the days of a separate co-processor) and my first experience with Windows, and also my first experience with networks, having used CIX (then Compulink Information eXchange) during that year as well as a few other BBSs.
When I was young, my dad took me to a friend of his, and he introduced me to his Apple II+. I got to enter a couple of BASIC programs and was hooked. My dad could not afford the price tag of the Apple, but I had my eyes on VIC-20 which was much cheaper. ( I just wanted a computer, I really did not care about which. I knew cost was a HUGE consideration) My father instead got me the recently released C-64 instead. That computer basically shaped my education moving forward. I do still have a C-64 here. It has a place in my heart. I never will let it go.....
I remember copying the BASIC for a submarine game from a magazine on my neighbour's ZX81. It wasn't until I got a 16K Spectrum that I saw the delights of tape in action! I'd cheerfully watch an episode looking into detail of each of these computers.
Now this jogged a memory! ..... I still have a Vic 20 in its box in the loft somewhere! This had the special extra of a memory expansion pack of 8Kb (if my memory serves) I also remember being an apprentice working at the West Gorton site of ICL ..... They obtained a "super clean" supply line for their testing by running a motor generator set on site!
I bought the first commodore pet in 1997 from a shop named Sumlock who were on Deansgate in Manchester. I still dare not say how much I paid for it, but I had hours of fun, frustration and utter fascination and so started a 40 year love affair with the PC. Loved this trip down MEMORY lane.
Oh MAN. My very first computer was a TI-99/4A with many peripherals including the expansion box that my parents bought when I was around nine years old in the very early eighties. It was meant to be a "family" computer, although I became the main user. I have been in "computers" ever since. I became a software engineer and eventually led to electronics engineering as well. Oh, the memories of the beginning of my future. I wish you had video of that old unit! I even wrote code for the McDonnell Douglas TI Users Group before I was twelve!
I remember looking at the TI-99/4A in stores, but never used or owned one. It would be great to feature on in a video. :)
Brilliant, thanks for that.
When I was very young there was the atari 800, played many games on that, which came on 5 1/4 disc and small cartridge. It had a memory expansion board that was so large and packed with IC's that it couldn't have fit in the slot if it had a housing (cover) as the other RAM modules did. It got very warm. My Father got the first Macintosh when it came out in '84. I remember Mac Bottom (external hard drive) and the Fanny Mac (after market external fan to prevent the stupid convection cooling-induced failures, of which there were several). Some programs were 'Megaroids' (mac version of Asteroids) , Mac Paint and Mac Draw, Deluxe music construction set (when upgraded to 512k that worked better), eventually Dark Castle. I remember the screen of death where the mac had XX eyes and the messed up checker-board pattern which apparently was really bad. At school there was the Apple 2, then C, then E, then the GS... but of course since this was public school in the mid-late 80's (in the US)... I rarely saw those computers until they were old and beat up.
A lot of these are older than me, and I never got to experience them first hand, yet I have a strong interest at looking at micros and early PC compatibles. I find it so interesting to see where we came from and how we got to the point we are at now.
Thanks for such a great video on the history of computing. During my career in computing have used a good portion of the computers featured. My first exposure to computers in the late 1970s included Commodore PET and Imsai 8800 (a competitor of the Altair 8800). I used a friend's Atari 800. The first computer I owned was a ZX81. The ZX81 played a pivotal role in my future career because it enabled me to become a finalist in a local science fair by programming the computer in machine code to teach biology (phage reproduction) and chemistry (and interactive gas laws program). Also, purchased a Timex Sinclair 2068 which had a raised keyboard and color graphics and 48KB of RAM . In college, I worked with IBM PCs for course work and Commodore 64 for recreation - Saturday nights were gaming night with pizza. In graduate school, I had IBM clone which I built from parts and Radio Shack Model 100. I maintained a computer lab of Macintosh Pluses and Macintosh SEs, and Macintosh II (of various types) and for rest of the department IBM PCs and clones.
One small point worth mentioning, is that ZX81 shipped with 1KB of RAM and Timex-Sinclair shipped with 2K of RAM.
Does the museum have Timex-Sinclair 1500?
Thanks for this. I did not know that the Timex was 2K. There wasn't a Timex-Sincliar 1500 at the museum.
My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. I bought with it the 16k memory, plus three programs: Chess, Frogger and a flight simulator. Learning to program in Basic was extremely interesting. I am still fond of Basic to this day! My next two computers were a Commodore Vic-20 and a Commodore 64. I used the 64 for ages.
Delightful video, brings back great memories and shows how fast the pace of development in new products was. There was literally a new thing on the market every time you turned around. It was exciting trying to keep up with all of it and trying to decide what to buy. No one wanted to seem behind the curve to their friends so we all kept getting new stuff and learning it. It was great that these manufacturers did this, it brought us a long way forward in a short time. The defining moment was in 1990 when Microsoft introduced Windows 3.0 however. No matter what you may think of them, most of all of these early machines simply vanished after Windows was released and everyone became aware of what it could do in the business market. The IBM PC and the clones were suddenly the most important things you could have and the rest is history. Apple could have become a much larger company much quicker if they had adopted the Intel hardware so they could run X 86 programs and share in the vast library of software. Steve Jobs was too stubborn.
I grew up in the late 70's and 80's. Dad was into computers from the get go. He had a Teletype Model 33ASR and TI 99/4 and TI 99/4A. He also had computers that wold boot from 8" floppy discs and just about every IBM PC. His first real hard drive was 5MB and was spun buy a belt driven AC motor. It is all gone now. I wish he would have given it to a museum.
My first computer was a Vic20 and I was very happy with it. Did a lot of programming with it. Never saw it in colour as TV was black & white in those days.
My first microcomputer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 (later rebranded as Model I), which I bought in 1978. I bought it with the expansion interface, 32 K RAM, and 2 floppy drives. Over time I upgraded it to add double-sided, double density, half-height floppy drives. I changed out the TRSDOS for NEWDOS 80. I even had VisiCalc, the proto-Lotus spreadsheet. I also had a word processing program that I used to publish a book. I bought an Epson printer in 1980 for $599.
Being in the electronic components business I decided to make a Triton which was a Practical Electronics design and a kit of parts was available. I would think that this was around 1980 +- a couple of years. The kit was around £350 then! It consisted of an 8080 processor, 2K RAM using around 24 DIL chips . The Tiny Basic and Monitor driver was 0n about 16 2708 EPROM. It was capable of outputting composite video and used cassette tape as program store - MOST unreliable. I learnt a lot by doing that about what's going on "under the hood" which still applies today. It certainly was a trip down memory lane Thanks so much.
For more details go to
www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/6210/Transam-Triton/
I knew you would be an Amiga fan.
Still one of my favourite machines that I still use to this day.