31 Jan
2024
31 Jan
'24
5:34 p.m.
On Wed, 31 Jan 2024 at 12:13, Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I write for an international audience and sometimes people from the
USA are openly and repeatedly incredulous that
"obscure" British
computers -- that means they've never heard of them -- can be
considered significant or important, even compared to American
machines that were on sale in East Futtbuck Idaho for 6 weeks in
Spring 1973 and have never been mentioned since.
I wish that I were in a position to visit that VCF and see those machines.
As an American it's true that the vast majority of my vintage computer
experience is completely americentric, but I'm aware that Acorn had a
significant presence in the overseas market and that RiscOS is viewed
fondly. Perhaps it's time for me to find an emulator and experience the
system for myself.
And yes, there does appear to be outsize interest from the community in
dead-end and/or sub-par American machines vs. those from overseas. For
example, I gather that Omron did fairly well in the UNIX hardware business
in Japan, but had effectively zero market penetration elsewhere. Interest
in those systems here is effectively zero, mostly because they never
appeared on the secondary market and so there was no long tail leading to
hobbyist use.
The biggest selling CPU in history is a British design
from a British
company. Its native OS is still updated and is FOSS today, and
provided the inspiration for a key part of the Windows 95 user
interface now used by billions. The core of the OS dates from the late
1970s or so and may be the oldest OS of which a modern derivative
still can run on the bare metal of new hardware in 2024.
Surely by this definition UNIX would take the crown? The "core of the OS"
dates from 1969 and modern derivatives are everywhere.
-Henry