5 Jun
2024
5 Jun
'24
9:10 p.m.
On Wed, Jun 5, 2024 at 3:25 PM Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
If a device is not a microcomputer, it then must be either a
minicomputer or a mainframe. Early on many mainframes didn't even
support interactive sessions so they more or less disqualified
themselves from being "personal" in any commonly-understood sense.
Disagree. Someone has to give it input to get output, and that can be one
person using the mainframe by themselves. So again, this kind of "
description" still does not cut it.
Which leaves minicomputers.
A single-user desktop (or deskside) minicomputer isn't a personal
computer, because it's not a microcomputer. (And it costs as much as a
car.) Then what is it? What do you call a single-user minicomputer?
Where has it been established/agreed/decreed that "personal computer" =
"microcomputer" + some other traits? The attempt to frame the term in
economic respects just does not work. People in the 70s could and did buy
refurbished minicomputers for their personal use, and in a timeframe in
which they were still be considered contemporary and not "obsolete".
The other, often overlooked category: it's a workstation.
Workstations, for as long as they existed, were personal computer
_like_ devices but typically an order of magnitude more powerful and
an order of magnitude more expensive. They also generally ran what ben
mononym calls a proper OS.
Workstations existed before microcomputers and before personal
computers, and continued happily existing for about 30 more years, but
by the time of 32-bit high-performance PCs with grown-up OSs, they
were teetering, and by the time of commodity _64-bit_ PCs, or
multiprocessor/multicore PCs with OSes that could use that, or of
course both (64-bit multi-core), they were dead.
...
--
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Why don't we just use the term "workstation" to describe all
microcomputers
used personally then, which is all of them? The difference in scale of
performance, memory, disk storage, etc. isn't much of a distinction, since
they're both used in a "personal" sense.
But don't worry, I am here to finally solve this riddle:
Consider: if you share a bathroom with the public where other people can
walk in while you're doing your business and do theirs, it's not your
*personal* bathroom. If you ride a bus, where multiple random people get
on and off at various stops, it's not a "personal" conveyance. If you use
a computer that simultaneously is or can be used by other people via
multiple concurrent user sessions across whatever signal path, whatever the
setting, it is *not* "personal". If you own and use a computer by
yourself, and use it singularly (or others do so when you are not), then in
fact, by definition, it is *personal*. Do you see? The opposite of
personal is multi-user. There is your dichotomy. It is either personal,
or multiuser, and never the twain shall meet, and neither anything betwixt.
I submit that this is the actual historical context of the original meaning
of the term "personal computer".
I REST MY CASE.
Sellam