History of Computing exam question

From: Christopher Smith <csmith_at_amdocs.com>
Date: Mon Dec 3 12:15:31 2001

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Franchuk [mailto:bfranchuk_at_jetnet.ab.ca]

> Christopher Smith wrote:

> > I took the question a different way. As I interpreted it,
> the computers
> > were supposed to be "significant" in terms of design. The
> IBM PC wasn't.
> > It was pretty much all re-hash of something else.

> Well when I first saw a PC ( clone that is ) , I thought
> "WOW A real keyboard, good display ( Upper / Lower Case )
> and dual floppies all in one box". 512K ram max sounded
> like a lot of memory too. Compared to the 8 bit toy market
> at the time Z80's,C64's,Coco's that was a lot of power.
> It was the small 16 bit addressing that killed the 8 bitters.

May have been unusual at the time. I doubt it was the first machine to have
any of that. A VAX-11/750 with a vt-100, for instance, would have had all
that less the dual-floppies and with a much higher maximum RAM limit ;)

Seriously, though, some older CP/M boxes also had real keyboards, decent
displays and dual floppies. (Some of which was optional, mind you... as were
_any_ floppies on the PC, AFAIK, in that you bought them separately :) Also
you could say that it was the first available 16-bit home computer
(depending on your definition of 16-bit), but you'd be wrong... (Quick
search says that several people believe this was the TI-99, actually, which
also had a real keyboard, and could have had the dual floppies)

Ultimately, the 32-bit systems were pretty close on its heels -- I have a
timeline that places the PC in '82, and the Apple Lisa in '83. I don't know
if this is correct...

I have no idea how the peesee actually lasted as long as it has. There were
several 32-bit systems on the market by 1984 or so (though, my personal
favorite was done in '87 with the Acorn Archimedes).

Regards,

Chris


Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL

/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
 
Received on Mon Dec 03 2001 - 12:15:31 GMT