29 May
2024
29 May
'24
12:16 p.m.
Always good to spark an "interesting discussion"
"Personal computer" - Generic enough that it can have multiple interpretations:
While technically somebody could have put a Cray1 in his (big :-) basement
and used it for his own enjoyment (ie: a "personal" computer) ... I don't
think I have ever seem such an arrangement promoter in a "marketing term".
I tend to think along the lines of places where I've seen the term actually
used in the industry:
The most obvious is IBM - the "IBM Personal Computer" (5150)
Perhaps there were others, but AFAIK this was a huge change in the way
the most prominent company I was aware of at the time in the industry
did business!
Prior to the PC, IBM rented large mainframes which came with a whole
support contract -- The first computer I ever saw was an IBM 360 at
"University of New Brunswick" ** and I got to know the people to ran
it and some of the IBM engineers who supported it quite well **
With the PC - IBM created a system that they could actually sell (and
could be afforded by) most anyone who wanted a computer. Yes, MANY of
there sales were to companies who wanted dozens of them, but they were
offered in electronics stores, or could be ordered.
Mits claimed to be the first to use term "Personal computer" which they
used to reference their Altair - but most people are much more aware of
the "IBM PC".
And "along the way" I "personally" had a a few full-rack systems in
my
own basement (actually - Dining room - at least till I got married :-)
These induced a couple "Data General Novas", a few "DEC PDP-8's and
PDP-11's" and a few others - but I never really though of these as
my "personal systems" - to me at the time, they were "lucky finds of
industrial computers" that I had managed to acquire!
Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old
Computers"->Personal
** When I first "met" the universitys IBM 360, the only way for students
to use it was with "punch cards", and a dedicates self serve room with a
card reader and massive chain line printer.
Then they got a room of Selectric 2741 printing terminals, after that
one with serial CRT terminals and finally a row of five IBM 3270 page-
mode CRT terminals across the end.
I of course was the guy who was in there constantly, late at night,
early mornings and weekends - learning about and putting the system
through as many "tricky things" as I could!
At one point I became friends with a couple of the operators, who told
me than whenever the system went down, the first thing they asked was
"Where's Dave"?
And I had the pleasure (significant to me at the time) of seeing one of
the 3270s being used by an IBM engineer who was running disgnostics and
other system test/monitor programs (the kind of stuff I really wanted to
see) - while the other four were being used by IBM engineers running a
multi-user "tank game" that I had written (which really excercised page-
mode updates to the terminals that had proven to be fairly upsetting to
the stability of the system). I do recall one of the players of my game
saying something like "I've never seem them used this way - quite cool!"