19 May
2024
19 May
'24
8:26 p.m.
On 2024-05-19 9:14 a.m., Tarek Hoteit via cctalk wrote:
A friend of a friend had a birthday gathering.
Everyone there was in their thirties, except for myself, my wife, and our friend. Anyway,
I met a Google engineer, a Microsoft data scientist, an Amazon AWS recruiter (I think she
was a recruiter), and a few others in tech who are friends with the party host. I had
several conversations about computer origins, the early days of computing, its importance
in what we have today, and so on. What I found disappointing and saddening at the same
time is their utmost ignorance about computing history or even early computers. Except for
their recall of the 3.5 floppy or early 2000’s Windows, there was absolutely nothing else
that they were familiar with. That made me wonder if this is a sign that our living
version of classical personal computing, in which many of us here in this group witnessed
the invention of personal computing in the 70s, will stop with our generation. I assume
that the most engaging folks in this newsgroup are in their fifties and beyond. (No
offense to anyone. I am turning fifty myself) I sense that no other generation following
this user group's generation will ever talk about Altairs, CP/M s, PDPs, S100 buses,
Pascal, or anything deemed exciting in computing. Is there hope, or is this the end of the
line for the most exciting era of personal computers? Thoughts?
Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
Well with the internet I have been finding a lot more about behind the
history of the 1970's.
The West Coast made the chips, and the East coast made the computers,
while here in Canada,We just got to watch computers on TV with the
blinking lights back then and the few chip sold by Radio Shack.
Back then you could get to build a computer of some kind, on the kitchen
table, as the knowledge was available, and parts Thu the hole. People
are going retro simply because modern computers are too complex with
documentation known to a few.
The Z80 may be long gone, but I am sure lots of 8080's are sill
for sale on ebay.
I wanted to build a computer in my teens, and now I have time and the
money. Looking back in time I see how bad the tech was back the for the
average Joe. BASIC to rot your brain. 4K ram so you never learned how
to comment stuff. Word lengths 4,8,16 so you spent all your time shoe
horning a stuff to fit. Parts costing a arm and a leg, and three weeks
for delivery.
(Today parts from China 95 cents, 2 months delivery and arm and leg for
shipping).
My latest design on paper, requires 74LSXX,74H74,CY7C122 (25ns 256x4
ram),13 mhz osc, and lots of cmos 22V10's.A 18 bit serial cpu,
with a memory cycle time of 2.25 uS. I am still working on my
personal computer.
Who knows,It might even work, but first the EMULATOR
and cross assembler.
Ben.