Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: VingtTrois on February 11, 2011, 04:52:51 PM
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PET, COMMODORE 64 but nothing about AMIGA (1000)!!!!
(http://www.maximumpc.com/files/gallery/commodore_pet_01_0.jpg)
(http://www.maximumpc.com/files/gallery/commodore64_01.jpg)
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/25_most_important_pcs_history#slide-0-field_gallery_images-17104
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How lame the Apple III and a couple of nondescript IBM-PC clones make it... Yet there is no ZX80 or Amiga... How very very lame :(
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No spectrum either.
Wankers
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@runequester & bloodline: perhaps Sir Clive SINCLAIR is banned!
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Now this is the kind of shit that really pisses me off. Linear minded dolts pure and simple. No TI-99's either. Atari ST should have even made an appearance as well as one of those British offerings like the Sinclair/Spectrum.
And "important" my ass. That Exidy machine was important? They've got to be kidding. The baby steps the IBM PC took every few years were hardly significant either. Yay, so here's the first PC to come pre-built with a hard drive. Yay.
Apple III :laughing:
I do not recognize the importance or accuracy of that article at all, but it was nice to see an Altair and PET make an appearance.
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What d'ya expect it's from a PC website what would anyone who hangs around or posts on a PC site know about the history of computers... :)
Put it this way if a PC user can't get the thing to work straight out the box (or even manage to open the box) they're stuffed until an adult helps them out... :lol:
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Yeah. It's nice to see more love for the Kenbak-1, but how the hell many PC clones do you need on a list?
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No Amiga? Good, because it's miles ahead of the 25 computers listed :)
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Maybe it is just because the old Amiga hardware is still important today and therefore not "an important computer in history".:laughing:
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They probably put the office dimwit to google for museum pieces, and wrote the copy thinking that the Amiga was still SOTA from all the forums and press ;)
Interesting footnote. Of all those historic computers, I don't think any of them still being written for and used daily by 1000s of people.
One thing can be said for the Amiga its not an Antique Computer just yet ;)
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Maybe it is just because the old Amiga hardware is still important today and therefore not "an important computer in history".:laughing:
Great minds think alike ;)
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I think the journalist doesn't have a clue what so ever about any of the entries listed. Just writes what's expected for the moment... so boring.
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Apparently preemptive multitasking is not considered a milestone.
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To my mind, the History of the personal computer ended when the ibm pc was introduced. ;-)
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hah, certainly consumer choice largely ended.
It blows my mind how many computers existed in the 8 bit era, each with significant software libraries of their own. Spectrum, The commodore and atari machines, msx, amstrad cpc, bbc micro, undoubtedly more stuff I am forgetting about :)
Move up a bit and we are mostly down to amiga, atari, ibm-clones and mac's.
And today, you can pick between a PC running windows, a PC running mac os, and a PC running linux.
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It blows my mind how many computers existed in the 8 bit era, each with significant software libraries of their own. Spectrum, The commodore and atari machines, msx, amstrad cpc, bbc micro, undoubtedly more stuff I am forgetting about :)
This. If I could bring back one thing about the '80s, it would be the absolutely enormous variety of significantly different computers available to the public.
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This. If I could bring back one thing about the '80s, it would be the absolutely enormous variety of significantly different computers available to the public.
Yeah bring back "Incompatible", lets revel in the lack of standards.
That's when you didn't choose to be different, it was forced upon you.
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Yeah bring back "Incompatible", lets revel in the lack of standards.
That's when you didn't choose to be different, it was forced upon you.
Microsoft office would like to talk to you about that, but it can't because you're not running the same version.
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LOL anyone see what he wrote for Apple Macintosh No.24 and his reason for it being on the list...: First "affordable" GUI-based PC....d'oh!
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Microsoft office would like to talk to you about that, but it can't because you're not running the same version.
Microsoft were still a tiny software house out of Albuquerque. M$ Office wasn't even in the Roadmap, even if they had a road map.
While Taiwan standardised, IBM then Compaq bastardised as did Apple and the rest.
I never said the road to compatibility was solely a x86 affair, but the 8bit Wild West that was the 80's wasn't good yet it did sort the men from the boys.
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hah, certainly consumer choice largely ended.
It blows my mind how many computers existed in the 8 bit era, each with significant software libraries of their own. Spectrum, The commodore and atari machines, msx, amstrad cpc, bbc micro, undoubtedly more stuff I am forgetting about :)
Yeah, there were a lot of them back in the Elder Days. Just pick up a copy of Byte, Kilobaud, or Creative Computers from that era. I had an Atari 800 and later a 1200XL. I can remember seeing the Exidy Sourcerer in the store, complete with software carts made from recycled 8-track tape shells. ;-) . Even saw an apple I board.
Of course in those days, having a computer was a goal in itself, not just a means to an end like today.
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I don't think much effort was put into the article. If you did it right you would research every country first. Amiga was very popular in Europe, but didn't make a dent (other than the A500) in the US.
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Ah, the good old days. When you were convinced that one day everyone would have a computer, but you weren't too sure what they'd be using them for.
And while you quietly advocating their purchase you had to explain to your
Uncle Ned that balancing his checkbook was probably not a good reason to buy one.
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The 80's will never be beaten for being the most innovative & exiting time for being a home computer user, quite apart from the seemingly never ending choice of home computers that were constantly popping up more often than a CUSA thread, it was a time when you actually had to use your brain just to get the things to work properly... :)
None of this straight out the box plug'n'play stuff for softies, more a case of I've just bought a VIC20 and no one told me I need a tape deck for it to use the ruddy thing, but you could type in the simple basic programs in the magazine you'd just bought as well and play that. Then spend another hour or two typing it in again next time you wanted to use it cos you still didn't have the tape deck to save it on... :)
It was a time when all the high street shops were packed out on a Saturday morning with all these spotty faced kids & teenagers that you met each week who spent hours droolling and arguing about which cassettes to spend all your hard earned pay or pocket money on that week and typing rude words on all the different computers that were on display, knowing that you'd never be kicked out of the shop cos the manager knew that eventually you'd soon part with your cash for all the latest games and then bugger off... :)
Course it was from these Saturday morning meetings in the high street shops or the specialised shops hidden down dark dingy lanes were you had to dodge the old tramps sleeping & puking in the doorways where lots of the user groups and cracking crews started. Don't really see or hear much of that these days in the likes of PCWorld or your local toffee nosed Mac dealers... :)
Twas indeed a wonderful time to be a home computer user and I've still got the scars to prove it... :)
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Compatibility/standardised=Not the best
8 bit = MSX vs others with better sound/sprites/colours.
16 bit = EGA PC 8086 vs Amiga/ST
32/64bit = PC vs $200 360 (as a gamer)
Also no personality/quirkyness outside console hardware wars today.
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Compatibility/standardised=Not the best
8 bit = MSX vs others with better sound/sprites/colours.
16 bit = EGA PC 8086 vs Amiga/ST
32/64bit = PC vs $200 360 (as a gamer)
Also no personality/quirkyness outside console hardware wars today.
Consoles which all use processors designed by the same company and are derived from PowerPC processors.
The top two selling consoles having GPUs designed by the same firm, and the third ranking seller using a GPU from that company's biggest rival.
Yeah, they're quirky, but the let's face it they're also standardized (more so than PCs). You can't even modify them, create your own software or use anything but officially sanctioned software.
What happened to the first part of your argument?
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Microsoft office would like to talk to you about that, but it can't because you're not running the same version.
Or most of Adobe's products. Or MS-DOS programs/games. Or Win95 apps and games. Or Mac OS9 apps and games. OR...
@Commodorejohn: good one, but if you're "lucky", there *may* be a patch available for your particular hardware and OS. *IF* you're lucky. And hopefully it doesn't mess with Windows so much that it causes your other programs to NOT work afterwards.
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Yeah bring back "Incompatible", lets revel in the lack of standards.
That's when you didn't choose to be different, it was forced upon you.
Right, right. It was quite the hassle tracking down the appropriate version of a piece of software for your hardware, admittedly. It's much better today, where it just refuses to run on anything older than three years.
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Apparently preemptive multitasking is not considered a milestone.
In combination with a GUI and custom chipset.
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If your willing to use the standards of the 8-bit era, there are dramatically MORE choices today than there ever were. If you are comparing the computers to top of the line PCs, no. The x86 PC has vastly outpaced everything else out there, but if you are willing to hack on a screen yourself, and put together your own keyboard, you have a huge choice.
Heck Microchip technology is actively selling a couple of hundred different models alone, ranging from 8-bit to 32-bit.
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Ah, the good old days. When you were convinced that one day everyone would have a computer, but you weren't too sure what they'd be using them for.
And while you quietly advocating their purchase you had to explain to your
Uncle Ned that balancing his checkbook was probably not a good reason to buy one.
Back then I was in the mainframe biz. When the boss heard I was looking for a computer, he thought I was nuts... "You work computers all day, then you want to go home to one?", He says. "But it's *mine*", sez I. ;-)
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Back then I was in the mainframe biz. When the boss heard I was looking for a computer, he thought I was nuts... "You work computers all day, then you want to go home to one?", He says. "But it's *mine*", sez I. ;-)
I don't think IBM ever really understood the idea of personal computing either. Why else would they totally out source all the elements their original PC?
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It was a time when all the high street shops were packed out on a Saturday morning with all these spotty faced kids & teenagers that you met each week who spent hours droolling and arguing about which cassettes to spend all your hard earned pay or pocket money on that week and typing rude words on all the different computers that were on display, knowing that you'd never be kicked out of the shop cos the manager knew that eventually you'd soon part with your cash for all the latest games and then bugger off... :)
Course it was from these Saturday morning meetings in the high street shops or the specialised shops hidden down dark dingy lanes were you had to dodge the old tramps sleeping & puking in the doorways where lots of the user groups and cracking crews started. Don't really see or hear much of that these days in the likes of PCWorld or your local toffee nosed Mac dealers... :)
Twas indeed a wonderful time to be a home computer user and I've still got the scars to prove it... :)
They have shops in Scotireland? :hammer:
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There were some good points made on the last page, and I have to agree. What sort of choice is there today? Apple vs Microsoft? HP vs Dell? AMD vs Intel? It doesn't really matter; in the mainstream market, it all boils down to x86 vs x86.
There are no competing platforms on the (main) market. For a while, Apple stayed with PowerPC, but now that they switched, what's left? Sure, there's the Efika, AmigaOne, Natami, all of that stuff, but the fact is, those are products for a niche hobbyist market.
It may be somewhat defeatist, but my stance is that the processor architecture war was lost with Apple switching from PPC, and now x86 is so ingrained into everything that it will continue to remain the dominant platform forever. It's sad, too, seeing how x86 is a crappy architecture from a programmer's perspective.
RISC was neat. x86 won out simply because it had better marketing, better production yields at the right times, and an early start. Hell, it's even more obvious today that RISC was better, because x86 today is really just a horrifying convoluted CISC instruction set laid over a RISC core.
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It may be somewhat defeatist, but my stance is that the processor architecture war was lost with Apple switching from PPC, and now x86 is so ingrained into everything that it will continue to remain the dominant platform forever. It's sad, too, seeing how x86 is a crappy architecture from a programmer's perspective.
I don't think forever, but I do wonder how long it's going to take before the industry finally gets it through their heads that you can't keep updating a 32-year-old architecture by extending the register width and lumping in coprocessor functionality indefinitely. That's why I'm cautiously hopeful for the recent attempts at ARM-based netbooks - I don't even think it's the best architecture on the market, but it would be nice to see some competition.
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Man...
...I miss those days of loading up Half-Life 2 off tape drive and running through it on my PET.
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Lew Eggebrecht and his fucking PCjnr.
Pfffffft!!!
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I don't think forever, but I do wonder how long it's going to take before the industry finally gets it through their heads that you can't keep updating a 32-year-old architecture by extending the register width and lumping in coprocessor functionality indefinitely. That's why I'm cautiously hopeful for the recent attempts at ARM-based netbooks - I don't even think it's the best architecture on the market, but it would be nice to see some competition.
Odd statement, because AMD and Intel have proved you can keep updating a 32year old architecture and it does just fine.
Though I have to say I am also keen on the ARM (much newer architecture at 27 years old!), as my hobby board has an nice little M3 on it and my main computing device is now my iPhone :-/
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RISC was neat. x86 won out simply because it had better marketing, better production yields at the right times, and an early start. Hell, it's even more obvious today that RISC was better, because x86 today is really just a horrifying convoluted CISC instruction set laid over a RISC core.
Not really, like most things in computer science, pure philosophies don't work as well in the real world as Hybrid designs do! That's why all modern CPUs are Hybrid CISC/RISC and all modern operating systems use hybrid monolithic/microkernel designs.
Hybrid designs almost always win out in real world situations :)
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I don't think forever, but I do wonder how long it's going to take before the industry finally gets it through their heads that you can't keep updating a 32-year-old architecture by extending the register width and lumping in coprocessor functionality indefinitely.
That's also what Intel and HP thought when they developed their Itanium 64 bit processors. Then came AMD with their 64 bit extensions to the year-old 32 bit architecture. And the rest is history...
greets,
Staf.
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That's also what Intel and HP thought when they developed their Itanium 64 bit processors. Then came AMD with their 64 bit extensions to the year-old 32 bit architecture. And the rest is history...
greets,
Staf.
You learn something new every day... :)
I thought HP only ever invented Brown Sauce... :)
(http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af79/frankosamiga/lg_hp-sauce-big.jpg)
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I don't think IBM ever really understood the idea of personal computing either. Why else would they totally out source all the elements their original PC?
Lots of the established computer companies didn't understand the home market. I think it was the head man at DEC who asked "Why would anyone want a computer in their home"? and IBM itself was reluctant to get into the computer market, thinking that there would only be a market for five computers world wide. Now, just like in Futurama, where every gizmo is a robot, every gizmo has a computer in it. ;-)
I do think IBM's outsourcing the original was a good thing... not necessarily for them, but it lead to the plethora of cheaper clones out there.
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That's also what Intel and HP thought when they developed their Itanium 64 bit processors. Then came AMD with their 64 bit extensions to the year-old 32 bit architecture. And the rest is history...
Yeah, except that the companies behind other architectures have had the good sense not to make their designs baffling and hideous to program for, which was one of the key factors that sank the Itanic.
Odd statement, because AMD and Intel have proved you can keep updating a 32year old architecture and it does just fine.
They've kept it up thus far, but it got so crufty that they had to offload it to an entire separate RISC machine all the way back in 1995. It's impressive that they've kept it competitive, but I don't think they can do that indefinitely.
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Well, I wouldn't count out ARM. Basically if it isn't a console or a computer, it probably runs ARM. They pretty much rule the embedded market.
As far as IBM using off-the-shelf parts for their original PC, my understanding was always that it was a question of cost and convenience, since they wanted a product on the market quick. Once the BIOS was cloned, the rest was history.
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Well, I wouldn't count out ARM. Basically if it isn't a console or a computer, it probably runs ARM. They pretty much rule the embedded market.
As far as IBM using off-the-shelf parts for their original PC, my understanding was always that it was a question of cost and convenience, since they wanted a product on the market quick. Once the BIOS was cloned, the rest was history.
Yes, that was my understanding as well, that it was a cost issue. But that doesn't explain IBM and Apple's strategy at the time of selling relatively low cost PCs with lost cost components at a premium price.
I don't know what 8088s were going for, but a $5.00 6502 in a $1000 computer? Something's wrong there.
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A 1000 dollars would have been a bargain in the mid 80s for a PC or Mac ;)
In the end, they charged what they thought people were willing to pay. And people were indeed willing to pay 1500 dollars for a computer that at the time was barely more capable than most 8 bits
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A 1000 dollars would have been a bargain in the mid 80s for a PC or Mac ;)
In the end, they charged what they thought people were willing to pay. And people were indeed willing to pay 1500 dollars for a computer that at the time was barely more capable than most 8 bits
Well in that regard, things have improved. Lower prices, more availability, and better performance.
Comparing even a sub $300 netbook to an original PC makes today's products look good.
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Yeah, prices have finally become sane.
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What do you all expect from a rather bad magazine that only supports IBM, Intel, and such.... ?
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Odd how they left out the most important computer in history... the abacus... :)
Prime example here... :)
(http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af79/frankosamiga/Funny/abacus.jpg)
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Hahahahaha! Condommore. Good one Franko! :laughing:
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He's a kid with NFI. Troll websites, write an article pretend you know what you're writing about.
Apart from Amiga and the noted C64 the ZX81 and then Spectrum delivered computers into more hands of millions. Apple III?. LOL.
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@Franko: and don't forget that :cry: + :madashell: + :roflmao: + :confused: + :D + :eek: = 25 years!
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Commodore 64 (1982): Most-sold PC ever
Good Wikipedia quote, seems to be hard these days to write a good story about the history.
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@Franko: and don't forget that :cry: + :madashell: + :roflmao: + :confused: + :D + :eek: = 25 years!
Fine by me, cos I don't have 25 years left... :)