15 Oct
2025
15 Oct
'25
9:48 p.m.
Hi everyone,
According to historians, and I consider myself one, let us consider what
classic/vintage computers were: The 1970s saw the three amigos: Apple II,
TRS-80 and Commodore PET and the OS was DOS and its ilk + CP/M. The 1980’s
saw the Dells, HPs and many others with MS-DOS & IBM PC-DOS from QDOS. We
saw this and behold ’bring on the clones’(I just had to say this!) The era
of old computers saw one generation building on the shoulders of giants who
designed these wayback computers(with apologies to Wayback Machine).
Today’s PCs and ARM machines are just the latest iteration of this
theory(by the way not mine).
Happy computing
Murray 🙂
15 Oct
15 Oct
10:27 p.m.
On 2025-10-15 3:48 p.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
Hi everyone,
According to historians, and I consider myself one, let us consider what
classic/vintage computers were: The 1970s saw the three amigos: Apple II,
TRS-80 and Commodore PET and the OS was DOS and its ilk + CP/M. The 1980’s
saw the Dells, HPs and many others with MS-DOS & IBM PC-DOS from QDOS. We
saw this and behold ’bring on the clones’(I just had to say this!) The era
of old computers saw one generation building on the shoulders of giants who
designed these wayback computers(with apologies to Wayback Machine).
Today’s PCs and ARM machines are just the latest iteration of this
theory(by the way not mine).
Happy computing
Murray 🙂
I was thinking more "the Good, the bad, and the ugly".
The 70's saw the drop in TTL logic and memory prices, Cpu chips were a
product looking for a use. Only later did the 4 bit chips ran your
calculator,washer,microwave.
The EDUC-8, pronounced "educate", is an early microcomputer kit
published by Electronics Australia in a series of articles starting in
August 1974 and continuing to August 1975. Electronics Australia
initially believed that it was the first such kit, but later discovered
that Radio-Electronics had just beaten it with their Mark-8 by one
month. However, Electronics Australia staff believed that their TTL
design was superior to the Mark-8, as it did not require the purchase of
an expensive microprocessor chip. Wikipedia
Ben.
10:28 p.m.
On Wed, 15 Oct 2025, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
According to historians, and I consider myself one,
let us consider what
classic/vintage computers were: The 1970s saw the three amigos: Apple II,
TRS-80 and Commodore PET and the OS was DOS and its ilk + CP/M.
"DOS"??!?
Every operating system called itself "DOS" from 360 through micros. When
IBM MS-DOS/PC-DOS achieved dominance, the generala public started calling
MS-DOS/PC-DOS, "DOS"
IBM explicitly considered "DOS"/"Disk Operating System" to be a
description, NOT A NAME! IBM did not trademark "DOS", nor even
"PC-DOS"!
MicroSoft, however, did trademark "MS-DOS"
In 1987, while on family business in Washington, DC, (my father's death),
I went to the patent and trademark office to research trademarking
"XenoSoft" UCSD had already trademarked "XenoFile" (did they ever
actually ship that?)
I also confirmed that "DOS", "PC-DOS" were not trademarked, bu MS-DOS
was.
IB_Irrelecant: three weeks later, at the curriculum committee meeting, one
xxxxxxx said that I could not call my OS Class "Microcomputer disk
Operating Systems", because "DOS" and "Disk Operating system" are
REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF IBM"!!! I still had my stack pass from PTO in
my pocket! Soon after, I managed to get on the curriculum committee to
defend our department from
Like you apparently do, I consider those three (TRS80, AppleII, and
Commodore PET) to have been tied.
first announcement, first prototype, first [trade show] exhibit, first
taking orders, first delivered, first available without pre-order, etc.
are all importaant, but intermingled enough that by picking one of tose as
being "what's important", anybody could argue any one of the three as
being first.
The 1980’s
saw the Dells, HPs and many others with MS-DOS & IBM PC-DOS from QDOS.
But, it behooves us to explicitly mention August 11, 1981 with the release
of the 5150 "PC".
We
saw this and behold ’bring on the clones’(I just had to say this!)
That may have been the title of the article that PCWorld did (they called
XenoCopy, "the acid test", because (at the insitence of the publisher,
that first release version of Xenocopy DRLIBERATELY refused to run on
anything but "real" 5150 (trivail look at some ROM addresses)
https://classiccmp.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/cctalk@classiccmp.org/messa…
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
> The era
> of old computers saw one generation building on the shoulders of giants who
> designed these wayback computers(with apologies to Wayback Machine).
> Today’s PCs and ARM machines are just the latest iteration of this
> theory(by the way not mine).
>
> Happy computing
>
> Murray 🙂
11:18 p.m.
On 2025-10-15 4:28 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
That I can live with. It is the horror of chip, the 8086 that I can't
live with
and marketing that went with it. Convert 8080 code to 8088 code.
first announcement, first prototype, first [trade show] exhibit, first
taking orders, first delivered, first available without pre-order, etc.
are all importaant, but intermingled enough that by picking one of tose
as being "what's important", anybody could argue any one of the three as
being first.
But it took the S-100 and other CP/M computers to educate the public
of what home computer was. The other computers where more GAME focused
machines.
I loved the APPLE II idea of split screen with hi-res graphics on the
top, and text on the bottom.
The 1980’s
saw the Dells, HPs and many others with MS-DOS & IBM PC-DOS from QDOS.
But, it
behooves us to explicitly mention August 11, 1981 with the
release of the 5150 "PC". --
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
Ben.
10:46 p.m.
Incoming!
On Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 5:57 PM Murray McCullough via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
Hi everyone,
According to historians, and I consider myself one, let us consider what
classic/vintage computers were: The 1970s saw the three amigos: Apple II,
TRS-80 and Commodore PET and the OS was DOS and its ilk + CP/M. The 1980’s
saw the Dells, HPs and many others with MS-DOS & IBM PC-DOS from QDOS. We
saw this and behold ’bring on the clones’(I just had to say this!) The era
of old computers saw one generation building on the shoulders of giants who
designed these wayback computers(with apologies to Wayback Machine).
Today’s PCs and ARM machines are just the latest iteration of this
theory(by the way not mine).
Happy computing
Murray 🙂
11:01 p.m.
On 2025-10-15 3:48 p.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
Hi everyone,
According to historians, and I consider myself one, let us consider what
classic/vintage computers were: The 1970s saw the three amigos: Apple II,
TRS-80 and Commodore PET and the OS was DOS and its ilk + CP/M. The 1980’s
saw the Dells, HPs and many others with MS-DOS & IBM PC-DOS from QDOS. We
saw this and behold ’bring on the clones’(I just had to say this!) The era
of old computers saw one generation building on the shoulders of giants who
designed these wayback computers(with apologies to Wayback Machine).
Today’s PCs and ARM machines are just the latest iteration of this
theory(by the way not mine).
The DG NOVA computer is a better example when I think of the 70's for
computing. It was one of the early mass production designs.
Before that computers where hand built for the customer, with SSI chips
if any.The IBM 1130,PDP 9, PDP 8, come to mind.
The 8' floppy drive and the smaller shit was just the right size for
micros that had no memory to spare for disk buffers.
Big drives where for the real computers, with FORTRAN IV, no MICROSOFT
BASIC here.
Happy computing
Computer magazines like Kilobyte, Byte and Dr. Dobb's was my reading
material.
Only with online material have I been reading the trade magazines of the
70's.The surplus AD's like used 1K x 36 bit core plane comes to mind here.
Murray 🙂
Ben.
16 Oct
16 Oct
1:58 a.m.
On Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 8:17 PM ben via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 2025-10-15 3:48 p.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk
wrote:
As a person who could claim to be a "qualified amateur" historian I am
trying to get what you're saying here. I throw the flag on a blanket
statement "what classic/vintage computers were..", especially when the
facts you present are not really accurate historically.
First of all, and I have said this before, vintage means, "of an era" so
it's more historically correct to use a more specific term like vintage
70's micocomputing or vintage 8-bit computers, etc. to describe what *you*
mean by "vintage computers" Bare in mind in the 70s the far more
significant dollars spent, marketshare, bits through wires and however
you'd want to measure was within mini and mainframe computing, in
particular manufactured by IBM. Your statement "...the OS was DOS and
its ink + CP/M.." is totally incorrect for the 70s, but that might just be
a typo on your part. Not sure what DOS you're talking about specifically
but IBM DOS was not sold until the early 1980s. There were many OS's in
the 60's and 70's, but the huge majority of these, the significant ones
were installed on mainframes and minicomputers.
I honestly don't have a beef with your opinions, I can't police everyone's
knowledge, but I suggest you need to do some readin' on the subject first.
Start with Steve Levy's book Hackers followed by "A History of Modern
Computing" by Paul Ceruzzi.
I hope you take my comments as a friendly feedback to your statements
Bill
Hi everyone,
According to historians, and I consider myself one, let us consider what
classic/vintage computers were: The 1970s saw the three amigos: Apple II,
TRS-80 and Commodore PET and the OS was DOS and its ilk + CP/M. The
1980’s
saw the Dells, HPs and many others with MS-DOS
& IBM PC-DOS from QDOS. We
saw this and behold ’bring on the clones’(I just had to say this!) The
era
of old computers saw one generation building on
the shoulders of giants
who
designed these wayback computers(with apologies
to Wayback Machine).
Today’s PCs and ARM machines are just the latest iteration of this
theory(by the way not mine).
The DG NOVA computer is a better example when I think of the 70's for
computing. It was one of the early mass production designs.
Before that computers where hand built for the customer, with SSI chips
if any.The IBM 1130,PDP 9, PDP 8, come to mind.
The 8' floppy drive and the smaller shit was just the right size for
micros that had no memory to spare for disk buffers.
Big drives where for the real computers, with FORTRAN IV, no MICROSOFT
BASIC here.
Happy computing
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Murray McCullough