29 Apr
2012
29 Apr
'12
10:33 a.m.
On Sat, 28 Apr 2012, Murray McCullough wrote:
I came across some interesting reading the other day
in a library book
that I'm sorry I can't remember its name.
Just as well. There are a LOT of books written by people well below the
median of this group. Well, to be honest, HALF OF US are below our
median!!
ADAM, went extinct because they used cassette drives .
. .
(explains the difference between ADAM and TRS80, Apple, and PET)
I?m not sure if this applied to floppy drive systems
but computing
never really took off until hard drives came along in the 16-bit
world, i.e., the mid-80s!
No.
"never really took off" is a euphemism for ("I didn't know about them
until")
ANYBODY who paid ANY attention to them in the late 1970s knew that it was
INEVITABLE and SOON that they would replace typewriters ON EVERY DESK!
It applies to ALL of us, but is most easily recognizable in TV
jaw-flappers, and NON-HISTORIAN NON- (well self-proclaimed)EXPERT authors
of histories.
"Computers existed, sort of, in prehistoric times." (They were around, but
I didn't care)
"Computers first really "took off" when . . ." (that's when I
noticed
them)
THAT is why there are SO MANY amateur histories that mention and
marginalize the "pre-dawn" times (an acknowledgement that they were
already there!), but essentially have the history of computers start with
Apple ][/TRS80/Pet OR IBM-PC (5150) OR AT (5170) OR Mac OR HARD DRIVES
(Wordstar (and other word processing), Visicalc (and other spreadsheets
("VisiClones")) didn't really exist until I got interested) as being the
"starting point", "when things took off" (when I got into it)
It's not just computers. It is a normal human trait to acknowledge the
existence of a pre-history (to be marginalized as insignificant), but
assert that the real beginning was when WE got into it.
Look at the PBS "documentary" "Berkeley in the 60's" - "It
all started
when we were sitting around in New York, and heard about what was
going on out there, . . . " (The important "starting point" was when WE
heard about it!)
Classic computing aficionados, particularly
on this site, may have a different take on things.
Because we have an interest in the computers that existed before y'all
cared and/or we REALIZE that we came in late, and we're INTERESTED in
what had already been happening. OR we're just a bunch of old farts who
wish that we could go back half a century.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com